Guided Sleep Meditation & Sleep Hypnosis from Sleep Cove - A Descent into the Maelstrom (A Sea Adventure) by Edgar Allan Poe

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Starting point is 00:00:46 please go to sleepcove.com slash support. That's sleepcove.com slash support. If you can't support the show right now, please subscribe with a bell to get alerts on all new free content Thank you Have you ever gazed in wonder at the Great Pyramid Have you marvelled at the golden face of Tudankhamun

Starting point is 00:01:16 Or admired the delicate features of Queen Nefertiti If you have, you'll probably like the History of Egypt podcast Every week we explore tales of this ancient culture The history of Egypt is available wherever you get your podcasting fix. Come, let me introduce you to the world of ancient Egypt. Hello and welcome to Sleep Cove, the place to come for a great night's sleep. Tonight's episode is the classic tale by Edgar Allan Poe called A Descent into the Maelstrom. It's a chilling sea adventure, so it may not be for everyone.

Starting point is 00:02:01 And if you think it might not be for you, please check out the rest of Sleep Co's back catalogue for something you may enjoy. Please listen to this recording in a place where you can safely go to sleep. This episode is brought to you by Best Fiends. Do you want to have some fun with a puzzle-solving game that really engages your brain? Then I can recommend Best Fiends. It's a casual game for adults that anyone can play. It's a mix of character-collecting and puzzles.

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Starting point is 00:03:14 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 a has never happened to a mortal man, or at least such as no man ever survived to tell off, 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

Starting point is 00:04:04 I tremble at the least exertion, and I 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 the 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 cracks 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.

Starting point is 00:05:04 clung to the shrubs around me and dared not even glance upwards 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 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.

Starting point is 00:05:55 We are now close upon the Norwegian coast, in the 68th degree of latitude, in the great province of Nordland, in the dreariest district of Lofenden. The mountain upon whose top we sit is Halzegin, the cloudy. Now raise yourself up a little higher. Hold on to the grass if you feel giddy, and sew and look out, beyond the belt of vapour beneath us,

Starting point is 00:06:24 into the sea. I looked dizzyly and held a wide expanse of ocean, whose waters were so inky a hue as to bring it once to my mind the Nubian's geographer's account of the Mayor Tenibararaan. 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 horribly black and beetling cliff whose character of gloom was but the more forcibly illustrated

Starting point is 00:07:05 by the surf which reared high upon its white and ghastly crest howling and shrieking forever just opposite the promontory upon whose apex we were placed 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

Starting point is 00:07:31 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 overworked, in the space between the more distant island and the shore, had something very unusual about it.

Starting point is 00:08:00 Although at the time, so strong a gale was blowing landward, there was a brig in the remote offing, laid to under a double-reefed trysail, and constantly plunged a 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 a little excerpt in the immediate vicinity of the rocks. The island in the distance, resumed the old man, is called by the Norwegians, Vergh, the one midway is Moscow, that a mile to the northward is Zambaran, yonder is Alslan

Starting point is 00:08:51 Hothom Kildem Surovam and Bokom Farther off between Moscow and Virg are Otterholm Flimen Sand Flesim and Stockholm

Starting point is 00:09:05 These are the true names of the places But why it has 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 Hal Sagin

Starting point is 00:09:28 to which we had ascended from the interior of Lofenden so that we caught no glimpse of the sea until it burst upon us from the summit. As the old man spoke, I became aware of a loud and gradual increased sound like the moaning of a vast herd of buffaloes upon an American prairie. And at the same moment, I perceived what seaman term the chopping character of the ocean beneath us was rapidly changing into a current which set to the eastward.

Starting point is 00:10:06 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 Verge, was lashed into an ungovernable fury, but it was between Moscow and the coast, that the main uproar held its sway. Here the vast bed of the waters seemed and scarred into a thousand conflicting channels, burst suddenly into a frenzied convulsion, heaving, boiling, hissing, gyrating and gigantic and innumerable vortices, and all whirling and plunging onto the eastward with a rapidity with which water never elsewhere assumes except in precipitous the sense. In a few minutes more, there came over the scene another radical alteration.

Starting point is 00:11:08 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 onto themselves the gyratory motion of the subsided vortices, and seemed to form the churn 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,

Starting point is 00:11:57 but no particle of this slipped into the mouth of the terrific funnel, whose interior as far as the eye could, could fathom it. It was a smooth, shining and jet-black wall of water, inclined to the horizon as an angle of some 45 degrees, speeding dizzily round and round, with a swaying and sweltering motion, and sending forth to the winds an appalling voice of half shriek, half-rawl, 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.

Starting point is 00:12:44 I threw myself upon my face, and clung to the scant herbage in 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 called it the Moscow Strong, from the island of Moscow in the Midway. The orderly accounts of this vortex had no means prepared me for what I saw,

Starting point is 00:13:21 that of Jonas Ramos, 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 that 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 Helsegan nor during a storm.

Starting point is 00:13:55 There are some passages of his description, nevertheless, which may be quoted for their details, although their affair is exceedingly feeble in conveying an impression of their spectacle. Between Lofenden and Moscow, he says, the depth of the water is between 36 and 40 fathoms, but on the other side towards Ver, these depths decrease as to not afford a convenient passage for a vessel,

Starting point is 00:14:28 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 Lofden and Moscow, 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, all pits, 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 and fragments thereof are thrown up again.

Starting point is 00:15:19 But these intervals of tranquility are only at the turn of the ebb and flood and in calm weather and last but 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,

Starting point is 00:15:47 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 the fruitless struggles to disengage themselves a bear once attempting to swin

Starting point is 00:16:12 from Lofenden to Moscow was caught by the stream and borne down while he roared terribly so as to be heard on shore Large stalks 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

Starting point is 00:16:39 among which there are welled 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 Sexerjessimus 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

Starting point is 00:17:18 in the immediate vicinity of the vortex. The 40 fathoms must have referenced only to portion of the channels close upon the shore, either of Moscow or Lofenden. The depth in the centre of the Moscow strum must be immeasurably greater. And no better proof of this fact is necessary than can be obtained from even the sidon glance into the abyss of the whirl which had been from the highest crag of Helsagin. Looking down from this pinnacle upon the howling flagathon below,

Starting point is 00:17:56 I could not help smiling and the simplicity with which the honest Jonas Ramos records. As a matter difficult of belief, the anecdotes of the whales and 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 or that deadly attraction, could resist it as little as a feather in the hurricane, and must disappear bodily and at once. The attempts to account for this phenomenon, some of which I remember, seemed to me sufficiently plausible impurusal. Now wore a very different and unsatisfactory aspect.

Starting point is 00:18:43 The idea generally received is that this, as well as three smaller vortices, among the Faroe Islands, have no other course than the collision of waves, rising and falling, and flux and reflux against a ridge of rocks and shelves, which combines the water 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. The words I quoted are from the encyclopedia Britannica. Kircher and others imagine that in the centre of the channel of the Maastrum is an abyss penetrating the globe and issuing in some very remote part, the Gulf of Bothanier, 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,

Starting point is 00:20:01 although it was the view almost universally entertained on 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

Starting point is 00:20:22 unintelligible and even absurd amid the thunder of the abyss you have had a good look at the world now said the old man and if you will creep round this crag so as to get in its lee

Starting point is 00:20:38 the dead and roar of the water I will tell you a story that will convince you I ought to know something of the Moscow Strom. I placed myself as desired, and he proceeded. Myself and my two brothers once owned a schooner-rigged smack of about 70-tonnes Berthen, with which we were in the habit of fishing among the islands behind Moscow, nearly to Vergh. In all violent eddies at sea There is good fishing

Starting point is 00:21:12 At proper opportunities If one has only the courage to attempt it But among the whole of the Luffington Coastman 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

Starting point is 00:21:34 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 a far greater abundance, so that we are 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 than the coast than this,

Starting point is 00:22:21 and it was in our practice in fine weather to take advantage of the 15 minutes slack to push across the main channel of the Moscow Strom far above the pool and then drop down upon anchorage somewhere near Ottenhelm or Sandflassen where the eddies are not so violent as elsewhere. Here we used to remain until nearly time for slack water again where we weighed and made for home. We never set out upon the expedition

Starting point is 00:22:53 without a steady side wind for coming and going, 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 car, 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,

Starting point is 00:23:28 amazed 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 wall-pours threw us round and round so violently that at length we fouled our anchor and dragged it. If it had not been that we were drifted in one of the innumeral cross-currents, here today and gone to-morrow, which drove us under the Lee of Flemen, where, by good luck, we brought up. I could not tell you the twentieth part of the difficulties we had counted on the grounds. It is a bad spot to be in, even in good weather,

Starting point is 00:24:12 but we made shift always to run the gauntlet of the Muscoe 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 behind the slack. The wind sometimes was not as strong as we thought it had starting, and then we made rather less way than we could wish, while the current rendered the smack unmanageable.

Starting point is 00:24:42 My eldest brother had a son 18 years old, and I had two stout boys on my own. These would have been of great assistance at such times, in using the sweeps, as well as afterwards 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 as sudden done, it was a horrible danger, and that is the truth. It is now within a few days of three years, since when I am going to tell you what occurred. It was on the 10th day of July the 18th, a day which the people of this part of the world, will never forget, for it was the day in which blew the terrible hurricane that ever came out of the heavens.

Starting point is 00:25:35 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 seamen among us could not have seen what was to follow. The three of us, my brothers and myself, had crossed over to the island, about two o'clock, and we 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, 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 it at a great rate, never dreaming of danger, for indeed we saw not the slightest reason to apprehend it.

Starting point is 00:26:34 All at once we were taken aback by a breeze from over Helsegan. 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 be calmed, 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, and less than two,

Starting point is 00:27:38 the sky was entirely overcast, and with this and the driving spray, it was suddenly so dark that we could not see each other in the smack. Such a hurricane as then blew, it is a folly to even attempt describing it. 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 sord off, the main mass taking with it my youngest brother. who had lashed himself to it for safety.

Starting point is 00:28:23 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 strong, by way of precaution against the chopping seas. But for this circumstance, we should have, founded at once, for we lay entirely buried for some moments. How my elder brother escaped destruction, I cannot say, for I never had opportunity of ascertaining. For my part, as soon as I had let the Vorsail run, I threw myself flat on deck, with my feet against the narrow gunway

Starting point is 00:29:12 of the bow, and 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, and I say at this time I held my breath and clung on to the bolt. When I could stand it no longer, I raised myself upon my knees, still taking hold of with my hands, and thus got my head clear. Presently our little boat gave herself a shake, just as our 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 grasped my arm. It was my elder brother, and my heart leaped for joy, for I had to see what was to be done, for I felt somebody grasped my arm.

Starting point is 00:30:19 made sure that he was overboard. But the next moment all this joy was turned to horror, for he put his mouth closed to my ear and screamed out the word, Muscar Strom. No one will know what my feelings were at that moment. I shook my 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 strong, and nothing could save us. You perceive that coming, in crossing the strong channel, we were 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.

Starting point is 00:31:18 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 are some little hope in that. But in the next moment I'd curse myself for being so great a fool as to dream of hope at all. All I knew very well that we were doomed, had we been ten times a number, 90 gunship. By this time, the first fury of the tempest had spent itself, or perhaps we do not feel it so much as we scuddered before it. But at all events the seas which had at first had been kept down by the wind lay flat and throffing, now got up into absolute mountains.

Starting point is 00:32:14 A singular change to 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, end of a deep bright blue, and through it there blazed forth the full moon with a luster that I never knew her to wear. She lit up everything about us With the greatest distinctiveness But oh God What a scene it was to light up I now made one or two attempts

Starting point is 00:32:59 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 to 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 fog

Starting point is 00:33:33 it was not going i glanced at his 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

Starting point is 00:34:00 The waves in a strong gale When she is going large She seemed to flip and slip From beneath her Which appears very strange to a landsman And this is what is called riding in sea frays. 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 as with it as it rose up up, as if into the sky.

Starting point is 00:34:31 I would have not 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 down 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 Moscow strong whirlpool was about a quarter of a mile dead ahead, but no more like the everyday Muscar Strong than the world as you now see it, is like a millrace. If I had not known where we were and what we had to expect, I could not have recognised the place at all. As it was, I involuntary closed my eyes in horror. the lids clenched themselves together as if in a spasm.

Starting point is 00:35:36 It could not have been more than two minutes afterwards until we suddenly felt the wave subside and we were enveloped in foam. The boat made us sharp, half turned to La Bard and then shot off in its new direction like a thunderbolt. At the same moment, the roaring noise of the wall, 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 altogether.

Starting point is 00:36:14 We were now in the belt of surf that always surrounds the well, and I thought of course that another moment would plungers into the abyss, down which would only see indistinctly on account of the amazing velocity with which we were born 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 well and on the laboured 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 we were in the very jaws of the Gulf. I felt more composed than when we were only approaching it.

Starting point is 00:37:09 Having made it 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.

Starting point is 00:37:52 After a little while I became possessed with a cute, curiousity about the world 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.

Starting point is 00:38:32 There was another circumstance which tended to restore my self-possession, as 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 low, 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

Starting point is 00:39:04 occasioned by the wind and spray together. They blind, deafen and strangle you, and take away all power of action or reflection. But we are now, in a great measure, rid of these anoints. Just as death condemned Fallon's 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 with the ring bolt.

Starting point is 00:39:56 My brother was at the stern, holding on to a small empty water cusk, which had been securely lashed under the coop of the counter, and was the only thing on deck that had not been swept overboard when the gale first took us. As we approached the brink of the pit, he let go his hold upon this, and made for the ring from which in the agony of his terror he endeavoured to force my hands, as it was not large enough to afford us both a secure grasp.

Starting point is 00:40:30 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 the cask. This there was no great difficulty in doing, for the smack flew round steadily enough,

Starting point is 00:41:02 and upon an even keel, only swaying to and fro were the immense sweeps and swelters of the well, scarcely had I secured myself in the 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,

Starting point is 00:41:28 I had indistinctively 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,

Starting point is 00:41:53 and the motion of the vessel seemed much as if it had been before, while in the belt of the foam, with the exception that she now lay all 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,

Starting point is 00:42:22 midway down upon the interior surface of a funnel, vast and circumference, prodigious and depth, and whose perfectly smooth sides might have been mistaken for ebony, but for the bewildering rapidity from which they spun round and around, for the gleaming and ghastly radiance they shot forth,

Starting point is 00:42:44 as the rays of the full moon from the circular rift amid the clouds, which I had 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 had been, held. Where I recovered myself a little, however, my gaze fell indistinctively downwards. In this direction, I was able to obtain an unconstructed view from the manner in which the smack

Starting point is 00:43:29 hung on the inclined surface of the pool. She was quite upon an even keel, that is to say, her deck lay in the plain parallel with that of the water, but this latter sloped at an angle. of more than 45 degrees, so that she seemed to be lying upon her 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 of which we revolved. The rays of the moon seemed to search the very bottom of the profound gulf

Starting point is 00:44:17 but still I could make out nothing distinctively on account of a thick mist in which everything there was invalid and over which hung a magnificent rainbow like the narrow and tottering bridge which musselmen say is the only pathway between time and eternity This mist or spray

Starting point is 00:44:41 Was no doubt occasioned By the clash of the great walls of the funnel As they met together at the bottom But the yell that went up to the heavens Was out of that mist I dare not attempt to describe Our first slide into the abyss itself From the belt of foam above

Starting point is 00:45:03 Had carried us a great distance down the slope But our father did it descent was by no means proportionate. Round and round we swept not with any uniform movement, but in dizzying swings and jerks that centres sometimes only a few hundred yards, and sometimes nearly the complete circuit of the world. 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 born

Starting point is 00:45:45 I perceive that our boat was not only The only object in the embrace of the well 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 terrace. It appeared to grow upon me as I drew nearer and nearer to my dreadful doom

Starting point is 00:46:28 and now begin 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 towards the foam below me. This fir tree, I found myself at one time saying, will certainly be the next thing that takes the awful plunge in disappears. and then I was disappointed to find that the wreck of the 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,

Starting point is 00:47:20 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 more exciting hope. This hope arose partly for memory, and partly from the present observation. I called in mind to the great variety of buoyant matter that strewed the coast of Lofendon, having been absorbed and then thrown forth by the Moscow Strom. By far the greater number of the articles, were shattered in the most extraordinary way,

Starting point is 00:48:02 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 how I could not account for this difference except by supposing that the roughened fragments were the only ones which had been completely absorbed

Starting point is 00:48:26 that the others had entered the whirl at so late a period of the tide, or for some reason had descended so slowly after entering, that they did not reach the bottom before the turn of the flood came, or of the ebb, as the case might be. I conceived it possible in either instance that they might be 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.

Starting point is 00:49:05 The first was that as a general rule, the larger the bodies, the more rapid the descent. The second that, between two masses of equal extent, the one spherical and the other of any 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 shape, the cylinder was absorbed the more slowly. Since my escape, I have had several conversations on this subject

Starting point is 00:49:41 with an old school master of the district, and it was from him that I learned the words, cylinder and sphere. He explained them 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 had showed me how it happened that a cylinder, swimming in a vortex, offered more resistance to its suction and was drawn in with greater difficulty than an equally bulky body, of any form, whatever. There was one startling circumstance which went a great way in enforcing these observations, and rending me anxious to turn them into account, and this was that, at every revolution we pass something like a barrel, or else the yard or 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,

Starting point is 00:50:44 we now high up above us had seemed to have moved but a 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

Starting point is 00:51:02 and to throw myself with it into the water. I attracted my brother's attentions by signs pointed to the floating barrels that came near us and did everything in my own. my power to make him understand what I was about to do. I thought at length that he comprehended my decision, 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

Starting point is 00:51:33 of no delay, and so with bitter struggle I resigned him to his fate, and fastened myself to the cask by means of the lashings we secured it to the counter and precipitated myself with it into the sea without another moment's hesitation. The result was precisely what I hoped it might be. As it is myself who now tell you this tale, as you see I did escape, and as you are already in possession of the mode in which this escape was affected, and must therefore and anticipate all that I have farther to say. I will bring my story quickly to conclusion. It might have been an hour or thereabout after my quitting the smack.

Starting point is 00:52:24 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, forever into the chaos of fear. foam below. The barrel to which I was attached sunk very little farther, then half the distance between the bottom of the gulf and the spot at which I leapt aboard before a great change took place in the character of the whirlpool. The slope of the sides of the vast funnel became momentally

Starting point is 00:53:03 less and less steep. The gyrations of the world 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. And when I found myself on the surface of the ocean in full view of the shores of Lofenden and above the spot where the pool of the Moscow strom 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 born violently into the channel of the strong, and in a few minutes was hurried down the coast into the grounds of the fishermen.

Starting point is 00:53:57 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 a spirit land

Starting point is 00:54:19 My hair had been raven black the day before Was as white as you see it now They say it too That the whole expression of my countenance had changed I told them my story And they did not believe it I tell it to you now and I can scarcely expect you to put more faith in it

Starting point is 00:54:41 then did the merry fisherman of Lofenden.

Guided Sleep Meditation & Sleep Hypnosis from Sleep Cove - A Descent into the Maelstrom (A Sea Adventure) by Edgar Allan Poe

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