no doubt occasioned by the clashing of the great
walls of the funnel, as they all met together at the bottom, but the yell
that went up to the heavens from out of that mist I dare not attempt to
describe.

"Our first slide into the abyss itself, from the belt of foam above, had
carried us to a great distance down the slope; but our further descent was
by no means proportionate. Round and round we swept; not with any uniform
movement, but in dizzying swings and jerks that sent us sometimes only a
few hundred yards, sometimes nearly the complete circuit of the whirl. 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 borne, I perceived that our boat was not the only object in the
embrace of the whirl. 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 terrors. It appeared to grow upon me as I drew nearer
and nearer to my dreadful doom. I now began 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 toward the foam
below. 'This fir-tree,' I found myself at one time saying, 'will certainly
be the next thing that takes the awful plunge and disappears'; and then I
was disappointed to find that the wreck of a 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, 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 a more
exciting hope. This hope arose partly from memory, and partly from present
observation. I called to mind the great variety of buoyant matter that
strewed the coast of Lofoden, having been absorbed and then thrown forth
by the Moskoe-stroem.

"By far the greater number 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