"Harpoon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... issue between himself and his wary antagonist. But the latter would not touch the bait that concealed the hook. Driven to desperation by this unexpected discomfiture, Max next made sundry attempts to spear and "harpoon" him, all of which signally failed, so that at the end of the brief interval of fine weather, this patriarch of the lake, whose wisdom seemed to be proportioned to his venerable age and gigantic size, remained proof against all the arts ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... it even probable that there is any, nearer than New Holland, or Van Diemen's Land, from which we were distant 260 leagues. We had, at the same time, several porpoises playing about us; into one of which Mr Cooper struck a harpoon; but as the ship was running seven knots, it broke its hold, after towing it some minutes, and before we could deaden the ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... the lock of hair of the Man. Ra spake unto the god Ami-haf, and an injury was done unto his mouth, that is to say, he was wounded in [that] mouth. And Ra spake unto the god Ami-haf, saying, 'O heir of men, receive [thy] harpoon;' and the harpoon-house came into being. Behold, O god Ami-haf, two divine brethren have come into being, [that is to say], Senti-Ra came into being, and Setem-ansi-f came into being. And his hand stayed not, and he made his ...
— Egyptian Literature
... on the banks of the Vezere, but they exist in many other places. Sometimes they have been used as habitations and even as graves for men. Skeletons, weapons, and tools are found here together. There are axes, knives, scrapers, lance-points of flint; arrows, harpoon-points, needles of bone like those used by certain savages to this day. The soil is strewn with the bones of animals which these men, untidy like all savages, threw into a corner after they had eaten the meat; they even ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... says I, "throw the harpoon! Got your yachtin' cap on, ain't you? Well, have I got to sub for you at ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... out for fins! Throppy, you steer as Budge tells you! Stand by to take the dory, Perce, and go after any fish I'm lucky enough to iron. Filippo, be ready to throw that buoy and coil of warp off the starboard bow the minute I make a strike. I'll get out in the pulpit with the harpoon. Keep alive, everybody! We're liable to run across ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... bear him company. It was to this fact that Marlowe really owed his rescue. Women have often a vein of sentiment in them where men can only see the hard business side of a situation; and it was the skipper's daughter who insisted that the family boat-hook, then in use as a harpoon for spearing dollar bills, should be devoted to the less profitable but humaner end of extricating the young ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... they may, and tell the truth, that's sartain, shipmate. You see, the sparmacitty don't take the harpoon quite so quietly as the black whale does; he fights hard to the last, and sometimes is very free with his jaws. The very large ones are the most easy to kill; so we always look out for them when we can, as they give less trouble, and more oil; the most dangerous are the half-grown, which we call ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... sung out the captain, who stood laughing to see the labors of the poor animal, who was becoming exhausted; "let's see who'll have the first harpoon!" and he hurled a billet at the dog's head as he was going down for the second time. Harry, seeing the action, cried out, "Save him! who will save my poor Nep?" and fell fainting upon the deck. Fortunately the hard-hearted man had missed his mark for once, and by the light of the moon, ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... unpleasant, that voyage out. We had the customary sports on crossing the line; we fished and caught very little, though the men captured the inevitable shark with the lump of salt pork; and used the grains, as they called the three-pronged fork, to harpoon dolphins. I had my first sight of flying fish, and made friends with the officers. Then there was music and dancing on the hot moonlit nights; deck quoits under the awning by day; a good deal more sleep than we took at home; and at last we reached Ceylon and ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... last with Almighty God, and afterward, horribile dictu, pitchforks for little Margaret, and a vivid incandescent state to be maintained through eternity at vast cost of pit-coal to a gentleman who carried over his arm, so as not to step on it, a long snaky tail with a point like a harpoon's. ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... however, bravely ran in front of it, and True kept barking round it, keeping wisely beyond its reach. We thus impeded its progress; but still it made way, and was just about to launch itself into the river when the canoe coming up, Naro's harpoon, struck it under the shield at the neck. It struggled to get free, but was hauled again on to the sand, and soon dispatched by the Indians. They seemed highly pleased at the capture, and signified that, in spite of its strange appearance, it was ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... spear-head a stout cord of deer-sinew is fastened by one end, its other being secured to the shaft near its insertion. The salmon is struck by this weapon in the manner of the ordinary fish-spear; the head slips off the shaft as soon as the barbs lodge, and the harpoon virtually becomes a fishing-rod, with the sinew for a line. This arrangement is much more manageable than the common spear, as it greatly diminishes the chances of losing fish ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... gnarled hand kept watch and watch with a blue star on its opposite member. Barry chuckled audibly as, in a casual flourish, one great arm was half turned, showing the comparative white of the underarm upon which was blazoned a pair of gory hearts in collision, impaled on a harpoon apparently. Around this work of art a flamboyant motto announced to the ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... popular name of cod-liver oil. Catching sharks is not an employment entirely devoid of danger, as they are large and powerful, often measuring twenty feet and more in length. The shark, like the whale, when it is first struck with the harpoon, must be given plenty of line, or it will drag down the fishermen's boat in its rapid descent to deep water. Sometimes the struggle to capture the fish is a long and serious one, as it must thoroughly exhaust itself before it will yield. When it is finally drawn to the side of the boat, a heavy, ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... among the members of the tribe. Along a mottled green-and-brown stretch of shore, which rolled undulatingly toward the icy fringe of the polar sea, more than twoscore hunters were engaged in unusual activity. Some were lacing tight over the framework the taut skin of their kayaks. Others sharpened harpoon points with bits of flint. Tateraq busily cut long lashings from tanned walrus hides. Maisanguaq deftly took these and pieced them together into long lines, which were rolled in coils lasso-fashion. Arnaluk and a half dozen others sat on their haunches, ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... and St. Jean de Luz, a race of men quaint, venturesome, and fabulously bold, left many widows, from their habit of sailing out into the roughest seas to harpoon whales. Leaving their wives to God or the Devil, they threw themselves in crowds into the Canadian settlements of Henry IV. As for the children, these honest worthy sailors would have thought about them more, if they had been clear as to their parentage. But on their return home they would ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... heart and shame to her cheek; but he was there, and there was no escape. Col. Sellers hitched back his coat sleeves airily from his wrists as who should say "Now for solid enjoyment!" seized a fork, flourished it and began to harpoon turnips and deposit them in the plates before him "Let me help you, Washington—Lafayette pass this plate Washington—ah, well, well, my boy, things are looking pretty bright, now, I tell you. Speculation—my! the whole atmosphere's full of money. I would'nt take three fortunes ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... of that ship was a good man. He taught me many things. Once, when we had left the cold seas and were among the islands of Tonga, he struck me in his rage because I threw the harpoon at a great sperm whale, and missed. That night I slipped over the side, and swam five miles to the land. Dost know the place called Lifuka? 'Twas there I landed. I lay in a thicket till daylight, then I arose and went into a house and asked for food. They gave me a yam ...
— Pakia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... "That there harpoon," he said, pointing to a rusty relic on the wall above the mantelpiece, "was given to me by the finest whaling captain that ever found his way into the North water. When I first went to sea I thought I'd like to be a whaler; but two voyages settled that fancy. I'm told they shoot their harpoons ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... devise some means of winding up his exhausted antimony, as the nutritive blood winds up exhausted nerves, the comparison would be complete. The subject may be summed up, as Du Bois-Reymond has summed it up, by reference to the case of a whale struck by a harpoon in the tail. If the animal were 70 feet long, a second would elapse before the disturbance could reach the brain. But the impression after its arrival has to diffuse itself and throw the brain into the molecular condition ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... entertainment of the company; but, for my part, I throw myself upon your mercy. I wouldn't, for the world, hint that we are more solid than the girls, but 'tis very certain that we are more lumbering. If I were to begin a tale, I'd flounder through it, like a whale with a harpoon in its body; while any of the girls, even down to little Anna, would glide along, like a graceful, snow-white swan upon a silver lake—happy in her element, and giving pleasure to all who witnessed ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... peculiar barking noise made by the walrus when irritated, may be heard, on a calm day, with great distinctness at the distance of two miles at least. We found musket-balls the most certain and expeditious way of despatching them after they had been once struck with the harpoon, the thickness of their skin being such that whale-lances generally bend without penetrating it. One of these creatures being accidentally touched by one of the oars in Lieutenant Nias's boat, took hold of it between its flippers, ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... sharply round, and young Jack, standing up on the head of the boat, held the harpoon ready for use when they should ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... He was of no brand, being one of an ear-nicked mob taken into the Bucephalus at L4:10s., a head to make up freight, and sold raw and out of condition at Calcutta for Rs.275. People who lost money on him called him a "brumby"; but if ever any horse had Harpoon's shoulders and The Gin's temper, Shackles was that horse. Two miles was his own particular distance. He trained himself, ran himself, and rode himself; and, if his jockey insulted him by giving him hints, he shut up at once and ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... congreve rocket[obs3]; shrapnel, mitraille[Fr]; levin bolt[obs3], levin brand[obs3]; thunderbolt. pike, lance, spear, spontoon[obs3], javelin, dart, jereed[obs3], jerid[obs3], arrow, reed, shaft, bolt, boomerang, harpoon, gaff; eelspear[obs3], oxgoad[obs3], weet-weet, wommerah[obs3]; cattle prod; chemical mace. Phr. en ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... had followed our very rapid ride with real courage climbed on to the blocks. A harpoon was thrown with marvellous skill on to our icy wreck so as to retain us in our position, for the current, rather strong underneath, might have caused us to move. A ladder was brought and planted against one of the large blocks; its steps afforded ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... of the bank brought him in sight of a gaudily-painted barge, oil board of which armed men, in uncouth and foreign dresses, were chasing with barbaric shouts some large object in the water. In the bows stood a man of gigantic stature, brandishing a harpoon in his right hand, and in his left holding the line of a second, the head of which was fixed in the huge purple sides of a hippopotamus, who foamed and wallowed a few yards down the stream. An old grizzled warrior at the stern, with a ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... wife, a young topman, alongside of him. Her head-dress consisted of a white flowing wig made of oakum, with a green turban; on her shoulders was an ample yellow shawl; her petticoat was red bunting; on her feet were sandals made from the green hide of a bullock. In her right hand she held a harpoon; her cheeks were thickly ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... this, and yet he saw that she would be a harder prize to win than he had once thought. If he made up his mind that he would have her, he must go armed with all implements, from the red hackle to the harpoon. ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... our encounter with the shark, placed the harpoons in readiness; and amused me by seeming to picture himself a whaler, flourishing his harpoon ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... she spoke Nigel saw the brown little fellow shooting about like a galvanised tadpole, with a small harpoon ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... my harpoon ready," answered Anvik bravely. "Do not fear, mother. Perhaps the bear ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... go, and I will do to them whatsoever pleaseth Ra." And everything was done according to what he had said. Then this Boat of Ra was brought by the winged Sun- disk upon the waters of the Lake of Meh,[FN87] [and] Heru-Behutet took in his hands his weapons, his darts, and his harpoon, and all the chains [which ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... approach a fire on which the flesh is cooking; she may not go near the sea and she should not walk on the beach below high-water mark. Nay, the infection extends to her husband, who may not himself harpoon or otherwise take an active part in catching turtle; however, he is permitted to form one of the crew on a turtling expedition, provided he takes the precaution of rubbing his armpits with certain leaves, to which no doubt a disinfectant virtue is ascribed.[190] Among the Kai ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... with a spear they seldom escape, for the line is fastened to the side of the spear-head, which detaches itself from the staff and holds in the flesh like a harpoon. Sometimes, however, the seal will slip away after the spear is thrown, and, instead of striking him, it strikes the ice where he had been lying. This is very aggravating after the cold and tedious ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... business of whaling, my feelings at this juncture may perhaps be hard to understand. But this much let me say: that Right whaling on the Nor'-West Coast, in chill and dismal fogs, the sullen inert monsters rafting the sea all round like Hartz forest logs on the Rhine, and submitting to the harpoon like half-stunned bullocks to the knife; this horrid and indecent Right whaling, I say, compared to a spirited hunt for the gentlemanly Cachalot in southern and more genial seas, is as the butchery of white bears upon blank Greenland icebergs to zebra hunting ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... Nanomaga was a Samoan. He was intended by nature to be a warrior, a leader of men; or—and no higher praise can I give to his dauntless courage—a boat-header on a sperm whaler. Strong of arm and quick of eye, he was the very man to either throw the harpoon or deal the death-giving thrust or the lance to the monarch of the ocean world; but fate or circumstance had made him a missionary instead. He was a fairly good missionary, but ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... throwing-stick is indicated in Fig. 1 by a drawing of H.W. Elliott. The Eskimo is just in the act of launching the light seal harpoon. The barbed point will fasten itself into the animal, detach itself from the ivory foreshaft, and unwind the rawhide or sinew line, which is securely tied to both ends of the light wooden shaft by a martingale device. The heavy ...
— Throwing-sticks in the National Museum • Otis T. Mason
... Huahine for love of Weaver of Mats; story of Tahia's white man who was eaten; the disaster that befell Honi, the white man who used his harpoon ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... attendants were tolerably well supplied with fish, which they either purchased or which were caught by the boatmen with a harpoon. ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... fishing; left their canoe and ran on the approach of our boats. My men wished to steal it, which of course I prevented; it was a simple dome palm hollowed. In the canoe was a harpoon, very neatly made, with only one barb. Both sides of the river from the Bahr el Gazal belong to the Nuehr tribe. Course S.E.; wind very light; windings of river endless; continual hauling. At about half an hour before sunset, as the men were hauling the boat along by dragging ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... college I tried to please him by tackling one thing after another that he set me to do. On the square, I had no head for business. I made a mess of everything. The governor got sore. He kept ramming the harpoon into me till I just couldn't stand it. What little ability I possessed deserted me when I got my back up, and there you are. Dad and I had a rather uncomfortable half hour. When I quit—when I told him straight out that I was going West to fare for ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... suddenly I found the waves heaving smoothly under the sloop instead of breaking all about her. I ran to the canvas and stowed it quickly, then brought the sloop around into the lee of the huge bulk of the whale. I had a broken-shanked harpoon and a boathook. I plunged these both into the carcass and then attached the Wavecrest, bows and stern, to ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... hollow reed and use it for a shaft. Make a shaft with a socket in it. Fit a spearhead into the socket. Change the spear so as to make a harpoon. ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... sparkling eye and rigid features, in which determination was strongly stamped, as if resolved "to do or die," was busily engaged in fitting a line to the harpoon, which had been sharpened and prepared for use some days before. I cast my eye to windward, and saw the ocean alive with fish. Hundreds of porpoises were swimming around the brig, crossing the bows, or following in the wake, or leaping out ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... is firm, dry, and less savory than the corvina. The Pexe-rey (king-fish) is superior in flavor to the Pexe-sapo (toad-fish), which is a little larger, and has a thick, fleshy head. These fish are taken on rocks and under water, where they are struck by a kind of harpoon ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... their ignorance. With a smile he fitted to the groove of the short stick the shaft of a short harpoon, whose head, about a foot and a half in length, they now discovered to be made of thin, dark slate, ground sharp on each edge and at the point. When the chief had fitted the butt of this dart against the ivory tip, he grasped the lower end of the nogock firmly ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... to my horror a huge whale was coming upward with extended jaws. His half-human eyes were turned benignantly upon me; but he was evidently in pain, and from a point in his back, where a broken harpoon still remained, gouts of blood curdled upward, coloring the water. His vocal power lay in his spiracle, and ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... Dictionary. This is to be the more regretted as its etymology is very obscure. It may, however, be traced with little doubt to the old Norse 'grein,' a branch or prong, surviving in the word 'grains,' a pronged harpoon or fish spear. From its meaning, 'branch,' it might seem to be akin to 'stem' and to 'bow,' which is only another spelling of'bough.' But this is not likely. The older meaning of 'bows' was 'shoulders,' and this, it is agreed, is how it became applied to the head of a ship. ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... suggest to them their danger. The attitude of the children still remained that of polite spectators. True, the youngest boy did make the suggestion of borrowing the kitchen toasting-fork, and employing it as a harpoon; but even this appeared to be the outcome rather of a desire to please than of any warmer interest; and, the whale objecting, the idea fell through. After that he climbed up on the dresser and announced to them that he was an ourang-outang. They watched him break a soup-tureen, and then ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... the ancient fisherman,—"Now bring me my harpoon! I'll get into my fishing-boat, and fix the fellow soon." Down fell that pretty innocent, as falls a snow-white lamb, Her hair drooped round her pallid cheeks, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... unpleasant: in a rough sea, the other boats out of sight, and each moment the wind increasing. We continued to strain every muscle till we were hard upon the whale. Tabor sprang to the bow, and stood by with the harpoon. "Softly, softly, my lads," said the headsman. "Ay, ay sir!" "Hush-h-h! softly! Now's your time, Tabor!" Tabor let fly the harpoon, and buried the iron. "Give him another!" "Stern all!" thundered P——. "Stern all!" And, as ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... morning, at daybreak, they brought him up to a large, long whale. He darted his harpoon, and missed; and the fish sounded. After a while, the monster rose again, about a mile off, and they made after him. But he was frightened, or "gallied," as they call it; and noon came, and the boat ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... power, after which it is still better for him to learn of how great power. Then he will not hit a cartridge with a hammer in order to find out, and when he dines in good society he can still lift his pie gracefully in his hand, and will not be compelled to harpoon it with an iron hook at the end of ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... three weeks when I sailed in the whaler Scotsman out of Glasgow, and more by token we named the place Thievish Harbor, for one of the Indians stole a harpoon out of our boat and away with it before we could reach him. 'T is a goodly river, broader and deeper than yon, and has a broad ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... the Fisheries, the planting of a harpoon in the vitals of a Right whale gives the planter a pre-emption claim to it. If subsequently appropriated by another party it becomes, so far as that party is concerned, the Wrong whale, and on Trying the case its value may be recovered in a court ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various
... Sproul, clacking his hard fist on the table rim. "Law will tie more knots in a man's business than a whale can tie in a harpoon-line. There ain't no justice in it—only pickin's and stealin's. Why, I had a mate once that was downed on T wharf in Bos'n and robbed, and they caught the men, and the mate couldn't give witness bonds and they locked him up with 'em, and the men got away one night ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... muskets were stuck into horizontal holes along the beams. On one side was a claw-footed old table lashed to the deck; a thumbed missal on it, and over it a small, meagre crucifix attached to the bulk-head. Under the table lay a dented cutlass or two, with a hacked harpoon, among some; melancholy old rigging, like a heap of poor friars' girdles. There were also two long, sharp-ribbed settees of Malacca cane, black with age, and uncomfortable to look at as inquisitors' racks, with a large, misshapen ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... regarded as highly felicitous, since it mixes the diction of various ages. Here are Old English archaisms like 'Leeds' and 'burnie'; here are expressions like 'escheat,' 'page' (attendant), 'emprize,' 'bombard' (drinking-vessel), 'chivalry.' Here are such specialized words as 'harpoon,' 'belligerent,' 'pocket-money,' and combinations like 'battailous grip'; while throughout the entire translation are scattered modern colloquialisms ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... the animals. From time to time their sentry raised his head, but apparently did not see us. We advanced slowly, and soon we were so near that we had to row very cautiously. Juell kept us going, while Henriksen was ready in the bow with a harpoon, and I behind him with a gun. The moment the sentry raised his head the oars stopped, and we stood motionless; when he sunk it again, a few more ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... went to sea A huntin' after lions; He came upon an island where There was a pair of giants. He brought his nets and big harpoon, And thought he'd try to catch 'em; But Nabbum found out very soon There was no need to ...
— The Last of the Huggermuggers • Christopher Pierce Cranch
... "purse-proud, elbowing insolence" of our Northern monopolist would soon disappear forever under the smooth speech of the pedlar, scourging our frontiers for a livelihood, or the bluff vulgarity of the South Sea whaler, following the harpoon amid storms and shoals. Doubtless the abolitionists think we could grow cotton without slaves, or that at worst the reduction of the crop would be moderate and temporary. Such gross delusions show how profoundly ignorant they are of our ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... without being seen. This would be a comparatively simple matter, since the tumbled ridges of ice afforded ideal hiding-places. When close enough, Barney, who was the stronger of the two, was to drive the harpoon-point through the thick skin of the creature. This harpoon-point was fastened to a rawhide rope. He must instantly drive a copper-pointed lance into the ice, and wrapping the skin-rope about it, close to the ice-surface, hold on like grim death until Bruce dispatched the creature ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... although vigilant looking policemen were always standing by. And though these "Charlies" might suppose there were tobacco smugglers passing; yet to hit the right man among such a throng, would be as hard, as to harpoon a speckled porpoise, one of ten thousand ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... first to send out a whaler from Havre, and had secured almost a monopoly of the oil-trade. Some years afterwards I made a passage with his brother, and learned from him the history of this Yankee enterprise, which had filled two capacious purses, and substituted the harpoon for the pruning-knife, the whale-ship for the olive-orchard, in the very stronghold of the emblem of peace; and now the collier with his pickaxe has driven them both from the field. But the Petit Hotel Montmorenci did not wait for the change. Its broad court was never enlivened by gas. Its tables ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... save by the wigwam and the bark canoe. As usual, upon the arrival of the steamer, the long canoe, steadily held by a single boy and paddle, in a current swift as the Niagara, shoots out into the Saut, while the Indian, standing erect in the canoe, poising his harpoon and scrap net, strikes or swoops in the large and delicious white fish, assured of a capacious basketful and more, before the ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... carcass, rocket; congreve^, congreve rocket^; shrapnel, mitraille [Fr.]; levin bolt^, levin brand^; thunderbolt. pike, lance, spear, spontoon^, javelin, dart, jereed^, jerid^, arrow, reed, shaft, bolt, boomerang, harpoon, gaff; eelspear^, oxgoad^, weet-weet, wommerah^; cattle prod; chemical mace. Phr. en flute; nervos belli pecuniam ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... vessels were sailers, but now powerful steamships are used, and the harpoon often gives way to the harpoon gun. A whale, when struck, will sometimes run out a mile of line before it comes up again, which is generally in about half an hour. The whalers judge as best they can, from the position of the line, in which direction ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... now waxed exceedingly wroth at what Mr. Ewer had done. Truth had been shot into their hearts, and if I should say that they bellowed like mad bulls, and spouted like whales, gored mortally by the harpoon, I do not think the figure of speech would be too strong. Mr. Crocker, the contractor or agent, for our wood, felt himself especially aggrieved that I had gotten bail, and was let loose upon the plantation, to hinder him ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes
... Dinky-Dunk's bland intimation that I am "a withered beauty." Those words have held like a fish-hook in the gills of my memory. If they'd come from somebody else they mightn't have meant so much. But from one's own husband—Wow!—they go in like a harpoon. And they have given me a great deal to think about. There are times, I find, when I can accept that intimation of slipping into the sere and yellow leaf without revolt. Then the next moment it fills me with a sort of desperation. I refuse to go up on the shelf. ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... mate is always the mate par excellence—soon got fast to a huge bull-whale who, when he felt the deadly harpoon in his vitals, swiftly turned and struck the whale-boat a terrific blow with his tail, smashing it into kindling wood and hurling the men in every direction. After that {232} splendid exhibition of power, he got away scot-free save for the rankling iron and the dangling line which he ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... thrown, the Tyee paddled furiously away, for when a harpoon strikes a whale, he is likely to lash violently with his tail, and may destroy his enemy, and this is a moment of terrible danger to the harpooner. But the whale was too much astonished to fight, and, with a terrific splash, he dived deep, deep into ...
— Kalitan, Our Little Alaskan Cousin • Mary F. Nixon-Roulet
... ancient fisherman—"Now bring me my harpoon! I'll get into my fishing-boat, and fix the fellow soon." Down fell that pretty innocent, as falls a snow-white lamb; Her hair drooped round her pallid cheeks, like sea-weed ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... of a soldier and a dog leaving a room, drawn with three strokes of the pencil. Another (3) is a sailor, drawn with two squares, two circles, and two triangles. Another (5), Henry VIII, drawn with a square and nine straight lines. Another (6), invented for this book, an Esquimaux waiting to harpoon a seal, drawn with eleven circles and a straight line. The remaining figures are a cheerful pig and a despondent pig (4), and a cat (2), drawn with ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... gone by till I forget where I am, and go on thinking so hard that the flames seem to turn into melting fires, and the bars of the grate into dead fish, and the smoke into sails and rigging, and I go to work cutting up the blubber and stirring the oil-pots, or pulling the bow-oar and driving the harpoon at such a rate that I can't help giving a shout, which causes ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... fish," Allicot answered. "You see, when the surround is completed, you, being the guest of honour, must take a harpoon and impale the first one. It is the custom. Then everybody goes in with their hands and throws the catch out on the sand. There will be a mountain of them. Then one of the chiefs will make a speech in which he presents you with the whole kit and ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... dash into the water in great confusion. It may be worth remarking, as a proof how tenacious the walrus sometimes is of life, that the animal killed to-day struggled violently for ten minutes after it was struck, and towed the boat twenty or thirty yards, after which the iron of the harpoon broke; and yet it was found, on examination, that the iron barb had penetrated both auricles of the heart. A quantity of the blubber was put into casks, as ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... from 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
... the above-mentioned, with amiable satisfaction, "if it interests you, I can tell you that whales, wounded in Davis's Straits, are caught some time afterwards in the neighbourhood of Tartary with the European harpoon ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... Arctic circle, thay have pervaded the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen serpent of the south: nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them, than the accumulated winter of the poles; while some of them strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others pursue their gigantic toils on the shores of the Brazils. There is no climate that is not a witness of their labours. When I contemplate these things; when I know they owe little or nothing to any care of ours, but that they have arrived at this perfection ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... till the returning inundation, as so many vivaria in which the fish were preserved for dwellers on the banks. Fishing with the harpoon, made either of stone or of metal, with the line, with a net or with traps, were all methods of fishing known and used by the Egyptians from early times. Where the ponds failed, the neighbouring Nile furnished them with inexhaustible supplies. Standing in light canoes, or rather ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Gladys hops off the one o'clock train that afternoon. I seen her talkin' to Eddie Duke near the African Desert, and I immediately went scoutin' around for Joe, because Eddie liked him the same way the brewers is infatuated with the Anti-Saloon League and I knowed if Eddie got a chance to harpoon Joe with Gladys, he'd do ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... resting-place in the progress of their victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them, than the accumulated winter of both the poles. We know that whilst some of them draw the line and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude, and pursue their gigantic game along the coast of Brazil. No sea but what is vexed by their fisheries. No climate that is not witness to their toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... "We will harpoon it, if you like, though I do not know why I should risk the lives of my crew. Where's Bowline? Pass the word for ...
— The Wizard of the Sea - A Trip Under the Ocean • Roy Rockwood
... These are the most formidable cetaceans in the northern seas, and whalers are very careful in attacking them, for their strength is prodigious. However, in harpooning one of these whales, either with the ordinary harpoon, the Fletcher fuse, or the javelin-bomb, of which there was an assortment on board, there would have been danger to the men of ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... the nearest illustrations of what man may have been during the glacial age. Their implements hardly differ from those of palaeolithic man, and some of their tribes do not yet know fishing: they simply spear the fish with a kind of harpoon.(25) They know the use of iron, but they receive it from the Europeans, or find it on wrecked ships. Their social organization is of a very primitive kind, though they already have emerged from the stage of "communal marriage," ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin
... grass and a few shrubs, and also ants, grasshoppers, and lizards. Upon the rocks were oysters of the small, crumply kind, which seemed to indicate that the sea here is not violently agitated; and in the water we saw several large turtle, but were not able to harpoon any of them. Several of the Northumberland Isles were in sight from the top of the islet, and the following ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... enough, but his gravatana was not the weapon which Guapo was about to use. He had other weapons as well—a fish-spear or harpoon, and a regular bow and arrows, which he had made during his leisure ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... leave a sea-life, to which, in comparison, all life spent on shore was worse than nothing for dulness. For Robson had never reached that rank aboard ship which made his being unable to run up the rigging, or to throw a harpoon, or to fire off a gun, of no great consequence; so he had to be thankful that an opportune legacy enabled him to turn farmer, a great degradation in his opinion. But his blood warmed, as he told the specksioneer, ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... most ample harvest for the reaper of mysteries. The Egyptians, to denote navigation, and the return of the Phoenician fleet, which annually visited their coast, used the figure of an Osiris borne on a winged horse, and holding a three-forked spear, or harpoon. To this image they gave the name of Poseidon, or Neptune, which, as the Greeks and Romans afterwards adopted, sufficiently proves this deity had his birth here. Thus the maritime Osiris of the Egyptians became a new deity with those who knew not ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... is accordingly done for, if, as often happens, he in attempting to escape seeks his deliverance in the sea. There, he is, as the hunters say, "as easy to kill as a sheep," but one has to make haste to get hold of the killed animal with a harpoon or in some other way, for it speedily sinks, unless it ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... boats and rowed toward it. The whale would go down out of sight. Each officer would place his boat where he thought the whale would come up. When the whale came up to get breath, the men in the nearest boat would row toward it. The officer who stood in the bow of the boat would then throw a harpoon, which would stick fast in the whale. As soon as the whale was struck with the harpoon, he would go down into the water. There was a line fast to the harpoon, which was coiled in a tub standing in the whaleboat. Sometimes the whale would run down so far, that it would take more ...
— Stories of American Life and Adventure • Edward Eggleston
... she well knew that it was the only life open to an Orkney lad, yet she was ever anxious to delay its beginning, and at these words from her my father did not urge me further, but quietly watched me as I rose from the table and took from a rack over the window a small harpoon, the sharp point of which I tested by pressing it against ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... as follows:—A large junk of pork was made fast to a rope and suspended from the stern, letting it sink about a foot under the surface. C——, Smith, and I were in the captain's boat, with three sailors, under the orders of Lapworth, who had taken his stand immediately above with a harpoon. The shark came up, nibbling and smelling at the pork, so close to us in the boat that he almost rubbed along the side without apparent alarm or taking any notice of our presence. He was a monster, ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... which, no doubt, facilitated commerce and colonization, even at this early period of the world's history. The discovery of works of art, of however primitive a character, in the drifts of France and England, indicates an early colonization. The rudely-fashioned harpoon of deer's horn found beside the gigantic whale, in the alluvium of the carse near the base of Dummyat, twenty feet above the highest tide of the nearest estuary, and the tusk of the mastodon lying alongside fragments of pottery ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... commerce. In pursuing them they have now adopted the European boat in preference to their own, and those most frequently employed are six oared, rowed by twelve men. The harpooner stands in the bow with his harpoon, or iron spear, which is stuck on a shaft one or two fathoms long, and is provided with a leathern thong of considerable length, to which are attached from five to ten bladders of seal skin. If the whale be struck he immediately dives to the bottom of the sea, where ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... bull. He had put Lord Joe at the sweep, and was going to harpoon himself. He backed, and made a fine cast. But the fish, instead of sounding, turned on their boat, and took it in his mouth. They all spilled clear except Lord Joe; the poor nigger was caught. Then the fish sounded, and made off with a tub of line. I picked up Garboy and his crew, all except ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... good for a score of years yet," jovially remarked Major Hawke, as he gazed at the well-preserved outer man of his uneasy entertainer. "The harpoon is deeply fixed in the old whale," mused Hawke, as he followed Hugh Johnstone. "He begins to ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... weeks; indeed Father suggested, "We ought to stay and see the movies. Look! Royal X. Snivvles in 'The Lure of the Crimson Cobra'—six reels—that sounds snappy." But his exuberance died in a sigh. A block down Harpoon Street they saw a sign, light-encircled, tea-pot shaped, hung out from a great elm. Without explanations they turned ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... harpoon into the monster's quivering blubber, and with a dexterity that was wonderful in a man of his size, he seized another and thrust it to ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... gentleman, that while the activity of the Governor was not to be disputed, exertions wisely directed were alone worthy of praise; and he compared the project for netting the aborigines, with an attempt to harpoon a whale from the heights of Mount Wellington. The ardour of the people would not, however, admit a comparison which it required at that moment some political resentment to perceive. Nor is it precisely just to estimate ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... Half heroes, half ruffians, they did their work, and unconsciously brought the islands a stage nearer civilization. Odd precursors of English law, nineteenth-century culture, and the peace of our lady the Queen, were these knights of the harpoon and companions of the rum-barrel. But the isolated coasts and savage men among whom their lot was cast did not as yet call for refinement and reflection. Such as their time wanted, such they were. They played a part and fulfilled a purpose, and then moved ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... and foods was made between the contracting parties, but the bridegroom's friends had to give the larger amount, and the bridegroom had to pay the parents for his wife, the usual price being a canoe or dugong harpoon, or shell armlet, or goods to equal value. The man might give his sister in exchange for a wife, and thus save the purchase price. A poor man who had no sister might perforce remain unmarried, unless an uncle took pity ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... used to come close to our ship, and blow the water up to a very great height in the air. One morning we had vast quantities of sea-horses about the ship, which neighed exactly like any other horses. We fired some harpoon guns amongst them, in order to take some, but we could not get any. The 30th, the captain of a Greenland ship came on board, and told us of three ships that were lost in the ice; however we still held on our course till July the 11th, when we were stopt by one compact impenetrable body of ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... which, as an eminent writer—Tupper, I think—remarks, places Man immeasurably above all the other animals stationed so much lower down, and by virtue of which he is lord and master of them all, leading Behemoth over the land with a ring in his nose, and towing Leviathan across the waters with a harpoon in his ribs. Fine as the line may appear which separates instinct from the divine gift of reason, we must see that progress, an essential consequence of the latter, is denied to the former. It is quite possible that the dogs which accompanied the first mariner in the first argosy were educated ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... crew one Ned Land, a gigantic Canadian of forty, who was considered to be the prince of harpooners. Many a whale had received its deathblow from him, and he was eager to flesh his harpoon in this redoubtable cetacean which had ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... like a springle-riser; line on the hum, like the string of Paganini winch on the gallop, like a harpoon wheel, Pike, the head-centre of everything, dashing through thick and thin, and once taken overhead—for he jumped into the hole, when he must have lost him else, but the fish too impetuously towed him out, and made off in passion for another pool, when, ...
— Crocker's Hole - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... tell a little about the ship, which is a Norwegian whaler of 4,000 tons, and has accompanying it two little steamers, on each of which is mounted a gun, from which the harpoon is shot. The captain is returning from the South Shetlands (south of Cape Horn), and has caught 392 whales of two or three varieties. Below are 8,000 barrels of oil, which he is taking to Cape Town to be sent on from there to an English or ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... recognized it—the long, slender, javelin-like narwhal harpoon used by only one people in the world, the murderous little black-visaged Kogmollocks of Coronation Gulf and ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... for taking boiled meat out of the pot, with five or more prongs; hence "harpoon." ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... And there, in the middle of it, was the man himself—his face twisted like a lost soul in torment, and his great brindled beard stuck upward in his agony. Right through his broad breast a steel harpoon had been driven, and it had sunk deep into the wood of the wall behind him. He was pinned like a beetle on a card. Of course, he was quite dead, and had been so from the instant that he had uttered that last yell ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... bottle-nosed whale, leisurely prowling about the Sound in search of a living, and, in fact, none other than the one that my friend had supposed to be a reef. These creatures rarely run amuck until the harpoon is thrust into them. They usually roll about the sea in the most harmless way. No doubt the sight of a huge creature in localities unaccustomed to it creates an impression of dull alarm, and, strange ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... the cavalry were Don Quixote de la U.V.M., Knight of the patent-leather gaiters, terrible in his bright rectangular cuirass of tin (once a tea-chest), and his glittering harpoon; his doughty squire, Sancho Panza; and a dashing young lady, whose tasteful riding-dress of black cambric, wealth of embroidered skirts and undersleeves, and bold riding, took not ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... yet. They look too mad. I gave 'em the harpoon in good shape, as is usual, but I didn't expect they'd run here so soon. Thought they would flop a ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... animal's fault in particular if he was built that way like the camel, ship of the desert, distilling grapes into potheen in his hump. Nine tenths of them all could be caged or trained, nothing beyond the art of man barring the bees. Whale with a harpoon hairpin, alligator tickle the small of his back and he sees the joke, chalk a circle for a rooster, tiger my eagle eye. These timely reflections anent the brutes of the field occupied his mind somewhat distracted from Stephen's words ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... organ of the whale, I suppose, is pulmonary in part, as he is obliged to come frequently to the surface, whence he can be pursued after he is struck with the harpoon; and may nevertheless be in part like the gills of other fish, as he seems to draw in water when he is below the surface, and emits it again when ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... lisp, The married and unmarried children ride home to their Thanksgiving dinner, The pilot seizes the king-pin—he heaves down with a strong arm, The mate stands braced in the whale-boat—lance and harpoon are ready, The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches, The deacons are ordained with crossed hands at the altar, The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel, The farmer ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... then a visit to the presidio, filled up our spare time after hide-curing was over for the day. Another amusement which we sometimes indulged in was "burning the water'' for craw-fish. For this purpose we procured a pair of grains, with a long staff like a harpoon, and, making torches with tarred rope twisted round a long pine stick, took the only boat on the beach, a small skiff, and with a torch-bearer in the bow, a steersman in the stern, and one man on ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... girls reach maturity, which they do in these latitudes at the age of about twelve years, they are instructed by their mothers how to perform the necessary work, and become very skilful at throwing the lance, harpoon, or any manner of dart, being bred to it from their infancy. These girls, from this training, possess wonderful eyesight, and will descry a sail at sea farther than ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... breezy and pleasant, but the sea was still very rough. One could not promenade without risking his neck; at one moment the bowsprit was taking a deadly aim at the sun in midheaven, and at the next it was trying to harpoon a shark in the bottom of the ocean. What a weird sensation it is to feel the stem of a ship sinking swiftly from under you and see the bow climbing high away among the clouds! One's safest course that day ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Sometimes they harpooned the alligators, and then, fastening lassos to their heads and tails, or to a hind leg, dragged them ashore; at other times they threw the lasso over their heads at once, without taking the trouble to harpoon them. It was a terrible and a wonderful sight to witness the Negroes in the very midst of a shoal of these creatures, any one of which could have taken a man into his jaws quite easily,—whence, once between these long saw-like rows of teeth, no man ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... there were thick bull's-eye windows, by means of which the under-water travelers could look out into the ocean through which they were moving. As a defense against the attacks of submarine monsters there was a steel, pointed ram, like a big harpoon. There were also a bow and a stern electrical gun, of which ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... Three days after they had stepped through the barrier of time at the outpost, Ross and Ashe balanced on the rounded back of a whale. It was a whale which would deceive anyone who did not test its hide with a harpoon, and whalers with harpoons large enough to trouble such a monster were yet well in ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... square, fierce fight for his life. A man had a chance then to show his skill and power over the brute, he said. He held, too, that man's highest object in life was to know how to kill a whale skilfully; and he heartily despised the whale "as would submit quietly to the harpoon, and die like a lubber." He also affected great contempt for the landsman who had lived like a gentleman, and never killed ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... throw the harpoon into each other ruthless, though? Why, you could see that old girl fairly squirm when she got one of them assault-and-battery glances. Her under lip would quiver a bit, she'd wink hard three or four times, and then she'd sort of collapse, smotherin' a sigh and not ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... its wholesale greediness, seized the bait, and feeling the hook in his horrid jaw, tugged most fiercely to release himself, but in vain. Twelve sailors hauled him in, when, with distended jaws, he seemed to look out for the legs of the men, whereupon they rammed the butt-end of a harpoon down his throat, which put a stop to all further proceedings on his part. He was said to be quite young, perhaps the child of doting parents. The juvenile monster had, however, already ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca |
