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Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
 Round the silver domes of Lucknow,
Moslem mosque and pagan shrine,
Breathed the air to Britons dearest,
The air of Auld Lang Syne.
O’er the cruel roll of war-drums
Rose that sweet and homelike strain;
And the tartan clove the turban,
As the Goomtee cleaves the plain.

Dear to the corn-land reaper

And plaided mountaineer,
To the cottage and the castle
The piper’s song is dear.
Sweet sounds the Gaelic pibroch
O’er mountain, glen, and glade;
But the sweetest of all music
The Pipes at Lucknow played!

NOTES AND QUESTIONS

For Biography, see page 60.

Historical Note. The Indian Mutiny was the great revolt of the
Bengal native army (the Sepoys) against the British rule in 1857.
At Lucknow, in northern India, the English were almost overcome.
The town, defended by a garrison of only 1720 men, who were
protecting many women and children, was besieged by a greatly
superior number. The defense, nevertheless, was maintained from
the 30th of June to the 26th of September, when the relief column
under the Scottish general, Sir Henry Havelock, preceded by the
music of the bagpipes, reached the city.
Discussion. 1. What stanzas picture Scotland and the feeling
her people have for the music of the bagpipe? 2. What contrasts
show how universal this feeling is? 3. In the first stanza, what is
this music said to be like? 4. What do you know about the bagpipe
that makes this comparison especially apt? 5. The poem tells a
story; with what stanzas does the story begin and end? 6. What
relation to this story have the first two stanzas? 7. What do you
know of the Indian Mutiny that helps you to understand this
story? 8. Who first heard the sound of the pipes? 9. How is this
accounted for? 10. What did this sound mean to her? 11. Read
the stirring lines that give the spirit of the martial music of the
pipes. 12. Why did the piper change to the air “Auld Lang Syne”?
What stanzas picture the feeling of those who heard this music?
13. What people wear the “tartan”? The “turban”? 14. What is the
most interesting point in the story? 15. Does the story make clear
the poet’s reason for saying that the “sweetest strain” the pipes
ever played was at Lucknow?
Phrases

droning of the torrents, 181, 3

treble of the rills, 181, 4
braes of broom, 181, 5
plaided mountaineer, 181, 10
ancient pibroch, 181, 13
the Indian tiger, 181, 17
jungle-serpent, 181, 19
low bewailing, 181, 27
cradle-crooning, 182, 11
vision of the seer, 182, 14
fierce as vengeance, 182, 29
Moslem mosque, 183, 6
pagan shrine, 183, 6
Goomtee cleaves the plain, 183, 12
SPANISH WATERS

JOHN MASEFIELD
Spanish waters, Spanish waters, you are ringing in my ears,
Like a slow sweet piece of music from the gray forgotten years;
Telling tales, and beating tunes, and bringing weary thought to me
Of the sandy beach at Muertos, where I would that I could be.

There’s a surf breaks on Los Muertos, and it never stops to roar,

And it’s there we came to anchor, and it’s there we went ashore,
Where the blue lagoon is silent amid snags of rotting trees,
Dropping like the clothes of corpses cast up by the seas.

We anchored at Los Muertos when the dipping sun was red,

We left her half-a-mile to sea, to west of Nigger Head;
And before the mist was on the Cay, before the day was done,
We were all ashore on Muertos with the gold that we had won.

We bore it through the marshes in a half-score battered chests,

Sinking, in the sucking quagmires, to the sunburn on our breasts,
Heaving over tree-trunks, gasping, damning at the flies and heat,
Longing for a long drink, out of silver, in the ship’s cool lazareet.

The moon came white and ghostly as we laid the treasure down,
There was gear there’d make a beggarman as rich as Lima Town,
Copper charms and silver trinkets from the chests of Spanish crews,
Gold doubloons and double moydores, louis d’ors and ortagues.

Clumsy yellow-metal earrings from the Indians of Brazil,

Uncut emeralds out of Rio, bezoar stone from Guayaquil,
Silver, in the crude and fashioned, pots of old Arica bronze,
Jewels from the bones of Incas desecrated by the Dons.

We smoothed the place with mattocks, and we took and blazed the
tree,
Which marks yon where the gear is hid that none will ever see,
And we laid aboard the ship again, and south away we steers,
Through the loud surf of Los Muertos which is beating in my ears.

I’ th l t li th t k it All th th th i
I’m the last alive that knows it. All the rest have gone their ways,
Killed, or died, or come to anchor in the old Mulatas Cays,
And I go singing, fiddling, old and starved and in despair,
And I know where all that gold is hid, if I were only there.

It’s not the way to end it all. I’m old and nearly blind,
And an old man’s past’s a strange thing, for it never leaves his mind.
And I see in dreams, awhiles, the beach, the sun’s disc dipping red,
And the tall ship, under topsails, swaying in past Nigger Head.

I’d be glad to step ashore there. Glad to take a pick and go

To the lone blazed coco-palm tree in the place no others know,
And lift the gold and silver that has moldered there for years
By the loud surf of Los Muertos which is beating in my ears.

NOTES AND QUESTIONS

Biography. John Masefield (1875-⸺) is an English poet and

playwright. When a small boy he had a mania for running away
from home; to satisfy this longing his father sent him to sea when
he was fourteen years old, in charge of the captain of a sailing
vessel. During his travels he collected much material which he
afterward used in his poems. On one of his trips he landed in New
York City, where he acquired considerable knowledge of American
customs. Next to Kipling he is England’s greatest singer of her
“Seven Seas and Five Oceans.”
Early in 1916 Masefield came to the United States on a lecture
tour which aroused much interest in him and his writings. During
the recent World War he served in France in connection with the
Red Cross. He also served in the campaign on the Gallipoli
Peninsula and wrote a splendid account of that unfortunate
undertaking.
Discussion. 1. Who is addressed in the first stanza? 2. What
comparison do you find in this stanza? 3. Tell the story in your
own words. 4. Where was the treasure secured? 5. What marks of
the ballad do you find in this poem? 6. What do you particularly
like in this poem? 7. Pronounce the following: quagmires; palm.
Phrases

gray forgotten years, 184, 2

bringing weary thought, 184, 3
sunburn on our breasts, 185, 2
rich as Lima Town, 185, 6
in the crude and fashioned, 185, 11
laid aboard the ship, 185, 15

KILMENY
(A Song of the Trawlers)

ALFRED NOYES
Dark, dark lay the drifters, against the red west,
As they shot their long meshes of steel overside;
And the oily green waters were rocking to rest
When Kilmeny went out, at the turn of the tide.
And nobody knew where that lassie would roam,
For the magic that called her was tapping unseen.
It was well nigh a week ere Kilmeny came home,
And nobody knew where Kilmeny had been.

She’d a gun at her bow that was Newcastle’s best,

And a gun at her stern that was fresh from the Clyde,
And a secret her skipper had never confessed,
Not even at dawn, to his newly wed bride;
And a wireless that whispered above like a gnome,
The laughter of London, the boasts of Berlin.
O it may have been mermaids that lured her from home,
But nobody knew where Kilmeny had been.

It was dark when Kilmeny came home from her quest,

With her bridge dabbled red where her skipper had died;
But she moved like a bride with a rose at her breast;
And “Well done, Kilmeny!” the admiral cried.
Now at sixty-four fathom a conger may come,
And nose at the bones of a drowned submarine;
But late in the evening Kilmeny came home,
And nobody knew where Kilmeny had been.

There’s a wandering shadow that stares at the foam,

Though they sing all the night to old England, their queen,
Late, late in the evening Kilmeny came home,
And nobody knew where Kilmeny had been.

NOTES AND QUESTIONS

 Biography. Alfred Noyes (1880-⸺), an English poet, lives in
London. He was educated at Oxford, where for three years he
rowed on the college crew. As soon as his college days were over
he devoted himself to literature, contributing to many English
magazines. During the World War he wrote many stirring poems,
of which “Kilmeny” is among the best. In 1918-1919 Mr. Noyes
was professor of literature in Princeton University.
Discussion. 1. What picture does the first stanza give you? 2.
What suggests to you the work in which the trawler was engaged?
3. Which stanza suggests the result of Kilmeny’s trip? 4. What was
the magic that called Kilmeny to the quest? 5. What other poems
of the sea have you read in this book? 6. Tell what you know
about the author.
Phrases

against the red west, 186, 1

long meshes of steel, 186, 2
turn of the tide, 186, 4
Newcastle’s best, 187, 1
like a gnome, 187, 5
wandering shadow, 187, 17

THE GUARDS CAME THROUGH

SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

Men of the Twenty-first
Up by the Chalk Pit Wood,
Weak with our wounds and our thirst,
Wanting our sleep and our food,
After a day and a night—
God, shall we ever forget!
Beaten and broke in the fight,
But sticking it—sticking it yet.
Trying to hold the line,
Fainting and spent and done,
Always the thud and the whine,
Always the yell of the Hun!
Northumberland, Lancaster, York,
Durham, and Somerset,
Fighting alone, worn to the bone,
But sticking it—sticking it yet.

Never a message of hope!

Never a word of cheer!
Fronting Hill 70’s shell-swept slope,
With the dull dead plain in our rear.
Always the whine of the shell,
Always the roar of its burst,
Always the tortures of hell,
As waiting and wincing we cursed
Our luck and the guns and the Boche,
When our Corporal shouted, “Stand to!”
And I heard someone cry, “Clear the front for the Guards!”
And the Guards came through.

Our throats they were parched and hot,

But Lord, if you’d heard the cheers!
Irish and Welsh and Scot,
Coldstream and Grenadiers.
Two brigades, if you please,
Dressing as straight as a hem
 Dressing as straight as a hem,
We—we were down on our knees,
Praying for us and for them!
Lord, I could speak for a week,
But how could you understand!
How should your cheeks be wet,
Such feelin’s don’t come to you.
But when can we or my mates forget,
When the Guards came through?

“Five yards left extend!”

It passed from rank to rank.
Line after line with never a bend,
And a touch of the London swank.
A trifle of swank and dash,
Cool as a home parade,
Twinkle and glitter and flash,
Flinching never a shade,
With the shrapnel right in their face
Doing their Hyde Park stunt,
Keeping their swing at an easy pace,
Arms at the trail, eyes front!
Man, it was great to see!
Man, it was fine to do!
It’s a cot and a hospital ward for me,
But I’ll tell ’em in Blighty, wherever I be,
How the Guards came through.

NOTES AND QUESTIONS

Biography. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-⸺) is an English

author. He was educated in Stonyhurst College and at the
University of Edinburgh. In 1885 he was graduated as a doctor of
medicine and soon afterwards began practice. It was about this
time that his first book, A Study in Scarlet, was published. His
greatest success came with the publication of The Adventures of
Sherlock Holmes, a collection of detective stories that introduced a
character who has become as famous as if he had actually lived.
Other books that have added to his fame are The Lost World, The
New Revelation, and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. He has
written many interesting articles on the World War, particularly
descriptions of the western campaigns. In 1902 he was knighted.
Discussion. 1. Who is supposed to be telling the story? 2. Why
were the soldiers of the Twenty-first so disheartened? 3. What
effect upon them had the arrival of the Guards? 4. Do you think
that you would have felt like cheering if you had been a soldier of
the Twenty-first? 5. What effect upon you has the line “Dressing
as straight as a hem”? 6. What picture does the last stanza give
you? 7. Does the poet make you see the Guards as they came
through? 8. What do the last three lines suggest? 9. What does
“Blighty” mean to you? 10. Why does the one who is telling the
story say that we could not understand?
Phrases

shell-swept slope, 188, 19

waiting and wincing, 188, 24
swank and dash, 189, 19
arms at the trail, 189, 26

STORIES OF THE SEA

 A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM

EDGAR ALLAN POE

MY FIRST VIEW OF THE MAELSTROM

We had now reached the summit of the loftiest crag. For some
minutes the old man seemed too much exhausted to speak.
“Not long ago,” said he at length, “and I could have guided you on
this route as well as the youngest of my sons; but, about three years
past, there happened to me an event such as never happened
before to mortal man—or at least such as no man ever survived to
tell of—and the six hours of deadly terror which I then endured have
broken me up, body and soul. You suppose me a very old man—but
I am not. It took less than a single day to change these hairs from a
jetty black to white, to weaken my limbs, and to unstring my nerves,
so that I tremble at the least exertion, and am frightened at a
shadow. Do you know I can scarcely look over this little cliff without
getting giddy?”
The “little cliff,” upon whose edge he had so carelessly thrown
himself down to rest that the weightier portion of his body hung
over it, while he was only kept from falling by the tenure of his
elbow on its extreme and slippery edge—this “little cliff” arose, a
sheer unobstructed precipice of black shining rock, some fifteen or
sixteen hundred feet from the world of crags beneath us. Nothing
would have tempted me to within half a dozen yards of its brink. In
truth, so deeply was I excited by the perilous position of my
companion, that I fell at full length upon the ground, clung to the
shrubs around me, and dared not even glance upward at the sky—
while I struggled in vain to divest myself of the idea that the very
foundations of the mountain were in danger from the fury of the
winds. It was long before I could reason myself into sufficient
courage to sit up and look out into the distance.
“You must get over these fancies,” said the guide, “for I have
brought you here that you might have the best possible view of the
scene of that event I mentioned—and to tell you the whole story
with the spot just under your eye.
“We are now,” he continued, in that particularizing manner which
distinguished him—“we are now close upon the Norwegian coast—in
the sixty-eighth degree of latitude—in the great province of Nordland
—and in the dreary district of Lofoden. The mountain upon whose
top we sit is Helseggen, the Cloudy. Now raise yourself up a little
higher—hold on to the grass if you feel giddy—so—and look out,
beyond the belt of vapor beneath us, into the sea.”
I looked dizzily, and beheld a wide expanse of ocean, whose
waters wore so inky a hue as to bring at once to my mind the
Nubian geographer’s account of the Mare Tenebrarum. A panorama
more deplorably desolate no human imagination can conceive. To
the right and left, as far as the eye could reach, there lay
outstretched, like ramparts of the world, lines of horridly black and
beetling cliff, whose character of gloom was but the more forcibly
illustrated by the surf which reared high up against it, its white and
ghastly crest, howling and shrieking forever. Just opposite the
promontory upon whose apex we were placed, and at a distance of
some five or six miles out at sea, there was visible a small, bleak-
looking island; or, more properly, its position was discernible through
the wilderness of surge in which it was enveloped. About two miles
nearer the land arose another of smaller size, hideously craggy and
barren, and encompassed at various intervals by a cluster of dark
rocks.
The appearance of the ocean, in the space between the more
distant island and the shore, had something very unusual about it.
Although, at the time, so strong a gale was blowing landward that a
brig in the remote offing lay to under a double-reefed try-sail, and
constantly plunged her whole hull out of sight, still there was here
nothing like a regular swell, but only a short, quick, angry cross-
dashing of water in every direction—as well in the teeth of the wind
as otherwise. Of foam there was little except in the immediate
vicinity of the rocks.
“The island in the distance,” resumed the old man, “is called by
the Norwegians Vurrgh. The one midway is Moskoe. That a mile to
the northward is Ambaaren. Yonder are Iflesen, Hoeyholm,
Kieldholm, Suarven, and Buckholm. Farther off—between Moskoe
and Vurrgh—are Otterholm, Flimen, Sandflesen, and Skarholm.
These are the true names of the places—but why it had been
thought necessary to name them at all is more than either you or I
can understand. Do you hear anything? Do you see any change in
the water?”
We had now been about ten minutes upon the top of Helseggen,
to which we 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 frenzied 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 Maelstrom.”
“So it is sometimes termed,” said he. “We Norwegians call it the
Moskoe-strom, 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 equaled 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 Norwegian
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 center of the Moskoe-strom 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 ships 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
Faroe 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 Encyclopedia Britannica. Kircher and others
imagine that in the center of the channel of the Maelstrom 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.

THE GUIDE’S MARVELOUS TALE

“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-strom.”
I placed myself as desired, and he proceeded.
“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-strom, 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 ground 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 today and gone tomorrow—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-strom 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
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 Strom 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-covered 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 so 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 Strom, 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 ringbolt
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.

SWEPT INTO THE MAELSTROM

“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-strom!’
“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 Strom, and nothing
could save us!
 “You perceive that in crossing the Strom 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 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, 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
Strom 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-strom whirlpool was about a quarter of a mile dead
ahead—but no more like the everyday Moskoe-strom 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 prisons 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 ringbolt. My brother was at the stern,
holding on to a small empty water-cask which had been securely
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