CHAPTER C EPILOGUE.


"AND I ONLY AM ESCAPED ALONE TO TELL THEE."

Job.

The drama's done. Why then here does any one step forth?--Because one
did survive the wreck.

It so chanced, that after the Parsee's disappearance, I was he whom
the Fates ordained to take the place of Ahab's bowsman, when that
bowsman assumed the vacant post; the same, who, when on the last day
the three men were tossed from out the rocking boat, was dropped
astern. So, floating on the margin of the ensuing scene, and in full
sight of it, when the half-spent suction of the sunk ship reached me, I
was then, but slowly, drawn towards the closing vortex. When I reached
it, it had subsided to a creamy pool. Round and round, then, and ever
contracting towards the button-like black bubble at the axis of that
slowly wheeling circle, like another Ixion I did revolve. Till, gaining
that vital centre, the black bubble upward burst; and now, liberated by
reason of its cunning spring, and owing to its great buoyancy, rising
with great force, the coffin life-buoy shot lengthwise from the sea,
fell over, and floated by my side. Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost
one whole day and night, I floated on a soft and dirge-like main. The
unharming sharks, they glided by as if with padlocks on their mouths;
the savage sea-hawks sailed with sheathed beaks. On the second day, a
sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was the
devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing
children, only found another orphan.


