unable to arrive at a satisfactory explanation.

Such sights, such a discussion, such a perilous position in which
to listen, make the hearer susceptible to the slightest impression.

II. The story proper is told in the most convincing, matter-of-fact
way, yet we are conscious all the time that the language of the old
man is rather that of a trained writer than of an ignorant
fisherman, and here Poe sacrifices the personality of his hero to
vividness of incident. What he wishes to accomplish is to impress
us with a terrible experience. He does not care to make us see the
narrator as a man, yet the story is not devoid of touches of strong
human interest; if it were it would be less powerful. The fisherman
and his brothers will not take with them their sons on their
perilous fishing trip. The youngest brother is carried away in the
first blast of the tempest with the mainmast to which he had bound
himself. The oldest brother selfishly drives our hero from the ring
in the deck.

There are remarkable touches of realism in the story. It was just
seven by the old man's watch when they started for home; later,
when the tempest is upon them, it is discovered that the watch had
run down at seven o'clock, and they are behind the time of the
slack water in the whirlpool.

III. Vividly descriptive phrases abound in the narration, and
figures of speech give powerful interest to the imagination.

"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."

"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
waste-pipes of many thousand steam-vessels letting off their steam
all together."

"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."

"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."

IV. It is meant that our interest should center in the story
itself. Accordingly, when the narrator has finished his tale the
story is finished. We are not further in