"Look! Look!" cried Joe suddenly. "There are more of them!"
"Good gracious, so there are," exclaimed Captain Akers, gazing anxiously to the westward.
Coming toward them, at a seemingly terrific rate, and spinning and dancing in a sort of gigantic witches' dance, were a dozen or more of the writhing, twisting water pillars.
A moaning sound filled the air, and it began to grow very dark suddenly.
Against the gathering curtain of blackness the ghastly forms of the huge waterspouts stood out menacingly.
If it had not been for their constant sinuous, snaky, undulating movements they might have been mistaken for the immense marble columns upholding the roof of a huge cathedral.
But these columns upheld the canopy of the sky, and found their nether resting place on the Pacific Ocean.
The boys' faces gleamed whitely in the heavy dusk that had fallen as the witches' dance of the waterspouts grew closer. They could now see the waves boiling at their feet as the spouts sucked the water up into the sky. Would they manage to escape the waterspouts, or would the "Nomad" be trapped in their path?
Anxiously as they hung on the answer to the question, it was impossible of solution just then. But one thing was certain, not one of the party on board the motor cruiser had ever been in a situation of graver danger.