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Here, where two strong streams met with terrific force, the turbulent water whirled about with wild irregular motion, and we were swept now one way, now another, until it seemed useless to fight against the current that controlled us. We were, in fact, in the midst of that dangerous vortex locally known as the Swelkie.
For a few minutes all we could do was to hold on, our lee rail in the water; but the plucky little brig rallied a little, her head went off inch by inch, and as she gathered way she righted, and catching the wind on our quarter we were off like a shot out of a gun. I knew we were too near the vortex of the disturbance for the wind to hang long in one quarter, so watched anxiously for a change.
It was here in this little village of Ware Centre, which could never know flood or volcanic fire, as if a sort of spiritual whirlpool had appeared suddenly in its midst. The thoughts of all the people, lying down upon their pillows, or rising for their daily tasks, centred upon it, and it was as if the minds of all were prone upon the edge of it, gazing curiously into the vortex.
He had left these quiet scenes inexperienced and untravelled, to be thrust suddenly into the thick of a struggle of nations over a sick land. He had worked in a vortex of debilitating local intrigue. All who had to do with Egypt gained except herself, and if she moved in revolt or agony, they threatened her.
In those nations who appear the most thoroughly convinced of this future punishment, may be seen assassins, thieves, crafty knaves, oppressors, adulterers, voluptuaries; all these pretend they are firmly persuaded of the reality of an hereafter; yet in the whirlwind of dissipation, in the vortex of pleasure, in the fury of their passions, they no longer behold this formidable future existence, which in those moments has no kind of influence over their earthly conduct.
Ellison would have found himself precipitated, by the very extraordinary successes of his life, into the common vortex of Unhappiness which yawns for those of preeminent endowments. But it is by no means my present object to pen an essay on Happiness. The ideas of my friend may be summed up in a few words. He admitted but four unvarying laws, or rather elementary principles, of Bliss.
Sometimes alone, sometimes two or three together, they seemed omnipresent. In all sorts of disguises, feigning all sorts of employments and characters, sometimes on horseback and again driving an old cart or a hack, they pressed with the most imperturbable effrontery into the very vortex of danger.
It can hardly fail to attract the attention of the inquirer that, in the highest walks of horsiness, the desire to appear horsey has been left behind. These shining ones have passed beyond symbols of canes, of gaiters, of straws in the mouth; it is as though they craved that incognito which for them is for ever impossible. Bandon Fair was privileged to have drawn two such into its shouting vortex.
And now the season had begun, and Lady Lesbia Haselden was circulating with other aristocratic atoms in the social vortex, with her head apparently uppermost.
But the chaotic vortex of civil war approached, and fell destruction, often procrastinated, brooded in storm.* As the English people may like to know what was really the origin of the rebellion, I have no hesitation in giving them the true and only cause.
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