The works of Edgar Allan Poe; newly collected and edited, with a memoir, critical introductions, and notes, by Edmund Clarence Stedman and George Edward Woodberry; the illustrations by Albert Edward Sterner.

A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM

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
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