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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 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.”