I wish I could locate the old book (one of those thick hardbound histories of Catholic heroes) in which I read about the event. It was on one of his later voyages to the New World. While sailing along the South American coast Columbus’ ship got caught in a huge storm. It wasn’t a hurricane, but the storm’s gale force winds and rain carried the ship along with it like a floating log as it swirled around the Atlantic. Days went by, then a whole week, with the crew helpless to escape the storm’s grip. With no stars to navigate by they were at the mercy of the waves. And, if things couldn’t get any worse, they did. One afternoon as they were being tossed about in the huge frothing swells, the clouds began to take on a strange bulbous formation, growing blackish-gray, and spreading an eerie greenish hue across the sky. Suddenly there was no wind and no rain, just an ominous stillness; nor were the waves behaving as they do in a storm; they seemed to have changed direction pushing the ship from the stern in another direction. A horrible roaring sound broke the silence. About a league ahead the clouds and the sea seemed to have come together forming a gigantic silvery tower. The sailors cowered for fear. What was this thing, they wondered in dreadful expectation? A demon of the sea? It was moving, growing bigger, louder, and coming straight toward their ship. “God help us,” the men shouted, “we are doomed!” The valiant captain, Columbus, was awestruck and terrified . Whatever this is, he thought, it is subject to the Creator of the wind and the sea and the clouds, and all things. So, he stood and faced this unknown tempest and called upon the Holy Name. Then with a copy of the Last Gospel in his hand, as he stood on the farthest plank of the prow, he shouted: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Before he finished the prayer, the swirling monster picked up its tail and leaped back up into the sky as it headed off in the opposite direction. This was Columbus’ first experience with a waterspout. As is usually the case with tornadoes, whether on land or sea, they tend to form at the rear of a storm system. So, with that, the sun soon broke through the clouds and there was peace upon the waters. A thousand sea gulls circling around their vessel told the weary crew that the shore was close at hand.
