About three years ago, something terrible happened to me. That was the day when it took only six hours to break my body and soul.
One day, my two brothers and I were coming back from the islands where we often risked going and got more fish than others. Suddenly, the sky was covered with dark clouds and in less than a minute we were in a terrible storm. A huge wave covered our boat and my younger brother fell into the sea. My elder brother cried out "Moskoe-strom!" The moment I heard the word I became very frightened. I knew what he meant by that one word well enough.
With the wind and waves, we were going in the direction of the whirlpool. We were hopeless. Nothing could save us. It mayappearstrange, but at that moment, when we were in the edge of the whirlpool, I felt calmer than when we were moving towards it.
I saw clearly that there were other objects in the whirlpool — trees and barrels. After a while, I becamecuriousabout the whirlpool itself. I then made three important observations. The first, the larger the bodies were, the more rapidly they fell; the second, between two objects of equal extent, round objects fell down less rapidly; and the third, between two objects of the same size, objects shaped like a tube fell down more slowly. So I tied myself to a barrel to help me float. I tried to make my brother understand, but he was too frightened and stayed in the heavy boat. Without waiting, I jumped into the sea to try andescape.
As you can see, the reason why I'm here to tell the story is that I made the right decision. Some time after I left the boat, with my brother in it, it was pulled into the bottom of the whirlpool. Soon after that, the whirlpool became lesswild. I was still tied to the barrel and the waves soon carried me to an area where the other fishermen were. In the end, a boat picked me up.
