"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-ström.
"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 there were some of them which were not disfigured at all. Now, I could not account for this difference except by supposing that the roughened fragments were the only ones which had been completely absorbed; that the others had entered the whirl at so late a period of the tide, or from some reason had descended so slowly after entering, that they did not reach the bottom before the turn of the flood came—or of the ebb, as the case might be.
"I conceived it possible, in either instance, that they might be thus 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. I made also three important observations. The first was, that as a general rule, the larger the bodies were, the more rapid their descent; the second, that between the two masses of equal extent, the one spherical and the other of any other shape, the superiority in speed of descent was with the sphere; the third, that between two masses of equal size, the one cylindrical, and the other of any other shape, the cylinder was absorbed the more slowly.
"Since my escape I have had several conversations on this subject with an old schoolmaster of the district; and it was from him that I learned the use of the words 'cylinder' and 'sphere.' He explained to me—although I have forgotten the explanation—how what I had observed was in fact the natural consequence of the forms of the floating fragments; and showed me how it happened that a cylinder, swimming in a vortex, offered more resistance to its suction, and was drawn in with greater difficulty, than an equally bulky body of any form whatever.
"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 the vessel; while many of those 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.
"I no longer hesitated what to do. 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. I attracted my brother's attention by signs, pointed to the floating barrels that came near us, and did everything in my power to make him understand what I was about to do.
"I thought at length that he comprehended my design, but, whether this was the case or not, he shook his head despairingly, and refused to move from his station by the ring-bolt. It was impossible to reach him; the emergency admitted of no delay; and so with a bitter struggle I resigned him to his fate, fastened myself to the cask by means of the lashings which secured it to the counter, and precipitated myself with it into the sea, without another moment's hesitation.
"The result was precisely what I had hoped it might be. As it is myself who now tell you this tale—as you see that I did escape, and as you are already in possession of the mode in which this escape was effected, and must therefore anticipate all that I have further to say, I will bring my story quickly to conclusion.