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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 in any way commensurate to the
vastness, profundity, and unsearchableness of His works which
have a depth in them greater than the well of Democritus.
JOSEPH GLANVILL
We had now reached the summit of the loftiest crag. For
some minutes the old man seemed too much exhausted to speak.
'Not long ago,' said he at length, 'and I could have guided
you on this route as well as the youngest of my sons; but, about
three years past, there happened to me an event such as never
happened before to mortal man--or, at least, such as no man ever
survived to tell of--and the six hours of deadly terror which I
then endured have broken me up body and soul. You suppose me a
very old man--but I am not. It took less than a single day to
change these hairs from a jetty black to white, to weaken my
limbs, and to unstring my nerves, so that I tremble at the least
exertion, and am frightened at a shadow. Do you know I can
scarcely look over this little cliff without getting giddy?'
The 'little cliff', upon whose edge he had so carelessly
thrown himself down to rest that the weightier portion of his
body hung over it, while he was only kept from falling by the
tenure of his elbow on its extreme and slippery edge--this
'little cliff' arose, a sheer unobstructed precipice of black
shining rock, some fifteen or sixteen hundred feet from the world
of crags beneath us. Nothing would have tempted me to be within
half a dozen yards of its brink. In truth so deeply was I
excited by the perilous position of my companion, that I fell at
full length upon the ground, clung to the shrubs around me, and
dared not even glance upward at the sky--while I struggled in
vain to divest myself of the idea that the very foundations of
the mountain were in danger from the fury of the winds. It was
long before I could reason myself into sufficient courage to sit
up and look out into the distance.
'You must get over these fancies,' said the guide, 'for I
have brought you here that you might have the best possible view
of the scene of that event I mentioned--and to tell you the whole
story with the spot just under your eye.
'We are now,' he continued, in that particularizing manner
which distinguished him--'we are now close upon the Norwegian
coast--in the sixty-eighth degree of latitude--in the great
province of Nordland--and in the dreary district of Lofoden. The
mountain upon whose top we sit is Helseggen, the Cloudy. Now
raise yourself up a little higher--hold on to the grass if you
feel giddy--so--and look out, beyond the belt of vapour beneath
us, into the sea.'
I looked dizzily, and beheld a wide expanse of ocean, whose
waters wore so inky a hue as to bring at once to my mind the
Nubian geographer's account of the Mare Tenebrarum. A panorama
more deplorably desolate no human imagination can conceive. To
the right and left, as far as the eye could reach, there lay
outstretched, like ramparts of the world, lines of horridly black
and beetling cliff, whose character of gloom was but the more
forcibly illustrated by the surf which reared high up against it
its white and ghastly crest, howling and shrieking for ever.
Just opposite the promontory upon whose apex we were placed, and
at a distance of some five or six miles out at sea, there was
visible a small, bleak-looking island; or, more properly, its
position was discernible through the wilderness of surge in which
it was enveloped. About two miles nearer the land, arose another
of smaller size, hideously craggy and barren, and encompassed at
various intervals by a cluster of dark rocks.
The appearance of the ocean, in the space between the more
distant island and the shore, had something very unusual about
it. Although, at the time, so strong a gale was blowing landward
that a brig in the remote offing lay to under a double-reefed
trysail, and constantly plunged her whole hull out of sight,
still there was here nothing like a regular swell, but only a
short, quick, angry cross dashing of water in every direction--as
well in the teeth of the wind as otherwise. Of foam there was
little except in the immediate vicinity of the rocks.
'The island in the distance,' resumed the old man, 'is
called by the Norwegian Vurrgh. The one midway is Moskoe. That
a mile to the northward is Ambaaren. Yonder are Islesen,
Hotholm, Keildhelm, Suarven, and Buckholm. Further off--between
Moskoe and Vurrgh--are Otterholm, Flimen, Sandflesen, and
Stockholm. These are the true names of the places--but why it
has been thought necessary to name them at all, is more than
either you or I can understand. Do you hear anything? Do you
see any change in the water?'
We had now been about ten minutes upon the top of Helseggen,
to which we had ascended from the interior of Lofoden, so that we
had caught no glimpse of the sea until it had burst upon us from
the summit. As the old man spoke, I became aware of a loud and
gradually increasing sound, like the moaning of a vast herd of
buffaloes upon an American prairie; and at the same moment I
perceived that what seamen term the chopping character of the
ocean beneath us, was rapidly changing into a current which set
to the eastward. Even while I gazed, this current acquired a
monstrous velocity. In five minutes the whole sea as far as
Vurrgh, was lashed into ungovernable fury; but it was between
Moskoe and the coast that the main uproar held its sway. Here
the vast bed of the waters seamed and scarred into a thousand
conflicting channels, burst suddenly into frenzied convulsion--
heaving, boiling, hissing--gyrating in gigantic and innumerable
vortices, and all whirling and plunging on to the eastward with a
rapidity which water never elsewhere assumes, except in
precipitous descents.
In a few minutes more, there came over the scene another
radical alteration. The general surface grew somewhat more
smooth, and the whirlpools, one by one, disappeared, while
prodigious streaks of foam became apparent where none had been
seen before. These streaks, at length, spreading out to a great
distance, and entering into combination, took unto themselves the
gyratory motion of the subsided vortices, and seemed to form the
germ of another more vast. Suddenly--very suddenly--this assumed
a distinct and definite existence, in a circle of more than a
mile in diameter. The edge of the whirl was represented by a
broad belt of gleaming spray; but no particle of this slipped
into the mouth of the terrific funnel, whose interior, as far as
the eye could fathom it, was a smooth, shining, and jet-black
wall of water, inclined to the horizon at an angle of some forty-
five degrees, speeding dizzily round and round with a swaying and
sweltering motion, and sending forth to the winds an appalling
voice, half shriek, half roar, such as not even the mighty
cataract of Niagara ever lifts up in its agony to Heaven.
The mountain trembled to its very base, and the rock rocked.
I threw myself upon my face, and clung to the scant herbage in an
excess of nervous agitation.
'This,' said I at length, to the old man--'this can be
nothing else than the great whirlpool of the Maelstrom.'
'So it is sometimes termed,' said he. 'We Norwegians call
it the Moskoe-strom, from the island of Moskoe in the midway.'
The ordinary account of this vortex had by no means prepared
me for what I saw. That of Jonas Ramus, which is perhaps the
most circumstantial of any, cannot impart the faintest conception
either of the magnificence, or of the horror of the scene--or of
the wild bewildering sense of the novel which confounds the
beholder. I am not sure from what point of view the writer in
question surveyed it, nor at what time; but it could neither have
been from the summit of Helseggen, nor during a storm. There are
some passages of his description, nevertheless, which may be
quoted for their details, although their effect is exceedingly
feeble in conveying an impression of the spectacle.
'Between Lofoden and Moskoe,' he says, 'the depth of the
water is between thirty-six and forty fathoms; but on the other
side, toward Ver [Vurrgh] this depth decreases so as not to
afford a convenient passage for a vessel, without the risk of
splitting on the rocks, which happens even in the calmest
weather. When it is flood, the stream runs up the country
between Lofoden and Moskoe with a boisterous rapidity; but the
roar of its impetuous ebb to the sea is scarce equalled by the
loudest and most dreadful cataracts; the noise being heard
several leagues off, and the vortices or pits are of such an
extent and depth, that if a ship comes within its attraction, it
is inevitably absorbed and carried down to the bottom, and there
beat to pieces against the rocks; and when the water relaxes, the
fragments thereof are thrown up again. But these intervals of
tranquillity are only at the turn of the ebb and flood, and in
calm weather, and last but a quarter of an hour, its violence
gradually returning. When the stream is most boisterous, and its
fury heightened by a storm, it is dangerous to come within a
Norway mile of it. Boats, yachts, and ships have been carried
away by not guarding against it before they were carried within
its reach. It likewise happens frequently, that whales come too
near the stream, and are overpowered by its violence; and then it
is impossible to describe their howlings and bellowings in their
fruitless struggles to disengage themselves. A bear once,
attempting to swim from Lofoden to Moskoe, was caught by the
stream and borne down, while he roared terribly, so as to be
heard on shore. Large stocks of firs and pine trees, after being
absorbed by the current, rise again broken and torn to such a
degree as if bristles grew upon them. This plainly shows the
bottom to consist of craggy rocks, among which they are whirled
to and fro. This stream is regulated by the flux and reflux of
the sea--it being constantly high and low water every six hours.
In the year 1645, early in the morning of Sexagesima Sunday, it
raged with such noise and impetuosity that the very stones of the
houses on the coast fell to the ground.'
In regard to the depth of the water, I could not see how
this could have been ascertained at all in the immediate vicinity
of the vortex. The 'forty fathoms' must have reference only to
portions of the channel close upon the shore either of Moskoe or
Lofoden. The depth in the centre of the Moskoe-strom must be
unmeasurably greater; and no better proof of this fact is
necessary than can be obtained from even the sidelong glance into
the abyss of the whirl which may be had from the highest crag of
Helseggen. Looking down from this pinnacle upon the howling
Phlegethon below, I could not help smiling at the simplicity with
which the honest Jonas Ramus records, as a matter difficult of
belief, the anecdotes of the whales and the bears, for it
appeared to me, in fact, a self-evident thing, that the largest
ships of the line in existence, coming within the influence of
that deadly attraction, could resist it as little as a feather
the hurricane, and must disappear bodily and at once.
The attempts to account for the phenomenon--some of which, I
remember, seemed to me sufficiently plausible in perusal--now
wore a very different and unsatisfactory aspect. The idea
generally received is that this, as well as three smaller
vortices among the Ferroe Islands, 'have no other cause than the
collision of waves rising and falling, at flux and reflux,
against a ridge of rocks and shelves, which confines the water so
that it precipitates itself like a cataract; and thus the higher
the flood rises, the deeper must the fall be, and the natural
result of all is a whirlpool or vortex, the prodigious suction of
which is sufficiently known by lesser experiments'.-- These are
the words of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Kircher and others
imagine that in the centre of the channel of the Maelstrom is an
abyss penetrating the globe, and issuing in some very remote
part--the Gulf of Bothnia being somewhat decidedly named in one
instance. This opinion, idle in itself, was the one to which, as
I gazed, my imagination most readily assented; and, mentioning it
to the guide, I was rather surprised to hear him say that,
although it was the view almost universally entertained of the
subject by the Norwegians, it nevertheless was not his own. As
to the former notion he confessed his inability to comprehend it;
and here I agreed with him--for, however conclusive on paper, it
becomes altogether unintelligible, and even absurd, amid the
thunder of the abyss.
'You have had a good look at the whirl now,' said the old
man, 'and if you creep round this crag, so as to get in its lee,
and deaden the roar of the water, I will tell you a story that
will convince you I ought to know something of the Moskoe-strom.'
I placed myself as desired, and he proceeded.
'Myself and my two brothers once owned a schooner-rigged
smack of about seventy tons burthen, with which we were in the
habit of fishing among the islands beyond Moskoe, nearly to
Vurrgh. In all violent eddies at sea there is good fishing, at
proper opportunities, if one has only the courage to attempt it:
but among the whole of the Lofoden coastmen, we three were the
only ones who made a regular business of going out to the
islands, as I tell you. The usual grounds are a great way lower
down to the southward. There fish can be got at all hours,
without much risk, and therefore these places are preferred. The
choice spots over here among the rocks, however, not only yield
the finest variety, but in far greater abundance; so that we
often got in a single day, what the more timid of the craft could
not scrape together in a week. In fact, we made it a matter of
desperate speculation--the risk of life standing instead of
labour, and courage answering for capital.
'We kept the smack in a cove about five miles higher up the
coast than this; and it was our practice, in fine weather, to
take advantage of the fifteen minutes' slack to push across the
main channel of the Moskoe-strom, far above the pool, and then
drop down upon anchorage somewhere near Otterham, or Sandflesen,
where the eddies are not so violent as elsewhere. Here we used
to remain until nearly time for slack-water again, when we
weighed and made for home. We never set out upon this expedition
without a steady side wind for going and coming--one that we felt
sure would not fail us before our return--and we seldom made a
miscalculation upon this point. Twice, during six years, we were
forced to stay all night at anchor on account of a dead calm,
which is a rare thing indeed just about here; and once we had to
remain on the grounds nearly a week, starving to death, owing to
a gale which blew up shortly after our arrival, and made the
channel too boisterous to be thought of. Upon this occasion we
should have been driven out to sea in spite of everything (for
the whirlpools threw us round and round so violently, that, at
length, we fouled our anchor and dragged it) if it had not been
that we drifted into one of the innumerable cross currents--here
to-day and gone to-morrow--which drove us under the lee of
Flimen, where, by good luck, we brought up.
'I could not tell you the twentieth part of the difficulties
we encountered "on the ground"--it is a bad spot to be in, even
in good weather--but we make shift always to run the gauntlet of
the Moskoe-strom itself without accident: although at times my
heart has been in my mouth when we happened to be a minute or so
behind or before the slack. The wind sometimes was not as strong
as we thought it at starting, and then we made rather less way
than we could wish, while the current rendered the smack
unmanageable. My eldest brother had a son eighteen years old,
and I had two stout boys of my own. These would have been of
great assistance at such times, in using the sweeps as well as
afterward in fishing--but, somehow, although we ran the risk
ourselves, we had not the heart to let the young ones get into
the danger--for, after all said and done, it was a horrible
danger, and that is the truth.
'It is now within a few days of three years since what I am
going to tell you occurred. It was on the tenth of July, 18--, a
day which the people of this part of the world will never forget-
-for it was one in which blew the most terrible hurricane that
ever came out of the heavens. And yet all the morning, and
indeed until late in the afternoon, there was a gentle and steady
breeze from the south-west, while the sun shone brightly, so that
the oldest seaman among us could not have foreseen what was to
follow.
'The three of us--my two brothers and myself--had crossed
over to the islands about two o'clock P.M., and soon nearly
loaded the smack with fine fish, which, we all remarked, were
more plenty that day than we had ever known them. It was just
seven, by my watch, when we weighed and started for home, so as
to make the worst of the Strom at slack water, which we knew
would be at eight.
'We set out with a fresh wind on our starboard quarter, and
for some time spanked along at a great rate, never dreaming of
danger, for indeed we saw not the slightest reason to apprehend
it. All at once we were taken aback by a breeze from over
Helseggen. This was most unusual--something that had never
happened to us before--and I began to feel a little uneasy,
without exactly knowing why. We put the boat on the wind, but
could make no headway at all for the eddies, and I was upon the
point of proposing to return to the anchorage, when, looking
astern, we saw the whole horizon covered with a singular copper-
coloured cloud that rose with the most amazing velocity.
'In the meantime the breeze that had headed us off fell away
and we were dead becalmed, drifting about in every direction.
This stage of things, however, did not last long enough to give
us time to think about it. In less than a minute the storm was
upon us--in less than two the sky was entirely overcast--and what
with this and the driving spray, it became suddenly so dark that
we could not see each other in the smack.
'Such a hurricane as then blew it is folly to attempt
describing. The oldest seaman in Norway never experienced
anything like it. We had to let our sails go by the run before
it cleverly took us; but, at the first puff, both our masts went
by the board as if they had been sawed off--the mainmast taking
with it my youngest brother, who had lashed himself to it for
safety.
'Our boat was the lightest feather of a thing that ever sat
upon water. It had a complete flush deck, with only a small
hatch near the bow, and this hatch it had always been our custom
to batten down when about to cross the Strom, by way of
precaution against the chopping seas. But for this circumstance
we should have foundered at once--for we lay entirely buried for
some moments. How my elder brother escaped destruction I cannot
say, for I never had an opportunity of ascertaining. For my
part, as soon as I had let the foresail run, I threw myself flat
on deck, with my feet against the narrow gunwale of the bow, and
with my hands grasping a ring-bolt near the foot of the foremast.
It was mere instinct that prompted me to do this--which was
undoubtedly the very best thing I could have done--for I was too
much flurried to think.
'For some moments we were completely deluged, as I say, and
all this time I held my breath, and clung to the bolt. When I
could stand it no longer I raised myself upon my knees, still
keeping hold with my hands, and thus got my head clear.
Presently our little boat gave herself a shake, just as a dog
does in coming out of the water, and thus rid herself, in some
measure, of the seas. I was now trying to get the better of the
stupor that had come over me, and to collect my senses so as to
see what was to be done, when I felt somebody grasp my arm. It
was my elder brother, and my heart leaped for joy, for I had made
sure that he was overboard--but the next moment all this joy was
turned into horror--for he put his mouth close to my ear, and
screamed out the word "Moskoe-strom!"
'No one ever will know what my feelings were at that moment.
I shook from head to foot as if I had had the most violent fit of
the ague. I knew what he meant by that one word well enough--I
knew what he wished to make me understand. With the wind that
now drove us on, we were bound for the whirl of the Strom, and
nothing could save us!
'You perceive that in crossing the Strom channel, we always
went a long way up above the whirl, even in the calmest weather,
and then had to wait and watch carefully for the slack--but now
we were driving right upon the pool itself, and in such a
hurricane as this! "To be sure," I thought, "we shall get there
just about the slack--there is some little hope in that"--but in
the next moment I cursed myself for being so great a fool as to
dream of hope at all. I knew very well that we were doomed, had
we been ten times a ninety-gun ship.
'By this time the first fury of the tempest had spent
itself, or perhaps we did not feel it so much, as we scudded
before it, but at all events the seas, which at first had been
kept down by the wind, and lay flat and frothing, now got up into
absolute mountains. A singular change, too, had come over the
heavens. Around in every direction it was still as black as
pitch, but nearly overhead there burst out, all at once, a
circular rift of clear sky--as clear as I ever saw--and of a deep
bright blue--and through it there blazed forth the full moon with
a lustre that I never before knew her to wear. She lit up
everything about us with the greatest distinctness--but, oh God,
what a scene it was to light up.
'I now made one or two attempts to speak to my brother--but
in some manner which I could not understand, the din had so
increased that I could not make him hear a single word, although
I screamed at the top of my voice in his ear. Presently he shook
his head, looking as pale as death, and held up one of his
fingers, as if to say "listen!"
'At first I could not make out what he meant--but soon a
hideous thought flashed upon me. I dragged my watch from its
fob. It was not going. I glanced at its face by the moonlight,
and then burst into tears as I flung it far away into the ocean.
It had run down at seven o'clock! We were behind the time of the
slack, and the whirl of the Strom was in full fury!
'When a boat is well built, properly trimmed, and not deep
laden, the waves in a strong gale, when she is going large, seem
always to slip from beneath her--which appears strange to a
landsman--and this is what is called ridging, in sea phrase.
'Well, so far we had ridden the swells very cleverly; but
presently a gigantic sea happened to take us right under the
counter, and bore us with it as it rose--up--up--as if into the
sky. I would not have believed that any wave could rise so high.
And then down we came with a sweep, a slide, and a plunge that
made me feel sick and dizzy, as if I was falling from some lofty
mountain-top in a dream. But while we were up I had thrown a
quick glance around--and that one glance was all-sufficient. I
saw our exact position in an instant. The Moskoe-strom whirlpool
was about a quarter of a mile dead ahead--but no more like the
every-day Moskoe-strom than the whirl, as you now see it, is like
a mill-race. If I had not known where we were, and what we had
to expect, I should not have recognized the place at all. As it
was, I involuntarily closed my eyes in horror. The lids clenched
themselves together as if in a spasm.
'It could not have been more than two minutes afterwards
until we suddenly felt the waves subside, and were enveloped in
foam. The boat made a sharp half turn to larboard, and then shot
off in its new direction like a thunderbolt. At the same moment
the roaring noise of the water was completely drowned in a kind
of shrill shriek--such a sound as you might imagine given out by
the water-pipes of many thousand steam-vessels letting off their
steam all together. We were now in the belt of surf that always
surrounds the whirl; and I thought, of course, that another
moment would plunge us into the abyss, down which we could only
see indistinctly on account of the amazing velocity with which we
were borne along. The boat did not seem to sink into the water
at all, but to skim like an air-bubble upon the surface of the
surge. Her starboard side was next the whirl, and on the
larboard arose the world of ocean we had left. It stood like a
huge writhing wall between us and the horizon.
'It may appear strange, but now, when we were in the very
jaws of the gulf, I felt more composed than when we were only
approaching it. Having made up my mind to hope no more, I got
rid of a great deal of that terror which unmanned me at first. I
supposed it was despair that strung my nerves.
'It may look like boasting--but what I tell you is truth--I
began to reflect how magnificent a thing it was to die in such a
manner, and how foolish it was in me to think of so paltry a
consideration as my own individual life, in view of so wonderful
a manifestation of God's power. I do believe that I blushed with
shame when this idea crossed my mind. After a little while I
became possessed with the keenest curiosity about the whirl
itself. I positively felt a wish to explore its depths, even at
the sacrifice I was going to make; and my principal grief was
that I should never be able to tell my old companions on shore
about the mysteries I should see. These, no doubt, were singular
fancies to occupy a man's mind in such extremity--and I have
often thought since, that the revolutions of the boat around the
pool might have rendered me a little light-headed.
'There was another circumstance which tended to restore my
self-possession; and this was the cessation of the wind, which
could not reach us in our present situation--for, as you saw for
yourself, the belt of the surf is considerably lower than the
general bed of the ocean, and this latter now towered above us, a
high, black, mountainous ridge. If you have never been at sea in
a heavy gale, you can form no idea of the confusion of mind
occasioned by the wind and spray together. They blind, deafen,
and strangle you, and take away all power of action or
reflection. But we were now, in a great measure, rid of these
annoyances--just as death-condemned felons in prison are allowed
petty indulgences, forbidden them while their doom is yet
uncertain.
'How often we made the circuit of the belt it is impossible
to say. We careered round and round for perhaps an hour, flying
rather than floating, getting gradually more and more into the
middle of the surge, and then nearer and nearer to its horrible
inner edge. All this time I had never let go of the ring-bolt.
My brother was at the stern, holding on to a small empty water-
cask which had been securely lashed under the coop of the
counter, and was the only thing on deck that had not been swept
overboard when the gale first took us. As we approached the
brink of the pit he let go his hold upon this, and made for the
ring, from which, in the agony of his terror, he endeavoured to
force my hands, as it was not large enough to afford us both a
secure grasp. I never felt deeper grief than when I saw him
attempt this act--although I knew he was a madman when he did it-
-a raving maniac through sheer fright. I did not care, however,
to contest the point with him. I knew it could make no
difference whether either of us held on at all; so I let him have
the bolt, and went astern to the cask. This there was no great
difficulty in doing; for the smack flew round steadily enough,
and upon an even keel--only swaying to and fro with the immense
sweeps and swelters of the whirl. Scarcely had I secured myself
in my new position, when we gave a wild lurch to starboard, and
rushed headlong into the abyss. I muttered a hurried prayer to
God, and thought all was over.
'As I felt the sickening sweep of the descent, I had
instinctively tightened my hold upon the barrel, and closed my
eyes. For some seconds I dared not open them--while I expected
instant destruction, and wondered that I was not already in my
death-struggles with the water. But moment after moment elapsed.
I still lived. The sense of falling had ceased; and the motion
of the vessel seemed much as it had been before, while in the
belt of foam, with the exception that she now lay more along. I
took courage and looked once again upon the scene.
'Never shall I forget the sensation of awe, horror, and
admiration with which I gazed about me. The boat appeared to be
hanging, as if by magic, midway down, upon the interior surface
of a funnel vast in circumference, prodigious in depth, and whose
perfectly smooth sides might have been mistaken for ebony, but
for the bewildering rapidity with which they spun around, and for
the gleaming and ghastly radiance they shot forth, as the rays of
the full moon, from that circular rift amid the clouds which I
have already described, streamed in a flood of golden glory along
the black walls, and far away down into the inmost recesses of
the abyss.
'At first I was too much confused to observe anything
accurately. The general burst of terrific grandeur was all that
I beheld. When I recovered myself a little, however, my gaze
fell instinctively downward. In this direction I was able to
obtain an unobstructed view, from the manner in which the smack
hung on the inclined surface of the pool. She was quite upon an
even keel--that is to say, her deck lay in a plane parallel with
that of the water--but this latter sloped at an angle of more
than forty-five degrees, so that we seemed to be lying upon our
beam ends. I could not help observing, nevertheless, that I had
scarcely more difficulty in maintaining my hold and footing in
this situation, than if we had been upon a dead level; and this,
I suppose, was owing to the speed at which we revolved.
'The rays of the moon seemed to search the very bottom of
the profound gulf: but still I could make out nothing distinctly
on account of a thick mist in which everything there was
enveloped, and over which there hung a magnificent rainbow, like
that narrow and tottering bridge which Mussulmans says is the
only pathway between Time and Eternity. This mist, or spray, was
no doubt occasioned by the clashing of the great walls of the
funnel, as they all met together at the bottom--but the yell that
went up to the heavens from out of that mist I dare not attempt
to describe.
Our first slide into the abyss itself, from the belt of foam
above, had carried us to a great distance down the slope; but our
further descent was by no means proportionate. Round and round
we swept--not with any uniform movement--but in dizzying swings
and jerks, that sent us sometimes only a few hundred yards--
sometimes nearly the complete circuit of the whirl. Our progress
downward, at each revolution, was slow, but very perceptible.
'Looking about me upon the wide waste of liquid ebony on
which we were thus borne, I perceived that our boat was not the
only object in the embrace of the whirl. Both above and below us
were visible fragments of vessels, large masses of building-
timber and trunks of trees, with many smaller articles, such as
pieces of house furniture, broken boxes, barrels and staves. I
have already described the unnatural curiosity which had taken
the place of my original terrors. It appeared to grow upon me as
I drew nearer and nearer to my dreadful doom. I now began to
watch, with a strange interest, the numerous things that floated
in our company. I must have been delirious, for I even sought
amusement in speculating upon the relative velocities of their
several descents toward the foam below. "This fir-tree," I found
myself at one time saying, "will certainly be the next thing that
takes the awful plunge and disappears,"--and then I was
disappointed to find that the wreck of a Dutch merchant ship
overtook it and went down before. At length, after making
several guesses of this nature, and being deceived in all--this
fact--the fact of my invariable miscalculation, set me upon a
train of reflection that made my limbs again tremble, and my
heart beat heavily once more.
'It was not a new terror that thus affected me, but the dawn
of a more exciting hope. This hope arose partly from memory, and
partly from present observation. I called to mind the great
variety of buoyant matter that strewed the coast of Lofoden,
having been absorbed and then thrown forth by the Moskoe-strom.
By far the greater number of the articles were shattered in the
most extraordinary way--so chafed and roughened as to have the
appearance of being stuck full of splinters--but then I
distinctly recollected that there were some of them which were
not disfigured at all. Now I could not account for this
difference except by supposing that the roughened fragments were
the only ones which had been completely absorbed--that the others
had entered the whirl at so late a period of the tide, or, from
some reason, had descended so slowly after entering, that they
did not reach the bottom before the turn of the flood came, or of
the ebb, as the case might be. I conceived it possible, in
either instance, that they might thus be whirled up again to the
level of the ocean, without undergoing the fate of those which
had been drawn in more early or absorbed more rapidly. I made,
also, three important observations. The first was, that as a
general rule, the larger the bodies were, the more rapid their
descent--the second that, between two masses of equal extent, the
one spherical, and the other of any other shape, the superiority
in speed of descent was with the sphere--the third, that, between
two masses of equal size, the one cylindrical, and the other of
any other shape, the cylinder was absorbed the more slowly.
Since my escape, I have had several conversations on this subject
with an old school-master of the district; and it was from him
that I learned the use of the words "cylinder" and "sphere". He
explained to me--although I have forgotten the explanation--how
what I observed was, in fact, the natural consequence of the
forms of the floating fragments--and showed me how it happened
that a cylinder, swimming in a vortex, offered more resistance to
its suction, and was drawn in with greater difficulty than an
equally bulky body, of any form whatever.1
'There was one startling circumstance which went a great way
in enforcing these observations, and rendering me anxious to turn
them to account, and this was that, at every revolution, we
passed something like a barrel, or else the yard or the mast of a
vessel,
while many of these things, which had been on our level when I
first opened my eyes upon the wonders of the whirlpool, were now
high up above us, and seemed to have moved but little from their
original station.
'I no longer hesitated what to do. I resolved to lash
myself securely to the water-cask upon which I now held, to cut
it loose from the counter, and to throw myself with it into the
water. I attracted my brother's attention by signs, pointed to
the floating barrels that came near us, and did everything in my
power to make him understand what I was about to do. I thought
at length that he comprehended my design--but, whether this was
the case or not, he shook his head despairingly, and refused to
move from his station by the ring-bolt. It was impossible to
reach him; the emergency admitted of no delay; and so, with a
bitter struggle, I resigned him to his fate, fastened myself to
the cask by means of the lashings which secured it to the
counter, and precipitated myself with it into the sea, without
another moment's hesitation.
'The result was precisely what I hoped it might be. As it
is myself who now tell you this tale--as you see that I did
escape--and as you are already in possession of the mode in which
this escape was effected, and must therefore anticipate all that
I have farther to say--I will bring my story quickly to
conclusion. It might have been an hour, or thereabouts, after my
quitting the smack, when, having descended to a vast distance
beneath me, it made three or four wild gyrations in rapid
succession and, bearing my loved brother with it, plunged
headlong, at once and for ever, into the chaos of foam below.
The barrel to which I was attached sunk very little further than
half the distance between the bottom of the gulf and the spot at
which I leaped overboard, before a great change took place in the
character of the whirlpool. The slope of the sides of the vast
funnel became momently less and less steep. The gyrations of the
whirl grew, gradually, less and less violent. By degrees, the
froth and the rainbow disappeared, and the bottom of the gulf
seemed slowly to uprise. The sky was clear, the winds had gone
down, and the full moon was setting radiantly in the west, when I
found myself on the surface of the ocean, in full view of the
shores of Lofoden, and above the spot where the pool of the
Moskoe-strom had been. It was the hour of the slack--but the sea
still heaved in mountainous waves from the effects of the
hurricane. I was borne violently into the channel of the Strom,
and in a few minutes, was hurried down the coast into the
"grounds" of the fishermen. A boat picked me up--exhausted from
fatigue--and (now that the danger was removed) speechless from
the memory of its horror. Those who drew me on board were my old
mates and daily companions--but they knew me no more than they
would have known a traveller from the spirit-land. My hair,
which had been raven black the day before, was as white as you
see it now. They say too that the whole expression of my
countenance had changed. I told them my story--they did not
believe it. I now tell it to you--and I can scarcely expect you
to put more faith in it than did the merry fishermen of Lofoden.'
1 See Archimedes, 'De incidentibus in Fluido', lib. 2.