Almost as soon as the boy spoke, the whale appeared to raise itself up on end, as they could see nearly the whole length of its body; there was a tremendous concussion; and then, with a report like thunder, the waterspout burst, falling around the boat in the form of heavy rain.
“I say,” said Jonathan, when the unexpected shower had ceased, “it’s an ill wind that blows nobody good. Look, if there are not a number of dead fish which the waterspout must have sucked up. How thankful we ought to be! there is enough to last us ever so long and keep us from starvation.”
“You are light,” said David. “Let us kneel down and thank God for His mercy and care in watching over us!”
And, after they had prayed fervently to Him who had guarded them through all the perils of the deep, and now showered on them a supply of food almost from heaven, they set to work and collected all the fish they could see floating about on the surface of the sea, David saying that they were bonetas and skipjacks, and capital eating, as he stored them in the locker.
“We’ll cut them open and dry them in the sun by and by,” he added. “It’s too much overcast to do it now; and it’s so rough with the spray dashing over us that they would only get wet instead of dry.”
Soon after the waterspout had burst, the boat’s head had been brought round again as near to the northward as the easterly wind would permit; but, towards evening, as the breeze grew stronger and stronger, and the sea rose in mountainous billows, just the same almost as on the day on which they bade good-bye to the Sea Rover, they were obliged to let her off a point or two and scud before the gale.
It was a day of surprises; for, just as night was closing in, Jonathan—who took the station of lookout man in the fore-sheets, while David steered, being more at home with the rudder oar than his friend—observed something white, standing out in relief against the dark background of the horizon, which was piled up with a wrack of blue-black storm-clouds.
“I say, David!” he shouted out, “what is this white thing in front—is it another waterspout, or a squall, or what?”
“I’ll soon tell you,” said David, standing up in the stern-sheets to get a better view. But he had no sooner looked than he dropped down again in his seat as if he had been shot, and turned as pale as a ghost, as he exclaimed hysterically, half laughing, half crying, “A sail! a sail!”