A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROeM.
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 theold man seemed too much exhausted to speak.
Not long ago, said he at length, and I could have guided you on thisroute 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--orat least such as no man ever survived to tell of--and the six hours ofdeadly terror which I then endured have broken me up body and soul. Yousuppose me a _very_ old man--but I am not. It took less than a singleday to change these hairs from a jetty black to white, to weakenmy limbs, and to unstring my nerves, so that I tremble at the leastexertion, and am frightened at a shadow. Do you know I can scarcely lookover this little cliff without getting giddy?
The little cliff, upon whose edge he had so carelessly thrown himselfdown to rest that the weightier portion of his body hung over it, whilehe was only kept from falling by the tenure of his elbow on its extremeand slippery edge--this little cliff arose, a sheer unobstructedprecipice of black shining rock, some fifteen or sixteen hundred feetfrom the world of crags beneath us. Nothing would have tempted me towithin half a dozen yards of its brink. In truth so deeply was I excitedby the perilous position of my companion, that I fell at full lengthupon the ground, clung to the shrubs around me, and dared not evenglance upward at the sky--while I struggled in vain to divest myself ofthe idea that the very foundations of the mountain were in danger fromthe fury of the winds. It was long before I could reason myself intosufficient courage to sit up and look out into the distance.
You must get over these fancies, said the guide, for I have broughtyou here that you might have the best possible view of the scene of thatevent I mentioned--and to tell you the whole story with the spot justunder your eye.
We are now, he continued, in that particularizing manner whichdistinguished him--we are now close upon the Norwegian coast--in thesixty-eighth degree of latitude--in the great province of Nordland--andin the dreary district of Lofoden. The mountain upon whose top we sit isHelseggen, the Cloudy. Now raise yourself up a little higher--hold on tothe grass if you feel giddy--so--and look out, beyond the belt of vaporbeneath us, into the sea.
I looked dizzily, and beheld a wide expanse of ocean, whose waters woreso inky a hue as to bring at once to my mind the Nubian geographer'saccount of the _Mare Tenebrarum_. A panorama more deplorably desolate nohuman imagination can conceive. To the right and left, as far as the eyecould reach, there lay outstretched, like ramparts of the world, linesof horridly black and beetling cliff, whose character of gloom was butthe more forcibly illustrated by the surf which reared high up againstits white and ghastly crest, howling and shrieking forever. Justopposite the promontory upon whose apex we were placed, and at adistance of some five or six miles out at sea, there was visiblea small, bleak-looking island; or, more properly, its position wasdiscernible 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 acluster of dark rocks.
The appearance of the ocean, in the space between the more distantisland and the shore, had something very unusual about it. Although,at the time, so strong a gale was blowing landward that a brig in theremote offing lay to under a double-reefed trysail, and constantlyplunged her whole hull out of sight, still there was here nothing like aregular swell, but only a short, quick, angry cross dashing of water inevery direction--as well in the teeth of the wind as otherwise. Of foamthere was little except in the immediate vicinity of the rocks.
The island in the distance, resumed the old man, is called bythe Norwegians Vurrgh. The one midway is Moskoe. That a mile to thenorthward 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 theplaces--but why it has been thought necessary to name them at all, ismore than either you or I can understand. Do you hear anything? Do yousee any change in the water?
We had now been about ten minutes upon the top of Helseggen, to whichwe had ascended from the interior of Lofoden, so that we had caught noglimpse of the sea until it had burst upon us from the summit. As theold 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 currentwhich set to the eastward. Even while I gazed, this current acquireda monstrous velocity. Each moment added to its speed--to its headlongimpetuosity. In five minutes the whole sea, as far as Vurrgh, was lashedinto ungovernable fury; but it was between Moskoe and the coast that themain uproar held its sway. Here the vast bed of the waters, seamedand scarred into a thousand conflicting channels, burst suddenly intophrensied convulsion--heaving, boiling, hissing--gyrating in giganticand innumerable vortices, and all whirling and plunging on to theeastward with a rapidity which water never elsewhere assumes except inprecipitous descents.
In a few minutes more, there came over the scene another radicalalteration. The general surface grew somewhat more smooth, and thewhirlpools, one by one, disappeared, while prodigious streaks of foambecame apparent where none had been seen before. These streaks,at length, spreading out to a great distance, and entering intocombination, took unto themselves the gyratory motion of thesubsided 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 wasrepresented by a broad belt of gleaming spray; but no particle of thisslipped into the mouth of the terrific funnel, whose interior, as faras the eye could fathom it, was a smooth, shining, and jet-black wall ofwater, 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, halfroar, such as not even the mighty cataract of Niagara ever lifts up inits agony to Heaven.
The mountain trembled to its very base, and the rock rocked. I threwmyself upon my face, and clung to the scant herbage in an excess ofnervous agitation.
This, said I at length, to the old man--this _can_ be nothing elsethan the great whirlpool of the Maelstroem.
So it is sometimes termed, said he. We Norwegians call it theMoskoe-stroem, from the island of Moskoe in the midway.
The ordinary accounts of this vortex had by no means prepared mefor what I saw. That of Jonas Ramus, which is perhaps the mostcircumstantial of any, cannot impart the faintest conception eitherof the magnificence, or of the horror of the scene--or of the wildbewildering sense of _the novel_ which confounds the beholder. I am notsure from what point of view the writer in question surveyed it, nor atwhat 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 theireffect is exceedingly feeble in conveying an impression of thespectacle.
Between Lofoden and Moskoe, he says, the depth of the water isbetween thirty-six and forty fathoms; but on the other side, toward Ver(Vurrgh) this depth decreases so as not to afford a convenient passagefor a vessel, without the risk of splitting on the rocks, which happenseven in the calmest weather. When it is flood, the stream runs up thecountry between Lofoden and Moskoe with a boisterous rapidity; but theroar of its impetuous ebb to the sea is scarce equalled by the loudestand 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 shipcomes within its attraction, it is inevitably absorbed and carried downto the bottom, and there beat to pieces against the rocks; and whenthe water relaxes, the fragments thereof are thrown up again. But theseintervals 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 violencegradually returning. When the stream is most boisterous, and its furyheightened by a storm, it is dangerous to come within a Norway mileof it. Boats, yachts, and ships have been carried away by not guardingagainst it before they were within its reach. It likewise happensfrequently, that whales come too near the stream, and are overpowered byits violence; and then it is impossible to describe their howlings andbellowings in their fruitless struggles to disengage themselves. Abear once, attempting to swim from Lofoden to Moskoe, was caught by thestream and borne down, while he roared terribly, so as to be heard onshore. Large stocks of firs and pine trees, after being absorbed by thecurrent, rise again broken and torn to such a degree as if bristles grewupon them. This plainly shows the bottom to consist of craggy rocks,among which they are whirled to and fro. This stream is regulated by theflux and reflux of the sea--it being constantly high and low water everysix hours. In the year 1645, early in the morning of Sexagesima Sunday,it raged with such noise and impetuosity that the very stones of thehouses on the coast fell to the ground.
In regard to the depth of the water, I could not see how this could havebeen ascertained at all in the immediate vicinity of the vortex. Theforty fathoms must have reference only to portions of the channelclose upon the shore either of Moskoe or Lofoden. The depth in thecentre of the Moskoe-stroem must be immeasurably greater; and no betterproof of this fact is necessary than can be obtained from even thesidelong glance into the abyss of the whirl which may be had from thehighest crag of Helseggen. Looking down from this pinnacle upon thehowling Phlegethon below, I could not help smiling at the simplicitywith which the honest Jonas Ramus records, as a matter difficult ofbelief, the anecdotes of the whales and the bears; for it appeared tome, in fact, a self-evident thing, that the largest ship of the line inexistence, coming within the influence of that deadly attraction, couldresist it as little as a feather the hurricane, and must disappearbodily 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 verydifferent and unsatisfactory aspect. The idea generally received is thatthis, as well as three smaller vortices among the Ferroe islands, haveno other cause than the collision of waves rising and falling, at fluxand reflux, against a ridge of rocks and shelves, which confines thewater so that it precipitates itself like a cataract; and thus thehigher the flood rises, the deeper must the fall be, and the naturalresult of all is a whirlpool or vortex, the prodigious suction of whichis sufficiently known by lesser experiments.--These are the words ofthe Encyclopaedia Britannica. Kircher and others imagine that in thecentre of the channel of the Maelstroem is an abyss penetrating theglobe, and issuing in some very remote part--the Gulf of Bothnia beingsomewhat 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 saythat, although it was the view almost universally entertained of thesubject by the Norwegians, it nevertheless was not his own. As to theformer notion he confessed his inability to comprehend it; and here Iagreed with him--for, however conclusive on paper, it becomes altogetherunintelligible, and even absurd, amid the thunder of the abyss.
You have had a good look at the whirl now, said the old man, and ifyou will creep round this crag, so as to get in its lee, and deadenthe roar of the water, I will tell you a story that will convince you Iought to know something of the Moskoe-stroem.
I placed myself as desired, and he proceeded.
Myself and my two brothers once owned a schooner-rigged smack of aboutseventy tons burthen, with which we were in the habit of fishing amongthe islands beyond Moskoe, nearly to Vurrgh. In all violent eddies atsea there is good fishing, at proper opportunities, if one has only thecourage to attempt it; but among the whole of the Lofoden coastmen, wethree were the only ones who made a regular business of going out to theislands, as I tell you. The usual grounds are a great way lower down tothe southward. There fish can be got at all hours, without much risk,and therefore these places are preferred. The choice spots over hereamong the rocks, however, not only yield the finest variety, but in fargreater abundance; so that we often got in a single day, what the moretimid of the craft could not scrape together in a week. In fact, we madeit a matter of desperate speculation--the risk of life standing insteadof labor, and courage answering for capital.
We kept the smack in a cove about five miles higher up the coast thanthis; and it was our practice, in fine weather, to take advantage ofthe fifteen minutes' slack to push across the main channel of theMoskoe-stroem, far above the pool, and then drop down upon anchoragesomewhere near Otterholm, or Sandflesen, where the eddies are not soviolent as elsewhere. Here we used to remain until nearly time forslack-water again, when we weighed and made for home. We never setout upon this expedition without a steady side wind for going andcoming--one that we felt sure would not fail us before our return--andwe seldom made a mis-calculation upon this point. Twice, during sixyears, we were forced to stay all night at anchor on account of a deadcalm, which is a rare thing indeed just about here; and once we had toremain on the grounds nearly a week, starving to death, owing to agale which blew up shortly after our arrival, and made the channel tooboisterous to be thought of. Upon this occasion we should have beendriven out to sea in spite of everything, (for the whirlpools threw usround and round so violently, that, at length, we fouled our anchorand dragged it) if it had not been that we drifted into one of theinnumerable cross currents--here to-day and gone to-morrow--which droveus under the lee of Flimen, where, by good luck, we brought up.
I could not tell you the twentieth part of the difficulties weencountered 'on the grounds'--it is a bad spot to be in, even ingood weather--but we made shift always to run the gauntlet of theMoskoe-stroem itself without accident; although at times my heart hasbeen in my mouth when we happened to be a minute or so behind or beforethe slack. The wind sometimes was not as strong as we thought it atstarting, and then we made rather less way than we could wish, whilethe current rendered the smack unmanageable. My eldest brother had a soneighteen years old, and I had two stout boys of my own. These would havebeen of great assistance at such times, in using the sweeps, as well asafterward 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 thetruth.
It is now within a few days of three years since what I am going totell you occurred. It was on the tenth day of July, 18-, a day which thepeople of this part of the world will never forget--for it was onein which blew the most terrible hurricane that ever came out ofthe heavens. And yet all the morning, and indeed until late in theafternoon, there was a gentle and steady breeze from the south-west,while the sun shone brightly, so that the oldest seaman among us couldnot have foreseen what was to follow.
The three of us--my two brothers and myself--had crossed over to theislands about two o'clock P. M., and had soon nearly loaded the smackwith fine fish, which, we all remarked, were more plenty that daythan we had ever known them. It was just seven, _by my watch_, when weweighed and started for home, so as to make the worst of the Stroem atslack water, which we knew would be at eight.
We set out with a fresh wind on our starboard quarter, and for sometime spanked along at a great rate, never dreaming of danger, for indeedwe saw not the slightest reason to apprehend it. All at once wewere taken aback by a breeze from over Helseggen. This was mostunusual--something that had never happened to us before--and I began tofeel a little uneasy, without exactly knowing why. We put the boat onthe wind, but could make no headway at all for the eddies, and I wasupon the point of proposing to return to the anchorage, when, lookingastern, we saw the whole horizon covered with a singular copper-coloredcloud that rose with the most amazing velocity.
In the meantime the breeze that had headed us off fell away, and wewere dead becalmed, drifting about in every direction. This state ofthings, however, did not last long enough to give us time to think aboutit. In less than a minute the storm was upon us--in less than two thesky was entirely overcast--and what with this and the driving spray, itbecame 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. Theoldest seaman in Norway never experienced any thing like it. We had letour sails go by the run before it cleverly took us; but, at the firstpuff, both our masts went by the board as if they had been sawedoff--the mainmast taking with it my youngest brother, who had lashedhimself 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, andthis hatch it had always been our custom to batten down when about tocross the Stroem, by way of precaution against the chopping seas. But forthis circumstance we should have foundered at once--for we lay entirelyburied for some moments. How my elder brother escaped destruction Icannot 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 handsgrasping a ring-bolt near the foot of the fore-mast. It was mereinstinct that prompted me to do this--which was undoubtedly the verybest 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 thistime I held my breath, and clung to the bolt. When I could stand it nolonger I raised myself upon my knees, still keeping hold with my hands,and thus got my head clear. Presently our little boat gave herselfa shake, just as a dog does in coming out of the water, and thus ridherself, in some measure, of the seas. I was now trying to get thebetter of the stupor that had come over me, and to collect my senses soas to see what was to be done, when I felt somebody grasp my arm. It wasmy elder brother, and my heart leaped for joy, for I had made surethat he was overboard--but the next moment all this joy was turned intohorror--for he put his mouth close to my ear, and screamed out the word'_Moskoe-stroem!_'
No one ever will know what my feelings were at that moment. I shookfrom head to foot as if I had had the most violent fit of the ague. Iknew what he meant by that one word well enough--I knew what he wishedto make me understand. With the wind that now drove us on, we were boundfor the whirl of the Stroem, and nothing could save us!
You perceive that in crossing the Stroem _channel_, we always went along way up above the whirl, even in the calmest weather, and then hadto wait and watch carefully for the slack--but now we were driving rightupon the pool itself, and in such a hurricane as this! 'To be sure,' Ithought, 'we shall get there just about the slack--there is some littlehope in that'--but in the next moment I cursed myself for being so greata 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 perhapswe did not feel it so much, as we scudded before it, but at all eventsthe seas, which at first had been kept down by the wind, and lay flatand frothing, now got up into absolute mountains. A singular change,too, had come over the heavens. Around in every direction it was stillas black as pitch, but nearly overhead there burst out, all at once, acircular rift of clear sky--as clear as I ever saw--and of a deep brightblue--and through it there blazed forth the full moon with a lustre thatI never before knew her to wear. She lit up every thing about us withthe 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 somemanner which I could not understand, the din had so increased that Icould not make him hear a single word, although I screamed at the topof my voice in his ear. Presently he shook his head, looking as pale asdeath, 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 thoughtflashed upon me. I dragged my watch from its fob. It was not going. Iglanced at its face by the moonlight, and then burst into tears as Iflung 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 Stroem was infull fury!_
When a boat is well built, properly trimmed, and not deep laden, thewaves in a strong gale, when she is going large, seem always to slipfrom beneath her--which appears very strange to a landsman--and this iswhat is called _riding_, in sea phrase. Well, so far we had ridden theswells very cleverly; but presently a gigantic sea happened to take usright under the counter, and bore us with it as it rose--up--up--asif into the sky. I would not have believed that any wave could rise sohigh. 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 loftymountain-top in a dream. But while we were up I had thrown a quickglance around--and that one glance was all sufficient. I saw our exactposition in an instant. The Moskoe-Stroem whirlpool was about a quarterof a mile dead ahead--but no more like the every-day Moskoe-Stroem, thanthe whirl as you now see it is like a mill-race. If I had not knownwhere we were, and what we had to expect, I should not have recognisedthe 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 wesuddenly felt the waves subside, and were enveloped in foam. Theboat made a sharp half turn to larboard, and then shot off in its newdirection like a thunderbolt. At the same moment the roaring noise ofthe water was completely drowned in a kind of shrill shriek--such asound as you might imagine given out by the waste-pipes of many thousandsteam-vessels, letting off their steam all together. We were now in thebelt of surf that always surrounds the whirl; and I thought, of course,that another moment would plunge us into the abyss--down which we couldonly see indistinctly on account of the amazing velocity with which wewore borne along. The boat did not seem to sink into the water atall, but to skim like an air-bubble upon the surface of the surge. Herstarboard side was next the whirl, and on the larboard arose the worldof ocean we had left. It stood like a huge writhing wall between us andthe horizon.
It may appear strange, but now, when we were in the very jaws of thegulf, I felt more composed than when we were only approaching it. Havingmade up my mind to hope no more, I got rid of a great deal of thatterror which unmanned me at first. I suppose it was despair that strungmy nerves.
It may look like boasting--but what I tell you is truth--I began toreflect how magnificent a thing it was to die in such a manner, and howfoolish it was in me to think of so paltry a consideration as my ownindividual 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 aboutthe whirl itself. I positively felt a _wish_ to explore its depths, evenat the sacrifice I was going to make; and my principal grief was thatI should never be able to tell my old companions on shore about themysteries I should see. These, no doubt, were singular fancies to occupya man's mind in such extremity--and I have often thought since, that therevolutions of the boat around the pool might have rendered me a littlelight-headed.
There was another circumstance which tended to restore myself-possession; and this was the cessation of the wind, which could notreach us in our present situation--for, as you saw yourself, the belt ofsurf is considerably lower than the general bed of the ocean, and thislatter now towered above us, a high, black, mountainous ridge. If youhave never been at sea in a heavy gale, you can form no idea of theconfusion of mind occasioned by the wind and spray together. Theyblind, deafen, and strangle you, and take away all power of actionor reflection. But we were now, in a great measure, rid of theseannoyances--just as death-condemned felons in prison are allowed pettyindulgences, 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 thanfloating, getting gradually more and more into the middle of the surge,and then nearer and nearer to its horrible inner edge. All this time Ihad never let go of the ring-bolt. My brother was at the stern, holdingon to a small empty water-cask which had been securely lashed under thecoop of the counter, and was the only thing on deck that had not beenswept overboard when the gale first took us. As we approached the brinkof the pit he let go his hold upon this, and made for the ring, fromwhich, in the agony of his terror, he endeavored to force my hands, asit was not large enough to afford us both a secure grasp. I never feltdeeper grief than when I saw him attempt this act--although I knew hewas a madman when he did it--a raving maniac through sheer fright. I didnot care, however, to contest the point with him. I knew it could makeno difference whether either of us held on at all; so I let him have thebolt, and went astern to the cask. This there was no great difficultyin doing; for the smack flew round steadily enough, and upon an evenkeel--only swaying to and fro, with the immense sweeps and swelters ofthe whirl. Scarcely had I secured myself in my new position, when wegave a wild lurch to starboard, and rushed headlong into the abyss. Imuttered a hurried prayer to God, and thought all was over.
As I felt the sickening sweep of the descent, I had instinctivelytightened my hold upon the barrel, and closed my eyes. For some secondsI dared not open them--while I expected instant destruction, andwondered that I was not already in my death-struggles with the water.But moment after moment elapsed. I still lived. The sense of falling hadceased; 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 morealong. I took courage, and looked once again upon the scene.
Never shall I forget the sensations of awe, horror, and admiration withwhich I gazed about me. The boat appeared to be hanging, as if bymagic, midway down, upon the interior surface of a funnel vast incircumference, prodigious in depth, and whose perfectly smooth sidesmight have been mistaken for ebony, but for the bewildering rapiditywith which they spun around, and for the gleaming and ghastly radiancethey shot forth, as the rays of the full moon, from that circular riftamid the clouds which I have already described, streamed in a flood ofgolden glory along the black walls, and far away down into the inmostrecesses 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 Irecovered myself a little, however, my gaze fell instinctively downward.In this direction I was able to obtain an unobstructed view, from themanner in which the smack hung on the inclined surface of the pool. Shewas quite upon an even keel--that is to say, her deck lay in a planeparallel with that of the water--but this latter sloped at an angle ofmore than forty-five degrees, so that we seemed to be lying upon ourbeam-ends. I could not help observing, nevertheless, that I had scarcelymore 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 tothe speed at which we revolved.
The rays of the moon seemed to search the very bottom of the profoundgulf; but still I could make out nothing distinctly, on account of athick mist in which everything there was enveloped, and over which therehung a magnificent rainbow, like that narrow and tottering bridge whichMussulmen say is the only pathway between Time and Eternity. This mist,or spray, was no doubt occasioned by the clashing of the great walls ofthe funnel, as they all met together at the bottom--but the yell thatwent up to the Heavens from out of that mist, I dare not attempt todescribe.
Our first slide into the abyss itself, from the belt of foam above, hadcarried us a great distance down the slope; but our farther descentwas by no means proportionate. Round and round we swept--not withany uniform movement--but in dizzying swings and jerks, that sentus sometimes only a few hundred yards--sometimes nearly the completecircuit of the whirl. Our progress downward, at each revolution, wasslow, but very perceptible.
Looking about me upon the wide waste of liquid ebony on which we werethus borne, I perceived that our boat was not the only object in theembrace of the whirl. Both above and below us were visible fragments ofvessels, large masses of building timber and trunks of trees, withmany smaller articles, such as pieces of house furniture, broken boxes,barrels and staves. I have already described the unnatural curiositywhich had taken the place of my original terrors. It appeared to growupon me as I drew nearer and nearer to my dreadful doom. I now began towatch, with a strange interest, the numerous things that floated in ourcompany. I _must_ have been delirious--for I even sought _amusement_in speculating upon the relative velocities of their several descentstoward the foam below. 'This fir tree,' I found myself at one timesaying, 'will certainly be the next thing that takes the awful plungeand disappears,'--and then I was disappointed to find that the wreck ofa Dutch merchant ship overtook it and went down before. At length, aftermaking several guesses of this nature, and being deceived in all--thisfact--the fact of my invariable miscalculation--set me upon a train ofreflection that made my limbs again tremble, and my heart beat heavilyonce more.
It was not a new terror that thus affected me, but the dawn of a moreexciting _hope_. This hope arose partly from memory, and partly frompresent observation. I called to mind the great variety of buoyantmatter that strewed the coast of Lofoden, having been absorbed andthen thrown forth by the Moskoe-stroem. By far the greater number of thearticles were shattered in the most extraordinary way--so chafedand roughened as to have the appearance of being stuck full ofsplinters--but then I distinctly recollected that there were _some_ ofthem which were not disfigured at all. Now I could not account for thisdifference except by supposing that the roughened fragments were theonly ones which had been _completely absorbed_--that the others hadentered 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 thebottom before the turn of the flood came, or of the ebb, as the casemight be. I conceived it possible, in either instance, that they mightthus be whirled up again to the level of the ocean, without undergoingthe fate of those which had been drawn in more early, or absorbed morerapidly. I made, also, three important observations. The first was,that, as a general rule, the larger the bodies were, the more rapidtheir descent--the second, that, between two masses of equal extent, theone spherical, and the other _of any other shape_, the superiorityin speed of descent was with the sphere--the third, that, between twomasses of equal size, the one cylindrical, and the other of any othershape, the cylinder was absorbed the more slowly. Since my escape, Ihave had several conversations on this subject with an old school-masterof 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 forgottenthe explanation--how what I observed was, in fact, the naturalconsequence of the forms of the floating fragments--and showed me how ithappened that a cylinder, swimming in a vortex, offered more resistanceto its suction, and was drawn in with greater difficulty than an equallybulky body, of any form whatever. (*1)
There was one startling circumstance which went a great way inenforcing these observations, and rendering me anxious to turn them toaccount, and this was that, at every revolution, we passed somethinglike a barrel, or else the yard or the mast of a vessel, while many ofthese things, which had been on our level when I first opened my eyesupon the wonders of the whirlpool, were now high up above us, and seemedto have moved but little from their original station.
I no longer hesitated what to do. I resolved to lash myself securely tothe 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'sattention by signs, pointed to the floating barrels that came near us,and did everything in my power to make him understand what I was aboutto do. I thought at length that he comprehended my design--but, whetherthis was the case or not, he shook his head despairingly, and refused tomove 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, Iresigned him to his fate, fastened myself to the cask by means of thelashings which secured it to the counter, and precipitated myself withit into the sea, without another moment's hesitation.
The result was precisely what I had hoped it might be. As it is myselfwho now tell you this tale--as you see that I _did_ escape--and as youare already in possession of the mode in which this escape was effected,and must therefore anticipate all that I have farther to say--I willbring my story quickly to conclusion. It might have been an hour, orthereabout, after my quitting the smack, when, having descended to avast distance beneath me, it made three or four wild gyrations in rapidsuccession, and, bearing my loved brother with it, plunged headlong, atonce and forever, into the chaos of foam below. The barrel to which Iwas attached sunk very little farther than half the distance between thebottom of the gulf and the spot at which I leaped overboard, before agreat change took place in the character of the whirlpool. The slope ofthe sides of the vast funnel became momently less and less steep.The gyrations of the whirl grew, gradually, less and less violent. Bydegrees, the froth and the rainbow disappeared, and the bottom of thegulf seemed slowly to uprise. The sky was clear, the winds had gonedown, and the full moon was setting radiantly in the west, when Ifound myself on the surface of the ocean, in full view of the shoresof Lofoden, and above the spot where the pool of the Moskoe-stroem_had been_. It was the hour of the slack--but the sea still heavedin mountainous waves from the effects of the hurricane. I was borneviolently into the channel of the Stroem, and in a few minutes washurried down the coast into the 'grounds' of the fishermen. A boatpicked me up--exhausted from fatigue--and (now that the danger wasremoved) speechless from the memory of its horror. Those who drew me onboard were my old mates and daily companions--but they knew me no morethan they would have known a traveller from the spirit-land. My hairwhich had been raven-black the day before, was as white as you seeit now. They say too that the whole expression of my countenance hadchanged. I told them my story--they did not believe it. I now tell itto _you_--and I can scarcely expect you to put more faith in it than didthe merry fishermen of Lofoden.