Perhaps this current leads us to the southern pole itself. It must
be confessed that a supposition apparently so wild has every
probability in its favor.
The crew pace the deck with unquiet and tremulous step; but there is
upon their countenances an expression more of the eagerness of hope
than of the apathy of despair.
In the meantime the wind is still in our poop, and, as we carry a
crowd of canvas, the ship is at times lifted bodily from out the sea
--Oh, horror upon horror! the ice opens suddenly to the right, and
to the left, and we are whirling dizzily, in immense concentric
circles, round and round the borders of a gigantic amphitheatre, the
summit of whose walls is lost in the darkness and the distance. But
little time will be left me to ponder upon my destiny --the circles
rapidly grow small --we are plunging madly within the grasp of the
whirlpool --and amid a roaring, and bellowing, and thundering of ocean
and of tempest, the ship is quivering, oh God! and --going down.
NOTE.--The "MS. Found in a Bottle," was originally published in 1831
[1833], and it was not until many years afterwards that I became
acquainted with the maps of Mercator, in which the ocean is
represented as rushing, by four mouths, into the (northern) Polar
Gulf, to be absorbed into the bowels of the earth; the Pole itself
being represented by a black rock, towering to a prodigious height.
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