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Updated: June 2, 2025
The special atmospheric conditions which bring about the formation of waterspouts are not well known; they doubtless include, however, warm, moist air next the surface of the sea and cold air above. Just why these storms never attain greater size or endurance is not yet known. These disturbances have been seen for centuries, but as yet they have not been, in the scientific sense, observed.
Then I found it became terribly monotonous, and to interest myself I kept trying to hit a particular spot on the wall near the ceiling, until the stores manager came forward in a state of great excitement, declaring that only six inches from that spot was the tap of a patent fire extinguishing arrangement, and that if I hit it the room would be flooded by a series of waterspouts in less time than I could imagine!
In the morning a white squall came on, and was succeeded by other squalls of various colours. It thundered and lightened heavily for six weeks. Hurricanes then set in for two months. Waterspouts and tornadoes followed. The oldest sailor on board and he was a very old one had never seen such weather.
We had gained to the northward of the Bahama Isles, and were standing to the westward before a light breeze, when early one morning several waterspouts were observed to be forming in various directions. It was my watch below, but as I had never seen one of these curious phenomena of nature, I went on deck to indulge my curiosity.
Suddenly his arm straightened, and the harpoon was thrown; I heard the sonorous stroke of the weapon, which seemed to have struck a hard body. The electric light went out suddenly, and two enormous waterspouts broke over the bridge of the frigate, rushing like a torrent from stem to stern, overthrowing men, and breaking the lashings of the spars.
About all the features I can make out are a pair of bushy eyebrows, a prominent hooked beak, and a set of crisp, curlin' black whiskers. Hardly the kind to go shinnin' up waterspouts or squeezin' through upper windows. Still, I'd almost caught him in the act. "If that's a disguise you've got on," says I, "it's a bird. And if it ain't say, let's hear the tale. Who do you claim to be, anyway?"
The natives were down in the bottom of the boat; they had given way to despair. Two other waterspouts now came into view, and subsequently a third, if not more, so that they felt as if completely surrounded by them.
Willis shook his head. "Are there not a thousand accidents to cause a ship to deviate from her route?" "Yes, Master Ernest, there are typhoons, and the waterspouts of which I spoke to you before. In such cases, ships often deviate from their route, but generally by going to the bottom." Willis concluded this sentence with a gesture that defies description, implying annihilation.
There can be no doubt whatever that fish are carried up in waterspouts, because the descent of those creatures from the skies in rain is a well-established fact; and if they did not get there in waterspouts which, when we consider it, seems most natural then we are driven to the conclusion that their native region is the sky, which is by no means so natural or so probable.
In the meanwhile the armada of the sturdy Peter proceeded prosperously on its voyage, and after encountering about as many storms, and waterspouts, and whales, and other horrors and phenomena, as generally befall adventurous landsmen in perilous voyages of the kind; and after undergoing a severe scouring from that deplorable and unpitied malady, called sea-sickness, the whole squadron arrived safely in the Delaware.
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