"Myself and my two brothers once owned a schooner-rigged smack of
about seventy tons burden, 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 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 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 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 seamen among us could
not have forseen 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 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 anything 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
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-ström_!'
"No one-will ever 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
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
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 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 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 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 new 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 diference 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 Mussulmans 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 to 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, 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 schoolmaster 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]
[Footnote 1: See Archimedes, _De iis Ques in Humido Vehuntur_, lib
ii.]
"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 20 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."