قصة الكتاب :
The story begins in the North Sea off the Norwegian coast, with a seemingly old man telling the narrator about a harrowing experience he had among the nearby whirlpools. Although his white hair makes him appear to be an old man, he tells the narrator that he is actually not old. His experience and brush with death, however, made his black hair turn white in the course of one day. Taking the narrator to a cliff, from whose top they can view the whirlpools and the great Maelstrom (or major whirlpool), this white-haired man relates how he and his two brothers were caught in the Maelstrom while in their fishing boat, and how his two brothers were both sucked into its current. The white-haired man managed to prevent his own descent into the Maelstrom by observing how the various objects from the boat were sucked into the whirlpool and eventually grabbing onto a water cask, and escaping the force of the Maelstrom. Its force gradually subsided, and some fishermen rescued the white-haired man. The story ends with the white-haired man telling the narrator that none of the other fishermen believed his story.