[figure description] Page 083.[end figure description]

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 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

[figure description] Page 084.[end figure description]

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 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

[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]

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 any thing? 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

[figure description] Page 086.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]

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
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

[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]

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 Encyclop
ædia 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-str
öm.”

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;

[figure description] Page 089.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]

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,

[figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]

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 overeast—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 deek, with only a small
batch near the bow, and this batch 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 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

[figure description] Page 092.[end figure description]

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.

[figure description] Page 093.[end figure description]

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 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

[figure description] Page 094.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 095.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 096.[end figure description]

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

[figure description] Page 097.[end figure description]

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.

[figure description] Page 098.[end figure description]

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.2

“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

[figure description] Page 099.[end figure description]

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.”

p321-113

Previous section

Next section