Mar. IQO7] PROCEEDINGS S. I. ASS'n arts and sciences, 101 



We started out with bait and rods about 2:15 o'clock and fished for 

 a short time off the point without success. We took up our anchor 

 and went down to the old buoy on the edge of the Princes Bay channel 

 and then ran in to the black buoy on the same channel. 



It was then beginning- to thicken up to the southeast, so that we 

 again took up anchor and ran in to a point about one thousand yards 

 off the Terra-Marine Club. About this time it was thick with clouds 

 about two hundred feet above the surface. There was not much wind. 

 The clouds were particularly thick over the red buoy, our second 

 anchorage. It began to blow from the northeast and rain. It looked 

 so threatening that we decided to run for shelter back of Tottenville. 

 There was a large yawl running down just outside of us under jib and 

 jiggrer. 



With the rain came hail, at first in pieces about one-quarter inch 

 largest dimension; afterwards these hailstones increased to about two 

 in the shorter axis. They seemed to strike at about five or six feet 

 apart and made holes in the water. 



We were then running down the beach with the yawl outside of us. 

 The wind had nearh' all gone down. I was steering, young Morris 

 was amidship, and Mr, Baldwin was watching the engine aft. We 

 were in oil skins and huddled up into as small a space as possible, as 

 those hailstones hurt when they struck. Mr, Baldwin was hit by one 

 of them and had a lame shoulder for several days afterwards. 



The atmosphere below the clouds was comparatively clear. Suddenly 

 the clouds over the red buoy, before mentioned, began to revolve in 

 the direction of the movement of the hands of a clock, in a circle of 

 about two hundred to two hundred and fifty feet in diameter. These 

 clouds let down a long finger of mist, this finger was met by a solid 

 cylinder of water about forty feet in diameter and of the same hight. 

 out of the center of which another finger went up and met the descend- 

 ing finger from the clouds. The meeting of the two formed a complete 

 water spout which went off to the southeast in most stupendous 

 gyrations. 



The yawl, being nearest to the point, dropped sails and anchor with 

 the most extraordinary celerity, and Mr. Baldwin called out to me "Put 

 the boat ashore. I never was very well acquainted with water spouts 

 and don't want any closer knowledge of them," 



The spout by this time had changed its direction of travel and was 

 coming our way, I headed the boat for the beach. The spout after 

 coming our way for probably a minute changed its course again to the 



