might
have avoided it; but there was scarcely steerage-way on her. I thought
of what Peter had just told me, and I thought if it does break over us,
it will certainly send us to the bottom. The captain ordered the slow
match to be brought to him, and went forward to the gun, which had been
loaded and run out. On came the water-spout. I could not conceive what
he was going to do. He stooped down, and, running his eye along the
gun, fired a shot right through the watery pillar. Down came the liquid
mass with a thundering sound into the sea, but clear of the ship, though
even our deck got a little sprinkling; and when I looked up at the sky,
not a sign of a cloud was there. Peter told me that we ought to be
thankful that we had escaped the danger so well, for that he had never
been in greater risk from a water-spout in his life.

We used frequently to catch dolphins during the passage, by striking
them with a small harpoon as they played under the bow of the brig.
They are not at all like the creatures I remember carved in stone at the
entrance of some gentleman's park near Dublin. They measure about four
feet in length; are thick in the middle, with a green back and a yellow
belly, and have a sinking between the tip of the snout and the top of
the head; indeed, they are something like a large salmon. We used to
eat them, and they were considered like a fat turbot.

Frequently flying-fish fell on our deck in attempting to escape from
their two enemies--the dolphin and the bonito: but they fell, if not
from the frying-pan into the fire, from the water into the frying-pan;
for we used to eat them also. Indeed nothing comes amiss to a sailor's
mess. The flying-fish, which is about the size of a herring, has two
long fins which serve it as wings; but it can only keep in the air so
long as its fins remain wet. These fish, like herrings, also swim
together in large shoals, which, as their pursuers come among them,
scatter themselves far and wide. Nothing very particular occurred on
the passage, till once more we made the land.

I went aloft when I heard the ever-welcome cry from the
foretopmast-head: "Land! land on the starboard bow!" Then I saw it
rising in a succession of faint blue hills out of the sparkling sea.
Peter told me that it was the large island of Hispaniola, or Saint
Domingo, and that it belonged partly to Spain and partly to France; but
that there were a great number of blacks and coloured people