United States or New Zealand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
After we had been at sea about two days, close on our weather-bow we observed a water-spout; when we first saw it, it was whole and entire, and was in shape like a speaking trumpet, the small end downwards, and reaching to the sea, and the large end terminating in a black thick cloud: the spout itself was very black, and the more so the higher up; it seemed to be exactly perpendicular to the horizon, and its sides perfectly smooth, without the least ruggedness where it fell.
And he put one arm through the shrouds and prepared for conversation under difficulties. Meanwhile the Duke brought out Miss Skeat, who rattled inside her tarpaulin, but did not exhibit the slightest nervousness, though a bit of a sea broke over the weather-bow just as she appeared.
The effect was that the next sea caught us full on the weather-bow with a shock that pitched everything movable out of its place. There was a twist and a grind from the machinery, a snap and a crash, and then part after part gave way, as the strain fell upon it in turn. Marston, with an engineer's instinct, shut off the steam; but the mischief was done.
If you touched a bit of iron on deck it almost burned your hand. If you lay down between-decks covered with a sheet, you awoke in a bath of perspiration. "Sail, ho!" The man, in his excitement, repeated the shout before he could be hailed from the deck. "Where away?" sang out the captain. "Two points on the weather-bow, sir," was the reply.
A black squall was coming down on the weather-bow, and the boat-swain's mates bellowed themselves hoarse at the main-hatchway. There is no knowing what would have ensued, had not the bass drum suddenly been heard, calling all hands to quarters, a summons not to be withstood.
It was just upon the outer or seaward skirts of the fog- bank that we had taken up our station and were hovering to and fro. The Virginia had just gone round, and was stretching to the southward upon the port tack, when, from my station on the heel of the bowsprit, I thought I detected a sudden thickening of the haze at a spot about three points on the weather-bow.
Just before sunset, one lovely day, the man at the mast-head sang out: "On deck there!" "Hullo!" "Something in sight; on our weather-bow." "What is it?" "Looks like a mast. No. Don't know what it is." "Point." The sailor pointed with his finger. Captain Moreland ordered the ship's course to be altered accordingly. By this time General Rolleston was on deck.
How, at peep of day, the man at the mast-head saw ten whales about two leagues off on the weather-bow; how the ship tacked and stood toward them; how she weathered on one of monstrous size, and how he and the other youngsters were mad to lower the boat and go after it, and how the captain said: "Ye lubbers, can't ye see that is a right whale, and not worth a button?
At length the frigate was seen, the weather lighting, and it was not an instant too soon. The two vessels, at that critical instant, were about half a mile apart, le Feu-Follet bearing directly off the Proserpine's weather-bow.
The Dolphin had been standing on to the south-east, a course which would take her some way to the southward of the Straits. Captain Roberts said he hoped that a tack or two would enable him to fetch the Straits, and once through them, that they should get a fair wind up the Mediterranean. Evening was approaching when the look-out from aloft shouted, "A sail on the weather-bow."
Word Of The Day