"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 coast-men 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 practise, in fine weather, to take advantage of the
fifteen minutes' slack to push across the main channel of the
Moskoe-stroem, 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 gantlet of the Moskoe-stroem
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.
"It is now within a few days of three years since what I am going to tell
you occurred. It was on the 10th 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 southwest, 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 Stroem at slack water, which we
knew would be at eight.
"We set out with a fresh wind at 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, 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 to describe. 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
Stroem, by way of precaution against 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 I was completely deluged, 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-stroem!'
"No one will ever know what my feelings were at that moment. I shook from
head to foot as if I 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 Stroem, and nothing could save us!
"You perceive that in crossing the Stroem 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 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 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 luster that I never before knew her to wear. She lit up everything
about us with the greatest distinctness--but, O 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 Stroem 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-stroem whirlpool was about a quarter of a mile dead ahead, but no
more like the every-day Moskoe-stroem 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 afterward until we suddenly
felt the waves subside, and were enveloped in foam. The boat made a sharp
half-turn to larboard, and then shot off in its new direction like a
thunderbolt. At the same moment the roaring noise of the water was
completely drowned in a kind of shrill shriek; such a sound as you might
imagine given out by the 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 the truth: I began to
reflect how magnificent a thing it was to die in such a manner, and how
foolish it was in me to think of so paltry a consideration as my own
individual life, in view of so wonderful a manifestation of God's power.
"I do believe that I blushed with shame when this idea crossed my mind.
After a little while I became possessed with the keenest curiosity about
the whirl itself. I positively felt a wish to explore its depths, even at
the sacrifice I was going to make; and my principal grief was that I
should never be able to tell my old companions on shore about the
mysteries I should see.
"These, no doubt, were singular fancies to occupy a man's mind in such
extremity--and I have often thought since that the revolutions of the boat
around the pool might have rendered me a little light-headed.
"There was another circumstance which tended to restore my
self-possession, and this was the cessation of the wind, which could not
reach us in our present situation--for as you saw yourself, the belt of
surf is considerably lower than the general bed of the ocean, and this
latter now towered above us, a high, black, mountainous ridge.
"If you have never been at sea in a heavy gale, you can form no idea of
the confusion of mind occasioned by the wind and spray together. They
blind, deafen, and strangle you, and take away all power of action or
reflection. But we were now, in a great measure, rid of these annoyances;
just as death-condemned felons in prison are allowed petty indulgences,
forbidden them while their doom is yet uncertain.
"How often we made the circuit of the belt it is impossible to say. We
careered round and round for perhaps an hour, flying rather than floating,
getting gradually more and more into the middle of the surge, and then
nearer and nearer to its horrible inner edge.
"All this time I had never let go of the ring-bolt. My brother was at the
stern, holding on to a small empty water cask which had been securely
lashed under the coop of the counter, and was the only thing on deck that
had not been swept overboard when the gale first took us.
"As we approached the brink of the pit, he let go his hold upon this and
made for the ring, from which in the agony of his terror he endeavored to
force my hands, as it was not large enough to afford us both a secure
grasp. I never felt deeper grief than when I saw him attempt this act,
although I knew he was a madman when he did it--a raving maniac through
sheer fright.
"I did not care, however, to contest the point with him. I knew it could
make no difference whether either of us held on at all; so I let him have
the bolt, and went astern to the cask.
"This there was no great difficulty in doing, for the smack flew round
steadily enough, and upon an even keel--only swaying to and fro with the
immense sweeps and swelters of the whirl. Scarcely had I secured myself in
my new position when we gave a wild lurch to starboard and rushed headlong
into the abyss. I muttered a hurried prayer to God, and thought all was
over.
"As I felt the sickening sweep of the descent, I had instinctively
tightened my hold upon the barrel and closed my eyes. For some seconds I
dared not open them; while I expected instant destruction and wondered
that I was not already in my death-struggles.
"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 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 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-stroem.
"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 be thus
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 the 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 had 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.
"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 the vessel; while many of those 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 further 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-stroem 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 Stroem, 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 traveler 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."