"Porpoise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... still a long time and was beginning to think that his trip had been in vain, when he heard a soft crackling of the twigs above him, a heavy tread crashing through the bushes, a puffing snorting breath from the porpoise-like Pat, and he held his own breath and lay very still. Suppose Pat should take a new trail and discover his hiding place? His heart pounded with great dull thuds. But Pat slid heavily down to the little clearing below him, fumbled ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... hours the Nautilus floated in these brilliant waves, and our admiration increased as we watched the marine monsters disporting themselves like salamanders. I saw there in the midst of this fire that burns not the swift and elegant porpoise (the indefatigable clown of the ocean), and some swordfish ten feet long, those prophetic heralds of the hurricane whose formidable sword would now and then strike the glass of the saloon. Then appeared the smaller fish, the balista, the leaping mackerel, wolf-thorn-tails, and a hundred ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... a few hours before high water, (the day he laid the sloop ashore) he attempted to get some swans, but met with none that could not fly. He saw several large fish, or animals that came up to the surface of the water to blow, in the manner of a porpoise, or rather of a seal, for they did not spout, nor had they any dorsal fin. The head also strongly resembled the bluff-nosed hair seal, but their size was greater than any which Mr. Flinders had seen before. He fired three musket balls into ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... Turk had puffed like a Porpoise, grunted and wallowed like a Hog, to his heart's content and to the envy of the eight who sat sweltering and impatient, he arose, all dribbling ooze, probably to seek a new wallowing place, when his nose discovered something on the bank that had far more effect than ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... not realise that what she really wanted was that Fred should be solicitous about her. If he had shown the slightest anxiety over her she would have become recklessly daring. But young Fred would as soon have shown tender care for a frisky young porpoise in the water, as Leslie, even had it been his nature to care unduly for any ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... old man. His arms and legs were very large, round, short, and stumpy; so that when he had on his great monkey-jacket, and sou'west cap flapping in his face, and his sea boots drawn up to his knees, he looked like a fat porpoise, standing on end. He had a round face, too, like a walrus; and with about the same expression, half human and half indescribable. He was, upon the whole, a good-natured fellow, and a little given to looking at sea-life romantically; singing songs about susceptible mermaids who fell ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... directly on our course, and I was looking at her from the windlass, trying to form some opinion as to the expediency of our luffing-to, in order to hold our own. Of a sudden, this brig gave a plunge, and she went down like a porpoise diving. What caused this disaster I never knew; but, in five minutes we passed as near as possible over the spot, and not a trace of her was to be seen. I could not discover so much as a handspike floating, ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... request of his father, would send her toward the surface by means of the deflecting rudder. Then she would dive to the bottom again. Once, as a test, she was sent obliquely to the surface, her tower just emerging, and then she darted downward again, like a porpoise that had come up to roll over, and suddenly concluded to seek the depths. In fact, had any one seen the maneuver they would have imagined the craft was a ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... half way to the zenith, burned bright in a cloudless sky, whilst in the east and west distant banks of purple mist coloured the liquid plain with a cool green-blue, a celadon tint that reposed the eye and the brain. The porpoise raised in sport his dark, glistening back to the light of day, and plunged into the cool depths as if playing off the "amate sponde" of the Mediterranean; and sandpipers and curlews, the latter wild as ever, paced the smooth, pure floor. ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... sharks, spotted dogfish that frequent these waters, big eagle rays, swarms of seahorse looking like knights on a chessboard, eels quivering like fireworks serpents, armies of crab that fled obliquely by crossing their pincers over their carapaces, finally schools of porpoise that held contests of speed with the Nautilus. But by this point observing, studying, and classifying were ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... continued in sounding of trumpets, with drums and fifes; also winding the cornets and hautboys, and in the end of their jollity, left with the battle and ringing of doleful knells. Towards the evening also we caught in the Golden Hind a very mighty porpoise with harping iron, having first stricken divers of them, and brought away part of their flesh sticking upon the iron, but could recover only that one. These also, passing through the ocean in herds, did portend storm. I omit to recite frivolous report by them ...
— Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage to Newfoundland • Edward Hayes
... is so. The first of these hideous monsters has the snout of a porpoise, the head of a lizard, the teeth of a crocodile; and it is this that has deceived us. It is the most fearful of all antediluvian reptiles, the world—renowned ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... forecastle head. He was intelligent, very strong, and of proved courage. Incidentally we are told, so exact is our narrator, that Tom had the finest pigtail for thickness and length of any man in the Navy. This appendage, much cared for and sheathed tightly in a porpoise skin, hung half way down his broad back to the great admiration of all beholders and to the great ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... himself and lifting his shoulders, when he had passed beyond hearing of the sentinel at the gate, "ziff! I can punch a good stiff stroke yet, Monsieur le Gouverneur. Ah, ziff!" and he blew like a porpoise. ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... were white with horror at the death we so narrowly had avoided, old Davie did not even breathe more quickly. The man had no more imagination than a porpoise. ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... we were cheated out of more than half of it, and when it was obtained one would have judged from its motley hues, exhibiting the consistency and appearance of variegated fancy soap, that it was the flesh of the porpoise or sea-hog, and had been an inhabitant of the ocean rather than the sty. The peas were about as digestible as grape-shot; and the butter—had it not been for its adhesive properties to retain together the particles of ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... of Heaven. Here and there a drove of small flying-fishes rose and skimmed over the surface like swallows, but they too soon plunged into the blue and sought below that the cool green depths. Into this tranquil scene steamed the Kinfauns Castle in a triangle of snow, a big porpoise rolling and rollicking along beside her, now rising on this side, now on that. When he came very close he could see into the saloon windows, and presently he saw the Captain standing at the end of a table spread with ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... me and my friends—and this our boat cast upon the reef like a stranded porpoise. Wilt help us float again, so that we may get to the king's town to-night and sleep in peace? And I shall pay every man twenty sticks of rich, sweet tobacco and four bottles of ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... Personages introduced must needs Come and Go precisely as they Came and Went to me in Real Life. I have often wished, when I had Power and Riches, to meet with and show my Gratitude to the rough old Sea-Porpoise that used to Rope's-End me so, and was so tearing a Tyrant to his Hands, and yet in a mere fit of kind-heartedness played the Honest Man to me, when All Things seemed against me, and rescued John Dangerous from ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... which to observe the usual solemnities; they thought it was possible to obtain the soul of the departed in some tangible transmigrated form. On the beach, near where a person had been drowned, and whose body was supposed to have become a porpoise, or on the battlefield, where another fell, might have been seen, sitting in silence, a group of five or six, and one a few yards before them with a sheet of native cloth spread out on the ground in front of him. ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... come in from the Pacific, followed by larger fish such as the halibut, the cod, the porpoise, and the finned-back -whale. Over the fish hover the sea-birds—"an immense cloud of innumerable gulls," wrote Bishop Hills after a visit to the place, "so many and so thick that as they moved to and fro, up and down, the sight resembled a heavy ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock
... where you are—that's all! There, by Gosh! we're in for it." At this point of the interesting dialogue, the young 'ooman gave a sudden lurch to larboard, and turned the boat completely over. The boatman, blowing like a porpoise, soon strode across the upturned bark, and turning round, beheld the drenched "fare" clinging ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... man has some houses in the borough, and an omnium gatherum like this was a good time to do the civil thing to him. There he is; peep into the card-room, and you'll see his great porpoise back, the same old man that Harry in his benevolence assisted to a chair. He shook hands with Leonard, and told him there was a snug desk at ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... obvious mystification," was the answer; "poor Mrs. Legend has picked up some straggling porpoise, and converted him, by a touch of her magical wand, into a Boanerges of literature. The thing is as clear as day, for the worthy fellow smells of tar and cigar smoke. I perceive that Mr. Effingham is laughing out ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... bloated superior servant replied, "Well, ma'am, to be sure, it always was so in them famullies where I have lived; the governess never didn't eat at the table." The fact is natural, and the reason obvious, but oh! my dear, the manner of the fat, pampered porpoise of a man-menial was too horrid. Then, on going for a candle into Miss Hall's room one evening, I found she had been provided with tallow ones, and, upon remonstrating about it with the chambermaid, she replied (with a courtesy at every other ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... there. Full fathom five thy father lies. At one, he said. Found drowned. High water at Dublin bar. Driving before it a loose drift of rubble, fanshoals of fishes, silly shells. A corpse rising saltwhite from the undertow, bobbing a pace a pace a porpoise landward. There he is. Hook it quick. Pull. Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor. We ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... concern, skipper," said the mate as he brought the axe to take the battons off the forehatch. "A fellow might as well try to work a crab at low tide as to keep her to it in a blow like that. She minds her helm like a porpoise in the breakers. Old Davy must have put his mark upon her some time, but I never know'd a lucky vessel to be got as she was. She makes a haul on the underwriters every time she drifts across; for I never knew her to sail clear since I shipped in the old tub. ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... were served dried squid and porpoise, and fresh flying-fish and bonito and shrimp. The feast was complete with mangoes, oranges, and pineapples, also bananas ripened in the expeditious way of the Marquesas. They bury them in a deep hole lined with cracked candlenuts and grass and cover all with earth. In several days—and they know ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... and amid all kinds of mocking advice we drifted down upon and fouled the Ghost, whose bowsprit poked square through our mainsail and ripped a hole in it as big as a barn door. The Centipede and the Porpoise doubled up on the cabin in paroxysms of laughter, and left us to get clear as best we could. This, with much unseamanlike performance, we succeeded in doing, and likewise in clearing the anchor-chain, of which we let out about three ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... bones, but tosses you about as if you were an India-rubber ball made on purpose;" added he, bursting into a hearty roar as he caught Mrs. Bates' eye fastened upon his rotund proportions, as if to ascertain where the bones were. "Oh! well, my good woman," continued he, "even a porpoise couldn't stand the bumping and thumping that we poor mortals are subject to when we trust ourselves on shipboard. Why, I solemnly protest that I've been pitched from my berth, many a time, quite across the cabin into ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... porpoise will keep us in oil all winter, and as for the seal-skins, I can sell them at Quebec for a good round price. So far so good. But this is the first stroke of luck this year. It has been a poor season. Have you any news, ...
— Marie Gourdon - A Romance of the Lower St. Lawrence • Maud Ogilvy
... personality of porpoises. They swam beside the ship, playing about in the water all the while, rolling over and diving, and chasing each other just as if they knew they had a "gallery." We did not reward them very well either, for the Prophet shot one, and we ate bits of him for lunch—the porpoise, I mean, not the Prophet. I thought he would make a good companion-piece for the polar bear, and he was quite edible. He only needed a rasher of bacon to make you believe he ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... sea, the sea, the o—pen sea, the blue, the fresh;' but here we halt; Mr. CORNWALL knew very little about the sea, or he would have written SALT. 'The whales they whistled, the porpoise rolled, And the dolphins bared their backs of gold;' Worse and worse; more blunders than words, and such a jumble! Whales spout, but never whistle; dolphins' backs are silver; and porpoises never roll, but tumble. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... race, but we are concerned with but one horse—Eliphaz, late Fairfax. When the barrier rose Jockey Merritt booted the spurs home and tried to hurl the big black into the lead. He might as well have tried to get early speed out of a porpoise. Eliphaz grunted loudly and in exactly five lumbering jumps was in last place; the other horses went on and left the favourite snorting in the dust. Jockey Merritt raked the black sides with his spurs and slashed cruelly with his ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... hardly be seen. All that could be seen of him was a very small black dot moving swiftly on the blue surface of the water, a little black dot which now and then lifted a leg or an arm in the air. One would have thought that Pinocchio had turned into a porpoise playing ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... at the store of Laneville & Co. No one was in save a small lad, who, to his inquiry, replied that all were sick. The youth was a short, porpoise-shaped lad, who appeared quite independent for his age and station, and told George that he had better call the next day, as the folks would n't be down. In an instant George suspected the cause of their absence. ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... obliging as to attend Lord Lovat, with his archers, all the way to Angouleme. He had the luck to procure a cursed little chaise, where Lord Lovat was in a manner buried alive under the unwieldy bulk of this enormous porpoise." This relation, so different from that given by Mr. Arbuthnot, weakens the veracity of both accounts, and leads one to infer that the long narrative by the reverend gentleman of Lord Lovat's adventures in the Bastille ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... animal is the porpoise. It is shaped something like a fish, except the head, which looks like that of a hog. They will follow a ship in droves, swimming near the surface of the water and jumping out of the water and diving ...
— A Soldier in the Philippines • Needom N. Freeman
... these predictions came exactly to pass, for the master and his boat's crew were lost before the Investigator was joined by the Lady Nelson, from Port-Jackson; and when the former ship was condemned, the people embarked with their commander on board the Porpoise, which was wrecked on a coral reef, and nine ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... in her early forties, rose to the bait like a porpoise being hand-fed at a Florida zoo. "Dear Swami Chandra! How perfectly wonderful to see you again! You're looking ...
— Psichopath • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the breathless commands as if he were hypnotized, puffing and blowing like a porpoise as he struggled to slip the linen covers over the chairs. Gladwin worked at top speed, too; and just as he was covering the great chest he gave a start and ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... path round the sun. Yet the sparrows in the Surrey valleys have not heard of it, and the sea-birds know nothing of it, save that occasionally they are bewildered to find a submarine rising from the waters instead of the porpoise for whose presence they had hoped. It is said that the pheasants in a Sussex wood awoke and screamed on Sunday night during the barrage fire around London. But this was egotism on the part of the pheasants. The pheasants of Wiltshire did not have their sleep broken, and so ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... is gone, but the otter remains, and comes so near the mighty City as just the other side of the well-known Lock, the portal through which a thousand boats at holiday time convey men and women to breathe pure air. The porpoise, and even the seal, it is said, ventures to Westminster sometimes; the otter to Kingston. Thus, the sea sends its denizens past the vast multitude that surges over the City bridges, and the last link with the olden time, the otter, still ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... loud was the harping in the halls of Alef the Cornishman, King of Gweek. Savory was the smell of fried pilchard and hake; more savory still that of roast porpoise; most savory of all that of fifty huge squab pies, built up of layers of apples, bacon, onions, and mutton, and at the bottom of each a squab, or young cormorant, which diffused both through the pie and through the ambient air a delicate odor ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... panted Joel, blowing like a porpoise, and running up with red cheeks, "and you wouldn't stop," he added in a very ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... conditions, living in the most distant climes, and at immensely remote periods, fitted to wholely different ends, yet to find large groups united by a similar type of structure. When we for instance see bat, horse, porpoise-fin, hand, all built on same structure{145}, having bones{146} with same name, we see there is some deep bond of union between them{147}, to illustrate this is the foundation and objects what is called ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... north and east, the Bottle-nose on the north, the Humpback on the east and south; and the Finback and Sulphur-bottom are common and widely distributed, especially on the east. The Little White whale, or "White porpoise," is fairly common all round; the Killer is widely distributed, but most numerous on the east, where the Narwhal is also found. The Harbour and Striped porpoises, and the Common and Bottle-nosed dolphins, are chiefly ...
— Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador • William Wood
... shining yellow stones, and stowed abundance of them on their ships, deeming, like certain Virginian gold-seekers of a later date, that their fortunes were now surely made. They found also "a great dead fish, round like a porepis [porpoise], twelve feet long, having a Horne of two yardes, lacking two ynches, growing out of the Snout, wreathed and straight, like a Waxe-Taper, and might be thought to be a Sea-Unicorne. It was reserved as a Jewell by the Queens' commandment in her Wardrobe ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the life of me how long it was before I first sat up and took notice of the fat little man. He was bobbing up and down in the surf for all the world like some ungainly porpoise, and every time he moved he shot sunlit streams of water off his gross body. I've seen fat men in my time, but this one was just about the limit. He was all up and down and then across. I know that doesn't quite explain what he looked like, but it's about the ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... nine o'clock to one, a gentleman with rather long hair and no neckcloth, who writes and grins as if he thought he were very funny indeed. At one he disappears, presently emerges from a bathing-machine, and may be seen, a kind of salmon-coloured porpoise, splashing about in the ocean. After that he may be viewed in another bay-window on the ground floor, eating a strong lunch; and after that, walking a dozen miles or so, or lying on his back in the sand reading a book. Nobody bothers him unless they know he is disposed to be talked ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... curiosity and fear. La Salle knew those with whom he was dealing, and, without ceremony, entered the chief's lodge with his followers. The crowd closed around them, naked men and half-naked women, described by Joutel as of a singular ugliness. They gave buffalo- meat and dried porpoise to the unexpected guests; but La Salle, racked with anxiety, hastened to close the interview; and, having without difficulty recovered the kidnapped men, he returned to the beach, leaving with the Indians, as usual, an impression of ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... tender and timid. Trepidation and the coldness of the water made him turn back to regain the hole he crept out of. In coming near the staging where the sentinel was posted, he heard the poor fellow breathe, and at length got sight of him;—"Ah," says Paddy, "here is a porpoise, and I'll stick him with my bayonet." On which the terrified young man exclaimed—"don't kill me, I am a prisoner." The sentinel held out his hand, and helped him on to the staging, and then fired his gun to give the alarm. The guard turned out, and the officers ran ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... At this time the squadron consisted of the frigates "Cumberland" (flagship), "Potomac," and "Raritan"; the steam frigate "Mississippi"; the sloops-of-war "Falmouth," "John Adams," and "St. Mary's"; the steam-sloop "Princeton"; and the brigs "Lawrence," "Porpoise," and "Somers." Before the close of the war some of these ships were recalled, at least one was wrecked, and the squadron was from time to time ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... the spectacles was presently overtaken by a stout, elderly woman, who landed in the exhausted condition of a porpoise that has come ashore, and stood regardless of everything but her own weight, while member after member of the party straggled up. No sooner did this group espy the artist than they moved in his direction. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... frame of mind she reached the hill which commanded a view of the three-cornered field and the snug cottage, and down she rushed to embrace her darling Andy and his gentle bride. Puffing and blowing like a porpoise, bang she went into the cottage, and Matty being the first person she met, she flung herself upon her, and covered ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... made more bad faces with his oppression than ever Michael Angelo made good ones. He lifts up 's nose, like a foul porpoise before a storm. ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... periscope suddenly appeared, then the submarine dived, rose once more, showing the rounded conning tower, dived, rose again, like a porpoise ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... happened to occur in the region inhabited by those who speak a particular language; and even things recognised and named may have been very superficially examined, and therefore wrongly classed, as when a whale or porpoise is called a fish, or a slowworm is confounded with snakes. A scientific classification, on the other hand, aims at the utmost comprehensiveness, ransacking the whole world from the depths of the earth to ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... hot here," remarked Ebony, going to a pool a little further from the fountain-head, where the water had cooled somewhat. There the negro dropped his simple garments, and was soon rolling like a black porpoise in his warm bath. It was only large enough for one, but close to it was another small pool big enough for several men. There Mark and Hockins were soon disporting joyously, while the Secretary looked on and laughed. Evidently he did not ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... let for L6 per annum. The rent was afterwards increased to L8, and a lease upon those terms expired in 1780. Since 1786 this fishery has been abandoned. Mention is also made that occasionally a porpoise was caught here, and, as a matter of fact, two watermen shot one here lately; but it was confiscated, and the men fined for discharging firearms on the river. The ferry at the time of the Conquest yielded 20s. a year to the Lord ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... 1) must have been very large, seven or eight feet being the ordinary length, while specimens measuring from twenty to thirty feet are not uncommon. The large head is pointed, like that of the Porpoise; the jaws contain a number of conical teeth, of reptilian form and character; the eyeball was very large, as may be seen by the socket, and it was supported by pieces of bone, such as we find now only in the eyes of birds of prey and in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... this ... we only meant to frighten the Law, a splash was all that we intended, but the sun was in my Friend's eyes as he dropped the ball. It struck the bow of the boat, which went under like a frightened porpoise. There were two men in it, besides the Law itself, and they all came up spitting and spouting, and stood up to their necks in water. Oaths bubbled up to us. The boat came up badly perforated, and I expect we shall get into trouble. It was funny, but the War has rather pacified us peace-time belligerents, ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... ears save the soft puff now and then of a porpoise, the slow creak of the masts, as we swayed gently on the swell, the patter of the reef-points, and the occasional flap of the hanging sails. An awning covered the fore and after parts of the schooner, under which the men composing the watch ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... of the former, although plenty of the latter were to be seen at times—generally out of range. Two I shot, but I believe when hit they sink. Anyway I did not see either of them again, although the water was coloured with blood, shewing that my aim had been true. I doubly wished to get a porpoise, for the sake of its oil, and also to cut a steak and try its flavour, as I have heard that in some of the ports on the eastern seaboard of the United States, boats are fitted out to capture young porpoises for the hotels, as porpoise calf is considered a delicacy. If cod liver oil ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... he could summon, caught the grip of his muley in both hands. He made his fall heavily to the ground, landing on his shoulder. But as he keeled from the saddle the last thing that rolled over the saddle, like the flash of a porpoise fin, was the barrel of the rifle, secure in his hands. Karg, on horseback, was already bending over him, revolver in hand, but the shot was never fired. A thirty-thirty bullet from the ground knocked the gun into the air and tore every knuckle from ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... of luxury in their food, and cookery was a science in which the ornamentation of the dish was almost as important as the dressing of the food. It was gilded, it was silvered, it was painted, it was surrounded with flame. From the boar and the peacock down to such strange food as the porpoise and the hedgehog, every dish had its own setting and its own sauce, very strange and very complex, with flavorings of dates, currants, cloves, vinegar, sugar and honey, of cinnamon, ground ginger, sandalwood, saffron, brawn and pines. It was the Norman tradition to eat in moderation, ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... down in open order on the brow of a hill to watch the play till their call should come. Father Dennis, whose duty was in the rear, to smooth the trouble of the wounded, had naturally managed to make his way to the foremost of his boys and lay like a black porpoise, at length on the grass. To him ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... turbulent current of the Saguenay mingles angrily with that of the St. Lawrence, there may be seen disporting in the waves the white whale of aquariums, which is not a whale at all, but a true porpoise (Delphinopterus Catodon, as he is now called by naturalists), having teeth in the jaws, and being destitute of the fringed bone of the whalebone whales. This interesting creature is very abundant in the Arctic Ocean on both ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... composite, cream mottled, carp, turbot, tench, perch, fresh sturgeon with whelks, porpoise roasted, memis fried, crayfish, prawns, eels roasted with lamprey, a leche called the white leche flourished with hawthorn leaves and red haws, and a march pane, garnished with figures of angels, having among them an image of St. Katherine ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... Hargraves, gadgeting for mineral deposits, and Ed Reiss, hopefully on the lookout for anything alive. The Lucky Pierre was back of us, her body out of sight behind a low black ridge, only her gleaming nose poking above like a porpoise coming up for air. When I looked back, I could see, along the jagged rim of the ridge, the busy reflected flickerings of the bubble-camp the techs were throwing together. Otherwise all was black, except for our blue-white torch beams that darted here and there ...
— Zen • Jerome Bixby
... old fool; if you make a noise we have six more girls waiting in a boat to fling you in the river and drag you up and down for a while tied on to a rope like a porpoise. Do you think ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... liked a sea life, I did not mean to be understood as liking a merchant ship, with an airless cabin, and with every variety of disagreeable odour. As a French woman on board, with the air of an afflicted porpoise, and with more truth than elegance, expresses it: "Tout ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... Killers and Thrashers, by far the most spirited and "spunky" of the finny tribes. Though little larger than a porpoise, a band of them think nothing of assailing leviathan himself. They bait the monster, as dogs a bull. The Killers seizing the Right whale by his immense, sulky lower lip, and the Thrashers fastening ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... mouth of the rivers, and on the coast, the shark, the porpoise, the sword, the guarr, and devil fishes, are all found, but in no respects rendered useful. However, the sea coast and rivers furnish a variety of fine fish for human use, both of the salt and fresh-water kinds. The angel fish, so called for their uncommon ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... cried, puffing like a stranded porpoise, "what—WHAT do you suppose has happened? ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... miscarried. The British cruiser Birmingham caught a glimpse of her wake and with a well-aimed shot destroyed her periscope. The submarine dived, but shortly afterwards came up again making what was called a porpoise dive—that is to say, she came up just long enough for the officer in the conning tower to locate the enemy, then submerged again. Brief, however, as had been the appearance of the conning tower, the British put a shell into it and in a few minutes ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... 18 stivers for a red cap for my godchild; lost 12 stivers at play; drank 2 stivers, bought three fine small rubies for 11 gold florins, 1 2 stivers; changed 1 florin for expenses. Dined again with the Augustines; dined twice with Tomasin. I gave 6 stivers for thirteen porpoise-bristle brushes, and 3 stivers ...
— Memoirs of Journeys to Venice and the Low Countries - [This is our volunteer's translation of the title] • Albrecht Durer
... little antelope that one meets frequently in the grassy places of East Africa. It is small, with dark complexion, and goes through the high grass in a way that strongly suggests the diving of a porpoise at sea. In fact, it gets its Dutch name for that reason, duiker bok, meaning "diving buck" in Dutch. There are a dozen or more different species of duikers, and they may be found scattered all over South and East Africa. They are difficult to shoot, for their diving habits ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... I, "is not running away;" so over we all went, except two. I was down like a porpoise never rising till my head touched the ship's copper. I swam round the stern, and was taken in on the side opposite the enemy. My captain, I daresay, would have disdained such a compromise; but though I was as proud as he was, I always thought, with Falstaff, that ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of Blyth, another species, Platanista Indi, or the Indus porpoise, but Dr. Anderson has conclusively proved that this is identical with the Gangetic dolphin. The dentition of the soosoo is most curious. The perfect tooth in the young animal is sharp and pointed, but as the creature advances ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... this time puffing like a porpoise, for he was not as young as when he had been the terror of the Bologna road, and he had been living on the fat of his masters' plentiful leavings for weeks, with a very liberal allowance of the white wine of Marino. Moreover, ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... where the light ripples melted away into a blue and white haze upon the water, a small black smudge, like the back of a porpoise, seemed to be ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... and he sent for all the doctors in the sea to come and treat her; from which circumstance you are to note that doctors are an evil to be met with not alone upon terra firma. The first to come was Dr. Porpoise, a gentleman of the old school, who floundered around in a very important manner and ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... porpoise!" she rejoined, which shows that her conversation was not quite aristocratic ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... that there was a certain irregular splashing in the water, quite different from the regular, diagonally crossing surges that the boat swept upon the bank. Looking at it more intently, he saw a black object turning in the water like a porpoise, and then the unmistakable uplifting of a black arm in an unskillful swimmer's overhand stroke. It was a struggling man. But it was quickly evident that the current was too strong and the turbulence of the shallow ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... the Englishman, looking at her through his single eyeglass, "tradition demands that steamer passengers shall always make a fuss over a passing porpoise. To be sure it's only a fish, but the fuss is because of tradition, not because of ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... "I have had plenty to eat," he said, "and I never felt better. If I had not taken exercise, you would have found me as fat as a porpoise." ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... commanding ridge there have been so many violent contests between the close-locked lines in the forest of Apremont. More to the centre of the picture, stood Mont Sec, detached from the range and pushing its summit up through the lowland mist like the dorsal fin of a porpoise in a calm sea. On the right the lowland extended to indistinct distances, where ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... gather firewood at once, and some of the others helped, so that in a brief time a fire was started that at least made things look a bit more comfortable and home-like, as Nick said, while puffing like a porpoise in his labors. ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... nothing in sight. So, in about ten minutes after the watch got on deck, every mother's son of them was hard and fast. The wind was a-beam, and the old schooner could steer herself; so, even the man at the helm was sitting down on a hencoop, with one arm round the tiller, and snoring like a porpoise. I heard the old man rouse out of his bunk and creep on deck, and, guessing fun was coming, I turned out and slipped up after him. The first thing I saw was old Eaton at work at the tiller. He got ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... the head of a young seal, which would instantly dive again and be seen no more. They watched the salmon splash in the shallower creeks where the sea had scooped out a tiny bay of ruddy sand, and then a slowly rolling porpoise would show his black back above the water and silently disappear again. All this was pleasant enough on a pleasant morning, in fresh sea-air and sunlight, in holiday-time; and was there any reason, Mackenzie may fairly have thought, why this young man, if he did marry Sheila, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... emporium of the East. The number of native as well as foreign vessels which we passed, proved that we were approaching some great mart, and at 5:00 p.m. we dropped our anchor in Singapore Roads. Here we found the Porpoise, Oregon, and Flying-Fish, all well: the two former had arrived on January 22nd, nearly a month before, and the latter three days previously. Before concluding this chapter, I shall revert to their proceedings since our separation ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... found a smaller shark, enclosing in its turn one still smaller, "both alive," says the traveller, which is manifestly an exaggeration; then, after describing the remora, the dactyloptera, and the porpoise, he speaks of the sea near the Maldive Islands in which he counted an enormous number of islands, among them he mentions Ceylon by its Arabian name, with its pearl fisheries; Sumatra, inhabited by cannibals, and rich in gold-mines; Nicobar, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... other vessels: one a New York brig, under English colours. The anchor had not been long down when a visit was received from the Captain of the Port, who proved to be an old acquaintance of Captain Semmes, he having piloted the brig Porpoise about the island at the time when the latter officer was First Lieutenant of that vessel. He seemed much pleased to renew the acquaintance, and volunteered to take on shore, to the Governor, Captain Semmes' request for permission ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... in pursuance of this same luck that caused the colonel, later that day, when the shadows of evening were falling, to take his limp satchel and slip out of the house. He went afoot to the ferry dock, and when the Allawanda floundered in like a porpoise he went on board. It was his first visit to this part of the inlet that separated Lakeside from Loch Harbor, and this means of getting to the yachting center was seldom used by any guests of The Haven. They went around ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... look like a boiled porpoise with parsley sauce!' exclaimed Mr. Waffles, pulling up where the unfortunate youth was spluttering and getting emptied like a jug. 'Confound it!' added he, as the water came gurgling out of his mouth, 'but you must have drunk the ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... and red the morn, In the noisy hour when I was born; And the whale it whistled, the porpoise rolled, And the dolphins bared their backs of gold; And never was heard such an outcry wild As welcomed ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... around us and a porpoise school before us, Full crowded under royals to the south'ard we would sweep; We would hear the bull whales blowing and the mermaids sing in chorus, And perhaps the white seal mummies hum their chubby ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various
... boots. Walking and moving a little appeared to loosen the stiff joints and ease that tired feeling. The water of the stream where the girls washed was colder than any ice Helen had ever felt. It almost paralyzed her hands. Bo mumbled, and blew like a porpoise. They had to run to the fire before being able to comb their hair. The air was wonderfully keen. The dawn was clear, bright, with a red glow in the east where the ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... rounded forehead and projecting muzzle of which its own bullet head and bill exactly correspond. In its plunge, if you watch it bathing, you may see it dip its breast just as much under the water as a porpoise shows its back above. You can only rightly describe the bird by the resemblances, and images of what it seems to have changed from,—then adding the fantastic and beautiful contrast of the unimaginable change. It is an owl that has been ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... swelling river, To the ocean flowing ever, With its teeming life of porpoise, fish, and seal, There hardy, brave, and daring, Dwells the habitant; nor caring Save to make his frugal living by his skill. Nor heeds he of the weather, For scale, and fur, and feather, Lay their tribute in his hand the ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... romping through the stiff sea like a playful porpoise, dipping and plunging. A half-score of adventuresome gulls were still following in the foam-churned wake. In the face of all the pitching about, Mrs. Richards had quite a battle to direct her shuttle to any efficient purpose, and Claire was almost amused ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... artificer at work in each of these complex structures that we have mentioned. This embryo, as it is called, then passes into other conditions. I should tell you that there is a time when the embryos of neither dog, nor horse, nor porpoise, nor monkey, nor man, can be distinguished by any essential feature one from the other; there is a time when they each and all of them resemble this one of the Dog. But as development advances, all the parts acquire their speciality, till at length ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... little faster?" said a whiting to a snail, "There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail. See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance! They are waiting on the shingle—will you come and join the dance? Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will ...
— Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Illustrated by Arthur Rackham. With a Proem by Austin Dobson • Lewis Carroll
... wonderful thing, he always carried it about with him. The next fall, while going along the coast, he saw a pack of white foxes approaching, and having with him neither a trap nor a gun, he thought of his spoon-hook. Tearing a rag off his shirt, he rubbed on it some porpoise oil which he was carrying in a bladder, fastened the rag about the hook, laid it on a log directly in the path of the approaching foxes, and, going to the end of the line, lay down out of sight to watch what would ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... mainly for illuminating purposes. For this purpose, however, it has been superseded by coal-oil, gas, and electricity. It is still in demand as a lubricant, but the whale-oil of commerce is quite as apt to come from the blubber of the porpoise or the sea-cow as from the right whale. Whalebone is a horny substance taken from the animal's jaw, and is worth from three dollars to eight dollars per pound. It is used chiefly in the manufacture of whips. For other purposes, steel, hard rubber, and ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... of a song thrush and that of the jackdaw; or to discern how the cuckoo's head is hollow where the organ of the love of offspring is located, whilst the same part presents a striking protuberance in the partridge. In the dolphin, the porpoise, the seal, and many other animals, the male could there be distinguished from the female by the form of the back part of the skull, where the same organ lies. Nor could any one fail to mark the form ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... seemed to find articulation difficult. He blew and sputtered like a stranded porpoise and his face became redder than ever, but he did not ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... forty yards; and near Goat Island we observed a large number of planks floating by for several hours, the cargo of some unfortunate vessel. Here we saw three gulls, the only birds we had observed in all our passage, and no fish, not even a porpoise, which should more readily be excused as they are mostly seen in ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood
... next day at noon were in the latitude of 28 deg. 25', longitude 170 deg. 26' E. In the evening, Mr Cooper haying struck a porpoise with a harpoon, it was necessary to bring-to, and have two boats out, before we could kill it, and get it on board. It was six feet long; a female of that kind, which naturalists call dolphin of the ancients, and which differs from the other kind of porpoise in the head ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... with attributes of fire, lightning and combinations of forces not found in any one creature, are common to the popular fancy. In Japan, the kappa, half monkey half tortoise, which seizes children bathing in the rivers, as real to millions of the native common folk as is the shark or porpoise; the flying-weasel, that moves in the whirlwind with sickle-like blades on his claws, which cut the face of the unfortunate; the wind-god or imp that lets loose the gale or storm; the thunder-imp or hairy, cat-like creature that on the cloud-edges beats his drums in crash, roll, or rattle; ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... elbowed her way forward; in one hand she carried a pair of embroidered silk stockings, with the other she raised a lorgnette. After a measured scrutiny her lips tightened, her nose lifted, she blew loudly like a porpoise, and, gathering her skirts closely, waddled away, as if fleeing from contagion. She continued to clutch the hosiery until a floor- walker, in answer to the clerk's frantic signal, intercepted her. Another crowd promptly gathered to listen to ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... and other intimations, only never yet for such a triumph of that particular sense. To be still frank, he was little less than a monster—for mere unresisting or unresilient mass of personal presence I mean; so that I fairly think of him as a form of bland porpoise, violently blowing in an age not his own, as by having had to exchange deep water for thin air. Thus he impressed me as with an absolute ancientry of type, of tone, of responsible taste, above all; this last I mean in literature, since it was literature we sociably explored, ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... an outside. It was true that the port-hole might most of the time have been wholly ornamental for all the good it did them, for it was generally splashed with grey October sea, but, at least, as Nancy lucently explained, you could see things—once there had actually been a porpoise—and that neither of them, in their present condition, would have worried very much about it if their cabin had been an aquarium was ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... abandoned. Our ancestors were, not difficult to please: they had good teeth, and their palates, having become accustomed to the flesh of the cormorant, heron, and crane, without difficulty appreciated the delicacy of the nauseous sea-dog, the porpoise, and even the whale, which, when salted, furnished to a great extent all the ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... the other, "I don't want you to do that. I don't mind tellin' you that I don't trust you. I've got very heavy responsibility on me, and I don't know who you are no more than if you was a porpoise come a-bouncin' up out of the sea. I don't want you and your skipper holdin' no conversation with each other until I've got this matter settled to my satisfaction, and then I can put you on board your vessel, and go ahead on my course, or I can turn back, just whichever ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... But it was still more astonishing to see how cleverly the Evil One exposed their foul sins, and how he answered with a home-thrust their false excuses. When these were about to receive their infernal doom, forty scholars were borne forward by porpoise-shaped fiends, uglier, if possible, than Lucifer himself. And when they heard the labourers pleading, they too waxed bold to give excuses, but what ready answers the old Serpent had for them with all their knavery and learning! As it happened that I heard similar pleas ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... for some time in the Tuscan tongue before we discovered that neither of us was Italian, after which we paid each other some handsome compliments upon fluency and perfection of accent. The gentleman was a pleasant purple porpoise from the waters of Chili, whither he had wandered from the English coasts in early youth. He had two leading ideas: one concerned the Pope, to whom he had just been presented, and whom he viewed as the best and blandest of beings; the other ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... a seagull can generally be observed opposite the Aquarium; when there is no seagull elsewhere along the whole Brighton front there is often one there. Young gulls occasionally alight on the roof, or are blown there. Once now and then a porpoise may be seen sunning himself off a groyne; barely dipping himself, and rolling about at the surface, the water shines like oil as it slips off ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... any flanking movement, and the scanty scarp denies fair start for a rush at the power of the hill front. Yet here must the heavy boats beach themselves, and wallow and yaw in the shingly roar, while their cargo and crew get out of them, their gunwales swinging from side to side, in the manner of a porpoise rolling, and their stem and stern going up and down like a ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... of argument, that a savage has more brains than seems proportioned to his wants, all that can be said is that the objection to natural selection, if it be one, applies quite as strongly to the lower animals. The brain of a porpoise is quite wonderful for its mass, and for the development of the cerebral convolutions. And yet since we have ceased to credit the story of Arion, it is hard to believe that porpoises are much troubled with intellect: and still more difficult is it ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... : pompa. poodle : pudelo. poor : malricxa, kompatinda. pope : papo. poplar : poplo. poppy : papavo. -"coloured", punca popular : populara. porcelain : porcelano. porcupine : histriko. porous : pora, truajxa. porpoise : fokeno. porridge : kacxo. port : haveno. porter : portisto, pordisto. portion : parto, (ration) porcio, portmanteau : valizo. position : pozicio, situacio. positive : pozitiva, definitiva. possess : posedi, havi possible : ebla. post : stango, fosto; ofico. "letter"—, ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... layer of granite which underlies the region stuck its back up, so to speak, forming a great smooth granite hump, known as Stone Mountain. This mountain is one of America's natural wonders. In form it may be compared with a round-backed fish, such as a whale or porpoise, lying on its belly, partly imbedded in a beach, and some conception of its dimensions may be gathered from the fact that from nose to tail it measures about two miles, while the center of its back is as high as the Woolworth Building in New York. Moreover, there ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... Early in the evening, probably nine o'clock, with a bright fire burning, and the boys spreading down their beds for the night, suddenly the horses were heard running, and the next moment they hobbled into camp like a school of porpoise, trampling over the beds and crowding up to the fire and the wagon. They almost knocked down some of the boys, so sudden was their entrance. Then they set up a terrible nickering for mates. The boys went amongst them, and horses that were timid and shy almost caressed their riders, ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... in the speech which for some reason sounds funny, or memorable, or very exaggerated, or, perhaps, merely concrete; then he writes it down and waits for the next one. If the orator says that the Premier is like a porpoise in the sea under some special circumstances, the reporter gets in the porpoise even if he leaves out the Premier. If the orator begins by saying that Mr. Chamberlain is rather like a violoncello, the reporter does not even wait to hear why he is like a violoncello. ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... change their governors, though they continue in the same condition themselves still, only they are a little better pleased with it in observing the dangers greatness is exposed to. He delights in nothing so much as civil commotions, and, like a porpoise, always plays before a storm. Paper and tinder are both made of the same material, rags, but he converts them both into the same again and makes his ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... "Like any porpoise. But of course I misunderstand people if they won't explain themselves. You needn't tremble like that. I'll be ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit |
