From
A Descent into the Maelström
"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
1See Archimedes, "De Incidentibus in Fluido". - lib. 2.
"There was one startling circumstance which went a great way in
enforcing these observations, and rendering me anxious to turn them
to account, and this was that, at every revolution, we passed
something like a barrel, or else the yard or the mast of a vessel,
while many of these things, which had been on our level when I first
opened my eyes upon the wonders of the whirlpool, were now high up
above us, and seemed to have moved but little from their original
station.
"I no longer hesitated what to do. I resolved to lash myself
securely to the water cask upon which I now held, to cut it loose
from the counter, and to throw myself with it into the water. I
attracted my brother's attention by signs, pointed to the floating
barrels that came near us, and did everything in my power to make him
understand what I was about to do. I thought at length that he
comprehended my design - but, whether this was the case or not, he
shook his head despairingly, and refused to move from his station by
the ring-bolt. It was impossible to reach him; the emergency admitted
of no delay ; and so, with a bitter struggle, I resigned him to his
fate, fastened myself to the cask by means of the lashings which
secured it to the counter, and precipitated myself with it into the
sea, without another moment's hesitation.
"The result was precisely what I had hoped it might be. As it is
myself who now tell you this tale - as you see that I did escape -
and as you are already in possession of the mode in which this escape
was effected, and must therefore anticipate all that I have farther
to say - I will bring my story quickly to conclusion. It might have
been an hour, or thereabout, after my 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."
THE END