"Send as stout a ship as we are to the bottom with scant warning!" he answered. "That's a water-spout. I've seen one rise directly ahead of a ship, and before there was time to attempt to escape it, down it came bodily on her deck like a heavy sea falling over a vessel. She never rose again, but went down like a shot." "I hope that won't be our fate," said I. At that moment the captain came on deck. "Get ready a gun there, forward!" he sung out. "Quick now!" While I had been talking to Peter, a pillar of water had risen out of the sea, so it seemed; and, having joined the point hanging from the cloud, came whirling towards us. Had there been sufficient wind to send the ship through the water, we might have avoided it; but there was scarcely steerage-way on her. I thought of what Peter had just told me, and I thought if it does break over us, it will certainly send us to the bottom. The captain ordered the slow match to be brought to him, and went forward to the gun, which had been loaded and run out. On came the water-spout. I could not conceive what he was going to do. He stooped down, and, running his eye along the gun, fired a shot right through the watery pillar. Down came the liquid mass with a thundering sound into the sea, but clear of the ship, though even our deck got a little sprinkling; and when I looked up at the sky, not a sign of a cloud was there. Peter told me that we ought to be thankful that we had escaped the danger so well, for that he had never been in greater risk from a water-spout in his life. We used frequently to catch dolphins during the passage, by striking them with a small harpoon as they played under the bow of the brig. They are not at all like the creatures I remember carved in stone at the entrance of some gentleman's park near Dublin. They measure about four feet in length; are thick in the middle, with a green back and a yellow belly, and have a sinking between the tip of the snout and the top of the head; indeed, they are something like a large salmon. We used to eat them, and they were considered like a fat turbot. Frequently flying-fish fell on our deck in attempting to escape from their two enemies--the dolphin and the bonito: but they fell, if not from the frying-pan into the fire, from the water into the frying-pan; for we used to eat them also. Indeed nothing comes amiss to a sailor's mess. The flying-fish, which is about the size of a herring, has two long fins which serve it as wings; but it can only keep in the air so long as its fins remain wet. These fish, like herrings, also swim together in large shoals, which, as their pursuers come among them, scatter themselves far and wide. Nothing very particular occurred on the passage, till once more we made the land.