In Part III, the Mariner uses a simile to describe the flight of the sailors' souls from their bodies as they dropped dead on the deck of the ship:
The souls did from their bodies fly, –
They fled to bliss or woe!
And every soul, it passed me by,
Like the whizz of my cross-bow!
The comparison of the sailors' souls to the "whizz of my cross-bow" introduces a sense of speed and suddenness. A cross-bow releases its projectile with remarkable speed, and in this context, the simile suggests the almost instantaneous departure of the sailors' souls from their bodies as they move toward their destinies of "bliss or woe." This simile also evokes the cross-bow that the Mariner used to kill the albatross. As the reader is presented with an image of the souls whizzing past the Mariner, the poem evokes both awe and dread. The swift and quasi-mechanical way in which the sailors' souls leave their bodies makes their deaths seem inevitable. The simile heightens the dramatic effect of this passage and gives weight and significance to the sequence of events that it describes.
In Part IV, the Wedding Guest lists the reasons for his fear of the Ancient Mariner, including a strange simile that compares him to sand:
I fear thee, ancient Mariner!
I fear thy skinny hand!
And thou art long, and lank, and brown,
As is the ribbed sea-sand.
The Mariner is "long, and lank, and brown, / As is the ribbed sea-sand." This simile draws a parallel between the Mariner's physical attributes and the characteristics of the sea-sand, aligning the look of his skin with the texture and color of ribbed sea-sand. It creates a clear and evocative visual image in the reader's mind, allowing them to picture the Mariner's gaunt and weathered appearance.
The Mariner carries the marks of the maritime environment from spending many years at sea. In fact, he appears so old and weathered that the Wedding Guest begins to believe that he perished alongside his crew and is telling the story as a ghost or zombie. His physical features, especially his skin, show evidence of many years of wear. The sea-sand is shaped and marked by the elements, just as the Mariner's experiences have left a lasting impact on his physical appearance. The resemblance between the Mariner and the sand also suggests his hard-won closeness to nature.
