At last, in the Pacific, Ahab himself sighted him first: a snow-white hump, as high as a hill, gliding through the calm sea. There she blows, he cried, it is Moby Dick. For three days they chased him. On the first day the whale bit Ahab's boat in half. On the second he tangled the lines and drowned the Parsee who had promised Ahab he would go before him. On the third day Ahab's harpoon went home, and the line ran out and caught him round the neck, and he was shot out of the boat without a cry. Then the whale turned and struck the Pequod, and the ship went down with every soul aboard, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago. Only I survived. The coffin that Queequeg had made for himself when he was ill shot up from the whirlpool, and I floated on it for a day and a night, until the Rachel, searching for her own lost children, found another orphan.