"Waterspout" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... himself 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 way down to ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... harsh language as Katie dared use; but she frowned fearfully, and a tuft of hair, rising from her head like a waterspout, made her look so fierce that Ruth seemed to be frightened, and ran away with her ...
— Dotty Dimple's Flyaway • Sophie May
... said 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
... was in shelter, but the rain streamed down upon its back and hind quarters, while a perfect deluge, like that from a waterspout, ran down a long gully in the overhanging rock right on to the spine just between the shoulders, and there divided to trickle on either side down the fore legs, and then run down through the pine needles, which formed too thick a bed for any of the ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... the black cat and her kittens romped amid a thousand twists and turns; whilst above them the mice, in the waterspout, peeped peeringly and curiously forth, drank of the rain-water, snuffed in the fresh air, and afterwards crept quietly ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... clear of every trace of it. I had just put back the ladder when Mrs. Sparrow returned with a piece of pink cotton-wool in her mouth. That was her idea of a colour scheme: apple-blossom pink and Reckitt's blue side by side. She dropped her wool and sat on the waterspout, ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... 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 the convexity appeared a spiral column ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... third son said, 'Father, let me also show you something;' and, as it was beginning to rain, he drew his sword and swung it in cross cuts above his head, so that not a drop fell on him, and the rain fell heavier and heavier, till at last it was coming down like a waterspout, but he swung his sword faster and faster, and kept as dry as if he were ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... 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, ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... 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 descended upon ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... away the terrible wreckage of the storm. There were large articles of furniture, the bodies of men, women, and children, together with horses and cows, all floating on the whirling waters.... It rained a waterspout for nearly five hours, and in consequence the small valleys leading down from the mountain were in some places thirty feet deep, for a time, in rushing water.... The tramways in some places are destroyed; the mountain railway ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... 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 ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... 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
... 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 the torrent ceased, ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... of our small vessel 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 ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... 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 on the offer, and did let me get ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... never let 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
... themselves on his mind. The "House of Pieterse" appeared to his mind's eye as a menacing waterspout. In the face of this danger difficult questions that had been clamoring for answer had to ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... Spring, which once had been a geyser of considerable power. Wetherill told a story of an old Navajo who had lived there. For a long time, according to the Indian tale, the old chief resided there without complaining of this geyser that was wont to inundate his fields. But one season the unreliable waterspout made great and persistent endeavor to drown him and his people and horses. Whereupon the old Navajo took his gun and shot repeatedly at the geyser, and thundered aloud his anger to the Great Spirit. The geyser ebbed away, and from that day ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... piled on each other in grotesque attitudes and heaps. Even the stone tank at the north-west side of the Ka'aba, under the famous Myzab, or Golden Waterspout on the Ka'aba roof, was heaped full of them; and all round the sacred Zem Zem well they lay in silent windrows, reaped down by some ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... 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 hurriedly across before ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... the fall of the year, when M.P.'s were about, And speeches burst forth like a waterspout, HODGE took up his bundle, and caught up his staff, And went for a walk—if you please, don't laugh!— Singing dumbledumdeary, dumbledumdeary, Dumble, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 12, 1891 • Various
... wind had subsided, the swell was tremendous; billow after billow being carried against the 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
... 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 ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... 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 ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... there Were tempest-rifted wrecks of scattered beams; And some had sunk, whelmed in the mighty deep, Swamped by the torrent downpour from the clouds: For these endured not madness of wind-tossed sea Leagued with heaven's waterspout; for streamed the sky Ceaselessly like a river, while the deep Raved round them. And one cried: "Such floods on men Fell only when Deucalion's deluge came, When earth was drowned, and ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... 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
... hoofs on the pavement, a single cry broke forth, "Georges! Georges! it is Georges!" Anxious faces appeared at the windows, and from every door people came out, who began to run without knowing it, drawn along as by a waterspout. Did Georges see in this a last hope of safety? Did he believe he could escape in the crowd? However that may be, at the top of the Rue Voltaire he jumped out into the street. Caniolle, at the same moment, ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... of waterspout in the social atmosphere which forms suddenly in certain conditions of temperature, and which, as it eddies about, mounts, descends, thunders, tears, razes, crushes, demolishes, uproots, bearing with it great natures and small, the strong man and ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... a man has really made sacrifices in order to accomplish it. There are many special jobs which absolutely demand scrupulous veracity, loyalty in a man's personal relations, or financial integrity. The politician who ruins his career in climbing down a waterspout, or the engineer who prevents his employers from trusting his judgment and conscience in money matters, cannot plead in extenuation any other sort of instrumental excellence. They have deserved to fail, because they have trifled with their job; ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... 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 ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... dull roar. I 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 pour for ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... sunshine." And then Mrs. Robarts did get up and embrace her friend, thus hiding the tears which were running down her face. Continued sunshine indeed! A dark spot had already gathered on her horizon, which was likely to fall in a very waterspout of rain. What was to come of that terrible notice which was now lying in the desk under Lady ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... good old college times, I wonder how we ever had the nerve to imitate insanity the way we did. Here I am, rubbing noses with thirty, outgrowing my belts every year, and sitting eight hours at a desk without exploding. Am I the chap who climbed up sixty feet of waterspout a few short years ago and persuaded the clapper of the college bell to come down with me? Here you are all worn smooth on top and proprietor of an overflow meeting in a nursery. In about ten minutes you'll be tearing your coat-tails ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... they would have sent her 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 had been before we saw them. ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston
... diversions were at their height, and in the midst of the intense heat, a deluge burst over Detroit, like the breaking of a waterspout, in a few minutes turning the streets into rivers, deep enough in many places to cover the fetlocks of the horses. It rained as it only rains in a hot climate, and the storm was accompanied by thunder and lightning. Waggons and carriages hurried furiously along; stages intended ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... in the house excepting the piano, she continued to shriek and scream in a manner that was simply appalling. At last, one day, Potts made a critical examination of the premises, and, guided by the noise, he finally located the cat in the tin waterspout which descends the north wall of the house. He thinks the cat must have been skylarking on the roof some dark night and ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... to leave the bridge. Several soldiers were passing bearing the wounded to the edifice in spite of the fact that it was falling in ruins. Suddenly he was sprinkled from head to foot, as if the earth had opened to make way for a waterspout. A shell had fallen into the moat, throwing up an enormous column of water, making the carp sleeping in the mud fly into fragments, breaking a part of the edges and grinding to powder the white balustrades with ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... apartment in the Calle del Lobo. It was there and 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 ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... the plain below, and I saw a vast, a prodigious volume of pulverized pumice stone, of sand, of dust, rising to the heavens in the form of a mighty waterspout. It resembled the fearful phenomenon of a similar character known to the travelers in the desert ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... 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 ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... 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 all ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... sound 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
... then, betook themselves to slumber with unusual contentment, repeating the splendid supper in their dreams, with the addition of every famous wine that Oporto and Rheims could dispense, when they were awakened by a sudden and terrible storm. A waterspout stooped over the forest and sucked up a mass of crackling branches. The camp-fire hissed and went out in a fume of smoke. A continuity of thunder, far off at first, but approaching nearer and nearer, kept up a constant ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... a balloon, as a ball might be carried on the summit of a waterspout, had been taken into the circling movement of a column of air and had traversed space at the rate of ninety miles an hour, turning round and round as if ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... not biting the sun or moon 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 the maleficent Arakho for ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... 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 the she-oak bough. Amid a terrific peal of thunder, the long pent-up ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... windows of the dressing room on the first floor, and as a man who is comforted and happy, he forgot where he was and stood gazing upward amid the foul mud and faint decaying smell peculiar to the premises of this antiquated Parisian building. Big drops were dripping from a broken waterspout, and a ray of gaslight slipped from Mme Bron's window and cast a yellow glare over a patch of moss-clad pavement, over the base of a wall which had been rotted by water from a sink, over a whole cornerful of nameless filth ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... 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 and ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... for no price did I and my 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 lasted ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... monster loosed from torment, and finally, as 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
... 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 ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... to ask in Parliament (as poor gamblers in that Cockpit are wont), 'And why did not you make the offer sooner, then? Friendship with his Prussian Majesty, last year, would have saved the whole of that large Waterspout about the Meadows of Clamei! Nay need we, a few months ago, have spent such loads of gold subsidizing those Hessians and Danes against him? The treasures of this Country go a strange road, Mr. Speaker! What is the use of our industries and riches?' Heavens, ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... Rome the road parted company with the shore, and we turned inland over the plain. The night came on with drifting showers, which descended in torrents, lashing the naked plain, and battering our vehicle with the force and noise of a waterspout. And though at length the moon rose, and looked out at times from the cloud, she had nothing to show us but houseless, treeless desolation; and, as if scared at what she saw, she instantly hid her face in another ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... 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, ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... 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 sea rolling ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... 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 ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... hard against the flood he worked his way nearer and nearer toward the broken curbing and finally DOVE through the waterspout and clung grimly to the wall.... For a moment his body seemed to tremble.... Then with a supreme effort he pulled his body into the opening and for a moment checked the flood.... It seemed like a gallant sacrifice.... ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... together," he said to Billy, "and see that lightning reaching out? This is going to bust the world open, somewhere. That's no cloudburst that's shaping up, it's a regular old waterspout; I know ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... wouldn't dare to! 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! This is terrible! ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster
... 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 eyes. The gathering of armed knights ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... Eleanor, happily, "all's well that ends well, they say. I really believe Dolly had the worst time, when you think about it. She had to watch Bessie climbing down that waterspout." ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart
... 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 ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... fountain's spray; now 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 of a loom, ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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 making three sheets of water, clear ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... 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
... given him by the lieutenant, Eric pressed the button. There was a tremendous roar as a waterspout shot up from the surface of the sea. As though some vast leviathan had passed underneath the old bark and shouldered her out of the water, the long black hull heaved herself up slowly. She seemed to hang poised ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... some fearful catastrophe. The thermometer attained the height of 104 deg. Fahrenheit. The obscurity was then complete. Presently the most furious tempest imagination can conceive burst forth; and when the darkness cleared off, there was seen over the sea what looked like a waterspout of prodigious depth and breadth, suspended at a height of several feet above the water, and moving slowly away until it dispersed at last at a distance of many miles from the shore. The eclipse and the waterspout were nothing else ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... "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, perhaps sink us! ...
— 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. He brought it along ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... Stanley beyond 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 ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... knew (I know not how) there lurked quicksands full of dread, Rocks and reefs and whirlpools in the water-bed, Whence a waterspout Instantaneously leaped out, Roaring as it ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... 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 ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... was the study. This, as I have explained, was on the first floor. Its window looked out on to a strip of lawn at the side of the house ending in a shrubbery. The drop would not be pleasant, but I seemed to remember a waterspout that ran up the wall close to the window, and, in any case, I was not in a position to be deterred by the prospect of a bruise or two. I had not failed to realize that my position was one of extreme peril. When Buck, concluding the tour ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... speaking now of fine days; but there are days when the sky is cloudy and the wind blows, and the waters in the Bay of Cadiz below surge up sullen and yeasty, and there are days when the rain comes down quick, thick, and heavy as from a waterspout, and the streets are turned for the moment into rivulets. But the effects of the rain do not last long; Spain is what washerwomen would call a good drying country. Beyond its neatness and tidiness, Puerto has other features to recommend it to the traveller. It has a bookseller's ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... and he found himself in profound darkness. The waves murmured and broke at the entrance of the cave; the waterspout precipitated itself with a crash ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... flame; the breeze sings hoarsely among the cordage; the whole surface flood plunges on as if some immense cataract must soon appear after the rapids are passed. Every sea that the vessel shatters sends up a flying waterspout; and the frost acts with amazing suddenness, so that the spars, the rigging, and the deck gather layer after layer of ice. Supposing the vessel is employed in fishing, then the men in the forecastle crouch round the little ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... a terrific, appalling outburst that he hastily clambered back upon the bank, to watch the strange sight. For fully two minutes the waterspout quivered and vibrated in the air, when it collapsed as ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... not thus with Alberoni; his was one of those extraordinary fortunes which one sees, always with new astonishment, spring up around the throne; one of those caprices of destiny which chance raises and destroys; like a gigantic waterspout, which advances on the ocean, threatening to annihilate everything, but which is dispersed by a stone thrown from the hand of a sailor; or an avalanche, which threatens to swallow towns, and fill up valleys, because a bird in its flight has detached ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... number—when it is remembered that it is the port of entry for the great state of Virginia—is a strong argument against its asserted prosperity. Not long before my arrival they had been visited with a perfect deluge of rain, accompanied with a waterspout, which evidently had whirled up some of the ponds in the neighbourhood; for quantities of cat-fish fell during the storm, one of which, measuring ten inches, a friend told me he had himself picked up at a considerable distance ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... where I hoped to find some Trading Vessel of heavier Burden to take me to Constantinople. The Mediterranean Sea here very beautiful, and delightful to see the Dolphins, Tunnies, and other Fish, that frequently leapt out of the Water, and followed our Ship in great Numbers. Also a Waterspout, which is a Phenomenon very well known to Seamen in the Levant Trade, and reckoned very dangerous. It looked mighty Fierce and Terrific; and our Sailors, to conjure it away, had recourse to the Superstitious Devices of cutting the air with a Black-Handled ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... 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 ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... 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 and rain, men and horses, carts and carriages. ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... 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 by the terrible ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... days. When we first lived in Via Condotti, the waste-pipes to carry off the rain-water from the roofs projected far into the street, and when there was a violent thunderstorm, one might have thought a waterspout had broken over Rome, the water poured in such cascades from the houses on each side of the street. On one occasion the rain continued in torrents for thirty-six hours, and the Tiber came down in heavy flood, inundating the Ghetto and all the low parts of the city; the water was six feet deep in ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... nearing the ascent when a sound startled her. She swung round in her saddle, to see a wall of water roaring down the lane with the leap of some terrible wild beast. Somewhere in the hills there had been a waterspout. ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... troubling of the waters was neither more nor less than a waterspout, which again is neither more nor less than a whirlwind at sea, which gradually whisks the water round and round, and up and up, as you see straws so raised, until it reaches a certain height, when it invariably breaks. ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... fat, pompous 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 a pitcher of ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... 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 ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... 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 Britain is indeed at ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... 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
... He has not 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 ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States
... the glass from him and looking himself. 'It's only a waterspout, they come sometimes along with this appearance of the sea!' But presently I heard him mutter something under his voice to the lieutenant, and then he said aloud, 'It is best to be prepared;' and a moment after that he gave ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... 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, ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... 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. ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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
... station at Randalstown was much injured; great numbers of slates, and two and a half hundredweight of lead were torn from the roof. When passing over a portion of the lake, it presented the appearance of a waterspout. On land everything that it lapped up was whirled round and round, and carried upwards in the centre, whilst dense clouds surrounded the outside and came down near ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... hard at it, the aegis quivering, the thunder rattling, the lightning engaged in a perpetual skirmish. Earth was shaken like a sieve, buried in snow, bombarded with hail. It rained cats and dogs (if you will pardon my familiarity), and every shower was a waterspout. Why, in Deucalion's time, hey presto, everything was swamped, mankind went under, and just one little ark was saved, stranding on the top of Lycoreus and preserving a remnant of human seed for ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... was 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 the ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... violence, that they were obliged once more to run back towards the port they had left; but before they could reach it, they were driven out to sea by a terrific gale. Here for days they were tossed about, while the rain poured down in a perfect deluge, and to add to the terror of the seamen a waterspout was seen approaching, from which they narrowly escaped. For a short time the tempest ceased, but again raged with greater fury than before. No serious damage, however, having occurred, the vessels at length, on the 3rd of February, 1503, came to an anchor off the ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... waterspout observed off Guernsey last week "travelling towards France" is believed to have been making for ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various
... shot up in the form of a gigantic hourglass, and the "Albatross" was enveloped in the eddy of an enormous waterspout, while twenty others, black as ink, raged around her. Fortunately the gyratory movement of the water was opposite to that of the suspensory screws, otherwise the aeronef would have been hurled into ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... unavoidable lump of that height produces the same effect; the hood gives you a deliberate punch on the head. Before you have quite recovered, it gives you another. A miniature precipice appears. This was caused by the latest waterspout choosing to cut the road instead of follow it. The mail-cart does not pause. Its springs were made, apparently, to spring. It descends. For one instant you are left in the air, the next you resume your seat—with violence. This sort of thing does not last long, however, for you ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... the warriors' faces and showed the face of Demetrios as sly and leering. It was less the countenance of a proud lord than a carved head on some old waterspout. ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... laughed. "Does anything ever happen in this place? One would be almost thankful if a cyclone or waterspout came along, if it were only to give the boys something to talk about. Still, one of the girls here is going to get married. I'm not sure old man Clouston finds it helps his trade quite as much as he fancied it would when he fired his Chinamen ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... or to use a more 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
... 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 to the earth in ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... (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 rust ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... 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, in ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... great are the dangers to which those who lead a seafaring life are exposed. The lightning's flash may strike a ship when far away from port, upon the trackless deep, or the sudden bursting of a particular kind of cloud, called a waterspout, may overwhelm her, and none be left to tell her fate. But of all the perils to which a ship is liable, I think that of her striking on a sand-bank, or on sunken rocks is the greatest. There must be men and women now living on the Kentish ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... v.; current, tide, race, coulee. spring, artesian well, fount, fountain; rill, rivulet, gill, gullet, rillet[obs3]; streamlet, brooklet; branch [U.S.]; runnel, sike[obs3], burn, beck, creek, brook, bayou, stream, river; reach, tributary. geyser, spout, waterspout. body of water, torrent, rapids, flush, flood, swash; spring tide, high tide, full tide; bore, tidal bore, eagre[obs3], hygre[obs3]; fresh, freshet; indraught[obs3], reflux, undercurrent, eddy, vortex, gurge[obs3], whirlpool, Maelstrom, regurgitation, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... class of 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, it is said that the fluid leaps up into ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... shruggings, and 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 ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... waterspout," observed Fogg, as the rain swept against the cab as if driven from a full pressure hose, and they could feel the staunch locomotive quiver as it breasted great sweeps of the wind. "I don't like that," he muttered, as a great clump came against the cab ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... 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 ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... to say nothing 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 to-day. ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... found a voice in my heart before the wind 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 so ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... 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 high to storm ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... rafters on the outside or inside according to the fancy of the builder; sunshine and storm had stained it grayish brown, and no tint could better harmonize with the background and surroundings. In one corner of the stoop a tin wash-basin stood under a waterspout in the sink; there swung the family towels; the public comb, hanging by its teeth to a nail, had seen much service; a piece of brown soap lay in an abalone shell tacked to the wall; a small mirror reflected kaleidoscopical ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... powerful steam-engine. A pressure upon a button, and a few seconds sufficed to exchange a speed of four for one of twenty miles an hour; while, instead of sinking the vessel below the surface, the master directed the engine to pump out all the liquid ballast she contained. The waterspout thus sent forth half-drowned the enemy which had already come within a few yards of our starboard quarter, and effectually-scared the others. It was just as well that Enva, who heartily hated the bitter cold, was snugly ensconced in the warm cushions ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various
... some terrible 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 of the custom we guessed that it was done for fear of their ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... answered Jorworth, "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 ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... cloud, that, guiding Israel through the land of Yemen, shone, Like a spirit of the desert, like a phantom, pale and wan, O'er the desert's sandy ocean, like a waterspout at sea, Whirls a yellow, cloudy column, tracking them ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... direction at a sharp run, carrying no balls, for they intended to make them on the scene of operation. When the other two divisions were off, Speug addressed his faithful band. "MacFarlane, take six birkies, climb up the waterspout, and clean the richt-hand shed, couping the Pennies into the street. Mackenzie, ye're no bad at the fightin'; tak' anither sax and empty the roof o' the left-hand shed, and 'gin ye can clout that Penny that's sittin' on the riggin' it'll teach him to ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... circling around, and must be looking for signs of the sub. Wow! that was a terrible waterspout, though. And there ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... 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 ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... Andes, the earthquake, the disappearance of Robert, his capture by the condor, Thalcave's providential shot, the episode of the red wolves, the devotion of the young lad, Sergeant Manuel, the inundations, the caimans, the waterspout, the night on the Atlantic shore— all these details, amusing or terrible, excited by turns laughter and horror in the listeners. Often and often Robert came in for caresses from his sister and Lady Helena. Never was a boy so much embraced, or by ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... for racing, a beautiful craft, managed much like a racing automobile. As she started from the dock, the purring drone of her eight cylinders sent her feathering over the waves like a skipping stone. She sank back into the water, her bow leaping upward, a cloud of spray in her wake, like a waterspout. ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... Teddington, who had done climbs in Switzerland, came in orthodox costume with nailed boots and a jaunty Tyrolean hat with a piece of edelweiss stuck in the front. Miss Lodge wore a full-length leather coat and felt hat in which she looked ready to defy a waterspout or a tornado. Miss Moseley, who owned to an ever-present terror of bulls, grasped an iron-spiked walking-stick, and Miss Davis had a First Aid wallet slung across her back. In the girls' opinion Miss Bowes shirked abominably. Instead ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... gorged on bitterness without a name: 510 Ah! fool, to choose such part Of soul-consuming care! Sense failed in the mortal strife: Like the watch-tower of a town Which an earthquake shatters down, Like a lightning-stricken mast, Like a wind-uprooted tree Spun about, Like a foam-topped waterspout Cast down headlong in the sea, 520 She fell at last; Pleasure past and anguish past, Is it ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti |
