332 
A VOYAGE TO PPITZBERGEN '. 
schooner over the narrow and finer lines of the other 
craft about us. We now resolve to run for Peter¬ 
head ; but the bar harbour, dry at low water, is sur¬ 
mounted by a boiling and seething surf; no vessel 
durst venture there in weather such as this, and this, 
be it remembered, is the condition of the harbours 
along our eastern coast from Leith to the Humber, 
offering no refuge whatever for a belaboured craft like 
ours, running from the north. 
Here it was we saw a large water-spout—one of 
those remarkable phenomena seen at rare intervals 
along the coast of England ; not one of those steady 
columns of water that rise like a pillar out of calm 
still water, such as we have seen in the tropical seas— 
hissing and foaming after the approved fashion, twist¬ 
ing round and round in a long spiral, growing thinner 
and thinner, until they disappear altogether, to re¬ 
appear, perhaps, again at a little distance, in company 
with some ten or twelve other water-spouts, carrying, 
each of them, an enormous volume of water into the 
thin, warm air; but this, a great thick cloud, low 
down over the surface of the sea, dark and threaten¬ 
ing-looking, as it travelled, at a great pace, over the 
waves, and was only linked with the ocean, from which 
it sprung by a slender neck, as it swept along before 
the storm, itself threatening, in turn, with destruction 
