Look you there! 'T is a waterspout!" cried Fuller, pointing
excitedly at the cloud, which, driven on with furious force by an upper
current of wind unfelt below, was now bellying in a marked and abnormal
fashion, while from the lowest point of the convexity appeared a spiral
column of dense vapor rapidly elongating itself toward the sea whose
waters assumed a black and sullen aspect, disturbed by chopping counter
currents of short waves, which gradually, as the waterspout neared them,
fell into its rotary motion, rising at the centre of the whirlpool into
a column of foaming water, a liquid stalagmite climbing to meet the
stalactite bending to it from above.

"If we had but a heavy gun!" cried Warren. "They say to hit the
waterspout in the centre where it joins the other from below will
disperse it."

"Knocks the wind out of it," explained Billington.

"But we have nothing better than these bird guns," cried Standish
contemptuously touching with his foot the pile of weapons covered with a
tarpaulin lying in the bottom of the boat. "And it drives down upon us
like a charge of horse. Here, let me to the helm."

"There is no way upon the boat, Captain," expostulated Eaton. "No man
can steer without a wind."

"Thou 'rt right, friend," replied the captain gravely, as he felt the
rudder give beneath his hand. "There's naught to do but tarry until
Master Waterspout declareth his pleasure."

"Until God declareth His pleasure," amended Bradford quietly. "Men, let
us pray."

And baring his head the governor poured forth a strong and manful
petition to Him who rideth upon the wings of the wind and reigneth a
King forever over His own creation.

Standish standing upright beside the useless tiller bared his head and
listened reverently, but always with an eye to the waterspout and to the
clouds, and as a deep-throated Amen rose from his comrades he gave the
tiller a shove and joyously cried,--

"A puff, a breath! Enough to steer us past!" And the boat feeling her
helm again careened gently to the little gust of wind out of the west,
and slid away upon her course, while the waterspout, more furious in its
speed at every instant, swept past and out to sea, where it presently
broke and fell with a thunderous explosion.

"Another crowning mercy!" exclaimed Bradford devoutly, and Standish
answered with his reticent smile,--

"Had Master Jones of the Mayflower been here, he would have more than
ever felt 't is better to be