A boat picked me up -- exhausted from fatigue -- and (now that the danger was removed) speechless from the memory of its horror. Be the first to contribute! while not particularly creepy, it was interesting and vividly written so that i almost feel like i was living it myself. 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. Those who drew me on board were my old mates and daily companions but they knew me no more than they would have known a traveller from the spirit-land. The old man recounts his ordeal that in less than a single day changed his hairs from a jetty black to white, weakened his limbs, and t unstrung his nerves. The story of how he was caught during a storm in a maelstrom three years earlier with his brothers and how he survived. Here we used to remain until nearly time for slack-water again, when we weighed and made for home. But while we were up I had thrown a quick glance around and that one glance was all sufficient. It is considered by some critics to be a science fiction tale based upon an actual maelstrom off the coast of Norway in the Lofoten Islands. js.id=id; This is why I'm afraid of traveling by sea. I never felt deeper grief than when I saw him attempt this act although I knew he was a madman when he did it a raving maniac through sheer fright. //]]>, Be the first to ask a question about A Descent into the Maelstrom - an Edgar Allan Poe Short Story. I was borne violently into the channel of the Strm, and in a few minutes was hurried down the coast into the grounds of the fishermen. We cannot be held responsible for delays if you do not use this reference. These, no doubt, were singular fancies to occupy a mans mind in such extremity and I have often thought since, that the revolutions of the boat around the pool might have rendered me a little light-headed. 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. This there was no great difficulty in doing; for the smack flew round steadily enough, and upon an even keel only swaying to and fro, with the immense sweeps and swelters of the whirl. There are no book plates in the book. The mountain trembled to its very base, and the rock rocked. Joseph Glanville. In truth so deeply was I excited by the perilous position of my companion, that I fell at full length upon the ground, clungto 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. The story is told by an Old Norwegian fisherman to a tourist at the top of a very tall mountain. 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. I knew it could make no difference whether either of us held on at all ;so I let him have the bolt, and went astern to the cask. A supposedly old man tells his story of getting into the whirlpool of the Moskoe-stroem while on a fishing trip with his brothers. The Literature Network: Online classic literature, poems, and quotes. I now began towatch, with a strange interest, the numerous things that floated in our company. Here we used to remain until nearly time for slack-water again, when we weighed and made for home. The sailor of A Descent is similar to both these characters, and so, before his descent, he seems [column 2:] unaware that as the storys epigraphical quotation from forum 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. I took courage, and looked once again upon the scene. I now tell it toyou and I can scarcely expect you to put more faith in it than did the merry fishermen of Lofoden., Filed Under: The Poe Museum Blog Tagged With: Poe's Works. Refresh and try again. The fact that he does not blame his brother for what he does proves his moral character and love for his siblings. Scarcely had I secured myself in my new position, when we gave a wild lurch to starboard, and rushed headlong into the abyss. Inspired by the Moskstraumen, it is couched as a story within a story, a tale told at the summit of a mountain climb in Lofoten, Norway. "There was one startling circumstance which went a great way in enforcing these observations, and rendering me anxious to turn them to account, and this was that, at every revolution, we passed something like a barrel, or else the yard or the mast of a vessel, while many of these things, which had been on our level when I first opened my eyes upon the wonders of the whirlpool, were now high up above us, and seemed to have moved but little from their original station. forum, gallery | Very descriptive but the story within a story doesnt quite work. The boat did not seem to sink into the water at all, but to skim like an air-bubble upon the surface of the surge. As we approached the brink of the pit he let go his hold upon this, and made for the ring, from which, in the agony of his terror, he endeavored to force my hands, as it was not large enough to afford us both a secure grasp. A singular change, too, had come over the heavens. They say too that the whole expression of my countenance had changed. It was long before I could reason myself into sufficient courage to sit up and look out into the distance. This book is in near mint condition with a bump on the side of the back cover. Do you see any change in the water?. I resolved to lash myself securely to the water cask upon which I now held, to cut it loose from the counter, and to throw myself with it into the water. All this time I had never let go of the ring-bolt. I would not have believed that any wave could rise so high. Just click the "Edit page" button at the bottom of the page or learn Entdecke Abstieg in den Strudel, Taschenbuch von Poe, Edgar Allan; Cedeno, Yasmira, L in groer Auswahl Vergleichen Angebote und Preise Online kaufen bei eBay Kostenlose Lieferung fr viele Artikel! The old man recounts his ordeal that in less than a single day changed his hairs from a jetty black to white, weakened his limbs, and t unstrung his nerves. "The result was precisely what I had hoped it might be. You suppose me averyold man but I am not. It has never been read. "I no longer hesitated what to do. 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-strm!. Each moment added to its speed -- to its headlong impetuosity. That a mile to the northward is Ambaaren. This hope arose partly from memory, and partly from present observation. To see what your friends thought of this book, A Descent into the Maelstrom - an Edgar Allan Poe Short Story. Which is how I came across. "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." I have yet to read another writer with the ability to take all my senses into a story and make me live it. No one ever will know what my feelings were at that moment. With their small fishing ship in the grip of this nightmarish phenomenon, the hero discovers himself to be in the grip of a force, parallel to that of the Maelstrom, equal in strength, which has arisen from within him. 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. I conceived it possible, in either instance, that they might thus be whirled up again to the level of the ocean, without undergoing the fate of those which had been drawn in more early, or absorbed more rapidly. A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTRM. On a fishing trip with his brothers a storm arose fuelled by the most powerful and wicked hurricane that ever erupted from hea. Unfortunately, he realizes this because his older brother shouts into his ear that they're headed directly into the maelstrom. Poe is a wonder and an amazement to me. I knew what he meant by that one word well enough I knew what he wished to make me understand. There was one startling circumstance which went a great way in enforcing these observations, and rendering me anxious to turn them to account, and this was that, at every revolution, we passed something like a barrel, or else the yard or the mast of a vessel, while many of these things, which had been on our level when I first opened my eyes upon the wonders of the whirlpool, were now high up above us, and seemed to have moved but little from their original station. At the same moment the roaring noise of the water was completely drowned in a kind of shrill shriek -- such a sound as you might imagine given out by the waste-pipes of many thousand steam-vessels, letting off their steam all together. Although his white hair makes him appear to be an old man, he tells the narrator that he is actually not old. And how he survived with an application of science. The sky was clear, the winds had gone down, and the full moon was setting radiantly in the west, when I found myself on the surface of the ocean, in full view of the shores of Lofoden, and above the spot where the pool of the Moskoe-strm had been. 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. The lids clenched themselves together as if in a spasm. Nothing would have tempted me to within half a dozen yards of its brink. Kircher and others imagine that in the centre of the channel of the Maelstrm is an abyss penetrating the globe, and issuing in some very remote part the Gulf of Bothnia being somewhat decidedly named in one instance. The mans fob watch a testament to mans ability to measure and regulate time mysteriously stops during his encounter with this unstoppable force of nature. We were now in the belt of surf that always surrounds the whirl; and I thought, of course, that another moment would plunge us into the abyss down which we could only see indistinctly on account of the amazing velocity with which we were borne along. It took less than a single day to change these. "It was not a new terror that thus affected me, but the dawn of a more exciting hope. Artist: DEFEATED SANITY. A Descent into the Maelstrm is one of his least known and most underrated tales, and I probably wouldn't have read it if I weren't such a big fan of his works. The storm comes But A Descent into the Maelstrom is different, because the trouble which descends upon the white-haired man is outside of his control: he is a victim of natures forces at their wildest and A maelstrom is a whirlpool: the word dates from at least the sixteenth century and was formed from Dutch words malen (meaning grind) and stroom (meaning stream). Interesting Literature is a participant in the Amazon EU Associates Programme, an affiliate advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by linking to Amazon.co.uk. "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-strm, far above the pool, and then drop down upon anchorage somewhere near Otterholm, or Sandflesen, where the eddies are not so violent as elsewhere. The Descent 2005 R 1 h 39 m IMDb RATING 7.2 /10 228K YOUR RATING Rate POPULARITY 812 812 Play trailer 2:04 1 Video 99+ Photos Adventure Horror Thriller A caving expedition goes horribly wrong, as the explorers become trapped and ultimately pursued by a strange breed of predators. It was not going. The slope of the sides of the vast funnel became momently less and less steep. The story Poe weaves out of this natural phenomenon is highly suggestive, leaving itself open to numerous interpretations. 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 ring-bolt near the foot of the fore-mast. For some minutes the old man seemed too much exhausted to speak. The barrel to which I was attached sunk very little farther than half the distance between the bottom of the gulf and the spot at which I leaped overboard, before a great change took place in the character of the whirlpool. 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. The Best Short Stories of Edgar Allan Poe book. A Descent into the Maelstrom by Edgar Allan Poe This is a short story about a man who tells how he survived a shipwreck and a whirlpool. 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-strm. Joseph Glanville. 2. I conceived it possible, in either instance, that they might thus be whirled up again to the level of the ocean, without undergoing the fate of those which had been drawn in more early, or absorbed more rapidly. The first was, that, as a general rule, the larger the bodies were, the more rapid their descentthe second, that, between two masses of equal extent, the one spherical, and the Kircher and others imagine that in the centre of the channel of the Maelstrm is an abyss penetrating the globe, and issuing in some very remote part -- the Gulf of Bothnia being somewhat decidedly named in one instance. 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 equalled 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. 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