"Yes, that's just what it does! It lets down water enough to drown a ship and sink her out of sight. It's just as if you should empty a whole barrel of water over one of the toy boats you used to make when you were a small boy."
Nearer and nearer came the waterspout toward us. The captain went below and brought out a musket, a weapon that had done duty in Revolutionary times.
"What's he got that for?" I asked; "I hope he isn't going to shoot anybody."
"No," said Haines, "he won't shoot anybody on board the ship; what he's after is to shoot the waterspout if it comes too near."
"What good will that do?"
"If you shoot into a waterspout," replied Haines, "it will break up and tumble into the sea, provided you are lucky enough to hit it right in the center and before it gets too near the ship. I've seen that done two or three times. Some sailors declare it's no use, but I know better, and every ship I go to sea on I hope will have a gun to shoot waterspouts with."
According to my reckoning the dreaded column came within two hundred yards of the Washington; then it seemed to stop and move away toward the southward, where it disappeared. Whether it broke up or continued to hold together I don't know, but just as it went out of sight in the clouds there was a squall struck us, and danced the Washington around pretty lively. As we had made everything snug when the squall was first reported, it did no particular harm, but I noticed that it whitened several of the faces of the men standing around me.
Haines told me that it used to be believed that the waterspouts in the Atlantic Ocean were really dragons or great serpents in the air. Some thought that the waterspout was a terrible animal living in the bottom of the sea, and some declared them to be black serpents passing from the desert into the sea, and living five hundred years. One of the old writers, in a book I've seen since I've quit the sea-faring life, says that in the Gulf of Salato every month in the year a great black dragon is seen to come from the clouds and put its head into the water. Its tail seems as though it were fixed in the sky, and this dragon drinks so greedily that it swallows any ships that may come in the water, along with their crews and cargo, be they ever so heavy.
It used to be the custom on French and Spanish ships, when waterspouts appeared, for the sailors to hold a religious service, raising their swords and holding them against each other in the shape of a cross. It was claimed that this would cause the dragon to flee, as he is an infidel, and always takes flight when he sees the Christian cross.