A strange spout.

The 11th at noon, having a very good observation, I found myself to the northward of my reckoning; and thence concluded that we had a current setting north-west, or rather more westerly, as the land lies.  From that time to the next morning we had fair clear weather and a fine moderate gale from south-east to east by north:  but at daybreak the clouds began to fly, and it lightned very much in the east, south-east and north-east.  At sun-rising the sky looked very red in the east near the horizon; and there were many black clouds both to the south and north of it.  About a quarter of an hour after the sun was up there was a squall to the windward of us; when on a sudden one of our men on the forecastle called out that he saw something astern, but could not tell what:  I looked out for it and immediately saw a spout beginning to work within a quarter of a mile of us, exactly in the wind.  We presently put right before it.  It came very swiftly, whirling the water up in a pillar about 6 or 7 yards high.  As yet I could not see any pendulous cloud from whence it might come; and was in hopes it would soon lose its force.  In 4 or 5 minutes time it came within a cable’s length of us and passed away to leeward; and then I saw a long pale stream coming down to the whirling water.  This stream was about the bigness of a rainbow:  the upper end seemed vastly high, not descending from any dark cloud and therefore the most strange to me; I never having seen the like before.  It passed about a mile to leeward of us and then broke.  This was but a small spout, not strong nor lasting; yet I perceived much wind in it as it passed by us.  The current still continued at north-west a little westerly, which I allowed to run a mile per hour.

A conjecture concerning A new passage southward.

By an observation the 13th at noon I found myself 25 minutes to the northward of my reckoning; whether occasioned by bad steerage, a bad account, or a current, I could not determine; but was apt to judge it might be a complication of all; for I could not think it was wholly the current, the land here lying east by south, and west by north, or a little more northerly and southerly.  We had kept so nigh as to see it, and at farthest had not been above 20 leagues from it, but sometimes much nearer; and it is not probable that any current should set directly off from a land.  A tide indeed may; but then the flood has the same force to strike in upon the shore as the ebb to strike off from it:  but a current must have set nearly alongshore either easterly or westerly; and if anything northerly or southerly, it could be but very little in comparison of its east or west course, on a coast lying as this doth; which yet we did not perceive.  If therefore we were deceived by a current it is very probable that the land is here disjoined, and that there is a passage through to the southward, and that the land from King William’s Cape to this place is an island, separated from New Guinea by some strait as New Britain is by that which we came through.  But this being at best but a probable conjecture I shall insist no farther upon it.