EPILOGUE

  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.

  FINIS