On Feb 7, 10:50�pm, tdciago <tdci...@aol.com> wrote:
> Miles Straume = Maelstrom
Poe's "A Descent into the Maelstrom"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Descent_into_the_Maelstr%C3%B6m
"Inspired by the Moskstraumen, it is couched as a story within a
story, a tale told at the summit of a mountain climb. The story is
told by an old man who reveals that he only appears old - 'You suppose
me a very old man,' he says, 'but I am not. It took less than a single
day to change these hairs from a jetty black to white, to weaken my
limbs, and to unstring my nerves.' The narrator, convinced by the
power of the whirlpools he sees in the ocean beyond, is then told of
the 'old' man's fishing trip with his two brothers a few years ago.
Driven by 'the most terrible hurricane that ever came out of the
heavens', their ship was caught in the vortex. One brother was pulled
into the waves; the other was driven mad by the horror of the
spectacle, and drowned as the ship was pulled under. At first the
narrator only saw hideous terror in the spectacle, and felt helpless.
Then, as a moment of revelation, he saw that the Maelstr�m is a
beautiful and awesome creation. Suddenly seeing how objects around him
are pulled into it, he deduced that 'the larger the bodies, the more
rapid their descent' and that spherical-shaped objects were pulled in
the fastest. Unlike his brother, he abandoned ship and held on to a
cylindrical barrel until he was saved several hours later. He tells
the narrator the story without any hope that the narrator will believe
it."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moskstraumen
"The Moskstraumen (popularly known as the Maelstrom) is a system of
tidal eddies and whirlpools, one of the strongest in the world, that
forms in a strait adjacent to the Lofoten archipelago, Norway...
The Swedish bishop Olaus Magnus showed it on his 1539 map Carta
marina, ascribing it to divine force and describing it as stronger
than the Sicilian Charybdis."
s0183616
God's Debris
