Nat aimed the weapon full at the advancing spout.
Bang! A red flash of flame split the gloom.
Bang!
A red flash of flame split the gloom as the missile sped.
"Hang on for your lives!" came simultaneously a shout from Captain Akers.
It was lucky for them that they took the advice. Down on their faces, clinging to the lowermost rail of the bridge, they all flung themselves, Joe leaving his useless wheel.
As the weight with which Nat had loaded the cannon struck the waterspout, shattering it as if it had been made of glass, the mighty structure broke in a gigantic cascade of water. To the boys, clinging with might and main to the rails, it appeared as if the bottom had fallen out of the heavens, letting down tons of green water. The force of the torrent drove the breath out of their bodies and choked and stunned them with its pressure. Beneath them they could feel the "Nomad" tremble from stem to stern at the shock. Mingling with the roar of the descending mass of fluid came a shout of dismay from Sam Hinckley at his engines.
In the emergency there had been no time to warn him. The firing of the gun had been the first intimation he had received that anything unusual was going on forward.
He had started up the stairway from his engine room as he heard the sharp report, only to be met by an inundation of water that swept him backward among his engines, gasping, half drowned and with the clothes ripped almost off his back.
But despite all this, the "Nomad" had been saved by Nat's quick wit. The other waterspouts waltzed past her, roaring furiously, but not one of them touched her, and when, after they had passed, the semi-suffocated crew struggled to their feet and surveyed the havoc about them, the waterspouts were already some distance off, whirling eastward on their destructive course, surrounded by their gloomy pall of dusky cloud.