“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 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 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 phrensied
      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.