had ascended from the interior of Lofoden, so that we had caught no
glimpse of the sea until it had burst upon us from the summit. As the
old man spoke I became aware of a loud and gradually increasing sound,
like the moaning of a vast herd of buffaloes upon an American prairie;
and at the same moment I perceived that what seamen term the _chopping_
character of the ocean beneath us was rapidly changing into a current
which set to the eastward. Even while I gazed, this current acquired a
monstrous velocity. Each moment added to its speed—to its headlong
impetuosity. In five minutes the whole sea, as far as Vurrgh, was lashed
into ungovernable fury; but it was between Moskoe and the coast that the
main uproar held its sway. Here the vast bed of the waters, seamed and
scarred into a thousand conflicting channels, burst suddenly into
phrensied convulsion—heaving, boiling, hissing—gyrating in gigantic
and innumerable vortices, and all whirling and plunging on to the
eastward with a rapidity which water never elsewhere assumes except in
precipitous descents.
In a few minutes more, there came over the scene another radical
alteration. The general surface grew somewhat more smooth, and the
whirlpools, one by one, disappeared, while prodigious streaks of foam
became apparent where none had been seen before. These streaks, at
length, spreading out to a great distance, and entering into
combination, took unto themselves the gyratory motion of the subsided
vortices, and seemed to form the germ of another more vast.
Suddenly—very suddenly—this assumed a distinct and definite existence,
in a circle of more than a mile in diameter. The edge of the whirl was
represented by a broad belt of gleaming spray—but no particle of this
slipped into the mouth of the terrific funnel, whose interior, as far as
the eye could fathom it, was a smooth, shining, and jet-black wall of
water, inclined to the horizon at an angle of some forty-five degrees,
speeding dizzily round and round with a swaying and sweltering motion,
and sending forth to the winds an appalling voice, half shriek half
roar, such as not even the mighty cataract of Niagara ever lifts up in
its agony to Heaven.
The mountain trembled to its very base, and the rock rocked. I threw
myself upon my face, and clung to the scant herbage in an excess of
nervous agitation.
“This,” said I, at length, to the old man—“this _can_ be nothing else
than the great whirlpool of the Maelström.”
“So it is sometimes termed,” said he. “We Norwegians call it the
Moskoe-ström, from the island of Moskoe in the midway.”
The ordinary accounts of this vortex had by no means prepared me for
what I saw. That of Jonas Ramus, which is perhaps the most
circumstantial of any, cannot impart the faintest conception either of
the magnificence, or of the horror of the scene—or of the wild
bewildering sense of _the novel_ which confounds the beholder. I am not
sure from what point of view the writer in question surveyed it, nor at
what time—but it could neither have been from the summit of Helseggen,
nor during a storm. There are some passages of his description,
nevertheless, which may be quoted for their details, although their
effect is exceedingly feeble in conveying an impression of the
spectacle.
“Between Lofoden and Moskoe,” he says, “the depth of the water is
between thirty-six and forty fathoms; but on the other side, toward Ver
(Vurrgh) this depth decreases so as not to afford a convenient passage
for a vessel, without the risk of splitting on the rocks, which happens
even in the calmest weather. When it is flood, the stream runs up the
country between Lofoden and Moskoe with a boisterous rapidity; but the
roar of its impetuous ebb to the sea is scarce equalled by the loudest
and most dreadful cataracts; the noise being heard several leagues off,
and the vortices or pits are of such an extent and depth, that if a ship
comes within its attraction, it is inevitably absorbed and carried down
to the bottom, and there beat to pieces against the rocks; and when the
water relaxes the fragments thereof are thrown up again. But these
intervals of tranquillity are only at the turn of the ebb and flood, and
in calm weather, and last but a quarter of an hour, its violence
gradually returning. When the stream is most boisterous, and its fury
heightened by a storm, it is dangerous to come within a Norway mile of
it. Boats, yachts, and ships have been carried away by not guarding
against it before they were within its reach. It likewise happens
frequently, that whales come too near the stream, and are overpowered by
its violence; and then it is impossible to describe their howlings and
bellowings in their fruitless struggles to disengage themselves. A bear
once attempting to swim from Lofoden to Moskoe, was caught by the stream
and borne down, while he roared terribly, so as to be heard on shore.
Large stocks of firs and pine trees, after being absorbed by the
current, rise again broken and torn to such a degree as if bristles grew
upon them. This plainly shows the bottom to consist of craggy rocks,
among which they are whirled to and fro. This stream is regulated by the
flux and reflux of the sea—it being constantly high and low water every
six hours. In the year 1645, early in the morning of Sexagesima Sunday,
it raged with such noise and impetuosity that the very stones of the
houses on the coast fell to the ground.”
In regard to the depth of the water, I could not see how this could have
been ascertained at all in the immediate vicinity of the vortex. The
“forty fathoms” must have reference only to portions of the channel
close upon the shore either of Moskoe or Lofoden. The depth in the
centre of the Moskoe-ström must be immeasurably greater; and no better
proof of this fact is necessary than can be obtained from even the
sidelong glance into the abyss of the whirl which may be had from the
highest crag of Helseggen. Looking down from this pinnacle upon the
howling Phlegethon below, I could not help smiling at the simplicity
with which the honest Jonas Ramus records, as a matter difficult of
belief, the anecdotes of the whales and the bears; for it appeared to
me, in fact, a self-evident thing that the largest ship of the line in
existence, coming within the influence of that deadly attraction, could
resist it as little as a feather the hurricane, and must disappear
bodily and at once.
The attempts to account for the phenomenon—some of which, I remember,
seemed to me sufficiently plausible in perusal—now wore a very
different and unsatisfactory aspect. The idea generally received is that
this, as well as three smaller vortices among the Ferroe islands, “have
no other cause than the collision of waves rising and falling, at flux
and reflux, against a ridge of rocks and shelves, which confines the
water so that it precipitates itself like a cataract; and thus the
higher the flood rises, the deeper must the fall be, and the natural
result of all is a whirlpool or vortex, the prodigious suction of which
is sufficiently known by lesser experiments.”—These are the words of
the Encyclopædia Britannica. Kircher and others imagine that in the
centre of the channel of the Maelström is an abyss penetrating the
globe, and issuing in some very remote part—the Gulf of Bothnia being
somewhat decidedly named in one instance. This opinion, idle in itself,
was the one to which, as I gazed, my imagination most readily assented;
and, mentioning it to the guide, I was rather surprised to hear him say
that, although it was the view almost universally entertained of the
subject by the Norwegians, it nevertheless was not his own. As to the
former notion he confessed his inability to comprehend it; and here I
agreed with him—for, however conclusive on paper, it becomes altogether
unintelligible, and even absurd, amid the thunder of the abyss.
“You have had a good look at the whirl now,” said the old man, “and if
you will creep round this crag, so as to get in its lee, and deaden the
roar of the water, I will tell you a story that will convince you I
ought to know something of the Moskoe-ström.”
I placed myself as desired, and he proceeded.
“Myself and my two brothers once owned a schooner-rigged smack of about
seventy tons burthen, with which we were in the habit of fishing among
the islands beyond Moskoe, nearly to Vurrgh. In all violent eddies at
sea there is good fishing, at proper opportunities, if one has only the
courage to attempt it; but among the whole of the Lofoden coastmen, we
three were the only ones who made a regular business of going out to the
islands, as I tell you. The usual grounds are a great way lower down to
the southward. There fish can be got at all hours, without much risk,
and therefore these places are preferred. The choice spots over here
among the rocks, however, not only yield the finest variety, but in far
greater abundance; so that we often got in a single day what the more
timid of the craft could not scrape together in a week. In fact, we made
it a matter of desperate speculation—the risk of life standing instead
of 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 every thing, (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 grounds’—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 is 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 day of July, 18—, a day which
the people of this part of the world will never forget—for it was one
in which blew the most terrible hurricane that ever came out of the
heavens. And yet all the morning, and indeed until late in the
afternoon, there was a gentle and steady breeze from the south-west,
while the sun shone brightly, so that the oldest seaman among us could
not have foreseen what was to follow.
“The three of us—my two brothers and myself—had crossed over to the
islands about two o’clock, P. M. and had 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 seamen in Norway never experienced any thing 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 ever will know what my feelings were at that moment. I shook
from head to foot as if I had had the most violent fit of the ague. I
knew what he meant by that one word well enough—I knew what he wished
to make me understand. With the wind that now drove us on, we were bound
for the whirl of the 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 every thing 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 everyday Moskoe-ström, than a
mill-race is like the whirl as you now see it. If I had not known where
we were, and what we had to expect, I should not have recognised 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 a wilderness of
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 waste-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 the stern, holding
on to a small empty water-cask which had been securely lashed aft 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, myself, 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 prodigious in
circumference, immeasurable 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.