“Here we are at the edge of the universe,” I said to myself, “at the mercy of the cataract; this is what I have dreaded, the hour has come…”
For our ship was sinking into a sinister, invisible whirlpool; I knew that, with fear, when I no longer could see the water beneath us, but above us: the phosphorescent crests of the waves were the only light in that black tempest, and if earlier the waves had risen to swamp us, now they threatened to capsize and crush us: the swells receded from us not horizontally but vertically, in a line parallel to our heads, not our outstretched arms; the waves were above us, high over our heads, higher even than masts that no longer pointed toward the clouds. We were descending the watery walls of a bottomless whirlpool, we were a paper boat foundering in a gutter, a fly swimming in honey, we were nothing, there.
And even though I was prepared for this, for I had foreseen and feared nothing else, I observed at that moment, Sire, the vigorous tenacity of life, for I labored then as if hope were possible; my mind racing, I ran toward Pedro, who struggled in vain to control the whirling wheel; the rudder had allied itself with the whirlpool and was our enemy. I pushed Pedro, whipped and befuddled, toward the nearest mast and as best I could lashed him to the pole; the old man moaned all the while, a feeble echo returned to the roar of the storm. There is nothing I could tell you, Sire, that could reproduce the roaring of that tempest; more than a tempest, it was the end of all tempests, the frontier of hurricanes, the sepulcher of storms: a centenary combat of wolves and jackals, lions and crocodiles, eagles and crows could not engender a more piercing, shriller, greater, and more keening outcry than that dark lament of all the wind-whipped seas of the world here reunited, over and around and below us; great, terrible, and without surcease were the boundaries and pantheon of the waters, Sire.
The bound old man moaned: the sparks from his eyes told me he considered himself a prisoner and me the jailer of the ship, and in those flashing glances was perhaps disguised the terror of defeat. We had reached not the new land of his desires but the bottomless well of my fears. I didn’t stop to reflect, I acted, telling myself that if salvation was to be had it would be attained only by clinging to the iron rings or the masts, and I myself clung for an instant to the mast, looking into Pedro’s resentful eyes, vacillating between anger and sadness, when before us we saw the second mast break like a feeble reed, sucked immediately, a quiet ruin of splinters, into the circling maelstrom.
I lost all hope; the speed with which we whirled toward the belly of the maelstrom tore the ropes loose from the casks, and they began to roll with menacing and chaotic force about the deck, demolishing what remained of the boat’s equilibrium. I imagined that within a few brief instants we would founder, deep within the vortex, swept from the deck, for now we could not even see the distant sky and distant crests of the sea we’d left both behind and above us; upturned, standing on end, we looked into our destiny, the blind eye of death in the entrails of the sea.
Then stumbling and falling I ran among the tumbling barrels, thinking feverishly in what manner I might best lash them again or throw them overboard; just in time I reached my iron ring and clung to it at the very moment the most terrible of all the tremors shook the boat. Everything in it that was not lashed down, casks and rigging, hooks and canvas, chains and harpoons, chests and bags, tumbled over the sides; clinging to my iron ring, I feared I, too, would be swept overboard as I saw them sucked out of the ship by the rapid circular whiplash, the whistling trajectory, our ship traced around the liquid walls of that marine tunnel.
I looked upward; it was like looking toward the highest tower ever built or toward the mountain after the Deluge; we were captive within a cylinder of compacted, fissureless water, a tube uninterrupted to the top of the distant, chiaroscuroed peaks of phosphorescent foam. And beyond was the sky and the storm; but we were part of a space without sky or storm; we were living within the swiftly racing black cave of the whirlpool, in the tomb of the waters. I imagined what lay beneath us, a smooth, narrow, pulsating pit; the infinite well. I called upon my diminished powers of observation and again looked upward; I don’t know whether our star Venus was shining once again high above or whether certain forms of luminous waves were being regularly repeated; what is certain is that in the distance there was a point of reference, a providential, fleeting, faint luminosity that permitted me to measure with exactitude the curve of our trajectory within the whirlpooclass="underline" I counted on my fingers, I counted forty seconds for every revolution — I counted, and my fingers still hurt from that counting — and I found that as I counted between thirty and thirty-six the velocity of the rotation notably diminished, our ship slipped into a calmer segment of the curve, cruelly offering a hope of remission before redoubling its fury to explode, between thirty-seven and forty of my total, with a whiplash force that at every revolution threatened to break forever the nutshell that held us. I looked at the liquid walls of our prison, and what I saw was incredible. Among the objects thrown outside the ship by the force of the whirlpool, some — heavy sacks, and chains, and the anchor — were descending into the vortex with greater velocity than that of the ship itself, while others, with equal speed, were effecting the opposite movement: I saw a yellowish cluster of shriveled limes ascending, I saw pieces of canvas rising and empty kegs and the sail we’d not managed to furl; I saw, an even greater marvel, that the pieces of the splintered mast were also ascending in regular rotation toward the surface of the sea that was our tomb, toward a meeting with the heavens that had forgotten us.
Never had a mind debated so fast and feverishly as in that instant: in every complete revolution of our boat around the circular walls of water I had exactly six seconds to move without fear of being sucked from the boat: swiftly, I reviewed the objects caught in the rigging and still remaining in the boat: strips of shark meat, some lines attached to the embedded iron rings; in vain I sought the ax with which we’d clubbed the shark to death: in the pocket of my water-soaked doublet I felt the shaving mirror, and in the belt of my breeches the black tailor’s scissors. And Pedro bound to the mast. And at the helm, the wheel, spinning wildly, weakened now, perhaps, in its precise and precious equipoise as both indicator and guide of the ship.
In the six seconds Providence granted me at each rotation, I ran to the wheel. The vibration had damaged its stability. I returned to my sure hold on the ring. I endured the trembling whiplash as the ship completed its gyration. I returned to the wheel, utilized the scissors as a lever, seized its vibrating base, and struggled like a galley slave to prize loose that wheel on which all my hopes were pinned.
Imagine, Sire, my repeated efforts during that eternal night whose only hour hands were those of my particular sequence: six seconds of feverish activity, thirty-four of obligatory and painful repose, watchful, adding my sweat to the waters that washed over me and at times blinded me, wiping away when I could the thick salt encrusted on my forehead and eyes. I ran toward the mast, waited, I began to free Pedro, waited, continued freeing Pedro, waited, I told him to run with me to the wheel, waited, we ran, I counted, I told him first to seize the base of the wheel, that he count to thirty-six and move only when I moved, now, clutching the wheel — wait, old man, now — I bound him chest and shoulders to the wheel, waited, now I grasped the wheel, wait, old man, now take the line, tie me while I hold myself pinned to the motionless base, now let go, old man, free your arms as I free mine, now we’re going to fly, old man, to fly or drown, I don’t know which: old man, you told me, didn’t you, that the novelty of this ship was its light wood? Invoke that lightness now, Pedro, for your life and mine, pray for us; I don’t know what forces of this hostile whirlpool cause certain weights to descend and others to rise, pray that your wheel be of the former, let go, old man, here comes the whiplash of this fearful curve, now …