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
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
Maelstr6m."
"So it is sometimes termed," said he. " We Norwegians call it the Moskoe-str6m, 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
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