"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 labour,
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 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 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 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 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-coloured 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 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 ever will 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 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, 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 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 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 supposed 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 upon 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 endeavoured 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 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.*
* See 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 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 for ever, 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
momentarily 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."