Ishmael explains his survival. In Fedallah's absence, he had rowed with Ahab that last day. He was tossed from the boat and floated "on the margin of the ensuing scene" but within full sight of the action. By the time the vortex pulled him to its center, it had sufficiently subsided so that he was not sucked under. Suddenly Queequeg's coffin buoy shot up from the center of the fading vortex. Clinging to it for a day and a night, Ishmael finally was rescued by the Rachel, "that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan."
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