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For an instant , the tranced boat’s crew stood still ; then turned . “ The ship ? Great God , where is the ship ? ” Soon they through dim , bewildering mediums saw her sidelong fading phantom , as in the gaseous Fata Morgana ; only the uppermost masts out of water ; while fixed by infatuation , or fidelity , or fate , to their once lofty perches , the pagan harpooneers still maintained their sinking lookouts on the sea . And now , concentric circles seized the lone boat itself , and all its crew , and each floating oar , and every lance - pole , and spinning , animate and inanimate , all round and round in one vortex , carried the smallest chip of the Pequod out of sight . But as the last whelmings intermixingly poured themselves over the sunken head of the Indian at the mainmast , leaving a few inches of the erect spar yet visible , together with long streaming yards of the flag , which calmly undulated , with ironical coincidings , over the destroying billows they almost touched ; — at that instant , a red arm and a hammer hovered backwardly uplifted in the open air , in the act of nailing the flag faster and yet faster to the subsiding spar . A sky - hawk that tauntingly had followed the main - truck downwards from its natural home among the stars , pecking at the flag , and incommoding Tashtego there ; this bird now chanced to intercept its broad fluttering wing between the hammer and the wood ; and simultaneously feeling that etherial thrill , the submerged savage beneath , in his death - gasp , kept his hammer frozen there ; and so the bird of heaven , with archangelic shrieks , and his imperial beak thrust upwards , and his whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab , went down with his ship , which , like Satan , would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her , and helmeted herself with it . Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf ; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides ; then all collapsed , and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago . 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 .
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