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 trysail, 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 Islesen, Hotholm, Keildhelm, Suarven, and
Buckholm. Farther off--between Moskoe and Vurrgh--are Otterholm, Flimen,
Sandflesen, and Stockholm. 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 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 gigan