APDL Eductation Resources/APDL Eductation Resources.iso/text/authors/poe/maelstrom/MAELSTROM

Text File | 1996-07-21 | 37.3 KB | 626 lines

                   A Descent into the Maelstrom

The ways of God in Nature, as in Providence, are not as our ways; nor
are the models that we frame in any way commensurate to the vastness,
profundity, and unsearchableness of His works which have a depth in them
greater than the well of Democritus.

                                   JOSEPH GLANVILL


We had now reached the summit of the loftiest crag. For some minutes the
old man seemed too much exhausted to speak.

'Not long ago,' said he at length, 'and I could have guided you on this
route as well as the youngest of my sons; but, about three years past,
there happened to me an event such as never happened before to mortal
man--or, at least, such as no man ever survived to tell of--and the six
hours of deadly terror which I then endured have broken me up body and
soul. You suppose me a very old man--but I am not. It took less than a
single day to change these hairs from a jetty black to white, to weaken
my limbs, and to unstring my nerves, so that I tremble at the least
exertion, and am frightened at a shadow. Do you know I can scarcely look
over this little cliff without getting giddy?'

The 'little cliff', upon whose edge he had so carelessly thrown himself
down to rest that the weightier portion of his body hung over it, while
he was only kept from falling by the tenure of his elbow on its extreme
and slippery edge--this 'little cliff' arose, a sheer unobstructed
precipice of black shining rock, some fifteen or sixteen hundred feet
from the world of crags beneath us. Nothing would have tempted me to be
within half a dozen yards of its brink. In truth so deeply was I excited
by the perilous position of my companion, that I fell at full length
upon the ground, clung to the shrubs around me, and dared not even
glance upward at the sky--while I struggled in vain to divest myself of
the idea that the very foundations of the mountain were in danger from
the fury of the winds. It was long before I could reason myself into
sufficient courage to sit up and look out into the distance.

'You must get over these fancies,' said the guide, 'for I have brought
you here that you might have the best possible view of the scene of that
event I mentioned--and to tell you the whole story with the spot just
under your eye.

'We are now,' he continued, in that particularizing manner which
distinguished him--'we are now close upon the Norwegian coast--in the
sixty-eighth degree of latitude--in the great province of Nordland--and
in the dreary district of Lofoden. The mountain upon whose top we sit is
Helseggen, the Cloudy. Now raise yourself up a little higher--hold on to
the grass if you feel giddy--so--and look out, beyond the belt of vapour
beneath us, into the sea.'

I looked dizzily, and beheld a wide expanse of ocean, whose waters wore
so inky a hue as to bring at once to my mind the Nubian geographer's
account of the Mare Tenebrarum. A panorama more deplorably desolate no
human imagination can conceive. To the right and left, as far as the eye
could reach, there lay outstretched, like ramparts of the world, lines
of horridly black and beetling cliff, whose character of gloom was but
the more forcibly illustrated by the surf which reared high up against
it its white and ghastly crest, howling and shrieking for ever.  Just
opposite the promontory upon whose apex we were placed, and at a
distance of some five or six miles out at sea, there was visible a
small, bleak-looking island; or, more properly, its position was
discernible through the wilderness of surge in which it was enveloped.
About two miles nearer the land, arose another of smaller size,
hideously craggy and barren, and encompassed at various intervals by a
cluster of dark rocks.

The appearance of the ocean, in the space between the more distant
island and the shore, had something very unusual about it. Although, at
the time, so strong a gale was blowing landward that a brig in the
remote offing lay to under a double-reefed trysail, and constantly
plunged her whole hull out of sight, still there was here nothing like a
regular swell, but only a short, quick, angry cross dashing of water in
every direction--as well in the teeth of the wind as otherwise. Of foam
there was little except in the immediate vicinity of the rocks.

'The island in the distance,' resumed the old man, 'is called by the
Norwegian Vurrgh. The one midway is Moskoe. That a mile to the northward
is Ambaaren. Yonder are Islesen, Hotholm, Keildhelm, Suarven, and
Buckholm. Further off--between Moskoe and Vurrgh--are Otterholm, Flimen,
Sandflesen, and Stockholm. These are the true names of the places--but
why it has been thought necessary to name them at all, is more than
either you or I can understand. Do you hear anything?  Do you see any
change in the water?'

We had now been about ten minutes upon the top of Helseggen, to which we
had ascended from the interior of Lofoden, so that we had caught no
glimpse of the sea until it had burst upon us from the summit. As the
old man spoke, I became aware of a loud and gradually increasing sound,
like the moaning of a vast herd of buffaloes upon an American prairie;
and at the same moment I perceived that what seamen term the chopping
character of the ocean beneath us, was rapidly changing into a current
which set to the eastward. Even while I gazed, this current acquired a
monstrous velocity. In five minutes the whole sea as far as Vurrgh, was
lashed into ungovernable fury; but it was between Moskoe and the coast
that the main uproar held its sway. Here the vast bed of the waters
seamed and scarred into a thousand conflicting channels, burst suddenly
into frenzied convulsion-- heaving, boiling, hissing--gyrating in
gigantic and innumerable vortices, and all whirling and plunging on to
the eastward with a rapidity which water never elsewhere assumes, except
in precipitous descents.

In a few minutes more, there came over the scene another radical
alteration. The general surface grew somewhat more smooth, and the
whirlpools, one by one, disappeared, while prodigious streaks of foam
became apparent where none had been seen before. These streaks, at
length, spreading out to a great distance, and entering into
combination, took unto themselves the gyratory motion of the subsided
vortices, and seemed to form the germ of another more vast.
Suddenly--very suddenly--this assumed a distinct and definite existence,
in a circle of more than a mile in diameter. The edge of the whirl was
represented by a broad belt of gleaming spray; but no particle of this
slipped into the mouth of the terrific funnel, whose interior, as far as
the eye could fathom it, was a smooth, shining, and jet-black wall of
water, inclined to the horizon at an angle of some forty- five degrees,
speeding dizzily round and round with a swaying and sweltering motion,
and sending forth to the winds an appalling voice, half shriek, half
roar, such as not even the mighty cataract of Niagara ever lifts up in
its agony to Heaven.

The mountain trembled to its very base, and the rock rocked.  I threw
myself upon my face, and clung to the scant herbage in an excess of
nervous agitation.

'This,' said I at length, to the old man--'this can be nothing else than
the great whirlpool of the Maelstrom.'

'So it is sometimes termed,' said he. 'We Norwegians call it the
Moskoe-strom, from the island of Moskoe in the midway.'

The ordinary account of this vortex had by no means prepared me for what
I saw. That of Jonas Ramus, which is perhaps the most circumstantial of
any, cannot impart the faintest conception either of the magnificence,
or of the horror of the scene--or of the wild bewildering sense of the
novel which confounds the beholder. I am not sure from what point of
view the writer in question surveyed it, nor at what time; but it could
neither have been from the summit of Helseggen, nor during a storm.
There are some passages of his description, nevertheless, which may be
quoted for their details, although their effect is exceedingly feeble in
conveying an impression of the spectacle.

'Between Lofoden and Moskoe,' he says, 'the depth of the water is
between thirty-six and forty fathoms; but on the other side, toward Ver
[Vurrgh] this depth decreases so as not to afford a convenient passage
for a vessel, without the risk of splitting on the rocks, which happens
even in the calmest weather. When it is flood, the stream runs up the
country between Lofoden and Moskoe with a boisterous rapidity; but the
roar of its impetuous ebb to the sea is scarce equalled by the loudest
and most dreadful cataracts; the noise being heard several leagues off,
and the vortices or pits are of such an extent and depth, that if a ship
comes within its attraction, it is inevitably absorbed and carried down
to the bottom, and there beat to pieces against the rocks; and when the
water relaxes, the fragments thereof are thrown up again. But these
intervals of tranquillity are only at the turn of the ebb and flood, and
in calm weather, and last but a quarter of an hour, its violence
gradually returning. When the stream is most boisterous, and its fury
heightened by a storm, it is dangerous to come within a Norway mile of
it. Boats, yachts, and ships have been carried away by not guarding
against it before they were carried within its reach. It likewise
happens frequently, that whales come too near the stream, and are
overpowered by its violence; and then it is impossible to describe their
howlings and bellowings in their fruitless struggles to disengage
themselves. A bear once, attempting to swim from Lofoden to Moskoe, was
caught by the stream and borne down, while he roared terribly, so as to
be heard on shore. Large stocks of firs and pine trees, after being
absorbed by the current, rise again broken and torn to such a degree as
if bristles grew upon them. This plainly shows the bottom to consist of
craggy rocks, among which they are whirled to and fro. This stream is
regulated by the flux and reflux of the sea--it being constantly high
and low water every six hours.  In the year 1645, early in the morning
of Sexagesima Sunday, it raged with such noise and impetuosity that the
very stones of the houses on the coast fell to the ground.'

In regard to the depth of the water, I could not see how this could have
been ascertained at all in the immediate vicinity of the vortex. The
'forty fathoms' must have reference only to portions of the channel
close upon the shore either of Moskoe or Lofoden. The depth in the
centre of the Moskoe-strom must be unmeasurably greater; and no better
proof of this fact is necessary than can be obtained from even the
sidelong glance into the abyss of the whirl which may be had from the
highest crag of Helseggen. Looking down from this pinnacle upon the
howling Phlegethon below, I could not help smiling at the simplicity
with which the honest Jonas Ramus records, as a matter difficult of
belief, the anecdotes of the whales and the bears, for it appeared to
me, in fact, a self-evident thing, that the largest ships of the line in
existence, coming within the influence of that deadly attraction, could
resist it as little as a feather the hurricane, and must disappear
bodily and at once.

The attempts to account for the phenomenon--some of which, I remember,
seemed to me sufficiently plausible in perusal--now wore a very
different and unsatisfactory aspect. The idea generally received is that
this, as well as three smaller vortices among the Ferroe Islands, 'have
no other cause than the collision of waves rising and falling, at flux
and reflux, against a ridge of rocks and shelves, which confines the
water so that it precipitates itself like a cataract; and thus the
higher the flood rises, the deeper must the fall be, and the natural
result of all is a whirlpool or vortex, the prodigious suction of which
is sufficiently known by lesser experiments'.--  These are the words of
the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Kircher and others imagine that in the
centre of the channel of the Maelstrom is an abyss penetrating the
globe, and issuing in some very remote part--the Gulf of Bothnia being
somewhat decidedly named in one instance. This opinion, idle in itself,
was the one to which, as I gazed, my imagination most readily assented;
and, mentioning it to the guide, I was rather surprised to hear him say
that, although it was the view almost universally entertained of the
subject by the Norwegians, it nevertheless was not his own. As to the
former notion he confessed his inability to comprehend it; and here I
agreed with him--for, however conclusive on paper, it becomes altogether
unintelligible, and even absurd, amid the thunder of the abyss.

'You have had a good look at the whirl now,' said the old man, 'and if
you creep round this crag, so as to get in its lee, and deaden the roar
of the water, I will tell you a story that will convince you I ought to
know something of the Moskoe-strom.'

I placed myself as desired, and he proceeded.

'Myself and my two brothers once owned a schooner-rigged smack of about
seventy tons burthen, with which we were in the habit of fishing among
the islands beyond Moskoe, nearly to Vurrgh. In all violent eddies at
sea there is good fishing, at proper opportunities, if one has only the
courage to attempt it: but among the whole of the Lofoden coastmen, we
three were the only ones who made a regular business of going out to the
islands, as I tell you. The usual grounds are a great way lower down to
the southward. There fish can be got at all hours, without much risk,
and therefore these places are preferred. The choice spots over here
among the rocks, however, not only yield the finest variety, but in far
greater abundance; so that we often got in a single day, what the more
timid of the craft could not scrape together in a week. In fact, we made
it a matter of desperate speculation--the risk of life standing instead
of labour, and courage answering for capital.

'We kept the smack in a cove about five miles higher up the coast than
this; and it was our practice, in fine weather, to take advantage of the
fifteen minutes' slack to push across the main channel of the
Moskoe-strom, far above the pool, and then drop down upon anchorage
somewhere near Otterham, or Sandflesen, where the eddies are not so
violent as elsewhere. Here we used to remain until nearly time for
slack-water again, when we weighed and made for home. We never set out
upon this expedition without a steady side wind for going and
coming--one that we felt sure would not fail us before our return--and
we seldom made a miscalculation upon this point. Twice, during six
years, we were forced to stay all night at anchor on account of a dead
calm, which is a rare thing indeed just about here; and once we had to
remain on the grounds nearly a week, starving to death, owing to a gale
which blew up shortly after our arrival, and made the channel too
boisterous to be thought of. Upon this occasion we should have been
driven out to sea in spite of everything (for the whirlpools threw us
round and round so violently, that, at length, we fouled our anchor and
dragged it) if it had not been that we drifted into one of the
innumerable cross currents--here to-day and gone to-morrow--which drove
us under the lee of Flimen, where, by good luck, we brought up.

'I could not tell you the twentieth part of the difficulties we
encountered "on the ground"--it is a bad spot to be in, even in good
weather--but we make shift always to run the gauntlet of the
Moskoe-strom itself without accident: although at times my heart has
been in my mouth when we happened to be a minute or so behind or before
the slack. The wind sometimes was not as strong as we thought it at
starting, and then we made rather less way than we could wish, while the
current rendered the smack unmanageable. My eldest brother had a son
eighteen years old, and I had two stout boys of my own. These would have
been of great assistance at such times, in using the sweeps as well as
afterward in fishing--but, somehow, although we ran the risk ourselves,
we had not the heart to let the young ones get into the danger--for,
after all said and done, it was a horrible danger, and that is the
truth.

'It is now within a few days of three years since what I am going to
tell you occurred. It was on the tenth of July, 18--, a day which the
people of this part of the world will never forget- -for it was one in
which blew the most terrible hurricane that ever came out of the
heavens. And yet all the morning, and indeed until late in the
afternoon, there was a gentle and steady breeze from the south-west,
while the sun shone brightly, so that the oldest seaman among us could
not have foreseen what was to follow.

'The three of us--my two brothers and myself--had crossed over to the
islands about two o'clock P.M., and soon nearly loaded the smack with
fine fish, which, we all remarked, were more plenty that day than we had
ever known them. It was just seven, by my watch, when we weighed and
started for home, so as to make the worst of the Strom at slack water,
which we knew would be at eight.

'We set out with a fresh wind on our starboard quarter, and for some
time spanked along at a great rate, never dreaming of danger, for indeed
we saw not the slightest reason to apprehend it. All at once we were
taken aback by a breeze from over Helseggen. This was most
unusual--something that had never happened to us before--and I began to
feel a little uneasy, without exactly knowing why. We put the boat on
the wind, but could make no headway at all for the eddies, and I was
upon the point of proposing to return to the anchorage, when, looking
astern, we saw the whole horizon covered with a singular copper-
coloured cloud that rose with the most amazing velocity.

'In the meantime the breeze that had headed us off fell away and we were
dead becalmed, drifting about in every direction.  This stage of things,
however, did not last long enough to give us time to think about it. In
less than a minute the storm was upon us--in less than two the sky was
entirely overcast--and what with this and the driving spray, it became
suddenly so dark that we could not see each other in the smack.

'Such a hurricane as then blew it is folly to attempt describing. The
oldest seaman in Norway never experienced anything like it. We had to
let our sails go by the run before it cleverly took us; but, at the
first puff, both our masts went by the board as if they had been sawed
off--the mainmast taking with it my youngest brother, who had lashed
himself to it for safety.

'Our boat was the lightest feather of a thing that ever sat upon water.
It had a complete flush deck, with only a small hatch near the bow, and
this hatch it had always been our custom to batten down when about to
cross the Strom, by way of precaution against the chopping seas. But for
this circumstance we should have foundered at once--for we lay entirely
buried for some moments. How my elder brother escaped destruction I
cannot say, for I never had an opportunity of ascertaining. For my part,
as soon as I had let the foresail run, I threw myself flat on deck, with
my feet against the narrow gunwale of the bow, and with my hands
grasping a ring-bolt near the foot of the foremast.  It was mere
instinct that prompted me to do this--which was undoubtedly the very
best thing I could have done--for I was too much flurried to think.

'For some moments we were completely deluged, as I say, and all this
time I held my breath, and clung to the bolt. When I could stand it no
longer I raised myself upon my knees, still keeping hold with my hands,
and thus got my head clear.  Presently our little boat gave herself a
shake, just as a dog does in coming out of the water, and thus rid
herself, in some measure, of the seas. I was now trying to get the
better of the stupor that had come over me, and to collect my senses so
as to see what was to be done, when I felt somebody grasp my arm. It was
my elder brother, and my heart leaped for joy, for I had made sure that
he was overboard--but the next moment all this joy was turned into
horror--for he put his mouth close to my ear, and screamed out the word
"Moskoe-strom!"

'No one ever will know what my feelings were at that moment.  I shook
from head to foot as if I had had the most violent fit of the ague. I
knew what he meant by that one word well enough--I knew what he wished
to make me understand. With the wind that now drove us on, we were bound
for the whirl of the Strom, and nothing could save us!

'You perceive that in crossing the Strom channel, we always went a long
way up above the whirl, even in the calmest weather, and then had to
wait and watch carefully for the slack--but now we were driving right
upon the pool itself, and in such a hurricane as this!  "To be sure," I
thought, "we shall get there just about the slack--there is some little
hope in that"--but in the next moment I cursed myself for being so great
a fool as to dream of hope at all. I knew very well that we were doomed,
had we been ten times a ninety-gun ship.

'By this time the first fury of the tempest had spent itself, or perhaps
we did not feel it so much, as we scudded before it, but at all events
the seas, which at first had been kept down by the wind, and lay flat
and frothing, now got up into absolute mountains. A singular change,
too, had come over the heavens. Around in every direction it was still
as black as pitch, but nearly overhead there burst out, all at once, a
circular rift of clear sky--as clear as I ever saw--and of a deep bright
blue--and through it there blazed forth the full moon with a lustre that
I never before knew her to wear. She lit up everything about us with the
greatest distinctness--but, oh God, what a scene it was to light up.

'I now made one or two attempts to speak to my brother--but in some
manner which I could not understand, the din had so increased that I
could not make him hear a single word, although I screamed at the top of
my voice in his ear. Presently he shook his head, looking as pale as
death, and held up one of his fingers, as if to say "listen!"

'At first I could not make out what he meant--but soon a hideous thought
flashed upon me. I dragged my watch from its fob. It was not going. I
glanced at its face by the moonlight, and then burst into tears as I
flung it far away into the ocean.  It had run down at seven o'clock!  We
were behind the time of the slack, and the whirl of the Strom was in
full fury!

'When a boat is well built, properly trimmed, and not deep laden, the
waves in a strong gale, when she is going large, seem always to slip
from beneath her--which appears strange to a landsman--and this is what
is called ridging, in sea phrase.

'Well, so far we had ridden the swells very cleverly; but presently a
gigantic sea happened to take us right under the counter, and bore us
with it as it rose--up--up--as if into the sky. I would not have
believed that any wave could rise so high.  And then down we came with a
sweep, a slide, and a plunge that made me feel sick and dizzy, as if I
was falling from some lofty mountain-top in a dream. But while we were
up I had thrown a quick glance around--and that one glance was
all-sufficient. I saw our exact position in an instant. The Moskoe-strom
whirlpool was about a quarter of a mile dead ahead--but no more like the
every-day Moskoe-strom than the whirl, as you now see it, is like a
mill-race. If I had not known where we were, and what we had to expect,
I should not have recognized the place at all. As it was, I
involuntarily closed my eyes in horror. The lids clenched themselves
together as if in a spasm.

'It could not have been more than two minutes afterwards until we
suddenly felt the waves subside, and were enveloped in foam. The boat
made a sharp half turn to larboard, and then shot off in its new
direction like a thunderbolt. At the same moment the roaring noise of
the water was completely drowned in a kind of shrill shriek--such a
sound as you might imagine given out by the water-pipes of many thousand
steam-vessels letting off their steam all together. We were now in the
belt of surf that always surrounds the whirl; and I thought, of course,
that another moment would plunge us into the abyss, down which we could
only see indistinctly on account of the amazing velocity with which we
were borne along. The boat did not seem to sink into the water at all,
but to skim like an air-bubble upon the surface of the surge. Her
starboard side was next the whirl, and on the larboard arose the world
of ocean we had left. It stood like a huge writhing wall between us and
the horizon.

'It may appear strange, but now, when we were in the very jaws of the
gulf, I felt more composed than when we were only approaching it. Having
made up my mind to hope no more, I got rid of a great deal of that
terror which unmanned me at first. I supposed it was despair that strung
my nerves.

'It may look like boasting--but what I tell you is truth--I began to
reflect how magnificent a thing it was to die in such a manner, and how
foolish it was in me to think of so paltry a consideration as my own
individual life, in view of so wonderful a manifestation of God's power.
I do believe that I blushed with shame when this idea crossed my mind.
After a little while I became possessed with the keenest curiosity about
the whirl itself. I positively felt a wish to explore its depths, even
at the sacrifice I was going to make; and my principal grief was that I
should never be able to tell my old companions on shore about the
mysteries I should see. These, no doubt, were singular fancies to occupy
a man's mind in such extremity--and I have often thought since, that the
revolutions of the boat around the pool might have rendered me a little
light-headed.

'There was another circumstance which tended to restore my
self-possession; and this was the cessation of the wind, which could not
reach us in our present situation--for, as you saw for yourself, the
belt of the surf is considerably lower than the general bed of the
ocean, and this latter now towered above us, a high, black, mountainous
ridge. If you have never been at sea in a heavy gale, you can form no
idea of the confusion of mind occasioned by the wind and spray together.
They blind, deafen, and strangle you, and take away all power of action
or reflection. But we were now, in a great measure, rid of these
annoyances--just as death-condemned felons in prison are allowed petty
indulgences, forbidden them while their doom is yet uncertain.

'How often we made the circuit of the belt it is impossible to say. We
careered round and round for perhaps an hour, flying rather than
floating, getting gradually more and more into the middle of the surge,
and then nearer and nearer to its horrible inner edge. All this time I
had never let go of the ring-bolt.  My brother was at the stern, holding
on to a small empty water- cask which had been securely lashed under the
coop of the counter, and was the only thing on deck that had not been
swept overboard when the gale first took us. As we approached the brink
of the pit he let go his hold upon this, and made for the ring, from
which, in the agony of his terror, he endeavoured to force my hands, as
it was not large enough to afford us both a secure grasp. I never felt
deeper grief than when I saw him attempt this act--although I knew he
was a madman when he did it- -a raving maniac through sheer fright. I
did not care, however, to contest the point with him. I knew it could
make no difference whether either of us held on at all; so I let him
have the bolt, and went astern to the cask. This there was no great
difficulty in doing; for the smack flew round steadily enough, and upon
an even keel--only swaying to and fro with the immense sweeps and
swelters of the whirl. Scarcely had I secured myself in my new position,
when we gave a wild lurch to starboard, and rushed headlong into the
abyss. I muttered a hurried prayer to God, and thought all was over.

'As I felt the sickening sweep of the descent, I had instinctively
tightened my hold upon the barrel, and closed my eyes. For some seconds
I dared not open them--while I expected instant destruction, and
wondered that I was not already in my death-struggles with the water.
But moment after moment elapsed.  I still lived. The sense of falling
had ceased; and the motion of the vessel seemed much as it had been
before, while in the belt of foam, with the exception that she now lay
more along. I took courage and looked once again upon the scene.

'Never shall I forget the sensation of awe, horror, and admiration with
which I gazed about me. The boat appeared to be hanging, as if by magic,
midway down, upon the interior surface of a funnel vast in
circumference, prodigious in depth, and whose perfectly smooth sides
might have been mistaken for ebony, but for the bewildering rapidity
with which they spun around, and for the gleaming and ghastly radiance
they shot forth, as the rays of the full moon, from that circular rift
amid the clouds which I have already described, streamed in a flood of
golden glory along the black walls, and far away down into the inmost
recesses of the abyss.

'At first I was too much confused to observe anything accurately. The
general burst of terrific grandeur was all that I beheld. When I
recovered myself a little, however, my gaze fell instinctively downward.
In this direction I was able to obtain an unobstructed view, from the
manner in which the smack hung on the inclined surface of the pool. She
was quite upon an even keel--that is to say, her deck lay in a plane
parallel with that of the water--but this latter sloped at an angle of
more than forty-five degrees, so that we seemed to be lying upon our
beam ends. I could not help observing, nevertheless, that I had scarcely
more difficulty in maintaining my hold and footing in this situation,
than if we had been upon a dead level; and this, I suppose, was owing to
the speed at which we revolved.

'The rays of the moon seemed to search the very bottom of the profound
gulf: but still I could make out nothing distinctly on account of a
thick mist in which everything there was enveloped, and over which there
hung a magnificent rainbow, like that narrow and tottering bridge which
Mussulmans says is the only pathway between Time and Eternity. This
mist, or spray, was no doubt occasioned by the clashing of the great
walls of the funnel, as they all met together at the bottom--but the
yell that went up to the heavens from out of that mist I dare not
attempt to describe.

Our first slide into the abyss itself, from the belt of foam above, had
carried us to a great distance down the slope; but our further descent
was by no means proportionate. Round and round we swept--not with any
uniform movement--but in dizzying swings and jerks, that sent us
sometimes only a few hundred yards-- sometimes nearly the complete
circuit of the whirl. Our progress downward, at each revolution, was
slow, but very perceptible.

'Looking about me upon the wide waste of liquid ebony on which we were
thus borne, I perceived that our boat was not the only object in the
embrace of the whirl. Both above and below us were visible fragments of
vessels, large masses of building- timber and trunks of trees, with many
smaller articles, such as pieces of house furniture, broken boxes,
barrels and staves. I have already described the unnatural curiosity
which had taken the place of my original terrors. It appeared to grow
upon me as I drew nearer and nearer to my dreadful doom. I now began to
watch, with a strange interest, the numerous things that floated in our
company. I must have been delirious, for I even sought amusement in
speculating upon the relative velocities of their several descents
toward the foam below. "This fir-tree," I found myself at one time
saying, "will certainly be the next thing that takes the awful plunge
and disappears,"--and then I was disappointed to find that the wreck of
a Dutch merchant ship overtook it and went down before. At length, after
making several guesses of this nature, and being deceived in all--this
fact--the fact of my invariable miscalculation, set me upon a train of
reflection that made my limbs again tremble, and my heart beat heavily
once more.

'It was not a new terror that thus affected me, but the dawn of a more
exciting hope. This hope arose partly from memory, and partly from
present observation. I called to mind the great variety of buoyant
matter that strewed the coast of Lofoden, having been absorbed and then
thrown forth by the Moskoe-strom.  By far the greater number of the
articles were shattered in the most extraordinary way--so chafed and
roughened as to have the appearance of being stuck full of
splinters--but then I distinctly recollected that there were some of
them which were not disfigured at all. Now I could not account for this
difference except by supposing that the roughened fragments were the
only ones which had been completely absorbed--that the others had
entered the whirl at so late a period of the tide, or, from some reason,
had descended so slowly after entering, that they did not reach the
bottom before the turn of the flood came, or of the ebb, as the case
might be. I conceived it possible, in either instance, that they might
thus be whirled up again to the level of the ocean, without undergoing
the fate of those which had been drawn in more early or absorbed more
rapidly. I made, also, three important observations. The first was, that
as a general rule, the larger the bodies were, the more rapid their
descent--the second that, between two masses of equal extent, the one
spherical, and the other of any other shape, the superiority in speed of
descent was with the sphere--the third, that, between two masses of
equal size, the one cylindrical, and the other of any other shape, the
cylinder was absorbed the more slowly.  Since my escape, I have had
several conversations on this subject with an old school-master of the
district; and it was from him that I learned the use of the words
"cylinder" and "sphere". He explained to me--although I have forgotten
the explanation--how what I observed was, in fact, the natural
consequence of the forms of the floating fragments--and showed me how it
happened that a cylinder, swimming in a vortex, offered more resistance
to its suction, and was drawn in with greater difficulty than an equally
bulky body, of any form whatever.1

'There was one startling circumstance which went a great way in
enforcing these observations, and rendering me anxious to turn them to
account, and this was that, at every revolution, we passed something
like a barrel, or else the yard or the mast of a vessel, while many of
these things, which had been on our level when I first opened my eyes
upon the wonders of the whirlpool, were now high up above us, and seemed
to have moved but little from their original station.

'I no longer hesitated what to do. I resolved to lash myself securely to
the water-cask upon which I now held, to cut it loose from the counter,
and to throw myself with it into the water. I attracted my brother's
attention by signs, pointed to the floating barrels that came near us,
and did everything in my power to make him understand what I was about
to do. I thought at length that he comprehended my design--but, whether
this was the case or not, he shook his head despairingly, and refused to
move from his station by the ring-bolt. It was impossible to reach him;
the emergency admitted of no delay; and so, with a bitter struggle, I
resigned him to his fate, fastened myself to the cask by means of the
lashings which secured it to the counter, and precipitated myself with
it into the sea, without another moment's hesitation.

'The result was precisely what I hoped it might be. As it is myself who
now tell you this tale--as you see that I did escape--and as you are
already in possession of the mode in which this escape was effected, and
must therefore anticipate all that I have farther to say--I will bring
my story quickly to conclusion. It might have been an hour, or
thereabouts, after my quitting the smack, when, having descended to a
vast distance beneath me, it made three or four wild gyrations in rapid
succession and, bearing my loved brother with it, plunged headlong, at
once and for ever, into the chaos of foam below.  The barrel to which I
was attached sunk very little further than half the distance between the
bottom of the gulf and the spot at which I leaped overboard, before a
great change took place in the character of the whirlpool. The slope of
the sides of the vast funnel became momently less and less steep. The
gyrations of the whirl grew, gradually, less and less violent. By
degrees, the froth and the rainbow disappeared, and the bottom of the
gulf seemed slowly to uprise. The sky was clear, the winds had gone
down, and the full moon was setting radiantly in the west, when I found
myself on the surface of the ocean, in full view of the shores of
Lofoden, and above the spot where the pool of the Moskoe-strom had been.
It was the hour of the slack--but the sea still heaved in mountainous
waves from the effects of the hurricane. I was borne violently into the
channel of the Strom, and in a few minutes, was hurried down the coast
into the "grounds" of the fishermen. A boat picked me up--exhausted from
fatigue--and (now that the danger was removed) speechless from the
memory of its horror. Those who drew me on board were my old mates and
daily companions--but they knew me no more than they would have known a
traveller from the spirit-land. My hair, which had been raven black the
day before, was as white as you see it now. They say too that the whole
expression of my countenance had changed. I told them my story--they did
not believe it. I now tell it to you--and I can scarcely expect you to
put more faith in it than did the merry fishermen of Lofoden.'


1 See Archimedes, 'De incidentibus in Fluido', lib. 2.