“Oh, we can’t always have good weather,” spoke Tom. The day was one of lowering clouds, and as our hero, a little later, went up to the pilot house, he saw Captain Steerit again studying the barometer.
“Anything wrong?” inquired Tom.
“She’s falling again,” was the answer. “I don’t like it. I think we’re in for a storm.”
The wind began to rise about an hour after that, and the clouds appeared lower than ever, some of them seeming fairly to touch the distant waves. The rigging hummed and twanged like the strings of a harp. Sailors were hurrying about, making everything snug below and aloft.
“Ha! What’s that?” suddenly asked the captain, as the lookout in the bows cried out a warning. The man repeated what he had said, but Tom could not catch it.
“Look, look, Tom my lad, if you want to see a strange sight!” said the commander, taking hold of Tom’s arm, and directing his gaze off to the left. “Did you ever see the like before?”
Our hero looked and saw, rising from the ocean, a dark mass of water, twisted into the shape of a funnel, with the upper end whipping about and twisting like a snake. At the same moment, from a black and threatening cloud above, a similar funnel-shaped mass seemed to drop, only the point of it was toward the point in the cone of water.
Suddenly the two met, forming a black pillar, and there was a loud roaring sound.
“What is it?” cried Tom, but, even as he asked he knew what the captain would say.