hat 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.

I fell upon my knees and clung with both hands to the slot I had cut in
the whale's blubber in to which to thrust the oar. I dug my fingers into
the greasy flesh and hung on for dear life. I actually expected that the
whale--and of course my sloop--would be overwhelmed.

The waterspout, traveling with the speed of an express train, bore down
upon me. With it came the wind, roaring deafeningly. I lost all other
sound, with such enormous confusion the tornado swept upon me. The whale
rolled as though it had come to sudden life again.

Over and over it canted. I know my sloop was lifted completely out of
the sea. The waterspout whirled past--within three cable-lengths of the
dead leviathan,--and the tempest shrieked after. The whale rolled back.
I slid down the curve of the carcass and dropped into my plunging sloop.
I feared to remain longer near the dead whale, but cast off both at bow
and stern, and let the sea carry me some yards from the heaving, rolling
carcass.

And then I could once more see the waterspout. It was still careening
over the sea, its general direction being nor'west; but it whirled so
that it was quite impossible