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 of the rocking boat, was dropped astern. So, floating
on the margin of the ensuing scene, and in full sight of it, when the
halfspent 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 dirgelike 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.
