by Poe · Cluster: Night Journey Vision · Katabasis Descent · Quest Hero
Abstract
A frame-narrative sea tale in which an old fisherman recounts surviving the Norwegian whirlpool by rational observation; explores terror, the sublime, and reason against the destructive power of nature.
Testo / Text
Parti / Parts
Readability (prose)60.8 Flesch ease12.3 FK grade15.1 Fog8% complex30.1 words/sent
Connections
Topoi: Katabasis Descent, Night Journey Vision, Book of Nature Archetypes: Hero Motifs: Sea, Storm, Water, Moon, Death Themes & Concepts: Terror and Horror, Sublime, Ratiocination Detection, Providence, Fate and Free Will, Mortality Forms & Genres: Short Story Settings: Sea (2), Ship
Testo integrale / Full text
The ways of God in Nature, as in Providence, are not as our ways; nor are the models that we frame 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 Glanville.
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 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 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 vapor 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 its
white and ghastly crest, howling and shrieking forever. 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 Norwegians Vurrgh. The one midway is Moskoe. That a mile to
the northward is Ambaaren. Yonder are Islesen, Hotholm,
Keildhelm, Suarven, and Buckholm. Farther 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. Each moment added to its speed—to its
headlong impetuosity. 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 phrensied
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 Maelström.”
“So it is sometimes termed,” said he. “We Norwegians call it the
Moskoe-ström, from the island of Moskoe in the midway.”
The ordinary accounts 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 tranquility 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 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-ström must be
immeasurably 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
ship 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 Encyclopædia Britannica. Kircher and others imagine that
in the centre of the channel of the Maelström 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 will 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-ström.”
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 labor, 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-ström, far above the pool, and then drop
down upon anchorage somewhere near Otterholm, 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
mis-calculation 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 grounds’—it is a bad spot to be in, even in
good weather—but we made shift always to run the gauntlet of the
Moskoe-ström 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 is 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 day 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 had 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 Ström 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-colored 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
state 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 any thing like it.
We had 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 Ström, 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 fore-mast. 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-ström!_’
“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 Ström, and
nothing could save us!
“You perceive that in crossing the Ström _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 every thing 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 Ström 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 very strange to a
landsman—and this is what is called _riding_, 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-Ström whirlpool was
about a quarter of a mile dead ahead—but no more like the
every-day Moskoe-Ström 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 recognised 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 afterward 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
waste-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
wore 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 suppose 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
yourself, the belt of 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 endeavored 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 sensations 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 Mussulmen say 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 a great distance down the slope; but our
farther 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-ström.
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, for 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 had 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 thereabout, 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 forever, into the chaos of foam below. The
barrel to which I was attached sunk very little farther 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-ström _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 Ström,
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.”