Call me Ishmael. Years ago, finding myself poor and aimless on land, I decided to sail and view the watery world. This is my method for curing melancholy and regulating my blood. Whenever my mouth grows grim, or my soul feels like a damp, drizzly November, I know it is time to leave. The urge becomes undeniable when I pause before coffin before warehouses, trail behind funerals, or feel a manic impulse to knock hats off in the street. Going to sea is my alternative to suicide. While Cato died on his sword with a flourish, I quietly board a ship. This impulse is not unique; almost all men feel a magnetic pull toward the ocean.
The Pequod sank in a great vortex that drew in the remaining boats, the floating oars, every chip of the ship. Tashtego, nailing the flag to the subsiding mast, caught a sky-hawk between hammer and wood. The bird, with archangelic shrieks, went down with the ship—like Satan, dragging a living part of heaven to hell. The gulf closed. The great shroud of the sea rolled on as it had rolled five thousand years before.
Ishmael alone survived. Dropped astern when the boat capsized, he was drawn toward the vortex but escaped its center. The coffin life-buoy shot up from the depths, and he floated upon it for a day and a night. The sharks passed him by; the sea-hawks sailed with sheathed beaks. On the second day, the Rachel appeared, searching for her missing children, and found another orphan. The drama was done, and one alone was escaped to tell the tale.
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