Swept Out to Sea; Or, Clint Webb Among the Whalers

by W. Bert Foster

I did not care for the oar and the lost lantern now. I stood there and waved the coat that I had dragged off at first sight of the vessel. I knew her company must see me. I was as positive of rescue as of anything in the world. The bark was flying before a stiff breeze, and it was head on to the whale. I could not be missed.

Although the on-coming ship sailed so proudly, however, the breeze that filled her canvas did not breathe upon my cheek. Nor was it the whining of that favoring wind I had heard since first opening my eyes. I swung about suddenly and looked to the south. Up from that direction rolled the copper colored cloud—and it seemed veritably to roll along the surface of the sea.

The sound came from this cloud. Before it the sea itself turned white. Far above, the upper reaches of the rolling mist seemed to writhe as though in travail of some great phenomenon. And it was so! Out of this mass of vapor I saw born within the hour the most remarkable of all sea-spells.

But at first my attention was divided between the tornado coming up from the south and the bark approaching from the north. Not at once did the favoring wind leave the craft. Where the dead whale lay seemed to be a belt of calm between the bark and the coming tornado. And this craft in which my hope was set was really a bark, by the way; I do not use the word poetically. Her fore and mainmasts were square rigged while her mizzen mast was rigged fore and aft like my little Wavecrest.

As I watched her I saw that her navigator had espied the coming tempest from the south and the crew began to swarm among the sails. She still came on at a spanking pace; but her canvas was reefed down rapidly until there was nothing left but the foretopsail, flying jib and the spanker. Soon these began to shake and then her fair wind left her entirely. She had reached the belt of calm in which the dead whale and my sloop still lay.

In my ears the savage voice from the cloud to the south’ard was now a roar. The remaining canvas on the bark was reefed down. She lay waiting for the tempest. I turned to descend from my rather slippery situation. I preferred to be in the sloop when the tempest struck us, for possibly I would be obliged to cast off from the dead mammal.

But before I could get off the whale the writhing cloud changed its appearance—and changed so rapidly that I was held spellbound. It was sweeping over the seas so close, it seemed that the topmasts of the bark could not have cleared it. Now whirling tongues of cloud shot downward while dozens of spiral columns of water leaped up to meet these gyrating tongues. Thus sucked up by the whirling cloud the waterspouts were formed, and dozens of them swept on across the sea beneath the hovering cloud.

As the cloud advanced the wind which accompanied it beat the waves flat. But they boiled about the waterspouts and the roaring sound increased rapidly. The heavens above and to the north and east grew dark. The rising sun seemed snuffed out. A vivid glare which was neither sunlight nor starlight accompanied the tempest as it swept on.

I trembled at the sight and as the seconds passed I grew more terrified—and for good reason. What would happen to me if any of those whirling columns of water and mist struck the dead whale? If they burst upon the drifting mammal where would I be? What would happen to the Wavecrest?

And then quite suddenly there came a change in the on-rushing tornado. Amid thunderous reports—like nothing so much as the explosions of great guns—the dozens of small spouts ran together, or were quenched as it might be, in one huge, whirling column of water which, swept on by the wind, charged down upon me as though aiming at my particular destruction.