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.
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