"Waterspout" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... we are not informed. Probably he herds with the big bird whose wings, among the Dacotahs of America and the Zulus of Africa, make thunder; or he may associate with the dragons, serpents, cows and other aerial cattle which supply the rain, and show themselves in the waterspout. Chinese, Greenland, Hindoo, Finnish, Lithunian and Moorish examples of the myth about the moon-devouring beasts are vouched for by Grimm.(2) A Mongolian legend has it that the gods wished to punish ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... been heard from since. In the park, we take refuge on the bank of the river. A very violent whirlwind now begins to uproot large trees, and lifts them high into the air. As it reaches the water, a waterspout forms which is approximately 100 meters high. The violence of the storm luckily passes us by. Some distance away, however, where numerous refugees have taken shelter, many are blown into the river. Almost all who are in the vicinity have been injured and have lost relatives who have been ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States
... have the heart to describe this as any sort of parallel to our situation? To be sure, an April shower has some resemblance to a waterspout; for they are both wet: and there is some likeness between a summer evening's breeze and a hurricane; they are both wind: but who can compare our disturbances, our situation, or our finances, to those of France in the time of Henry? Great ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Columbiad was accompanied by a veritable earthquake. Florida was shaken to its very depths. The gases of the powder, expanded by heat, forced back the atmospheric strata with tremendous violence, passing like a waterspout through the air. ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... then that Patricio de Escosura firmed his intimacy with the future poet. He describes graphically his first meeting with the youth who was to be his lifelong friend. He first saw Jos sliding down from a third-story balcony on a tin waterspout. In the light of later years Escosura felt that in this boyish prank the child was father of the man. The boy who preferred waterspouts to stairways, later in life always scorned the beaten path, and "the illogical road, no matter how venturesome and hazardous it was, attracted him ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... was falling with increasing power, held one key; the drip from the eaves and the irregular gush from a broken waterspout played separate tunes. I am well used to the night-time bravado of mice, who fight duels and sometimes pull shoes about, of the pranks of squirrels and other little wood beasts about the floor, but the noise that made me sit up in the cot and reach ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... weather, in the course of which they had been obliged to catch sharks for food and had once been nearly overwhelmed by a waterspout, they entered a harbour where, in the words of young Ferdinand, "we saw the people living like birds in the tops of the trees, laying sticks across from bough to bough and building their huts upon them; and though we knew not the reason ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... thought it was strange that he could keep still and wait until the next morning to see the ships. He certainly had not slept five minutes before he slipped out from under the wing and slid down the lightning-rod and the waterspout all the ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... the world, guided fleet upon fleet innumerable through trackless space! And over an infinitely grander sea than the measureless ocean of worlds, the Father was carrying navies of human souls, every soul a world whose affairs none but the Father could understand, through many a storm, and waterspout, and battle with the powers of evil, safe to the haven of the children, the Father's house! And Clare began to understand ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... the rain in such overwhelming torrents, that it was as if a waterspout had burst, and Ferdinand gasped for breath beneath its oppressive power; while the blaze of the variegated lightning, the crash of the thunder, and the roar of the wind, all simultaneously in movement, indicated the ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... spinning storms, known as waterspouts, may often be observed. In general appearance these air whirls resemble tornadoes, except that they are in all cases smaller than that group of whirlings. As in the tornadoes, the waterspout begins with a funnel, which descends from the sky to the surface of the sea. Up the tube vapours may be seen ascending at great speed, the whole appearing like a gigantic pillar of swiftly revolving smoke. When the whirl reaches the water, ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... Plains. Mrs. N. Battling alone with Death. A Fatherless and Childless Home. The Plagues of Egypt. Murrain, Grasshoppers, and Famine. Following a Forlorn Hope. A Bridal Tour and its Ending. On the Borders of the Great Desert. An Extraordinary Experience. Women Living in Caves. A Waterspout and its Consequences. Drowning in a Drought. Fleeing from Death. A Woman's Partnership in a Herd of Buffaloes. The Huntress of the Foot-hills. A Charge by Ten Thousand Bison. Hiding in a Sink-hole. A Terrible Danger and a Miraculous ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... wonderful access of power it whirled through space telling its beads of days and nights. What endless work, and withal what illimitable energy of freedom! None shall check it, oh, none can ever check it! From the depths of my being an uprush of joy, like a waterspout, sprang ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... sea-level, stood the Pino del Dornajito ('of the Little Trough'), one of the few survivors in this once wealthy pine-ground. The magnificent old tree, which was full grown in the days of the conquest, and which in the seventeenth century was a favourite halting-point, suffered severely from the waterspout of November 7, 1826; but still measured 130 feet long by 29 in girth. The vegetation now changed. We began brushing through the arbutus (callicarpa), the wild olive (Olea excelsa), the Canarian oak, the daphne, the myrtle entwined with indigenous ivy (Hedera canariensis); the cytisus, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... did attempt a fire with his main-deck gun; but, at the first plunge of the ship, a sea slapped up against her weather-bow, and sent a column of water through the port, that drove half its crew into the lee-scuppers. In the midst of this waterspout, the gun exploded, the loggerhead having been applied an instant before, giving a sort of chaotic wildness to the scene in-board. This satisfied the party below; though that on the forecastle fared better. The last fired their gun several times, and always without success. ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... imprisonment. As I was thinking about all this, the masts again appeared on the horizon, the Emden steaming easterly, but very much slower. All at once the enemy, at high speed, shot by, apparently quite close to the Emden. A high white waterspout showed amidst the black smoke of the enemy. That was a torpedo. I saw how the two opponents withdrew, the distance growing greater and greater between them; how they separated, till they disappeared in the darkness. The fight had lasted ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... quaint old-world niches withdrawn from men in silent grass-grown corners, where a twelfth-century corbel holds a pot of roses, or a Gothic arch yawns beneath a wool warehouse, or a waterspout with a grinning faun's head laughs in the grim humor of the Moyen-age above the bent ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... to the bottom in no time. But our skipper was not a man to be daunted by difficulties. As soon as he saw them coming he ordered the guns to be loaded and run out. As the first came near he fired, and down fell the waterspout with a rushing sound into the ocean. 'It is your turn next,' he sang out, pointing a gun at another, which he treated in the same fashion; but three came on together, when he blazed away at them and all were knocked to pieces in a moment; and the ocean was as calm as it ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston
... 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 ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... man.] Well may they fear, for the Assyrians are not three days distant. They are blazing along like a waterspout to chop Damascus down like ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... heavy winds, the roar of turbulent woods, the tumultuous tossing of leafy arms, and with what seemed the silent dissolution of the whole landscape in days of steady and uninterrupted downfall. It came extravagantly, for every canyon had grown into a torrent, every gulch a waterspout, every watercourse a river, and all pouring into the North Fork, that, rushing past the settlement, seemed to threaten it with lifted crest and flying mane. It came dangerously, for one night the ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... son. The wind cut through the rigging, and the boat cut through the sea. The sails, filled by the wind, swelled out and carried them along in wild career. It was wet and rough above and below, and might still be worse. Hold! what is that? What has struck the boat? Was it a waterspout, or a heavy ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... boat cut through the sea. The sail blew out, filled by the wind, and they drove on in wild career. It was rough and wet around and above, and it might come worse still. Hold! what was that? what struck there? what burst yonder? what seized the boat? It heeled, and lay on its beam ends! Was it a waterspout? Was it a heavy sea coming suddenly down? The boy at the helm cried out aloud, "Heaven help us!" The boat had struck on a great rock standing up from the depths of the sea, and it sank like an old shoe in a puddle; it sank "with man and mouse," as the ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... below? On a soft bed of sponge in the deep sea I lie, And watch the huge shark and the grampus glide by; Or amidst groves of coral I play at bo-peep, Or I float where the porpoise and flying-fish leap. I have seen the thin nautilus trimming her sail, And the Geyser-like waterspout made by the whale; To this lord of the ocean there clung a whole bevy Of parasite barnacles waiting his 'levee.' I have seen the small soldier-crab coated in red, With the shell of a whelk for a home overhead; And the limpet, who, cased in a house of his own, Shuts out all the air, and sticks fast ...
— The Quadrupeds' Pic-Nic • F. B. C.
... "There is a waterspout after us," exclaimed Captain Turner, as we made our appearance, "and we must give it the slip, or be grabbed by Davy Jones. Be alive for once! If that fellow comes over us, he will capsize, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... out of the window, and sliding down the waterspout, reached the roof and went in pursuit of the ball. One of the windows opening from the third story onto this open space was that in the electric room, and it was under this window that the ball came to a standstill. As Dick stooped to pick it up he found a knife lying beside it. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... appropriate expression, "it went out," like a huge glowworm. Had it fled from us? We were duty bound to fear so rather than hope so. But at 12:53 in the morning, a deafening hiss became audible, resembling the sound made by a waterspout expelled ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... "thinkest thou the Prince of Powys has as many money-bags, as the merchants of thy land of sale and barter? He gathers treasures by his conquests, as the waterspout sucks up water by its strength, but it is to disperse them among his followers, as the cloudy column restores its contents to earth and ocean. The silver that I promise thee has yet to be gathered out of the Saxon chests—nay, the casket of Berenger himself must ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... the storm was at its height; the black thunder-cloud had broken into many, which assumed the wildest shapes and the strangest colours, some of them unspeakably glorious; the rain poured in a deluge, and more than one waterspout was seen at no great distance: an immense rabble is hurrying in one direction; a multitude of men of all ranks, peers and yokels, prize-fighters and Jews, and the last came to plunder, and are now plundering amidst that wild confusion of hail ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... the TABAKS-COLLEGIUM had need to be doubly busy. As we shall find he is (though without effect), when the time comes round:—but we have not yet got to November of this Year 1729; there are still six or eight important months between us and that. Important months; and a Prussian-English "Waterspout," as we have named it, to be seen, with due wonder, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... that! Whenever he had wanted anything, he had ordered it, and had let the bill go to his father; whenever he had wanted money, he had sent to his father for it, and had got it. Dawson's question made the reality of his position—moneyless, resourceless, friendless—burst over him like a waterspout. Dawson saw and understood; but it was not his cue to ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... The ship might sink while I was there. I know we'll get caught in a whirlpool, or in a waterspout, or some other dreadful thing! ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster
... the god were envious, he must have seen with mortification how little he could do to mar the happiness of mortals. I stood in a mere waterspout; she herself was wet, not from my embrace only, but from the splashing of the storm. The candles had guttered out; we were in darkness. I could scarce see anything but the shining of her eyes in the dark room. To her I must have appeared as a silhouette, ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Honeybunch in his lap evenings for a month, he reckoned one night that he'd drop down street and look in on the boys. Honeybunch reckoned not, and he didn't press the matter, but after they'd gone to bed and she'd dropped off to sleep, he slipped into his clothes and down the waterspout to the ground. He sat up till two o'clock at the Dutchman's, and naturally, the next morning he had a breath like a gasoline runabout, and looked as if he'd been attending a successful coon-hunt in the capacity ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... Raimbaut and Biatritz were aging people now. It seemed to him that they were the wraiths of those persons who had loved each other at Montferrat; and that the walls about them and the leaden devils who grinned from every waterspout and all those dark and narrow windows were only part of some magic picture, such as a sorceress may momentarily summon out of smoke-wreaths, as he had seen Zoraida do ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... and river very high. A great freshet. A very wonderful washout occurred in the side of the North mountain, above Turleytown, back of Elijah Baker's. It is supposed to have been caused by a waterspout or cloud-burst, as it is sometimes called. A great flood of water seemed to fall on the side of the mountain on a small patch of ground, uprooting trees, overturning rocks, and carrying all in one huge mass into the hollow below, where they lodged. The flood, rolling on, carried off Moses ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... hurricane, the irrational, persistent chaos of noise made by switching freight-trains, the explosion of gas, the blasting of stone, and the terrific grinding of rock upon rock which precedes the collapse—all these have been in my touch-experience, and contribute to my idea of Bedlam, of a battle, a waterspout, an earthquake, and other enormous accumulations ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... sportive tendencies as the result of a vow made by myself to Providence, during the early hours of a certain Sunday morning, while clinging to the waterspout of an unpretentious house situate in a side street off Soho. I put it to Providence as man to man. "Let me only get out of this," I think were the muttered words I used, "and no more 'sport' for me." Providence closed ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... appeared—but not as she had known it, for it boiled and heaved, bubbled and rose. From its lowest depths it was moved to meet and receive her! Coil upon coil it lifted itself into the air, towering like a waterspout, then stretched out a long, writhing, shivering neck to take her from the invisible arms that bore her to her doom. The neck shot out a head, and the head shot out the tongue of a water-snake. She shrieked and woke, bathed ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... guarded by a wooden railing (many a day since these were painted); and over these railings and up the supports which carry the roof of the portico straggles a honeysuckle that does its best to hide the shabbiness of the shingles and the old waterspout and sagging gutter, and fails miserably when it gets to the farther cornice, which has rotted away, showing under its dismal paint the black and brown ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... shot forward as though from a catapult, feet foremost, and, as he fought and struggled to get his breath, he saw that he was in the midst of a giant waterspout, as it leaped from the end of the broken flume and plunged, like a stream from an immense hose, into a swirling pool which the freed sluice water had dug in ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... so terrific that Ken distinctly felt the deck of the trawler lift under his feet. A cloud of thick black smoke shot high into the air, and as it rose a very waterspout ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... see the disk strike the shining broad shoulders of the Father of Waters, for the bend around which the Natchez Belle had steamed so proudly hid the sky monster from view. But Jimmy did see the waterspout, spiraling skyward like the atom bomb explosion he'd goggled at in the pages of an old Life magazine, all ...
— The Mississippi Saucer • Frank Belknap Long
... downpour of rain, which fell upon the frigate's deck like a waterspout, cut short all further speech by its deafening tumult, and although it lasted but a few minutes, it killed the fury of the squall to such an extent that the ship, unsteadied by her canvas, rolled so violently that no one could keep his feet. Suddenly ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... men want to get into English imprisonment. As I was thinking about all this, the masts again appear on the horizon, the Emden steaming easterly, but very much slower. All at once the enemy, at high speed, shoots by, apparently quite close to the Emden. A high, white waterspout showed among the black smoke of the enemy. That was a torpedo. I see how the two opponents withdrew, the distance growing greater between them; how they separate, till they disappear in the darkness. The fight had ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... 2d November for Celebes, and anchored at its N.E. end on the 9th. The 30th, while steering between two shoals, in lat. 3 deg. S. ten leagues from Celebes, we saw three waterspouts towards evening. A waterspout is a piece of a cloud hanging down in a sloping direction, sometimes bending like a bow, but never perpendicular. Opposite to its extremity the sea begins to foam, and the water is then seen gently moving round ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... we let the ball swing to and fro, the little waterspout will travel over its immature sea, carrying its whirlpools along with it. When it breaks up, a portion of the liquid—and with it anything it may contain—remains attached to the ball. The fish, seeds, leaves, etcetera, that have fallen ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... burning, eating through my defenceless nakedness, I have been thrust into white sharp crystals, Writhing, twisting, superpenetrated, Ah, Lot's wife, Lot's wife! The pillar of salt, the whirling, horrible column of salt, like a waterspout That has enveloped me! ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... Tommy, "without the buff'loes have got 'em." So they camped for the day under a huge banyan-fig tree and awaited developments. About evening, away on the horizon, there arose an answering cloud of smoke, connecting earth and sky, like a waterspout. ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... the isle fort at Cattegat, put there to fight the Baltic with storm-lashed guns, on which the sea-salt cakes! 4th Nantucket Sailor He has his orders, mind ye that. I heard old Ahab tell him he must always kill a squall, something as they burst a waterspout with a pistol —fire your ship right into it! English Sailor Blood! but that old man's a grand old cove! We are the lads to hunt him up his whale! All Aye! aye! Old Manx Sailor How the three pines shake! ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... entered beneath the hospitable roof of the hotel of the Eagle, before the rain fell in torrents, like a waterspout. I elevated my soul to God. At this moment the thunder burst, the avalanches resounded among the mountains, and the echoes a thousand times repeated the noise ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... (Rhiwabon) hills and the Dee is agricultural and rich in minerals; the Berwyn to Offa's Dyke (Wl Offa) is wild and barren, except the Tanat valley, Llansilin and Ceiriog. One feeder of the Tanat forms the Pistyll Rhaiadr (waterspout fall), another rises in Llyncaws (cheese pool) under Moel Sych (dry bare-hill), the highest point in the county. Aled and Alwen are ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... Thuillier's importance ten-fold. As for the notary, he had temporarily lost his head in presence of political events which came upon him like a waterspout out of cloudless skies. Theodose, certain now of his supremacy, holding Thuillier fast by his past services and by the literary work in which they were both engaged, admired by Brigitte for his modesty and discretion,—for never had he made the slightest allusion to his ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... man. They'd let it go all at once and cause a waterspout, that's about what they'd do, and between a waterspout and a dry spell, give me the ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... "hairst," and when the turnip "shaws" have just forced themselves through the earth, looking like straight rows of green needles. Here is a picture of a bothy of to-day that I visited recently. Over the door there is a waterspout that has given way, and as I entered I got a rush of rain down my neck. The passage was so small that one could easily have stepped from the doorway on to the ladder standing against the wall, which was there in lieu of a staircase. "Upstairs" ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... rang through the workshops. The water in the machine had broken the chamber, and now spouted out in a jet of incalculable force; luckily it went in the direction of an old furnace, which was overthrown, enveloped and carried away by a waterspout. ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... have known it rain six mortal weeks in Bonny River, just for all the world as if it were done by machinery, and the interval that came then was only a few wet days, where-after it settled itself down to work again in the good West Coast waterspout ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... France produced a sensation throughout England totally indescribable at the present day. Every tongue and every heart was full of it. It offered something for every mind of the million to seize on. Like a waterspout, such as I have seen sweeping over the bosom of the Atlantic, half-descending from the skies, and half-ascending from the deep; every second man whom one met gave it credit for a different origin, some looking at the upper portion and some at the lower; while, in the mean time, the huge phenomenon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... rush of the water, a strange and intermittent roaring, the which I could make nothing of, until, at last, forcing my way through the underbrush I saw before me a column of water that spouted up into the air from a fissure at the base of the hill, and this waterspout was about the bigness of a fair-sized tree and gushed up some twenty feet or so, now sinking to half this height, only to rise again. Scarce pausing to behold this wonder I would have hasted on (and roaring louder than ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... growing wetter 'Twill be worse before it's better. When the tide is at its ebb Fix your gaze on SIDNEY WEBB. When the tide is at high level Modernists discuss the Devil. Floods upon the Thames or Kennet Stimulate the brain of BENNETT; While a waterspout foretells Fresh activities in WELLS. When it's calm in the Atlantic Gooseberries become gigantic. When it's rough in the Pacific Laying hens are less prolific. When the clouds are moving largo There is no restraining MARGOT. When their movement is con brio 'Ware CHIOZZA MONEY (LEO)! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various
... descended almost to the earth, rushing about, holding out their hands as though to clasp the blessed moisture and talking excitedly one to the other. Soon they were driven into their huts, for the rain turned into a kind of waterspout. Never had such ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... is mentioned in the Vidar myths, some mythologists suppose that he had but one leg, and was the personification of a waterspout, which would rise suddenly on the last day to quench the wild fire personified ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... from 6 to 8 miles broad. Owing to the rush of the tide, navigation is difficult, and, in rough weather, dangerous. The tidal wave races at a speed which varies from 6 to 12 m. an hour. At the meeting of the western and eastern currents the waves at times rise into the air like a waterspout, but the current does not always nor everywhere flow at a uniform rate, being broken up at places into eddies as perilous as itself. The breakers caused by the sunken reefs off Duncansbay Head create the Bores of Duncansbay, and eddies off St John's Point are the origin of the Merry Men of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... words. And it was always the same—always some piffle about a dream he'd had, or some cranky idea he'd got hold of, or some rot he'd been reading. Stanley turned over on his back and kicked with his legs till he was a living waterspout. But even then... "I dreamed I was hanging over a terrifically high cliff, shouting to some one below." You would be! thought Stanley. He could stick no more of it. He stopped splashing. "Look here, Trout," he said, "I'm in rather a hurry ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... himself in profound darkness. The waves murmured and broke at the entrance of the cave; the waterspout precipitated itself with a ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... and most terrible avalanches, those of dry, powdery snow, occur only in winter, when sudden squalls and hurricanes of snow throw the whole atmosphere into chaos. They come down in sudden whirlwinds, with the violence of a waterspout, and in a few minutes whole ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... the grass grow under her feet. In this case she acted with her usual promptitude, and by two o'clock Emma, in much alarm, and weeping like a waterspout, was ushered into the study and confronted with Gwen and Netta, who were both summoned ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... 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 ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... without any warning, a most terrific eruption occurred. A loud explosion was heard; the earth shook, and immense columns of hot water, boiling mud mixed with burning brimstone, ashes and stones, were hurled upwards from the mountain top like a waterspout, and with such wonderful force that large quantities fell at a distance of forty miles. Every valley near the mountain became filled with burning torrents; the rivers, swollen with hot water and mud, overflowed their banks, and swept away ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... rose to a hurricane, scattering the flames on all sides into a tempest of burning billows. I buried my head in my apron, for I thought that all was lost, when a most terrific crash of thunder burst over our heads, and, like the breaking of a waterspout, down came the rushing torrent of rain which had been pent up for ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... write these souvenirs feel the same desire as I experienced to visit the cascades of Tierra-Alta, let them go to a place called Yang-Yang; it was near this spot where my Indian protector resided. At this part the river, obstructed in its course by the narrowness of its channel, falls from only one waterspout, about thirty or forty feet high, into an immense basin, out of which the water calmly flows onwards, to form, lower down, three other waterfalls, not so lofty, but extending over the breadth of the river, thereby ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... the Sea, its white teeth gnashing Through its coral-reef lips flashing, "Shall I let this scheming mortal Shut with stone my shining portal, Curb my tide and check my play, Fence with wharves my shining bay? Rather let me be drawn out In one awful waterspout!" ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... wood that covers its domain, which extends over three neighbouring hills. Under the principal facade is a large lake, whose blue waves bathe the walls; an immense mirror, ever reflecting the numberless turrets, and the grotesque birds and beasts which decorate the extremity of every waterspout; wherein, too, the tranquil marble giants, who support the broad balcony on their heads, seem to contemplate and admire their own imperturbable countenances—countenances that betrayed no shade of feeling at all that must have passed before their ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... waterspout is caused by a whirlwind entering a cloud and gathering vapour together by its rotary action into such a heavy mass that it descends in the funnel shape described. We are all familiar with the small whirlwinds that ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... came to her house at last. One half of the thatch lay over the other half; the rafters were bare like the ribs of the wreck; the oat-cake peck was rattling on the lath; the meal-barrel in the corner was stripped of its lid, and the meal was whirling into the air like a waterspout; the dresser was stripped, the broken crockery lay on the uncovered floor, and the iron slowrie hanging over the place of the fire was swinging and striking against the wall, and ringing like a knell. ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... with their leaden, golden, iron, bronz-ed glows, Where the hurricane, the waterspout, thunder, and hell repose, Muttering hoarse dreams of destined harms, 'Tis God who hangs their multitude amid the skiey deep, As a warrior that suspendeth from the roof-tree of his keep His dreadful ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... Ramon jumped. A waterspout had shot down the back of his neck. "We mus' go out of zis! We soon shall be wetter; we can run to ze ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... wind roared with a noise that overpowered the thunder; then came a rattling shower of hail, with stones as big as pigeons' eggs, succeeded by rain, not in showers, but literally in cataracts. The only thing to which a tempest of rain in Italy can be compared is the bursting of a waterspout. Venetia could scarcely believe that this could be the same day of which the golden morning had found her among the sunny hills of Arqua. This unexpected vicissitude induced Lady Annabel to alter her plans, and she resolved to rest at Rovigo, where she was glad to find that they could be ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... frightful sound was heard; a genuine waterspout fell upon deck, heaved up by an enormous wave. A cry of terror rang out from the crew whilst Garry, at the helm, held the Forward in a straight line in spite of the frightful incumbrance. When their frightened looks were drawn towards the mountain of ice it had ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... any time," he answered, very firmly, gazing through the door as if he saw the vain endeavor. "That little game can easily be stopped, for about fifty dollars, by opening down the bank toward the old track of the river. The biggest waterspout that ever came down from the mountains could never come anigh the mill, but go right down the valley. It hath been in my mind to do it often, and now that I see the need, I will. Firm and ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... desperately with his feet, and flung himself across the chasm. He had already clutched the rock, and thrust himself forward, when the tremendous volume of water struck him. McNab and the soldier felt the sudden pluck of the rope and saw the light swing across the abyss. Then the fury of the waterspout burst with a triumphant scream, the tension ceased, the light was blotted out, and when the column sank, there dangled at the end of the lariat nothing but the drenched and blackened skeleton of ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... if by direct intent, started for the river's mouth. The Dyaks saw it coming, and in their puny efforts to escape, looked like ants before an elephant. The five streams, flowing through the delta of the Cotabato River, seemed to draw the vicious waterspout toward them, and on it went, directly in the wake of the doomed Dyaks. Tensely the Sabah's passengers followed the course of the spout. The whirling Nemesis descended upon the pirates; their cries of anguish came ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... it was a lion, or a tiger, or a wolf, or an ass, or, as often as anything else, a hog, wallowing in the marble basin as if it were his sty. It was either magic or some very curious machinery that caused the gushing waterspout to assume all these forms. But, before the strangers had time to look closely at this wonderful sight, their attention was drawn off by a very sweet and agreeable sound. A woman's voice was singing melodiously in another room of the palace, and with her voice was mingled the noise ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was violent and we perceived amidst the dashing of the waves two seas crossing each other, one the from north and the other from north-north-east. Waterspouts were formed at the distance of a mile and were carried rapidly from north-north-east to north-north-west. Whenever the waterspout drew near us we felt the wind grow sensibly cooler. Towards evening, owing to the carelessness of our American cook, our deck took fire; but fortunately it was soon extinguished. On the morning of the 1st of December the sea slowly calmed and the breeze became steady from north-east. ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... of their hindering our shooting, let the water through in the most shameless fashion; and under the trees, though at first, certainly, the rain did not reach us, afterwards the water collected on the leaves suddenly rushed through, every branch dripped on us like a waterspout, a chill stream made its way under our neck-ties, and trickled down our spines.... This was 'quite unpleasant,' as Yermolai expressed it. 'No, Piotr Petrovitch,' he cried at last; 'we can't go on like this....There's no shooting ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... without a sound upon the bear's great, broad back. The half-dozen old wolves followed him like figures moved by a single lever. The pack sucked in with the rush of a waterspout. The bear vanished under a wave of fangs and tails, as a sinking boat vanishes beneath the billows. And the rest was the most diabolical devils' riot that ears ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... thoroughly accustomed to it, as the traders were in the habit of bringing him presents of araki every season. He declared this to be excellent, and demanded another bottle. At that moment a violent storm of thunder and rain burst upon us with a fury well known in the tropics; the rain fell like a waterspout, and the throng immediately fled for shelter. So violent was the storm, that not a man was to be seen: some were sheltering themselves under the neighbouring rocks; while others ran to their villages that were close by; the trader's people commenced a fusilade, firing off all their guns lest they ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... cylinders to supply an atmosphere he could breathe, and some food to eat, for it appears our giant friends are something of inventors in their way. The current of water bore him to the surface of the earth, and he was cast up on the ocean, in what was probably taken for a waterspout ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... strange sights, sea-serpents not a few, and mermaids quite beyond the possibility of mistake, and men who can call the wind with four knots in a string and words unlearnable, and others who can alter the course of a waterspout by a secret spell, and a captain who made a floating beacon of junk soaked in petroleum in a tar-barrel and set it adrift and stood up on the quarter-deck calling on all the three hundred and sixty-five saints in the calendar out of the Neapolitan ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... coral reefs with a violence known only to the earthquake and the angry ocean. Vast volumes of water surged high on either side, projecting still higher their sparkling shafts of spray, like the pillars of a waterspout. ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... untransacted. And on Saturday morning, I sent down and arranged with Charlie Taylor to go down that afternoon. I had scarce got the saddle bags fixed and had not yet mounted, when the rain began. But it was no use delaying now; off I went in a wild waterspout to Apia; found Charlie (Sale) Taylor - a sesquipedalian young half-caste - not yet ready, had a snack of bread and cheese at the hotel while waiting him, and then off to Malie. It rained all the way, seven miles; the road, which begins in triumph, dwindles ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it is," said David; "although I've never seen one before, it must be a waterspout, and we'll have to give it a wide berth. Look out, Jonathan, for the sheet; I'm going to put the helm up and bring the boat about on ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... die away, he gave the order to retire to the Waschbank. His men were back in bivouac at 4 p.m. No sooner had the infantry from the height above filed over the muddy pools than a storm, which had been gathering all day in the terrible heat, burst, and cooled the sun-baked ground with a waterspout of rain. The Waschbank, which had all but perished in the drought, in less than an hour rose from three inches to a height of twelve feet of roaring water, thirty-five yards in breadth. The rearmost infantry plunged ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... black banks of moss earth, sometimes crossed narrow but deep ravines filled with a consistence between mud and water, and sometimes along heaps of gravel and stones, which had been swept together when some torrent or waterspout from the neighbouring hills overflowed the marshy ground below. He began to ponder how a horseman could make his way through such broken ground; the traces of hoofs, however, were still visible; he even thought he heard their sound at some distance, and, convinced that Mr. ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... sullen, reluctant shiftings of the logs give opportunity for the men to assure their safety. This jam, after inexplicably hanging fire for a week, as inexplicably started like a sprinter almost into its full gait. The first few tiers toppled smash into the current, raising a waterspout like that made by a dynamite explosion; the mass behind plunged forward blindly, rising and falling as the integral logs were up-ended, turned over, thrust one side, or forced bodily into the air by the mighty power playing jack-straws ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... intervals distinctly visible for a moment. It was dark when we landed, and we had to pass through two or three streets, servants, guides, bag, and baggage, groping our way; and oh, wretched mortals, went to the wrong place, and before we could reach the right one, down poured a waterspout of a shower on our devoted heads and backs. In five minutes, running as hard as we could, we were wet through; and Fanny, in crossing the street and plucking at the guide's bundle for a cloak for me, was nearly run over, but stood ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... the wind. The surface was lashed into foam as white as the driven snow. The lightning and artillery of the heavens were incessant, blinding, and deafening; involuntarily we bowed our heads, utterly helpless. Soon the heavens were opened, and the floods came down like a waterspout. I knew then that the worst of it had passed, and though one fierce squall succeeded another, each one was tamer. The deluge, too, helped to beat down the sea. To give an order was impossible, for I could not be heard; I could only, during the flashes, ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... waterspout, Miss Trevor? No? Then the chances are that you will see several before you are many hours older. Have you noticed those long, black, quivering tongues that dart out and in from the bodies of the darkest clouds? Well, those are the forerunners of waterspouts. See, there ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... sped on day and night, and behind it followed the old man like a shadow. Once it went into an inn, and killed several travellers; another time it slid into the King's house and killed him. Then it crept up the waterspout to the Queen's palace, and killed the King's youngest daughter. So it passed on, and wherever it went the sound of weeping and wailing arose, and the old man followed it, silent ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... make of the weather I knew not. Certainly, of all the caprices of this huge cold sea, its calms are the shortest lived, but this knowledge helped me to no other. The clouds did not stir. In the north-east a beam of sunshine stood like a golden waterspout, its foot in a little flood of glory. It stayed all the while I was on deck, showing that the clouds had scarce any motion, and made the picture of the sea that way beyond nature to my sight, by the contrast of the defined shaft of gold, burning purely, with the dusk of the clouds ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... destroyer is circling around, and must be looking for signs of the sub. Wow! that was a terrible waterspout, though. And ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... point, and had arrived at the conclusion that we ought to set them again, when the atmosphere seemed suddenly to grow more dense, and in a moment down came the rain in a regular tropical deluge, like the bursting of a waterspout, the sails flapped to the masts, and we were becalmed again. This was horribly vexatious, not to say disheartening; but, happily for our peace of mind, it was a state of things that did not last long; it merely meant a shift of wind, for presently, when ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood |
