About three P.M. on the 24th of January, a small speck, which appeared to the westward on our weather beam, grew rapidly into a gloomy cloud, and swiftly, as if on the wings of a destroying angel, it traversed the thickening air and the agitated sea, which darkened beneath its shadow; and so this speck came on, until it grew an awful thunder-cloud.
"Bear a hand fore and aft! Hurrah, my lads!—make all snug before the tempest breaks!" were the cheering orders of Weston, Hislop, and Lambourne, as the brig was prepared to encounter a heavy squall.
The rain soon fell in torrents, impeding the men at their work of close reefing, furling, and stowing some of the heavier canvas, and in tightly belaying the running rigging; for when loose ropes are flying about in a tempest, and cracking in men's faces like coach-whips, they become sufficiently bewildering to impede the working of the ship.
Under the lower edge of the approaching cloud, when about twelve miles distant, we beheld an object which filled us with wonder and awe.
It was a tremendous spout, or column of water, connected with the cloud above, and the sea below (the sea, from which a circular wind had sucked it upward), that was now visible.
This column was like a solid mass of white breakers, approaching with incredible speed over waves that began to rise in short and pyramidal peaks.
Hislop was too busy clewing up canvas, sending yards down from aloft, belaying and ordering, and so lost a famous opportunity for expatiating—as no doubt he would have done—on the theory of these spouts; for this phenomenon filled us with the greatest alarm, lest it might swoop down upon the Eugenie, dismast and destroy her like a child's toy-ship.
Antonio el Cubano, being the most powerful and muscular man on board, was ordered to the wheel.
Across the sea this column seemed to pass with the cloud, boiling, foaming, and with the sound of a mighty cascade pouring into a deep valley, but yet maintaining a position quite perpendicular. Around its base the waves seemed in dreadful commotion, rising and falling, seething and glittering in the lightning which shot at times from the gloomy bosom of the cloud that floated over them.
As this terrible phenomenon approached from the westward, Captain Weston conceived that we might escape its influence by altering the brig's course, and so passing it. I have heard of water-spouts being dissipated by the effect of heavily-shotted guns; but we had no such appliances—at least we had no shot on board.