One of the noblest and most beautiful sights in the world is a gallant, symmetrical, full-rigged ship, clothed with mighty wings from keel to truck, cleaving through the waves under the influence of a "right merrie" wind abeam. There is something exceedingly grand, to behold it steadily gliding along, like a thing instinct with life; to see its towering pyramidal sails swelling to the generous breeze; to glance from its fluttering ensigns, and bright sides, and snowy canvas, to the contrasting deep blue sea, sparkling beneath the vertical rays of the tropical sun; to hastily run over in one's mind a few only of the spirit-stirring associations conjured by the object. But it is not with a ship in this exhilarating position that I have now to deal; to the reverse—it is with one which lay like "a painted ship upon a painted ocean"—being a large East Indiaman, chartered to convey troops to the Bombay presidency, and lying totally becalmed not far from the tropics.
I was languidly swinging in my hammock, one sultry morning, when not a breath of air was stirring strong enough "to blow a lady's curl aside," when I heard a sound which convinced me that something unusual had occurred to arouse the listless idlers lounging on the upper deck. It speedily increased to such a degree that all between decks who were able (myself included) rushed up, pell-mell, to discover the reason, and soon there were none left below but the miserable sick, who could not crawl from their stifling berths.
"What's the kick-up?" roared the gigantic corporal of the grenadier company, the moment he got his head above the combing of the hatchway.
"Niver sighted sich a jamb sin' the meet at Ballyshannon!" echoed a voluble Irish comrade. "Maybe a tu-an'-thirty-punder wouldn't mak' buthermilk of us all just now."
"Can ye no kape that long red rope i' yer own impty hid, but ye must let every body know ye're a gomulah? Ain't it a watherspout, eh?" fiercely responded a brother Emeralder.
"A watherspout! an' what's that, avick? Summat to ate?"
"Ate! ye gossoon! Ay, it's summat as'll soon ate yer, big and ugly as yer are."
Some few happy-go-lucky reprobates laughed at Pat's sapience, but the majority felt the matter to be far too serious to permit their indulging in senseless merriment, and strove, with uncontrollable interest, to secure some position whence they could behold an object of which they had heard or read highly-colored accounts. I myself instantly sprang into the shrouds, and the whole spectacle then burst full upon me in all its novel grandeur.
As already mentioned, not a breath of air was stirring, and the vessel herself lay sluggishly on the briny ocean, the sails hanging in bags, or clewed up in festoons to the yards, and the masts motionless as Pompey's Pillar. At the distance of very little more than the ship's length, the sea was bubbling up in the shape of spiral cones of varying height and sizes, all of them springing from within a circle, the circumference of which might be equal to that of the ring of an equestrian circus. The vertical rays of the sun invested the falling spray with an indescribable beauty, but the level water appeared of a dull, strong, white color. The phenomenon was attended by a very loud and long-continued hissing noise, of a peculiar and terrifying kind. This was but the commencement of a waterspout. Every moment we expected to see the several columns unite in one; and, from their contiguity, there would, in such a case, be no hope of final escape. Either the ship would be totally engulfed, or every atom of mast, rigging, and all above deck, would be whirled a hundred fathoms through the air.
Travelers say that the serpent possesses the basilisk power of fascinating its prey by the glare of its eye, and certainly a waterspout is equal in that terrible attribute, for scarcely a man in the ship that saw it was able to withdraw his gaze from the fearful spectacle. All other faculties seemed to be absorbed, and even had they had the opportunity to flee, few would have been able to move a foot.