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, 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
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.

"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 t