Moby Dick: The Epilogue

Ishmael, the narrator of this story, was the only man aboard the Pequod who lived to tell what happened, and he explained afterward how such a thing was possible.Days before, when the mysterious sailor called the Parsee vanished at sea, Ishmael had been the man chosen to fill his empty place in Ahab’s own boat.On the last day of the chase, when Ahab’s boat was thrown about and three men were flung into the water, Ishmael was thrown clear, farthest of them all from the sinking wreck.

Floating alone at the edge of the disaster, he watched the Pequod go under and felt the sea slowly begin to pull him toward the whirlpool she left behind.The great circle of spinning water grew narrower and narrower, and round and round he was drawn, closer each time to its dark, silent center.Just as he reached that center, something rose up from far below: a shape burst out of the sea and into the open air.

It was Queequeg’s coffin, the same one the ship’s carpenter had built and the sailors had later sealed shut and fitted out as a life buoy.Carried up by its own buoyancy, the coffin shot lengthwise out of the water, tipped over, and floated down softly beside him.Ishmael caught hold of it at once, and it kept him afloat, drifting on the quiet sea for almost a full day and night.

Sharks glided close by but left him alone, and sea-hawks circled low overhead but never once struck at him.On the second day, a distant sail appeared on the horizon and slowly grew larger as it drew nearer.

The ship was the Rachel, a whaler that had lost her own captain’s young son somewhere on these same waters only days before.She was still sailing back and forth in wide circles, searching every stretch of ocean for her own missing boats and men.Instead of the sons she was looking for, the Rachel’s lookouts found only one more lonely survivor, floating on an old wooden coffin.

Her sailors lowered a boat, pulled Ishmael up out of the water, and brought him safely aboard.So the Pequod, Captain Ahab, and every other man who had sailed with them were lost beneath the sea, and the whale swam on.Only Ishmael was left to carry the story home, just as it is written: “And I only am escaped alone to tell thee.”