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.

Like the 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 where'er they flee.

[Illustration: "N-n-nothin' but a drink of water"] "You're sure you ain't mistook in your thirst and that it ain't a suddint cravin' for licker, and that you ain't sort of p'intin' down the waterspout for the Dutchman's, Duckie Doodums?" "Shorely not, Honeybunch darlin'," he finally fetched up, though he was hardly breathing.

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 silent, invisible force.

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.

"Because your ma told me that you was given to somnambulasticatin' in your sleep, and that I must keep you tied up nights or you'd wake up some mornin' at the foot of a waterspout with your head bust open and a lot of good licker spilt out on the grass.