94 THE SEA. 



part. This is the view held by most of the Norwegian peasantry and fishermen 

 to-day. 



Who that lias read the works of Edgar Allan Poe will ever forget his thrilling and detailed 

 story of a descent into the maelstrom ? * It bears the impress of close study, and is founded 

 largely on recorded facts. Two brothers, the most daring fishermen of their coast, were 

 accustomed to fish in closer proximity to the maelstrom than all the rest, because, although a 

 desperate speculation, they would get more fish in a day than the others could at the distant 

 fishing grounds in a week. The risk of life stood for labour, and courage for capital. 



In a terrible hurricane they were diiven through the surf into the inner circle of the whirl- 

 pool, where (as is likely to be the case in actual fact) the wind nearly ceased, the surface of the 

 water being lower than that of the surrounding ocean. " 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." Now the two fishermen brothers were in a measure respited, as death-condemned 

 felons in prison are allowed petty indulgences forbidden them while their doom is yet uncertain. 

 Round and round the belt the vessel flew rather than floated, getting nearer and nearer to the 

 fatal inner vortex, and making wild lurches towards the abyss. " The boat appeared to be 

 hanging, as if by magic, midway down, upon the interior surface of a funnel vast in circum- 

 ference, prodigious in depth, and whose perfectly smooth sides might have been mistaken for 

 ebony, but for the bewildering rapidity with which they spun round, and for the gleaming and 

 ghastly radiance they shot forth as the rays of the full moon . . . streamed in a flood of 

 golden glory along the black walls, and far away down into the inmost recesses of the 

 abyss." Round and round they swept in dizzying swings and jerks. Above and below them 

 were whirling fragments of vessels, timbers, boxes, barrels, and trunks of trees. And now a 

 hope arose from the recollection of one circumstance : that of the great variety of buoyant 

 matter thrown up by the moskoe-strom on the coast of Lofoden, some articles were not 

 disfigured or damaged at all. Further, light and cylindrical articles were the least likely to be 

 absorbed into any watery vortex : for the last statement there are good scientific reasons. ' ' I," 

 says the survivor, " 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, W 7 ith 

 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 smack soon after made a few gyrations in rapid succession, 

 then sank to the bottom for ever, bearing with it the unfortunate brother. " The barrel to 

 which I was attached had 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 



* " Tales of Mystery and Imagination." 



