After leaving Dusky Bay, as hath been already mentioned, I directed my course along shore for Queen Charlotte’s Sound, where I expected to find the Adventure. In this passage we met with nothing remarkable or worthy of notice till the 17th, at four o’clock in the afternoon. Being then about three leagues to the westward of Cape Stephens, having a gentle gale at west by south, and clear weather, the wind at once flattened to a calm, the sky became suddenly obscured by dark, dense clouds, and seemed to forebode much wind. This occasioned us to clew up all our sails, and presently after six water-spouts were seen. Four rose and spent themselves between us and the land; that is to the S. W. of us; the fifth was without us; the sixth first appeared in the S. W. at the distance of two or three miles at least from us. Its progressive motion was to the N. E. not in a strait, but in a crooked line, and passed within fifty yards of our stern, without our feeling any of its effects. The diameter of the base of this spout I judged to be about fifty or sixty feet; that is, the sea within this space was much agitated, and foamed up to a great height. From this a tube or round body was formed, by which the water or air, or both, was carried in a spiral stream up to the clouds. Some of our people said they saw a bird in the one near us; which was whirled round like the fly of a jack as it was carried upwards. During the time these spouts lasted, we had, now and then, light puffs of wind from all points of the compass; with some few slight showers of rain, which generally fell in large drops; and the weather continued thick and hazy, for some hours after, with variable light breezes of wind. At length the wind fixed in its old point, and the sky resumed its former serenity. Some of these spouts appeared, at times, to be stationary; and, at other times, to have a quick, but very unequal, progressive motion, and always in a crooked line, sometimes one way, and sometimes another; so that, once or twice, we observed them to cross one another. From the ascending motion of the bird, and several other circumstances, it was very plain to us that these spouts were caused by whirlwinds, and that the water in them was violently hurried upwards, and did not descend from the clouds, as I have heard some assert. The first appearance of them is by the violent agitation and rising up of the water; and, presently after, you see a round column or tube forming from the clouds above, which apparently descends till it joins the agitated water below. I say apparently, because I believe it not to be so in reality, but that the tube is already formed from the agitated water below, and ascends, though at first it is either too small or too thin to be seen. When the tube is formed, or becomes visible, its apparent diameter increaseth, until it is pretty large; after that, it decreaseth, and, at last, it breaks or becomes invisible towards the lower part.