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Updated: May 2, 2025
We had seen two waterspouts in the morning between us and the land. It might possibly have happened that the suction which forms them drew up these unfortunate crabs and crabesses, and discharged them with unrelenting fury, through the medium of a dark, lowering cloud upon our decks.
Occasionally, when passing nearer to a ship than was deemed safe, a waterspout has been dissipated by a cannon-shot, as represented in our engraving. Such are the usual appearances and actions of waterspouts. They are not, however, properly named, being simply whirlwinds at sea, instead of whirlwinds on land. Professor Oersted suggests the name "storm-pillar," as being a more appropriate term.
It was with no inconsiderable emotion that Chicot again recognized La Rue des Augustins, so quiet and deserted, the angle formed by the block of houses which preceded his own, and lastly, his own dear house itself, with its triangular roof, its worm-eaten balcony, and its gutters ornamented with waterspouts.
The curtain ahead was again pierced by a retreating force of Cruisers beaten back on the protection of the Battle-Fleet and ringed by leaping waterspouts as the enemy's salvos pursued them. As yet the enemy were invisible, but when the last ship swung into deployment the mist cleared for a moment and disclosed them amid a cloud of smoke and the furious flashes of guns.
They came thicker and thicker, till they splashed down upon the river, throwing up miniature waterspouts all over it. The roar of the splashing and pattering was quite deafening. The wind, too, howled through the trees, which threatened to come down upon our heads, though we had placed our hut as far from them as possible.
We turn back now from the atmospheric to the aqueous ocean. Yet so intimate is the connection between the two, that we shall find it impossible to avoid occasional reference to the former. Our present subject, waterspouts, obliges us to recur for a little to the atmosphere, which we dismissed, or attempted to dismiss, in the last chapter.
It don't matter what the conversation started with, whether 'twas ships, or flyin'-fish, or hurricanes, waterspouts anything in heaven or airth, she'd bring it all round in a sort of great-circle-sailing fashion to you. And now that you've got her, lad, I hope as you'll be able to sail her properly.
Like other waterspouts it was sometimes perpendicular and sometimes curved, like the pipe of a still-head, its course tending in a direction from Bencoolen Bay across the peninsula on which the English settlement stands; but before it reached the sea on the other side it diminished by degrees, as if from want of the supplies that should be furnished by its proper element, and collected itself into the cloud from which it depended, without any consequent fall of water or destructive effect.
The owners had given up, so Captain Zeb said, and went on to enumerate the various accidents which might have happened typhoons, waterspouts, fires, and even attacks by Malay pirates though, added the captain, "Gen'rally speakin', I'd ruther not bet on any pirate gettin' away with Nat Hammond's ship, if the skipper was alive and healthy.
Waterspouts and bits of wreck smell like polecats when you're a hundred miles from land, don't they? Waterspouts and bits of wreck roar like a million wild bulls, and snort and swish as they go through the water like a thousand express trains going through a tunnel, don't they?" I was silenced by Jim's sarcasm, and humbly begged his pardon for doubting the veracity of his eyesight.
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