re answering each other loudly.
What was the matter? Had they discovered our flight? I felt Ned Land
slipping a dagger into my hand.

"Yes," I murmured, "we know how to die!"

The Canadian had stopped in his work. But one word many times
repeated, a dreadful word, revealed the cause of the agitation
spreading on board the Nautilus. It was not we the crew were looking
after!

"The maelstrom! the maelstrom!" Could a more dreadful word in a more
dreadful situation have sounded in our ears! We were then upon the
dangerous coast of Norway. Was the Nautilus being drawn into this gulf
at the moment our boat was going to leave its sides? We knew that at
the tide the pent-up waters between the islands of Ferroe and Loffoden
rush with irresistible violence, forming a whirlpool from which no
vessel ever escapes. From every point of the horizon enormous waves
were meeting, forming a gulf justly called the "Navel of the Ocean,"
whose power of attraction extends to a distance of twelve miles.
There, not only vessels, but whales are sacrificed, as well as white
bears from the northern regions.

It is thither that the Nautilus, voluntarily or involuntarily, had been
run by the Captain.

It was describing a spiral, the circumference of which was lessening by
degrees, and the boat, which was still fastened to its side, was
carried along with giddy speed. I felt that sickly giddiness which
arises from long-continued whirling round.

We were in dread. Our horror was at its height, circulation had
stopped, all nervous influence was annihilated, and we were covered
with cold sweat, like a sweat of agony! And what noise around our
frail bark! What roarings repeated by the echo miles away! What an
uproar was that of the waters broken on the sharp rocks at the bottom,
where the hardest bodies are crushed, and trees worn away, "with all
the fur rubbed off," according to the Norwegian phrase!

What a situation to be in! We rocked frightfully. The Nautilus
defended itself like a human being. Its steel muscles cracked.
Sometimes it seemed to stand upright, and we with it!

"We must hold on," said Ned, "and look after the bolts. We may still
be saved if we stick to the Nautilus."

He had not finished the words, when we heard a crashing noise, the
bolts gave way, and the boat, torn from its groove, was hurled like a
stone from a sling into the midst of the whirlpool.

My head struck on a piece of iron, and with the viol