Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 11).djvu/70

 huge pillar-like thunder-clouds, from which we saw one small and one very large water-spout, about one mile distant, and dipping into the sea. It was formed like a tunnel, bottom or tube upwards. Nine of these phenomena are sometimes seen at once in this tempestuous latitude, 34° 40['], long. 76°, from Greenwich. A fine breeze immediately followed the bursting of these two spouts.

At midnight came on a terrific tempest, filling the horizon above, and the sea beneath, with blue forked lightning, and stunning the ear with loud-sounding, crackling, rattling, crashing thunder, presenting a scene more sublimely horrific than I had ever seen; the lightning might almost be handled, being what our captain calls "double-twisted ropy." The gulf seemed, literally, a lake of boiling fire and brimstone.

20th.—Warm, calm, bright day, and 13 sail in sight. Yankee sailors, says our captain, are now {40} so badly paid (14 dollars per month), that they leave the sea, for ploughing land, and therefore half the crews of our vessels are composed of British seamen. I find that watches, costing from three and a half dollars to 20 dollars each, are selling at Massachusetts from six to 30 dollars each; made in Geneva, but marked London.

21st.—At two this morning we were providentially prevented from running our ship ashore, on those dangerous shoals off Cape Look-out, by a singular dream of the captain's, who awoke much alarmed with the dream, in which he saw both sides of the ship falling out, a complete wreck. He rushed on deck, took soundings in 15 fathoms, and again in only nine fathoms, just on the edge of these fearful shoals, where, in less than twenty minutes, we must, perhaps, have gone to pieces, and sunk like lead in the mighty waters. But in all this deliverance, there