"Whale" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... first double Canoe we had seen in this Country. They staid about the Ship until it was dark, then left us; but not before they had thrown a few stones. They told us the name of the Island, which was Mowtohora.* (* Motuhora, called also Whale Island.) It is but of a small Circuit, but high, and lies 6 Miles from the Main. Under the South side is Anchorage in 14 fathoms. South-West by South from this Island on the Main land, seemingly at no great distance from the Sea, is a high round ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... that list should include the eland, white rhinoceros, blessbok, bontebok, kudu, giraffes and southern elephants, sable antelope, rhinoceros south of the Zambesi, leucoryx antelope and whale-headed stork. In Asia it should include the great Indian rhinoceros and its allied species, the burrhel, the Nilgiri tahr and the gayal. The David deer of Manchuria already is extinct in a ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... shall be a great Whale, Mistris, at all his bignesse spouting huge Hils of salt-water afore him, like a little water squirt, but you shall not neede to feare him Mistris, for he shal be silke, and gould, he shall doe you noe harme, and he be nere ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... thoughtful look, but more frequently with a smile. Generally when he had concluded a period, in the course of a dispute, by which time he was a good deal exhausted by violence and vociferation, he used to blow out his breath like a Whale. This I supposed was a relief to his lungs; and seemed in him to be a contemptuous mode of expression, as if he had made the arguments of his opponent fly like chaff before ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... She was held in Bowie County, Hickens[HW:sp.] Prairie, by Bob Trammel. They kept her locked up and I have heard mother say that she used whale bone, card bats and a spinning wheel. Finally they got so hot behind the Trammels in 1847-48, they pulled up stakes and went down on the Guadalupe River and carried my mother's mother down there. Before they left Dave Block went on Trammel's ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... reached Portland Bay he noticed that when a whale appeared in the bay the natives were accustomed to send up a column of smoke, thus giving timely intimation to all the whalers. If the whale should be pursued by one boat's crew only it might be taken; but if pursued by several, it would probably be run ashore and become food for ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... and service industries in the last decade, and new developments in software production, biotechnology, and financial services are taking place. The tourism sector is also expanding, with the recent trends in ecotourism and whale watching. Since 2000 growth has varied from a -1% in 2002 to 8% ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... of Mr. Mitchel's, called The Shoe-heel, which was much read on account of the low humour it contains. He has addressed to Dr. Watts a poem on the subject of Jonah in the Whale's Belly. In the dedication he observes, 'That it was written for the advancement of true virtue and reformation of manners; to raise an emulation amongst our young poets to attempt divine composures, and help to wipe off the censures which the numerous labours of the muses are justly ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... short time since, relates the following as having occurred on a voyage to Memel:—"One morning during a cairn, when near the Hebrides, all hands were called up at three o'clock, to witness a battle between several of the fish called thrashers and some sword-fish on one side, and an enormous whale on the other. It was in the middle of summer, and the weather being clear, and the fish close to the vessel, we had a fine opportunity of witnessing the contest. As soon as the whale's back appeared above the water, the thrashers, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 578 - Vol. XX, No. 578. Saturday, December 1, 1832 • Various
... muzzle Upon these tawny sands! We will not puzzle, For a few happy hours, our weary pates With Burning Questions or with Dull Debates. We have had enough of Measures, and of Motions, we, "Ayes" to starboard, "Noes" to larboard (in the language of the sea), Where the wallowing SEYMORE spouted like a whale, and COBB made free. Let us take our solemn davy, TOBY, for a space (Punch perceives complete approval in that doggish face)— Let us take our davy, TOBY—for a time, now mind!— In this briny Lotos Land to live and lie reclined, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 29, 1891 • Various
... garden paths to the kitchen quarter of the house, she followed him without a word, awed by his extraordinary utterances, vaguely feeling that in his dripping garments he somehow reminded her of Jonah and the whale. ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... criticize; To crop his ears and stretch his tail were wise; A creature he of huge, misshapen size. The elephant, though famed as beast judicious, While on his own account he had no wishes, Pronounced dame whale too big to suit his taste; Of flesh and fat she was a perfect waste. The little ant, again, pronounced the gnat too wee; To such a speck, a vast colossus she. Each censured by the rest, himself content, Back to their homes ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... first time that I've been in a boat out in mid-ocean, without a drop of water, and with nothing to eat except maybe a flying-fish and a brace of noddies we caught, and a dead bird we picked up, till we came across a whale floating, and, fed on the blubber for a week or more, though we had to hold our noses as we put it into our mouths, till we were at length picked up. So you see, bad off as we may be, we've no business to give way to despair; help will come from ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... Hendricks, evidently quoting, "are as filled with sedition as a whale with corset bones. Also the army. ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the passers-by. The beach plum and bayberry bushes on the dunes were spangled with beady drops. The pole on Cannon Hill, where the beacon was hoisted when the packet from Boston dropped anchor in the bay, was shiny and slippery. The new weathervane, a gilded whale, presented to the "Regular" church by Captain Zebedee Mayo, retired whaler, swam in a sea of cloud. The lichened eaves of the little "Come-Outer" chapel dripped at sedate intervals. The brick walk leading to the door of Captain Elkanah Daniels's fine ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... poyem on Jonah and the Whale, which I wrote at the age of seven. Most of it consisted of a conversation between them, while Jonah was in the Whale's stomach, which I think showed agility on the part of ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... he saw the whole object move. He watched it closely. It did stir! It was some living thing, then. But what? A whale? ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... But, do you know that people make fun of me because I admire a game rooster? They do. I don't want to fight 'em for money, you know; I'm a good church member and all that sort of thing; I believe the Book from one end to the other; believe that the whale swallowed Jonah, I don't care if its throat ain't bigger than a hoe-handle; believe that the vine growed up in one night, and withered at mornin'; believe that old Samson killed all them fellers with the jaw-bone—believe everything as I tell you from start to finish, but I'll be blamed if ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... day, while between the tropics, we saw various kinds of fish, in greater abundance than elsewhere. As the whale, or mighty Leviathan, whom God hath created to take his pastime in the seas; Dolphins also, and Albicores, with Bonitoes, flying-fishes, and many others. Some whales were of an exceeding greatness, which, in calm weather, would often rise and shew themselves above ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... out of the whale's belly, I rose early, and joined some old salts, who were smoking by a dim light on a sheltered part of the deck. We were just getting into the river. They knew all about it, of course. I was proud to find that I had stood the voyage so well, and was not in the least digested. We brushed up and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... esteemed as a food fish, but is, like all mud fishes, rich and oily. Girella belongs to the family Sparida, or Sea-Breams, and Gadopsis to the Gadopsidae, a family allied to that containing the Cod fishes. The name was also formerly applied to a whale. ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... He-Goat lies the Southern Fish, facing towards the tail of the Whale. The Censer is under the Scorpion's sting. The fore parts of the Centaur are next to the Balance and the Scorpion, and he holds in his hands the figure which astronomers call the Beast. Beneath the Virgin, Lion, and Crab is the twisted girdle formed by the Snake, extending over a whole ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... play that we are travellers, hunting for a whale. I heard my mamma talking about one that was on ex-ex-exedition down by the river. She said that it was ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the clumsy gambols of the porpoise, racing and leaping and turning somersets in mid-air about the ship. Once, I mind the St. Pierre gave a tremor as if her keel had grated a reef; and a monster silver-stripe heaved up on our lee. 'Twas a finback whale, M. Radisson explained; and he protested against the impudence of scratching its back on our keel. As we sailed farther north many a school of rolling finbacks glistened silver in the sun or rose higher than our masthead, when ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... to be defended, it may be shown that those witticisms, aimed at him, about the giraffe getting its long neck by continually stretching it, or the whale getting its tail by holding its hind legs too close in swimming, do not apply to Darwinism, but to the exploded theory ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... were safe enough, but they would turn back their heads and lay their cold noses on my leg; I preferred the now-forbidden horse. But Melville himself made up for everything by the tremendous stories he used to tell about the South Sea Islands and the whale fishery. Normally he was not a man of noticeable appearance; but when the narrative inspiration was on him, he looked like all the things he was describing—savages, sea-captains, the lovely Fayaway in her canoe, or the terrible Moby Dick himself. ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... scale-armored neck, as thick as a man's body at its thinnest point, which was just behind a tremendous-jawed crocodilian head. It tapered back for a distance of at least thirty feet, to merge into a body as big as that of a terrestial whale, that was supported ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... moderate speed, the ocean beneath was plainly visible; and its entire surface was covered with broken floes of ice and small, ragged icebergs. He seized a telescope and focused it below. A typical polar scene met his eyes: penguins strutted about on cakes of ice, a whale ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... same spirit in the superstitious belief of the Fuegians, that killing water-fowl whilst very young will be followed by "much rain, snow, blow much."[531] I may add, as showing forethought in the lowest barbarians, that the Fuegians when they find a stranded whale bury large portions in the sand, and during the often-recurrent famines travel from great distances for the remnants of the ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... show Jonah being thrown to the whale, and the same Jonah being subsequently relinquished by the sea monster. The whale is represented by a large bland smiling head, with gaping jaws, occurring in the midst of the water, and Jonah takes the usual "header" familiar ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... shoulder to see what was in front; and away off in the distance she saw the dim outline of something that looked like a gate-way. And as they came nearer, sure enough it was a gate-way, and when they came up to it she saw the pillars, made of beautiful white coral, and the gate itself made of a whale's skin, polished and studded with shark's teeth as white as ivory. The little man stopped before the gate, which was shut, and the sword-fish came forward in the most pompous manner, and knocked with his sword upon the ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... trichophyllum; Ranunculus aquatilis of Gray) has its fine thread-like leaves entirely submerged; but the flowers, like a whale, as the old conundrum put it, come to the surface to blow. The latter are small, white, or only yellow at the base, where each petal bears a spot or little pit that serves as a pathfinder to the flies. When the water rises unusually high, the blossoms never ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... become a whale. And see, the English ship, too, is much larger, and is dancing along like a beauty. Both are very fast, and in half an hour they will be at anchor in ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... through the Channel between Spain and Spanish Flanders furnished many victims, for in those days the wrecks were innumerable. Strange fish and other products of the tropical seas had drifted hither across the Atlantic from the West Indies and America, and in the fishing season the fin whale, blue shark, threshers and others had been caught, also the sun fish, boar fish, and the angler or sea-devil. Rare mosses and lichens, with agates, jaspers, coloured flints and corals, had also been found on the Chesil Bank; but the most ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... British General Prescott commanded at Rhode Island, in the revolutionary war, (the same whom our Major Barton stole, and carried off in the night, from his head quarters, in a whale boat) he was very much disliked for his silly haughtiness, and unbecoming pride. One day a Baptist preacher waited upon him to complain of an oppression exercised on some of his followers, by the military, and taking his bible out of his pocket, he began ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... sculptor's thought, For in the portal was displayed on high (The work of Vulcan) a fictitious sky; A waving sea the inferior earth embraced, And gods and goddesses the waters graced. 10 AEgeon here a mighty whale bestrode; Triton, and Proteus, (the deceiving god,) With Doris here were carved, and all her train, Some loosely swimming in the figured main, While some on rocks their dropping hair divide, And some on fishes ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... blunt cape of Bray Head that lay on the water like the snout of a sleeping whale. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... were pictures of natural history, representing rhinoceroses and elephants and spotted tigers; and above all there was a picture of a great whale, as big as a ship, stuck full of harpoons, and three boats sailing after it as ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... after the vessel, which happily fell by the side of it and only made great black holes in the water; and, finally, mad with anger, he plunged head foremost into the sea and began to swim after the ship with frightful speed. At each stroke he advanced forty feet, blowing like a whale, and like a whale cleaving the waves. By degrees he gained on his enemies; one more effort would bring him within reach of the rudder, and already he was stretching out his arm to seize it, when Finette threw the second silver bullet into the ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various
... of beasts? We will not go out of our way to seek a conflict with him; but if he cross our path, and refuses to move at a peaceful command, he will run his nose on the talons of the American eagle, and his blood will spout as from a harpooned whale. The spectators who look on the struggle may prepare to hear a crash, as if the very ribs of nature ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... whale (species of delphinus) is well known to the natives by the names of pawus and gajah mina; but I do not recollect to have heard any instance of their ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... many of these dogs are used as beasts of burden, and each carries from thirty to fifty pounds. They are then much better kept than in the winter; for they have the remains of the whale and sea-calf, which their masters disdain to eat. The majority, however, are sent adrift in the summer, and they live on the produce of the chase or of their constant thievery. The exactness with which, the summer being past, each returns to his master, is ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... replied Mr. Jones, still hauling away at his line, to which some immense dead weight seemed to be attached. "It must be a whale." ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... that," answered Burke. "But one thing I know,—I'm going to stick to him like a thrasher to a whale!" ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... her depth, with uncle to float her back; Aunt Jessie splashed placidly in the shallow pools, with Jamie paddling near by like a little whale beside its mother; while the lads careered about, looking like a flock of distracted flamingoes, and acting like the famous dancing party in "Alice's ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... as a fact, that the sperm whale, alarmed at the untiring rigor of his assailants, has almost disappeared from the navigable waters, retreating to the fastnesses of the Frozen Ocean, where he is still pursued, although at the greatest peril, by the dauntless New Bedford, Nantucket, and Vineyard whalemen, who, as the narrator ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... of rocks which looked like the back of a whale, running out some distance into the sea, where the water was whiter and leaped higher than anywhere else; and soon her dainty feet picked a way over the jagged rocks. The boy was about to send a light shell skipping through ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... a scientific expedition on the whale-ship Bedford. From the deck they remarked a strange object on the shore. It was moving down the beach toward the water. They were unable to classify it, and, being scientific men, they climbed into the whale-boat alongside and went ashore to see. And they saw something that ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... the dogs. I was also given moneys of the Government, for I was its servant, and charts of lands which the eyes of man had never dwelt upon, and messages. These messages were sealed, and protected shrewdly from the weather, and I was to deliver them to the whale-ships of the Arctic, ice-bound by the great Mackenzie. Never was there so great a river, forgetting only our own Yukon, the ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... house which was subsequently transported by water from Brussels to Bruges. In a tower 41 feet high attached to this house, the noble company invited to the ceremony witnessed the movements and heard the cries of a number of mechanical animals, monkeys, wolves and boars, while a whale 60 feet long moved around the hall together with elephants, amid thirty large trees, a fountain of crystal and a pelican "spouting hippocras from his beak." The fact is that the situation in the Netherlands, in the second half of the fifteenth century, was very much the same as that in Florence ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... forgotten in the interest of the rest of our journey. For we sailed on now in bright sunshine, the uneasy motion of the schooner was at an end, and there was always something fresh to see. Now it was a whale, then a shoal of fish of some kind, and sea-birds floating here and there. Then some mountain peak came into view, with lovely valleys and vast forests of pines—scene after scene of beauty that kept us on deck till it was too dark to see anything, and ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... needs—dingbats!" He shouted the last word. He twisted the radical off his feet, stooped, and laid the victim across a knee that was as solid as a tree-trunk, and with the flat of a broad hand began to whale the culprit with ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... beef there nor venison, but good tough whale flesh, black as a peat, or else a few candle ends — for the Icelanders are fond of fat. Once when I was ship-broken on their coasts naught could my shipmates find to eat but reasty butter. Disliking that alone, we took our ship's cable, that was made of walrus hide, and smearing the cable with ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... several villages, nearly all of which are summer resorts. At Hyannis is a state normal school (1897; co-educational). Cranberries are raised in large quantities, and there are oyster and other shell fisheries. In the 17th century the mackerel and whale fisheries were the basis of economic life; the latter gave way later to the cod and other fisheries, but the fishing industry is now relatively unimportant. Much of the county is a region of sands, salt-marshes, beach-grass and scattered ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... of the sea, the good strong smell of sea coasts. I walked fast; I was no longer cold. I looked at the stranded wreck, which grew in size as I approached, and came now to resemble an enormous shipwrecked whale. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... which covers acres with its profound shadow, and endures while nations and empires come and go around its vast circumference. Or, turning to the other half of the world of life, picture to yourselves the great Finner whale, hugest of beasts that live, or have lived, disporting his eighty or ninety feet of bone, muscle, and blubber, with easy roll, among waves in which the stoutest ship that ever left dockyard would flounder hopelessly; and contrast him with the invisible animalcules—mere ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... knew I'd find some big game to shoot. Isn't he a whale? I'll bet he'll go twelve pounds. He's a whiter cat, and a racier, than the big yellows, down below. He looks gamier and ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... of their fear.[51] One of the canoes, at length, ventured to come under the ship's side; and an old man came on board, who seemed to be a chief from the finery of his garment, and the superiority of his weapon, which was a Patoo-Patoo, made of bone, that, as he said, had belonged to a whale. He staid on board but a short time, and when he went away, he took with him our guests, very much to the satisfaction ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... William Penn, father of the founder of Pennsylvania, is a conspicuous object in the nave—a mural tablet decorated with his helmet, cuirass, gauntlets, sword, and tattered banners taken from the Dutch. Near it—a singular object in a church—is the rib of a whale which is believed to date from the year 1497, there being an entry in the town records of that year: "Pd. for settynge upp ye bone of ye bigge fyshe," etc.;[4] and as Sebastian Cabot had then just discovered Newfoundland, it may have been one of the trophies of his voyage. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... you," approved the Grand Army man. "I kin hear him howlin' yet, when he was a big feller in long pants and his mother used to whale him with a rawhide in the barn for lettin' the cows git foundered in the cornfield when he was drivin' 'em home from pasture. He killed a cow of mine that-a-way onct—a pure Jersey and the best milker I had, an' the ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... younger. "I've had a whale of a time. Come up to my country and see me next year. Come any old time. We'll bust things wide open ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... The whale has a beautiful figure, Which he makes every effort to spoil, For he knows if he gets a bit bigger He increases the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... which, when enraged, will blindly plunge its armed head against a rock, in which case its horn is broken; or, if the bottom is soft, it becomes transfixed, and then would fall an easy prey. De Ruyter, while in a country vessel, had her struck by one of these fish, (perhaps mistaking her for a whale, which, though of the same species, it often attacks,) with such velocity and force, that its sword passed completely through the bow of the vessel: and, having been broken by the shock, it was with great difficulty extracted. It measured seven feet; about one foot ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... yet the southern colonies were the more productive. Virginia boasted of its tobacco plantations, Georgia and the Carolinas of their maize and rice and indigo crops, while New York and Pennsylvania, with, the colonies of New England, were restricted to their whale and cod fisheries, their corn-harvests, and their timber trade. The distinction indeed between the northern and southern colonies was more than an industrial one. While New England absorbed half a million ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... Percy Popjoy, approved of the genius of young Pen; when the great Lord Steyne himself, to whom the Major referred the article, laughed and sniggered over it, swore it was capital, and that the Muffborough would writhe under it, like a whale under a harpoon, the Major, as in duty bound, began to admire his nephew very much, said, "By gad, the young rascal had some stuff in him, and would do something; he had always said he would do something;" and with a hand quite tremulous ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... signal for those in the steerage, and at the same time whistled for the information of those on deck. Bitts was not so obliging as to lean against a mast, or anything else, and the conspirators were compelled to take him flying. Phillips had prepared, with a piece of whale line, a kind of lasso, and, stepping up behind him, threw it over his head, drawing it tight around his neck, before the astonished carpenter suspected any mischief. The end of the whale line was then hooked to the clewline of the fore-square-sail, ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... men and goods out of our ship was somewhat settled and quiet, I thought good to call our company together, and when they were assembled, said unto them, "My dear friends, let us know ourselves, and how it standeth with us. We are men cast on land, as Jonas was out of the whale's belly, when we were as buried in the deep; and now we are on land, we are but between death and life, for we are beyond both the old world and the new; and whether ever we shall see Europe, God only knoweth. It is a kind of miracle ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... that the idea of fish filled the mind of Mrs. Block, and she set herself to work to search in an encyclopaedia which was on board for descriptions of fishes which inhabited the depths of the arctic seas. To meet a whale, she thought, would be very bad, but then a whale is clumsy and soft; a sword-fish was what she most dreaded. A sword-fish running his sword through one of the glass windows, and perhaps coming in himself along with the water, sent ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... jedgments too. Ho! ho! Onct Dad has a jedgment, he'd sooner dip his colours to the British than change it. I'm glad it's settled right eend up. Dad's right when he says he can't take you back. It's all the livin' we make here—fishin'. The men'll be back like sharks after a dead whale in ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... glare peculiar to clouds, which makes the snow and ice more lurid. Not far from the house where I am writing, the avalanche that swept away the bridge last winter is lying now, dripping away, dank and dirty, like a rotting whale. I can see it from my window, green beech-boughs nodding over it, forlorn larches bending their tattered branches by its side, splinters of broken pine protruding from its muddy caves, the boulders on its flank, and the hoarse hungry torrent tossing up its tongues to lick ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... give us permission to pitch in, and whale the whole bunch the next time they play one of their measly old tricks on us? Is that ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... all kinds, whale fins, whalebone, oil, and blubber, not caught by and cured on board British vessels, when imported into Great Britain, are subject to double aliens duty. The Dutch, as they are still the principal, were then the only fishers in Europe that attempted to supply foreign ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... ends of His own, which are obscure to the wit of man, incapable by reason of our ignorance of understanding His wise providence. But since Constance was not slain at the feast, it might be asked: who kept her from drowning in the sea? Who, then, kept Jonas in the belly of the whale, till he was spouted up at Ninive? Well do we know it was no one but He who kept the Hebrew people from drowning in the waters, and made them to pass through the sea with dry feet. Who bade the four spirits of the tempest, which have the power to trouble land and sea, north and south, and west and ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... the wall of bamboo, as definite as if it marked the course of a river. In front was an open plain, sloping slightly upwards and dotted with clumps of tree-ferns, the whole curving before us until it ended in a long, whale-backed ridge. This we reached about midday, only to find a shallow valley beyond, rising once again into a gentle incline which led to a low, rounded sky-line. It was here, while we crossed the first of these ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... looked cautiously toward the door, "we've been slowed up due to injuries and illness this year in addition to poor material. But right now my eleven's at its peak for the first time and we're set to give Grinnell a whale of a battle tomorrow. So—if your team wins, your coach ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... Blue" is a child's book, very funny in its illustrations—this we see—and funny, we suspect, in its contents; for we lighted on a ballad in which a most scientific piscator, standing on the Norway coast, casts his fly for whale and hooks and lands several which he rose on the Faroe Isles, and is at last beaten by a Kraken or the ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... "In a whale?" sez I; "are you a loonatick, or what duz ail you, to try to make a pair of Jonahses of us ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... thrive with ever-renewing change of color; gelatinous worms that shine like stars cling to every weed; glimmering animalcules, phosphorescent medusae, the very deep itself is vivid with sparkle and corruscation of electric fire. So through every scale, from the zoophyte to the warm-blooded whale, the sea teems with life, out of which fewer links have been dropped than from sub-aerial life. It is a matter for curious speculation that the missing species belong not to the lower subsidiary genera, as in terrene animals, but to the highest types of marine life. In the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... trembling of the island, while at the same moment those left upon the ship set up an outcry bidding us come on board for our lives, since what we had taken for an island was nothing but the back of a sleeping whale. Those who were nearest to the boat threw themselves into it, others sprang into the sea, but before I could save myself the whale plunged suddenly into the depths of the ocean, leaving me clinging to a piece of the wood which we had brought to make our fire. Meanwhile a breeze had sprung up, ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... the trees, each casting its own shadow; the white spires of meeting-houses; a sheet of water, partly seen among swelling lands. This Browne's Hill is a long ridge, lying in the midst of a large, level plain; it looks at a distance somewhat like a whale, with its head and tail under water, but its immense back protruding, with steep sides, and a gradual curve along its length. When you have climbed it on one side, and gaze from the summit at the other, you feel ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... backs, and with their long pectoral fins beat the surface of the sea, which always caused a great noise, equal to the explosion of a swivel. This kind of play has doubtless given rise to the mariner's story of a fight between the thrasher and the whale, of which the former is said to leap out of the water in order to fall heavily on the latter. Here we had an opportunity of observing the same exercise many times repeated, and discovered that all the belly and under side of the fins and tail are of a white colour, whereas the rest are ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... land animals, but Darwinism does not tell us what they were. The whale also was once a land animal, but the testimony of the rocks throws no light upon its antecedents. The origin of any new species is shrouded in the obscurity of whole geological periods, and the short span of human life, or of the whole human ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... too, says the Psalmist, in this 104th Psalm, "and there goeth that leviathan, whom Thou hast made to take his pastime therein." This leviathan is no doubt the whale—the largest of all living things—often a hundred feet long, and as thick as a house. And yet even of him, the monster of all monsters, does God's Word stand true, that He has put all things under man's feet, ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... desolation that pervades polar regions, the resources are considerable and have attracted much commercial activity. For many years whale oil was about the only illuminating oil used by most of the world, and the chief supply was obtained from the whales slaughtered in ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... not to be supposed that the crew of the whale-boat continued idle during this interchange of opinions between the lieutenant and his cockswain; on the contrary, the sight of their vessel acted on them like a charm, and, believing that all necessity for caution was now over, they had expended their utmost strength in efforts that had already ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... afternoon of their arrival in Somerset, the Brothers, after a "slight" luncheon, in which Mr. Jardine's preserved vegetables received very particular attention, manned the whale-boat belonging to the Settlement, and pulled over the Straits to Albany Island to get fresh horses. Two were got over, but night coming on, the crossing of the rest was deferred until the next day. The Strait is three-quarters-of-a-mile wide, which, with a current running upwards ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... in order to help on the slaughter of his enemies on the part of a barbarian general, God stopped the whole machinery of the universe for hours until he got through with his killing. We must believe the literal story of Jonah's being swallowed by the whale. We must believe no end of incredibilities; and then, if we dare to read with our eyes open, we must believe immoral things, cruel things, about men and about God, things which our civilization would not endure, were it not for the power of tradition, which hallows ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... rational conversation on a variety of matters, Peter having seen great part of the world in his youth, from having made two voyages to Greenland, during one of which he was very nearly frozen up—with his uncle, who was the mate of a whale-vessel. To relate all that Peter told me he had seen and witnessed in his far-away travels, among the white bears, and the frozen seas, would take up a great deal of the reader's time, and of my paper; but as to its being very diverting, there is no doubt of that. However, when Peter ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... soul, sir," Mr. Murphy protested; "of course I'll stick with you! Didn't you whale the big Swede Cappy Ricks sent to Cape Town to kick you out of your just due?" He reaffirmed his ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... a passer-by, observing a crowd collected around a black fellow, whom an officer was attempting to secure, to put on board an outward-bound whale ship, from which he had deserted. "Matter! matter enough," exclaimed the delinquent, "pressing a poor negro to ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... him in the eyes, and he felt a kind of shiver go through him. "Not enough to notice. I never observed you had any," she replied. "If I saw that you had, I'd be so frightened I'd fly. I've seen pictures of an excited whale turning a boat full of men over. No, I couldn't bear to see you show ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... high, or over. In any case, he was undoubtedly a very big animal indeed, for his thigh-bone alone measures eight feet, or two feet taller than that glory of contemporary civilisation, a British Grenadier. This, of course, implies a very decent total of height and size; but our own sperm whale frequently attains a good length of seventy feet, while the rorquals often run up to eighty, ninety, and even a hundred feet. We are thus fairly entitled to say that we have at least one species of animal now living which, occasionally ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... assigned to them by astrologers. These influences were mostly associated with the imaginary figures of the constellations. Thus the bright star in the head of Aries, called by some the Ram's Horn, was regarded as dangerous and evil, denoting bodily hurts. The star Menkar in the Whale's jaw denoted sickness, disgrace, and ill-fortune, with danger from great beasts. Betelgeux, the bright star on Orion's right shoulder, denoted martial honours or wealth; Bellatrix, the star on Orion's left shoulder, denoted military or civic honours; Rigel, on Orion's ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... captured. A fishing establishment with a good boat, a trained crew, and proper appliances for extracting the oil, could not fail to return a large profit to the proprietors, and every now and then they could kill a whale, one or more of which could be frequently seen disporting themselves in the waters ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... huge whale, upon which the two witches were seated, delighted at the tempest they had stirred up. Speaking to his good ship, which could both hear and obey, he bade it run down the whale ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... and settle down. First one gun'l goes under, then the other. Then they lift and sink again, and both go under at once. All at once there's a noise like a cannon—that's the air blowing up the deck. Soon the water rushes out of the scupper-holes like a whale spouting, the vessel gives a last groan, spins round and round, and disappears, forming a vast whirlpool in the ocean, and then all is over, so that in five minutes nothing but the eye of God can see the vessel where she lies at the bottom of the sea. Do you ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... appropriate for rooms of no particular period. There are charming lacquer sconces to go with lacquer furniture, and old-fashioned prism candelabra and sconces, and fixtures copied from choice old whale oil lamps in both brass and bronze. There are suitable designs for each and every room. The difficulty lies not in finding too few to choose from, but too many, and, growing weary, making a selection not quite so good as it should be. One should take blue prints to the shop if possible, ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... alluded to many profitable waters; we have said nothing about those vast seas where the great whale is found, or of the waters where men ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... you going to do?" asked Mr. Hardley. "You ought to do something! I'm not going to be killed down here by a whale. You've got to do something, Swift! ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... mans no could live there then. Much snow and ice, big rocks, and—what you call—Fur Trees. How that? Fur no grow on tree in Japan. Strange ting. Muchee animal they say—what you call—walrus there. Perhaps Whale. That makee me to tink of Mr. FEESH. He is deep, that FEESH. So deep I no can understand hims. They tella me much other peoples no can understand hims too. He makee much policee with his Foreign Relations. I ask a much people to tella me who are his Foreign Relations. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... with great vigor; we see the circling gull and the darting horn-fish; we hear the creaking of the ropes and the roaring of the waves.[2] Every mention of the sea is dwelt upon with lingering affection, and described with vivid metaphor. It is now the "bosom of the flood," now the "whale-road" or the "fish's bath." Again it is the "welter of the waves," or its more angry mood is personified as the "Terror of the waters." In the first 500 lines alone there are no less than 43 different words and phrases ...
— Andreas: The Legend of St. Andrew • Unknown
... every rare breeze of the dry season, and Willems, after standing irresolutely by the table for a short time, walked without a word down the steps of the house and over the courtyard towards the little wooden jetty, where several small canoes and a couple of big white whale-boats were made fast, tugging at their short painters and bumping together in the swift current of the river. He jumped into the smallest canoe, balancing himself clumsily, slipped the rattan painter, and gave an unnecessary and violent shove, which nearly ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... the Arabic author meant by "trees of ambergris" is more than I can say. The word anber (pro. pounced amber) signifies also "saffron"; but the obbligato juxtaposition of aloes and sandal-wood tends to show that what is meant is the well-known product of the sperm-whale. It is possible that the mention of this latter may be an interpolation by some ignorant copyist, who, seeing two only of the three favourite Oriental scents named, took upon himself to complete the odoriferous trinity, so dear to Arab writers, ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... the reign of George III, only a few feeble oil lamps were in use. Many miles of streets were dark and dangerous, and highway robberies were frequent. At length (1815) a company was formed to light the city with gas. After much opposition from those who were in the whale-oil interest the enterprise succeeded. The new light, as Miss Martineau said, did more to prevent crime than all the Government had accomplished since the days of Alfred. It changed, too, the whole aspect of the ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... torrents, under a heavy black sky. This was India. Sylvestre had just set foot upon land, chance selecting him to complete the crew of a whale boat. He felt the warm shower upon him through the thick foliage, and looked around, surprised at the novel sight. All was magnificently green; the leaves of the trees waved like gigantic feathers, and the people walking beneath them had large velvety eyes, which seemed to close under ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... name and who's the author?" inquired Dick, too much engrossed in his own book of wonderful adventures to give much heed to his sister's words. "Quick, Win; I'm just killing a whale. Ah! now they've got him. Bravo!" and the boy shouted his appreciation of the ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... you come and get on the whale to-morrow?" this extraordinary personage asked. I gazed at him in bewilderment. He spoke French ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... seafaring world of Europe and America was greatly disturbed by an ocean mystery which baffled the wits of scientists and sailors alike. Several vessels, in widely different regions of the seas, had met a long and rapidly moving object, much larger than a whale, and capable of almost incredible speed. It had also been seen at night, and was then phosphorescent, moving under the water in a glow ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... whom the same is aisy, me bye. Ye feel down in the mouth jest now, as Jonah did respicting the whale, but bimeby this fog will clear away and the sun will shine forth again. I've been in some purty bad scrapes mesilf and He niver desarted me. Why, it ain't two hours, since He raiched out His hand, grabbed me by the neck and saved me from drowning. I tell ye, ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... we left Christiansand; Lieutenant Nilsen, as a former owner of pigeons, was to take charge of them. Then a nice house was made for them, and the pigeons lived happily in their new abode on the top of the whale-boat amidships. Now, in some way or other the second in command found out that the circulation of air in the pigeon-house was faulty; to remedy this defect, he one day set the door a little ajar. Air certainly got into the house, but the pigeons came out. A joker, ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... being exceedingly successful. The usage and living were good, and the whaling must have been good too, or we never should have been back again, as soon as we were. We went round the Horn, and took our first whale between the coast of South America and that of New Holland. I must have been present at the striking of thirty fish, but never met with any accident. I pulled a mid-ship oar, being a new hand at the business, and had ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... pinch of rice a day, between the tropic and the equator, with the Esquimaux, who, to keep up his 37 degrees of heat, beyond the polar circle, in a country where European travellers have seen mercury freeze, sometimes swallows from ten to fifteen pints of whale-oil at a sitting! Just fancy whale-oil! which is much nastier than even cod-liver oil, if you ever tasted that; but, on the other hand, it is a thorough combustible, and the poor people are not so very particular: come what will, the fire must be kept up, ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... give the true reason for their parting with a servant. A friend of mine had a footman who, through trick, or some defect in his respiratory organs, used to blow like a grampus, and indeed more like a whale, while waiting at table. It was not a vice, of course, but it was very objectionable, and guests who were bald especially objected to it. My friend consulted with his butler, who admitted that 'John did blow like a pauper' ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... constituted into a compound being, endowed with life. The Esquimaux believed the vessels commanded by Ross to be alive, since they moved without oars. When Cook touched at New Zealand, the inhabitants supposed his ship to be a whale with sails. The Bosjesmanns ascribed life to a waggon, and imagined that it required the nourishment of grass. When an Arauco saw a compass, he believed that it was an animal; and the same belief has been held by savages of musical instruments, such as grinding organs, which ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... rising wind, and the snowy heights of Avacha Bay are left on the offing. The thunder of the surf against the rocky caves of Kamchatka coast fades fainter. The myriad birds become fewer. Steller, the scientist, leans over the rail to listen if the huge sperm whale, there, "hums" as it "blows." The white rollers come from the north, rolling—rolling down to the tropics. A gray thing hangs over the northern offing, a grayish brown thing called "fog" of which they will know more anon. The grayish brown thing ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... say, there is a large series of skulls of various mammals, birds, reptiles, and fishes, and, again, leg and arm bones, and their parts, arranged side by side; hence you may compare the fore-limb of the human subject with that of a monkey, a lion, a whale, a marsupial, a bird, a reptile, or a fish. [Footnote: Of course, all this may be seen in the Museum of the College of Surgeons, or at Oxford or Cambridge, etc, but these are special institutions, and I am merely taking provincial ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... hand. The ship no longer, foundering by the lee, Bears on her side the invasions of the sea; All lonely o'er the desert waste she flies, Scourged on by surges, storms, and bursting skies. As when enclosing harpooneers assail In Hyperborean seas the slumbering whale, 80 Soon as their javelins pierce his scaly side, He groans, he darts impetuous down the tide; And rack'd all o'er with lacerating pain, He flies remote beneath the flood in vain— So with resistless haste the wounded ship Scuds from pursuing waves ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... florid; different from what he is now, for, dreading fancy, his career since has been one effort to curb it. But all his mind attached itself to something that we Englishmen call solid; it was a large mind,—not, my dear Kitty, like a fine whale sailing through knowledge from the pleasure of sailing, but like a polypus, that puts forth all its feelers for the purpose of catching hold of something. Trevanion had gone at once to London from the University; his reputation and his talk ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... He was a whale of a man, bashful in his ways. He smiled like an overgrown boy who had done something there was no harm in but of which he was ashamed. "He always appears to be gettin' in ahead o' me, don't he?" he said, wistfully-like, ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... edges of which the brown water broke into dancing crests of crystal bubbles when the river was full, and the deep pools under the hollow banks where they had seen the trout that was the size of a young whale, and the twisted wild cherry tree from beneath which the eddies sometimes twirled away bearing fleets of frail, snowy petals. And Johnny and Katty and the rest might all come into view paddling round any corner. When the car stopped at the gap ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... walking is the most refined form of punishment. Your real cowboy slouches miserably along in his tight-fitting, uncomfortable high-heeled boots, looking about as much in his element as a stranded whale. In cowboy parlance his "feet don't track," his backbone wilts, and his knees bow naturally as a result of early horseback riding. On solid earth the cowboy is a ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... addition to their bill of fare was fresh blubber, or fat, from a stranded whale. Under date of January ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... They know nothing but the English world, and the worst part of that too, and generally very little of any but the English language; and they come home, at three or four-and-twenty, refined and polished (as is said in one of Congreve's plays) like Dutch skippers from a whale-fishing. The care which has been taken of you, and (to do you justice) the care that you have taken of yourself, has left you, at the age of nineteen only, nothing to acquire but the knowledge of the world, manners, address, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... the frozen regions, and every cold country, the best of all nourishment is that which contains a large proportion of fat and oil. In Britain, we read with disgust of the Greenlander eagerly swallowing whale-oil and blubber; but in his country, it is precisely what is best adapted to sustain vital energy. Europeans in the position of Franklin's crew would become acclimatised, and gradually accustomed to the food of the natives, even before their own provisions were ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... great cod-hook attached and a lump of fat pork on it; for Archie, in the fervour of hope coupled with piscatorial ignorance and a sanguine disposition, had strongly advised his brother to err, if err he must, on the safe side, and be prepared for anything, from a great lake-serpent to a fresh-water whale. ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... surveying party then proceeded to view the lands round the harbour and bay of Saint John in a whale boat, they brought with them: for they could not travel on the land, on account of the multitude of fallen trees that had been torn up by the roots in a violent gale of wind, nearly four years previous. (The same gale extended as far up the ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... concerning the word of God. The former will not accept of verbal inspiration, yet they call the Bible a divine book, which, fortunately, could be no better. Though they laugh at the story of Jonah and the whale, they accept every word of Christ, who quotes the story. They will not hear of present miraculous interpositions of providence, but accept some of the miracles of the Bible. There are Catholic priests who are affability itself, while there are orthodox Protestants possessed of ultra views. In ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... I cud eat a whale," he growled rather discontentedly, "but what der difference say I ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... elephants of Siam been there, doubtless they had offered up their long, hooked tusks, whereon they impale the leopards, their foes; and the unicorn had surrendered that fixed bayonet in his forehead; and the imperial Cachalot-whale, the long chain of white towers in his jaw; yea, over that grim warrior's grave, the mooses, and elks, and stags, and fallow-deer had stacked their antlers, as soldiers their ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... of seaweed with its shells and snails began to rock; a plashing and drumming could be heard and a huge red whale passed like a flash over their heads; he had a tail-fin like a cork-screw, and that was ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... manage the wheel well they are kept steering, and so leave the more experienced men to work the ship. These details are trivial enough, but a small thing serves as food for gossip aboard ship. The appearance of a whale in the evening caused quite a flutter among us. From its sharp back and forked tail, I should pronounce it to have been a rorqual, or "finner," as they are ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to the West Indies, which his friends put him upon for his health's sake, the little schooner in which he was embarked was suddenly attacked by some monstrous fish, probably a thorn-back whale, who gave it such a terrible stroke with his tail as started a plank. The frightened crew flew to their pumps, but in vain; for the briny flood rushed with such fury into their vessel, that they were glad to quit her, ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... of the world knows as a sculptor, but whom Miss Abigail esteemed only because of his orthodox ideas on rose culture. He came in to ask some information about a blight on his Red Ramblers, although after Miss Abigail had finished her strong recommendation to use whale oil soap sprayed, and not hellebore, he still lingered, crushing a leaf of lemon verbena between his fingers and sniffing the resultant perfume with thoughtful appreciation. He was almost as enthusiastic a horticulturist as Miss Abigail, and ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... seamen, with the intention, if possible, of passing into the Goolwa from seaward. At Encounter Bay, Captain Hart, who had the superintendence of the fishery there, gave me his most experienced steersman, and a strong whale-boat. In this I left Victor harbour for Freeman's Nob, a small rocky point in the very bight of Encounter Bay, where I remained until three a.m. of the next morning, when I started for the outlet under the most favourable auspices. A northerly wind had been blowing off ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... formidable hungry dogs; and little boys used to look forward eagerly to the day when they would be old enough to be permitted to attend. On Sunday afternoons colliers and potters, gathered round the jawbone of a whale which then stood as a natural curiosity on the waste space near the corn-mill, would discuss the fray, and make bets for next Sunday, while the exhausted dogs licked their wounds, or died. During the Wakes week bull and bear were baited at frequent ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... this writing Rabelais in 1850. And to do this alone.—You must even pitch your tune to suit yourself. We must let Arctic Navigators and deepsea divers wear what astonishing coats, and eat what meats—wheat or whale— they like, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... suffered nothing like the discomforts endured by the British troops during the previous winter. Rubber boots reaching to the thigh were issued, sparingly at first, but gradually until every man had a pair, and whale oil and spare socks were available in large quantities to aid in the fight against trench-foot. Nothing, however, could prevent the mud, which lay a foot deep along the gangways of the trench. Pumps were issued, but the mud was too thick ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry |
