Book: Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four.

W >> William H. Elson and Christine Keck >> Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four.




Literature presented itself as his most natural vocation. He had written
poetry from the pure love of it, but now actual poverty drove him to the
more remunerative prose writing. He engaged in journalistic work in
Baltimore, living with his aunt, Mrs. Clemm, and her daughter, Virginia.
Two years later he married Virginia Clemm, a mere child; but Poe, whose
reverence for women was his noblest trait, loved her and cared for her
through poverty and ill-health, until her death eleven years later, a short
time before his own. His life was a melancholy one, a fierce struggle and
final defeat. In 1849, on his way to New York from Richmond, chance brought
him and election day together in the city of Baltimore. He was found in an
election booth, delirious, and died a few days later.

Poe was a keen critic of the literary men of his day, but he applied the
same standards to himself. He was constantly re-writing and polishing what
he had written. Poe's greatness lay in his imaginative, work--his tales and
his poems. The tales may be said to constitute a distinct addition to the
world's literature. From time immemorial, there have been tales in prose
and in verse, tales legendary, romantic, and humorous, but never any quite
like Poe's.

The appeal of his poetry is to the sentiment of beauty--the one appeal,
which according to his theory is the final justification of any poem.
Language is made to yield its utmost of melody. "The Raven" was first
published in January, 1845, and immediately became and remains one of the
most widely known of English poems. It can be mentioned anywhere, without
apology or explanation and there is scarcely a lover of melodious verse who
cannot repeat many of its lines and stanzas.

Every reader of Poe's prose will be impressed with the charm of the
language itself, the fascination of the vivid scenes and the magic touch
like the Necromancer's wand, which removes these scenes into the uncharted
realm of the supernatural and invests them with a kind of sacred awe.

* * * * *


A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTRÖM

EDGAR ALLAN POE

WE had now reached the summit of the loftiest crag. For some minutes the
old man seemed too much exhausted to speak.

"Not long ago," said he at length, "and I could have guided you on this
route as well as the youngest of my sons; but, about three years past,
there happened to me an event such as never happened before to mortal
man--or at least such as no man ever survived to tell of--and the six hours
of deadly terror which I then endured have broken me up body and soul. You
suppose me a _very_ old man--but I am not. It took less than a single
day to change these hairs from a jetty black to white, to weaken my limbs,
and to unstring my nerves, so that I tremble at the least exertion, and am
frightened at a shadow. Do you know I can scarcely look over this little
cliff without getting giddy?"

The "little cliff," upon whose edge he had so carelessly thrown himself
down to rest that the weightier portion of his body hung over it, while he
was only kept from falling by the tenure of his elbow on its extreme and
slippery edge--this "little cliff" arose, a sheer unobstructed precipice of
black shining rock, some fifteen or sixteen hundred feet from the world of
crags beneath us. Nothing would have tempted me to within half a dozen
yards of its brink. In truth so deeply was I excited by the perilous
position of my companion, that I fell at full length upon the ground, clung
to the shrubs around me, and dared not even glance upward at the sky--while
I struggled in vain to divest myself of the idea that the very foundations
of the mountain were in danger from the fury of the winds. It was long
before I could reason myself into sufficient courage to sit up and look out
into the distance.

"You must get over these fancies," said the guide, "for I have brought you
here that you might have the best possible view of the scene of that event
I mentioned--and to tell you the whole story with the spot just under your
eye.

"We are now," he continued, in that particularizing manner which
distinguished him--"we are now close upon the Norwegian coast--in the
sixty-eighth degree of latitude--in the great province of Nordland--and in
the dreary district of Lofoden. The mountain upon whose top we sit is
Helseggen, the Cloudy. Now raise yourself up a little higher--hold on to
the grass if you feel giddy--so--and look out, beyond the belt of vapor
beneath us, into the sea."

I looked dizzily, and beheld a wide expanse of ocean, whose waters wore so
inky a hue as to bring at once to my mind the Nubian geographer's account
of the _Mare Tenebrarum_. A panorama more deplorably desolate no human
imagination can conceive. To the right and left, as far as the eye could
reach, there lay outstretched, like ramparts of the world, lines of
horridly black and beetling cliff, whose character of gloom was but the
more forcibly illustrated by the surf which reared high up against it its
white and ghastly crest, howling and shrieking forever. Just opposite the
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 Iflesen, Hoeyholm, Kieldholm, Suarven, and
Buckholm. Farther off--between Moskoe and Vurrgh--are Otterholm, Flimen,
Sandflesen, and Skarholm. 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 gigantic and innumerable vortices, and all
whirling and plunging on to the eastward with a rapidity which water never
elsewhere assumes, except in precipitous descents.

In a few minutes more there came over the scene another radical alteration.
The general surface grew somewhat more smooth, and the whirlpools, one by
one, disappeared, while prodigious streaks of foam became apparent where
none had been seen before. These streaks, at length, spreading out to a
great distance, and entering into combination, took unto themselves the
gyratory motion of the subsided vortices, and seemed to form the germ of
another more vast. Suddenly--very suddenly--this assumed a distinct and
definite existence, in a circle of more than a mile in diameter. The edge
of the whirl was represented by a broad belt of gleaming spray; but no
particle of this slipped into the mouth of the terrific funnel, whose
interior, as far as the eye could fathom it, was a smooth, shining and
jet-black wall of water, inclined to the horizon at an angle of some
forty-five degrees, speeding dizzily round and round with a swaying and
sweltering motion, and sending forth to the winds an appalling voice, half
shriek, half roar, such as not even the mighty cataract of Niagara ever
lifts up in its agony to Heaven.

The mountain trembled to its very base, and the rock rocked. I threw myself
upon my face, and clung to the scant herbage in an excess of nervous
agitation.

"This," said I at length, to the old man--"this _can_ be nothing else
than the great whirlpool of the Maelström."

"So it is sometimes termed," said he. "We Norwegians call it the
Moskoe-ström, from the island of Moskoe in the midway."

The ordinary accounts of this vortex had by no means prepared me for what I
saw. That of Jonas Ramus, which, is perhaps the most circumstantial of any,
cannot impart the faintest conception either of the magnificence or of the
horror of the scene--or of the wild bewildering sense of _the novel_
which confounds the beholder. I am not sure from what point of view the
writer in question surveyed it, nor at what time; but it could neither have
been from the summit of Helseggen, nor during a storm. There are some
passages of his description, nevertheless, which may be quoted for their
details, although their effect is exceedingly feeble in conveying an
impression of the spectacle.

"Between Lofoden and Moskoe," he says, "the depth of the water is between
thirty-six and forty fathoms; but on the other side, toward Ver (Vurrgh)
this depth decreases so as not to afford a convenient passage for a vessel,
without the risk of splitting on the rocks, which happens even in the
calmest weather. When it is flood, the stream runs up the country between
Lofoden and Moskoe with a boisterous rapidity; but the roar of its
impetuous ebb to the sea is scarce equaled by the loudest and most dreadful
cataracts, the noise being heard several leagues off; and the vortices or
pits are of such an extent and depth that if a ship comes within its
attraction it is inevitably absorbed and carried down to the bottom, and
there beat to pieces against the rocks; and when the water relaxes, the
fragments thereof are thrown up again. But these intervals of tranquillity
are only at the turn of the ebb and flood, and in calm weather, and last
but a quarter of an hour, its violence gradually returning. When the stream
is most boisterous, and its fury heightened by a storm, it is dangerous to
come within a Norway mile of it. Boats, yachts, and ships have been carried
away by not guarding against it before they were within its reach. It
likewise happens frequently that whales come too near the stream, and are
overpowered by its violence; and then it is impossible to describe their
howling and bellowings in their fruitless struggles to disengage
themselves. A bear once, attempting to swim from Lofoden to Moskoe, was
caught by the stream and borne down, while he roared terribly, so as to be
heard on shore. Large stocks of firs and pine trees, after being absorbed
by the current, rise again broken and torn to such a degree as if bristles
grew upon them. This plainly shows the bottom to consist of craggy rocks,
among which they are whirled to and fro. This stream is regulated by the
flux and reflux of the sea--it being constantly high and low water every
six hours. In the year 1645, early in the morning of Sexagesima Sunday, it
raged with such noise and impetuosity that the very stones of the houses on
the coast fell to the ground."

In regard to the depth of the water, I could not see how this could have
been ascertained at all in the immediate vicinity of the vortex. The "forty
fathoms" must have reference only to portions of the channel close upon the
shore either of Moskoe or Lofoden. The depth in the center of the
Moskoe-ström must be immeasurably greater; and no better proof of this fact
is necessary than can be obtained from even the sidelong glance into the
abyss of the whirl which may be had from the highest crag of Helseggen.
Looking down from this pinnacle upon the howling Phlegethon below, I could
not help smiling at the simplicity with which the honest Jonas Ramus
records, as a matter difficult of belief, the anecdotes of the whales and
the bears; for it appeared to me, in fact, a self-evident thing that the
largest ships of the line in existence, coming within the influence of that
deadly attraction, could resist it as little as a feather the hurricane,
and must disappear bodily and at once.

The attempts to account for the phenomenon--some of which, I remember,
seemed to me sufficiently plausible in perusal--now wore a very different
and unsatisfactory aspect. The idea generally received is that this, as
well as three smaller vortices among the Feroe Islands, "have no other
cause than the collision of waves rising and falling, at flux and reflux,
against a ridge of rocks and shelves, which confines the water so that it
precipitates itself like a cataract; and thus the higher the flood rises,
the deeper must the fall be, and the natural result of all is a whirlpool
or vortex, the prodigious suction of which is sufficiently known by lesser
experiments."--These are the words of the "Encyclopaedia Brittanica."
Kircher and others imagine that in the center of the channel of the
Maelström is an abyss penetrating the globe, and issuing in some very
remote part--the Gulf of Bothnia being somewhat decidedly named in one
instance. This opinion, idle in itself, was the one to which, as I gazed,
my imagination most readily assented; and, mentioning it to the guide, I
was rather surprised to hear him say that, although it was the view almost
universally entertained of the subject by the Norwegians, it nevertheless
was not his own. As to the former notion he confessed his inability to
comprehend it; and here I agreed with him--for, however conclusive on
paper, it becomes altogether unintelligible, and even absurd, amid the
thunder of the abyss.

"You have had a good look at the whirl now," said the old man, "and if you
will creep round this crag, so as to get in its lee, and deaden the roar of
the water, I will tell you a story that will convince you I ought to know
something of the Moskoe-ström."

I placed myself as desired, and he proceeded.

"Myself and my two brothers once owned a schooner-rigged smack of about
seventy tons burden, with which we were in the habit of fishing among the
islands beyond Moskoe, nearly to Vurrgh. In all violent eddies at sea there
is good fishing, at proper opportunities, if one has only the courage to
attempt it; but among the whole of the Lofoden coastmen we three were the
only ones who made a regular business of going out to the islands, as I
tell you. The usual grounds are a great way lower down to the southward.
There fish can be got at all hours, without much risk, and therefore these
places are preferred. The choice spots over here among the rocks, however,
not only yield the finest variety, but in far greater abundance; so that we
often got in a single day what the more timid of the craft could not scrape
together in a week. In fact, we made it a matter of desperate
speculation--the risk of life standing instead of labor, and courage
answering for capital.

"We kept the smack in a cove about five miles higher up the coast than
this; and it was our practice, in fine weather, to take advantage of the
fifteen minutes' slack to push across the main channel of the Moskoe-ström,
far above the pool, and then drop down upon anchorage somewhere near
Otterholm, or Sandflesen, where the eddies are not so violent as elsewhere.
Here we used to remain until nearly time for slack-water again, when we
weighed and made for home. We never set out upon this expedition without a
steady side wind for going and coming--one that we felt sure would not fail
us before our return--and we seldom made a miscalculation upon this point.
Twice, during six years, we were forced to stay all night at anchor on
account of a dead calm, which is a rare thing indeed just about here; and
once we had to remain on the grounds nearly a week, starving to death,
owing to a gale which blew up shortly after our arrival, and made the
channel too boisterous to be thought of. Upon this occasion we should have
been driven out to sea in spite of everything (for the whirlpools threw us
round and round so violently that, at length, we fouled our anchor and
dragged it) if it had not been that we drifted into one of the innumerable
cross currents--here to-day and gone to-morrow--which drove us under the
lee of Flimen, where, by good luck, we brought up.

"I could not tell you the twentieth part of the difficulties we encountered
'on the ground'--it is a bad spot to be in, even in good weather--but we
made shift always to run the gauntlet of the Moskoe-ström itself without
accident; although at times my heart has been in my mouth when we happened
to be a minute or so behind or before the slack. The wind sometimes was not
as strong as we thought it at starting, and then we made rather less way
than we could wish, while the current rendered the smack unmanageable. My
eldest brother had a son eighteen years old, and I had two stout boys of my
own. These would have been of great assistance at such times, in using the
sweeps, as well as afterward in fishing--but, somehow, although we ran the
risk ourselves, we had not the heart to let the young ones get into the
danger--for, after all said and done, it _was_ a horrible danger, and
that is the truth.

"It is now within a few days of three years since what I am going to tell
you occurred. It was on the tenth of July, 18--, a day which the people of
this part of the world will never forget--for it was one in which blew the
most terrible hurricane that ever came out of the heavens. And yet all the
morning, and indeed until late in the afternoon, there was a gentle and
steady breeze from the southwest, while the sun shone brightly, so that the
oldest seaman among us could not have foreseen what was to follow.

"The three of us--my two brothers and myself--had crossed over to the
islands about two o'clock P.M., and soon nearly loaded the smack with fine
fish, which, we all remarked, were more plenty that day than we had ever
known them. It was just seven, _by my watch_, when we weighed and
started for home, so as to make the worst of the Ström at slack water,
which we knew would be at eight.

"We set out with a fresh wind on our starboard quarter, and for some time
spanked along at a great rate, never dreaming of danger, for indeed we saw
not the slightest reason to apprehend it. All at once we were taken aback
by a breeze from over Helseggen. This was most unusual--something that had
never happened to us before--and I began to feel a little uneasy, without
exactly knowing why. We put the boat on the wind, but could make no headway
at all for the eddies, and I was upon the point of proposing to return to
the anchorage, when, looking astern, we saw the whole horizon covered with
a singular copper-colored cloud that rose with the most amazing velocity.

"In the meantime the breeze that had headed us off fell away, and we were
dead becalmed, drifting about in every direction. This state of things,
however, did not last long enough to give us time to think about it. In
less than a minute the storm was upon us--in less than two the sky was
entirely overcast--and what with this and the driving spray, it became
suddenly so dark that we could not see each other in the smack.

"Such a hurricane as then blew it is folly to attempt describing. The
oldest seaman in Norway never experienced anything like it. We had let our
sails go by the run before it cleverly took us; but, at the first puff,
both our masts went by the board as if they had been sawed off--the
mainmast taking with it my youngest brother, who had lashed himself to it
for safety.

"Our boat was the lightest feather of a thing that ever sat upon water. It
had a complete flush deck, with only a small hatch near the bow, and this
hatch it had always been our custom to batten down when about to cross the
Ström, by way of precaution against the chopping seas. But for this
circumstance we should have foundered at once--for we lay entirely buried
for some moments. How my elder brother escaped destruction I cannot say,
for I never had an opportunity of ascertaining. For my part, as soon as I
had let the foresail run, I threw myself flat on deck, with my feet against
the narrow gunwale of the bow, and with my hands grasping a ringbolt near
the foot of the foremast. It was mere instinct that prompted me to do
this--which was undoubtedly the very best thing I could have done--for I
was too much flurried to think.

"For some moments we were completely deluged, as I say, and all this time I
held my breath, and clung to the bolt. When I could stand it no longer I
raised myself upon my knees, still keeping hold with my hands, and thus got
my head clear. Presently our little boat gave herself a shake, just as a
dog does in coming out of the water, and thus rid herself, in some measure,
of the seas. I was now trying to get the better of the stupor that had come
over me, and to collect my senses so as to see what was to be done, when I
felt somebody grasp my arm. It was my elder brother, and my heart leaped
for joy, for I had made sure that he was overboard--but the next moment all
this joy was turned into horror--for he put his mouth close to my ear, and
screamed out the word '_Moskoe-ström!_'

"No one will ever know what my feelings were at that moment. I shook from
head to foot as if I had had the most violent fit of the ague. I knew what
he meant by that one word well enough--I knew what he wished to make me
understand. With the wind that now drove us on, we were bound for the whirl
of the Ström, and nothing could save us!

"You perceive that in crossing the Ström _channel_, we always went a
long way up above the whirl, even in the calmest weather, and then had to
wait and watch carefully for the slack--but now we were driving right upon
the pool itself, and in such a hurricane as this! 'To be sure,' I thought,
'we shall get there just about the slack--there is some little hope in
that'--but in the next moment I cursed myself for being so great a fool as
to dream of hope at all. I knew very well that we were doomed, had we been
ten times a ninety-gun ship.

"By this time the first fury of the tempest had spent itself, or perhaps we
did not feel it so much as we scudded before it; but at all events the
seas, which at first had been kept down by the wind, and lay flat and
frothing, now got up into absolute mountains. A singular change, too, had
come over the heavens. Around in every direction it was still as black as
pitch, but nearly overhead there burst out, all at once, a circular rift of
clear sky--as clear as I ever saw--and of a deep bright blue--and through
it there blazed forth the full moon with a luster that I never before knew
her to wear. She lit up everything about us with the greatest
distinctness--but, oh God, what a scene it was to light up!

"I now made one or two attempts to speak to my brother--but, in some manner
which I could not understand, the din had so increased that I could not
make him hear a single word, although I screamed at the top of my voice in
his ear. Presently he shook his head, looking as pale as death, and held up
one of his fingers, as if to say _listen!_

"At first I could not make out what he meant--but soon a hideous thought
flashed upon me. I dragged my watch from its fob. It was not going. I
glanced at its face by the moonlight, and then burst into tears as I flung
it far away into the ocean. _It had run down at seven o'clock! We were
behind the time of the slack, and the whirl of the Ström was in full
fury!_

"When a boat is well built, properly trimmed, and not deep laden, the waves
in a strong gale, when she is going large, seem always to slip from beneath
her--which appears very strange to a landsman--and this is what is called
_riding_, in sea phrase.

"Well, so far we had ridden the swells very cleverly; but presently a
gigantic sea happened to take us right under the counter, and bore us with
it as it rose--up--up--as if into the sky. I would not have believed that
any wave could rise so high. And then down 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. But while we were up I had thrown a
quick glance around--and that one glance was all-sufficient. I saw our
exact position in an instant. The Moskoe-ström whirlpool was about a
quarter of a mile dead ahead--but no more like the everyday Moskoe-ström,
than the whirl as you now see it is like a mill-race. If I had not known
where we were, and what we had to expect, I should not have recognized the
place at all. As it was, I involuntarily closed my eyes in horror. The lids
clenched themselves together as if in a spasm.

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