8
same day, after a passage of about one hundred and seven days from New York.
Here we recruited ship with fresh provisions, such as yams, onions, sweet potatoes and fowls. On the third day we weighed anchor, and sailed out into the Straits, with the wind from S.S.W. blowing up the Straits. We passed the Two Brothers Island out in the China Sea. The first Sunday, after we entered the China Sea, at daylight, we were confronted with seventeen waterspouts of huge size, some of which were over two miles off. At one time it looked as if we would be engulfed by them, for certainly, if one of them had burst on us, our good ship would have gone down. A water-spout is a long column of water, rising out of the sea. It begins with a little ripple on the water like a whirlwind, increasing in diameter until ten or twelve feet in size; it then rises, up and up, until it reaches the clouds. It ascends with a corkscrew motion. The only way to get clear of it is to fire a cannon into it.
