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.
ETYMOLOGY
(Supplied by a Late Consumptive Usher to a Grammar School)
The pale Usher--threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain;
I see him now.
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