fairly
close quarters."

"How?"

"Well, here is a pistol. Put it in your pocket and draw it on me as I
come toward you."

The reporter did as he was directed. He had not raised the weapon when
the noose was around his hand and the pistol was jerked a dozen feet.

"Try again, and tighter," said Ohnimus.

The reporter did so. The pistol was not jerked from his hand this
time, but before he could snap it Ohnimus had thrown a coil around his
neck and pulled his pistol hand up over his shoulder. In another
instant a second coil was around the reporter's body, and both arms
were fastened firmly to his sides. He could not move that pistol an
inch. No clearer demonstration of the use of the lasso as a weapon of
defence was possible.

"What is the most difficult animal, in your opinion, to catch with the
lasso?" was asked.

"A sea lion," answered the rope thrower. "I have caught them off the
southern coast. They go right through a noose. The only way to get
them is to throw the rope around his neck and back of one flipper. A
hog is hard to catch, too. He pulls his legs out of a noose without
half trying, and you can't hold him by the neck or body. The only way
is to get him like the sea lion--back of one foreleg."

A WATERSPOUT.

Doubtless many of my readers have heard of the dreadful encounters of
vessels with waterspouts, when the ship escaped destruction by firing a
cannon-ball into the waterspout, thus causing it to break apart.

Now these things are by no means such terrible objects as many believe.
No doubt the vessels of the present day are larger and stronger than
formerly, and perhaps waterspouts have become smaller. Be as it may,
the people who go down to the sea in ships need give themselves no
uneasiness about them, for really they amount to little.

The _Slavonia_, of the Hamburg line left Brunshausen, on the Elbe, on
February 26 last, under the command of Capt. H. Schmidt. She had only
two passengers. The weather was squally and the air full of mist when
she reached the outer Banks, 900 miles from New York, shortly after
sunrise on Sunday, March 16. The big vessel was heading west by north,
when, at 7 o'clock, Second Mate Erichsen, who was on the bridge, saw
emerge through the mist on the starboard side of the ship, at the
distance of about a thousand feet, a towering column which united sea
and sky. The column was in front of the ship to starboard, and was
moving in a southeas