he wished to make me understand. With the wind that now drove us on,
we were bound for the whirl of the Ström, and nothing could save us!

"You perceive that in crossing the Ström _channel_, we always
went a long way up above the whirl, even in the calmest weather, and
then had to wait and watch carefully for the slack - but now we were
driving right upon the pool itself, and in such a hurricane as this!
'To be sure,' I thought, 'we shall get there just about the slack -
there is some little hope in that' - but in the next moment I cursed
myself for being so great a fool as to dream of hope at all. I knew
very well that we were doomed, had we been ten times a ninety-gun
ship.

"By this time the first fury of the tempest had spent itself, or
perhaps we did not feel it so much, as we scudded before it, but at
all events the seas, which at first had been kept down by the wind,
and lay flat and frothing, now got up into absolute mountains. A
singular change, too, had come over the heavens. Around in every
direction it was still as black as pitch, but nearly overhead there
burst out, all at once, a circular rift of clear sky - as clear as I
ever saw - and of a deep bright blue - and through it there blazed
forth the full moon with a lustre that I never before knew her to
wear. She lit up every thing about us with the greatest distinctness
- but, oh God, what a scene it was to light up!

"I now made one or two attempts to speak to my brother - but, in
some manner which I could not understand, the din had so increased
that I could not make him hear a single word, although I screamed at
the top of my voice in his ear. Presently he shook his head, looking
as pale as death, and held up one of his finger, as if to say