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More "Porpoise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... satirists I have named the one who at bottom presents most affinity with Lowell, but the differences are marked. The intellectual sphere of the German is vaster, but though with certain aims before him, he rather floats and tumbles about like a porpoise at play than follows any direct perceptible course. With Lowell, on the contrary, every word tells, every laugh is a blow; as if the god Momus had turned out as Mars, and were hard at work fighting every inch of him, grinning his broadest ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... said the mate as he brought the axe to take the battons off the forehatch. "A fellow might as well try to work a crab at low tide as to keep her to it in a blow like that. She minds her helm like a porpoise in the breakers. Old Davy must have put his mark upon her some time, but I never know'd a lucky vessel to be got as she was. She makes a haul on the underwriters every time she drifts across; for I never ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... quarter where, under the circumstances, it was least likely to be looked for, namely, straight ahead. Of course what I had seen might merely have been a ray of moonlight glancing off the wet body of a porpoise, a whale, or some other sea creature risen to the surface to breathe; but it had so much the appearance of the momentary flash of oars that I was loath to believe it anything else. Assuming it ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... was romping through the stiff sea like a playful porpoise, dipping and plunging. A half-score of adventuresome gulls were still following in the foam-churned wake. In the face of all the pitching about, Mrs. Richards had quite a battle to direct her shuttle to any efficient purpose, and Claire was almost amused at ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... wrathful force; And dolefully echoes the wild-fowl's scream, As the sallows are swept by the whelming stream; And her callow young are hurled for a meal, To the gorge of the barbel, the pike, and the eel: The porpoise[10] heaves 'mid the rolling tide, And, snorting in mirth, doth merrily ride,— For he hath forsaken his bed in the sea, To sup on ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... and Dunstaffnage; and enough left us as we entered the Sound, to show, and barely show, the Lady Rock, famous in tradition, and made classic by the pen of Campbell, raising its black back amid the tides, like a belated porpoise. And then twilight deepened into night, and we went snorting through the Strait with a stream of green light curling off from either bow in the calm, towards the high dim land, that seemed standing up on both sides like tall hedges over a green lane. We entered the Bay of Tobermory ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... around quiet, bobbin' up in unexpected places, like a porpoise, and askin' questions once in a while. He asked about most everybody, but about Willie, especial. I judged Peter T. had dropped a hint to him and to Gabe. Anyhow, the old critter give out that he wouldn't trust a poet with the silver handles on his grandmarm's coffin. As for Grace, she acted ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... it a general plan to steer so that the smoke blew at right angles to the ship's course. As the wind was prevailingly west, this meant that his general trend was southerly. Whenever he saw another vessel, a mass of floating sea-weed, a porpoise, or even a sea-gull, he steered directly for it, and passed as close as possible, to have a good look at it. Even Mr. Pointer admitted (in the mates' mess) that he had never experienced so eventful a voyage. ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... virginity. I will chase the deer, I will subdue the whale, resistless as the frost of darkness, and un- wearied as the summer sun. In a few weeks I shall return prosperous and wealthy; then shall the roe- fish and the porpoise feast thy kindred; the fox and hare shall cover thy couch; the tough hide of the seal shall shelter thee from cold; and the fat of the whale illuminate ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... fellow-creatures; especially on board of a ship, leave off with an appetite. We passed our time—not having the fear of the Ancient Mariner before our eyes—in shooting albatrosses, Cape pigeons, and the like; in picking up a porpoise, a bonnitta, or a dolphin. Books, backgammon, and whist, filled up the measure of the day. Mem.—had we been favoured with less wind, we should have got more porpoises. We speared many—first-raters; but the speed at which we cut along, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... neck, threw back his leg, and, with all the precision he could summon, caught the grip of his muley in both hands. He made his fall heavily to the ground, landing on his shoulder. But as he keeled from the saddle the last thing that rolled over the saddle, like the flash of a porpoise fin, was the barrel of the rifle, secure in his hands. Karg, on horseback, was already bending over him, revolver in hand, but the shot was never fired. A thirty-thirty bullet from the ground knocked the gun into the air and tore ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... matron beside Lorelei elbowed her way forward; in one hand she carried a pair of embroidered silk stockings, with the other she raised a lorgnette. After a measured scrutiny her lips tightened, her nose lifted, she blew loudly like a porpoise, and, gathering her skirts closely, waddled away, as if fleeing from contagion. She continued to clutch the hosiery until a floor- walker, in answer to the clerk's frantic signal, intercepted her. Another crowd promptly gathered to listen to her ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... with horror at the death we so narrowly had avoided, old Davie did not even breathe more quickly. The man had no more imagination than a porpoise. ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... to him instantly! Don't dare say he's out, for I know that he's at home! It's a matter of life and death! Woman dying—children starving—and the devil to pay generally. Wake Snakes, you fat porpoise, and conduct me to ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... remember Anningait, and meet my return with the smile of virginity. I will chase the deer, I will subdue the whale, resistless as the frost of darkness, and unwearied as the summer sun. In a few weeks I shall return prosperous and wealthy; then shall the roe-fish and the porpoise feast thy kindred; the fox and hare shall cover thy couch; the tough hide of the seal shall shelter thee from cold; and the fat of the whale ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... began to watch daily for the letter carrier, in hope of getting a letter from Alfred; but day after day, week after week, passed and none came. But there came news of the wreck of the Porpoise, which had sailed from New York for London on the very day that Alfred Whyte had left the country—and which had gone down in a storm in ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... little incident which occurred when the destroyers picked up and escorted the Adriatic of the White Star Line. As may be imagined, the Americans on board were delighted to see a destroyer with an American flag darting about the great vessel like a porpoise, while the British appreciated to the full the significance of the occasion—so much so that the following message was formulated and wirelessed ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... squadron consisted of the frigates "Cumberland" (flagship), "Potomac," and "Raritan"; the steam frigate "Mississippi"; the sloops-of-war "Falmouth," "John Adams," and "St. Mary's"; the steam-sloop "Princeton"; and the brigs "Lawrence," "Porpoise," and "Somers." Before the close of the war some of these ships were recalled, at least one was wrecked, and the squadron was from time ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... often some yards across, and not arranged in radii and arcs, but spun like weaver's woofs. Paintings, remarkable only for their hideous proportions and want of perspective, are daubed in vermilion, ochre, and indigo. The elephant, camel, and porpoise of the Ganges, dog, shepherd, peacock, and horse, are especially frequent, and so is a running pattern of a hand spread open, with a blood-red spot on the palm. A still less elegant but frequent object is the fuel, which is composed of the manure collected on the ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... the scanty scarp denies fair start for a rush at the power of the hill front. Yet here must the heavy boats beach themselves, and wallow and yaw in the shingly roar, while their cargo and crew get out of them, their gunwales swinging from side to side, in the manner of a porpoise rolling, and their stem and stern going up and down like a pair of ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... panted Joel, blowing like a porpoise, and running up with red cheeks, "and you wouldn't stop," he added in ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... through: and, in good faith, I believe she bounced through after me; for, when I got fairly into the street and looked round, there she went, bounce, flounce, pell-mell, all in a rage, steam up, puffing like a porpoise—though, thank Jupiter! she took another course from myself. I was glad to get out of her clutches, I ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... descending weight, he added to it a wrench which seemed to sink his ten fingers into the flesh of Ujarak's shoulders; a momentary check threw the latter off his guard, and next instant Angut not only pulled him over, but hurled him over his own head, and rolled him like a porpoise on the snow! ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... between curiosity and fear. La Salle knew those with whom he was dealing, and, without ceremony, entered the chief's lodge with his followers. The crowd closed around them, naked men and half-naked women, described by Joutel as of a singular ugliness. They gave buffalo- meat and dried porpoise to the unexpected guests; but La Salle, racked with anxiety, hastened to close the interview; and, having without difficulty recovered the kidnapped men, he returned to the beach, leaving with the Indians, as usual, an ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... out there. Full fathom five thy father lies. At one, he said. Found drowned. High water at Dublin bar. Driving before it a loose drift of rubble, fanshoals of fishes, silly shells. A corpse rising saltwhite from the undertow, bobbing a pace a pace a porpoise landward. There he is. Hook it quick. Pull. Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor. We ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... stones, and stowed abundance of them on their ships, deeming, like certain Virginian gold-seekers of a later date, that their fortunes were now surely made. They found also "a great dead fish, round like a porepis [porpoise], twelve feet long, having a Horne of two yardes, lacking two ynches, growing out of the Snout, wreathed and straight, like a Waxe-Taper, and might be thought to be a Sea-Unicorne. It was reserved as a Jewell by the Queens' commandment in her ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... British submarines which were left from the fight had already put out to try conclusions with the Flying Fishes; but a porpoise might as well have tried to hunt down a northern diver. As soon as each Flying Fish had finished its work of destruction it spread its wings and leapt into the air—and woe betide the submarine whose periscope showed for a moment above the water, for in ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... pass, for the master and his boat's crew were lost before the Investigator was joined by the Lady Nelson, from Port-Jackson; and when the former ship was condemned, the people embarked with their commander on board the Porpoise, which was wrecked on a coral reef, and nine ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... commands as if he were hypnotized, puffing and blowing like a porpoise as he struggled to slip the linen covers over the chairs. Gladwin worked at top speed, too; and just as he was covering the great chest he gave a start and held ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... the sun in a fiery ship, before I bid him to-morrow, overturn his canoe, and drown him in lagoon or spring or ocean. If any woman go near them without Tu-Kila-Kila's leave, bind her hand and foot with ropes of porpoise hide, and cast her out into the surf, and dash her with your waves, and pummel her ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... river beyond the mouth of the Saguenay, and often in water but little over their own depth. On the western coast they also enter the great rivers, and have been captured up the Yukon seven hundred miles from its mouth. In their columnar movements they somewhat resemble the porpoise,—long processions being frequently seen, composed of three in a row, perhaps led by a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... food, and cookery was a science in which the ornamentation of the dish was almost as important as the dressing of the food. It was gilded, it was silvered, it was painted, it was surrounded with flame. From the boar and the peacock down to such strange food as the porpoise and the hedgehog, every dish had its own setting and its own sauce, very strange and very complex, with flavorings of dates, currants, cloves, vinegar, sugar and honey, of cinnamon, ground ginger, sandalwood, ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... gone so far he could hardly be seen. All that could be seen of him was a very small black dot moving swiftly on the blue surface of the water, a little black dot which now and then lifted a leg or an arm in the air. One would have thought that Pinocchio had turned into a porpoise playing in the sun. ...
— The Adventures of Pinocchio • C. Collodi—Pseudonym of Carlo Lorenzini
... cantered around and around and around a running track until my breathing was such probably as to cause people passing the building to think that the West Side Y.M.C.A. was harboring a pet porpoise inside. Once, doing this, I caught a glimpse of my own form in a looking-glass which for some reason was affixed to one of the pillars flanking the oval. A looking-glass properly did not belong there; distinctly it was out of place and could serve no worthy purpose. ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... called at the store of Laneville & Co. No one was in save a small lad, who, to his inquiry, replied that all were sick. The youth was a short, porpoise-shaped lad, who appeared quite independent for his age and station, and told George that he had better call the next day, as the folks would n't be down. In an instant George suspected the cause of their absence. Though he knew James would be mortified to be seen, ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... beavers had buried in the bottom of the stream. We saw no beaver dams on the river; they were not necessary, for deep, quiet pools existed everywhere in Brown's Park. We saw two beavers in this section. One of these rose, porpoise-like, to the top of the water, stared at us a moment, then brought his tail down with a resounding smack on the top of the water, and disappeared, to enter his home by the subterranean route, no doubt. The river was gradually losing its clear colour, for ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... fifes; also winding the cornets and hautboys, and in the end of their jollity, left with the battle and ringing of doleful knells. Towards the evening also we caught in the Golden Hind a very mighty porpoise with harping iron, having first stricken divers of them, and brought away part of their flesh sticking upon the iron, but could recover only that one. These also, passing through the ocean in herds, did portend storm. I omit ...
— Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage to Newfoundland • Edward Hayes
... periscope suddenly appeared, then the submarine dived, rose once more, showing the rounded conning tower, dived, rose again, like a porpoise ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... the coarse weeds which the mighty storms of the month of falling leaves root up from the bottom of the ocean, and scatter along the margin of the feathery strand where we now dwell. Upon his face, which was shaped like that of a porpoise, he had a beard of the colour of ooze. Around his neck hung a string of great sea-shells, upon his forehead was bound another made of the teeth of the cayman, and in his hand was a staff formed of the rib of a whale. But, if ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... Grew, Edward Tyson10 and Samuel Collins11 cultivated the same department with diligence and success. Grew has left an interesting account of the anatomical peculiarities of the intestinal canal in various animals; Tyson, in the dissection of a porpoise, an opossum and an orang outang, adduces some valuable illustrations of the comparative differences between the structure of the human body and that of the lower animals; Collins has the merit of conceiving, and executing on an enlarged plan, a comprehensive system, embodying all ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... a drove of small flying-fishes rose and skimmed over the surface like swallows, but they too soon plunged into the blue and sought below that the cool green depths. Into this tranquil scene steamed the Kinfauns Castle in a triangle of snow, a big porpoise rolling and rollicking along beside her, now rising on this side, now on that. When he came very close he could see into the saloon windows, and presently he saw the Captain standing at the ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... Tucuxi (Steno tucuxi of Gray). When it comes to the surface to breathe, it rises horizontally, showing first its back fin, then draws an inspiration, and dives gently down, head foremost. This mode of proceeding distinguishes the Tucuxi at once from the other species, which is called Bouto or porpoise by the natives (Inia Geoffroyi of Desmarest). When this rises the top of the head is the part first seen; it then blows, and immediately afterwards dips head downwards, its back curving over, exposing successively the ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... picked us up and threw us at the sea-wall, the seventeen foot high sea-wall. Just before we struck, I saw the Captain move and look up. The schooner was thrown out of the water, as a porpoise jumps, vaulted the sea-wall and came to solid ground with a crash that broke every timber. We landed stern first, and the wave that followed us tore off our bow and foredeck and threw them clear over the vessel. ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... that will stick fast to anything—iron, wood, stone, or flesh. All that this Water-devil gets to eat is what happens to come swimmin' or sailin' along where he can reach it, and it doesn't matter to him whether it's a shark, or a porpoise, or a shipful of people, and when he takes a grab of anything, that thing never ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... to detain me here, I request that my officer and people may be permitted to depart in the schooner; as well for the purpose of informing the British Admiralty where I am, as to relieve our families and friends from the report which will be spread of the total loss of the Porpoise and Cato, with all on board. Mr. Aken can be laid under what restrictions may be deemed requisite; and my honour shall be a security that nothing shall be transmitted by me, but what passes ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... porpoise, and I believe it all owing to you that my husband neglects his wife and family. What's vampyres to him, I should like to know, that he should go troubling about them? I never heard of vampyres taking ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... his middle, from whence a kind of net-work descended before, too thin to conceal any thing from the sight. A string was tied about his neck, and a flat bone, something shaped like a tongue, and about four inches long, was fastened to it, and hung down on the breast. This he told us, was a porpoise's bone (eavee toharra) expressing it exactly by the same words which an Otaheitean would have made use of. Mahine, who had already expressed his impatience to go ashore, was much pleased to find that the inhabitants spoke a language ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... As the porpoise, grown weary of his rush through the dim Of the unlitten silence where the swiftnesses swim, Learns at sudden the tumult of a clipper bound home And exults with this playmate and leaps ...
— Right Royal • John Masefield
... swimmer, I went about it in right earnest. Once and sometimes twice each day during the warm weather—that is, after school was out—I betook myself to the water, where I might be seen splashing and spluttering about like a young porpoise. Some bigger boys, who had already learnt to swim, gave me a lesson or two; and I soon experienced the delightful sensation of being able to float upon my back without assistance from any one. I well remember how proud I felt on the occasion when I first accomplished ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... a similar smoothness of brain. But, in the higher orders, and especially the larger members of these orders, the grooves, or sulci, become extremely numerous, and the intermediate convolutions proportionately more complicated in their meanderings, until, in the Elephant, the Porpoise, the higher Apes, and Man, the cerebral surface appears a perfect labyrinth of ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... sweaters. They passed Rockaway Beach a good three miles to port and by half-past one were off Point Lookout. Every instant held interest, for many pleasure boats were out and their white sails gleamed in the crisp sunlight. Three porpoise appeared off Short Beach and proved very companionable, for they stayed with the Adventurer for quite ten minutes. One placed himself directly in front of the boat and the others took up positions about six feet apart on the starboard bow, and for two miles or more they maintained their stations, ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... them a good seaman in calm weather," Sieur Radisson observed; and he put them through marine drill all that week. La Chesnaye so far recovered that he sometimes kept me company at the bowsprit, where we watched 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 ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... little faster?" said a whiting to a snail, "There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail. See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance! They are waiting on the shingle—will you come and join the dance? Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance? ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... cried Jane. Coming up, she splashed about in the pond trying to get her bearings. Then, seeing Harriet's struggle with Margery, Jane headed for them in a series of porpoise-like lunges. The last reach brought a hand in contact with one of Margery's feet. Jane gave it a mighty tug. "Put her under, put her under! ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... articulation difficult. He blew and sputtered like a stranded porpoise and his face became redder than ever, but he did not ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... I liked a sea life, I did not mean to be understood as liking a merchant ship, with an airless cabin, and with every variety of disagreeable odour. As a French woman on board, with the air of an afflicted porpoise, and with more truth than elegance, expresses it: "Tout ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... play; drank 2 stivers, bought three fine small rubies for 11 gold florins, 1 2 stivers; changed 1 florin for expenses. Dined again with the Augustines; dined twice with Tomasin. I gave 6 stivers for thirteen porpoise-bristle brushes, and 3 ...
— Memoirs of Journeys to Venice and the Low Countries - [This is our volunteer's translation of the title] • Albrecht Durer
... of your own. Village full of them; you could bargain with a porpoise for half the money which I was duped into squandering away on a chit! But don't look so grave; you may copy ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... some houses in the borough, and an omnium gatherum like this was a good time to do the civil thing to him. There he is; peep into the card-room, and you'll see his great porpoise back, the same old man that Harry in his benevolence assisted to a chair. He shook hands with Leonard, and told him there was a snug desk at ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... were, not difficult to please: they had good teeth, and their palates, having become accustomed to the flesh of the cormorant, heron, and crane, without difficulty appreciated the delicacy of the nauseous sea-dog, the porpoise, and even the whale, which, when salted, furnished to a great extent all the markets ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... with a mere "tumulus inanis" at which to observe the usual solemnities; they thought it was possible to obtain the soul of the departed in some tangible transmigrated form. On the beach, near where a person had been drowned, and whose body was supposed to have become a porpoise, or on the battlefield, where another fell, might have been seen, sitting in silence, a group of five or six, and one a few yards before them with a sheet of native cloth spread out on the ground in front of him. Addressing some ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... its waters, made a cruise into the open, and killed a porpoise, but we have no record of any battles fought, nor do we know how he was received by the Phoenician towns. He pushed on, it is thought, as far as the Nahr el-Kelb, and the sight of the hieroglyphic ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... rose vertically. Her enormous dimensions gradually grew smaller to the eye, and the necks of the crowd were almost cricked as they gazed into the air. Gradually the whale became a porpoise, and the porpoise became a gudgeon. The ascensional movement did not cease until the "Go-Ahead" had reached a height of fourteen thousand feet. But the air was so free from mist that she remained ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... Whether sleeping, quarrelling, or playing, whether curious, frightened, or angry, its interest is continuously humorous, but the Adelie penguin in the water is another thing; as it darts to and fro a fathom or two below the surface, as it leaps porpoise-like into the air or swims skimmingly over the rippling surface of a pool, it excites nothing but admiration. Its speed probably appears greater than it is, but the ability to twist and turn and the general control of movement is both ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... The wonder would then be if they could not be so classed. Again, how astonishing on the creative, how natural on the evolutionary hypothesis, that the arrangement of bones in the hand of a man, the wing of a bat, the fin of a porpoise, the leg of a horse, should be precisely the same; the number of vertebrae in the neck of a giraffe, and in that of an elephant the same; the primitive germs from which a man, a dog, a frog, and a lobster are gradually evolved, to all appearance the same—the same microscopic atom of homogeneous ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... such a coarse-skinned family. There's your brother Bob just as bad—as fat as a porpoise—wi' his low, mean, 'How'st do, Ann?' whenever he meets me. I'd 'How'st do' him indeed! If the sun only shines out a minute, there be you all streaming in the ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... moorings, and after boxing it about, dashed it against the windlass, where it stranded. The water then poured along the deck like a flood rolling over and over, pots, pans, and kettles, and even old Baltimore himself, who went breaching along like a porpoise. ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... a derelict porpoise was cast on the shore Our village policeman was much to the fore; He measured the beast from its tip to its tail, And blandly pronounced ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917 • Various
... illustration facing p. 17, of a Lebaudy air-ship, we have a good type of the semi-rigid craft. In shape it somewhat resembles an enormous porpoise, with a sharply-pointed nose. The whole vessel is not as symmetrical as a Zeppelin dirigible, but its inventors claim that the sharp prow facilitates the steady displacement of the air during flight. The stern is rounded so as to ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... knew there was the fore-royal gone. I ran forward, bawling blue hell; and just as I came by the foremast something struck me right through the fore-arm and stuck there. I put my other hand up, and, by George, it was the grain; the beasts had speared me like a porpoise. 'Cap'n!' I cried. 'What's wrong?' says he. 'They've grained me,' says I. 'Grained you?' says he. 'Well, I've been looking for that.' 'And by God,' I cried, 'I want to have some of these beasts murdered ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... first of these hideous monsters has the snout of a porpoise, the head of a lizard, the teeth of a crocodile; and it is this that has deceived us. It is the most fearful of all antediluvian reptiles, the world—renowned Ichthyosaurus or great ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... and the Theatrical Committee are looking up amateurs for a farce. Readings from Dickens are also spoken of. An occasional whale is seen blowing in the distance, and many grampuses come rolling about the ship,—most inelegant brutes, some three or four times the size of a porpoise. Each in turn comes up, throws himself round on the top of the sea, exposing nearly half his body, and then ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... he lost his balance. In the effort to recover it his leg knocked down the blade lever, and the steel cylinder sprang forward, leaving him floundering in the water. Pointed upward, it appeared for a moment on the surface, then dived like a porpoise and disappeared. In five seconds ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... the other,qualities which would have been very essential to his safety a few hours before. Then Miss Wardour was a syren, or a bird of Paradise; her father a triton, or a sea-gull; and Oldbuck alternately a porpoise and a cormorant. These agreeable imaginations were varied by all the usual vagaries of a feverish dream;the air refused to bear the visionary, the water seemed to burn himthe rocks felt like down pillows as he was dashed against themwhatever he undertook, failed in some strange ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... alive with an abundance of life. The black back of a porpoise showed above the surface; far away the sun glinted on the silver scales of a leaping tarpon. The red sides of a mangrove snapper were seen as it tried in vain to escape the jaws of a steel-gray barracuda, and a moment later half of the slim barracuda ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... on and the wounded whale ran a little way in fright, trying its best to shake out the harpoon. Finding this impossible, despite its porpoise-like gambols, the whale sounded; then occurred one of the strangest happenings that can be imagined. The bull went down, and we paid out a goodly portion of line. Finally the line stopped running, but the whale ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... it was not such a very difficult matter after all, and so asked to be allowed to try for themselves. The Indians at first hesitated, as they well knew how really difficult it was, and thought that the boys had better keep at the safer sport of trying to shoot those that sprang, porpoise-like, out of the water. This itself afforded great amusement, and, while exciting, was not very successful, as it is extremely difficult to strike a sturgeon in this way, so rapid are ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... swore peace again and everlasting. Then was discussed the matter of starting a German plantation twenty miles down the coast. The land, of course, was to be bought from Koho, and the price was arranged in terms of tobacco, knives, beads, pipes, hatchets, porpoise teeth and shell-money—in terms of everything except rum. While the talk went on, Koho, glancing through the window, could see Worth mixing medicines and placing bottles back in the medicine cupboard. Also, he saw the manager complete his labours by taking a drink of Scotch. Koho noted ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... came rolling and tumbling by, turning up their sleek sides to the sun and spouting up the briny element in sparkling showers. No sooner did the sage Oloffe mark this than he was greatly rejoiced. "This," exclaimed he, "if I mistake not, augurs well; the porpoise is a fat, well-conditioned fish, a burgomaster among fishes; his looks betoken ease, plenty, and prosperity; I greatly admire this round fat fish, and doubt not but this is a happy omen of the success of our undertaking." So ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... he dove to the bottom of the pool in a flash, taking the guard with him. But no human being could stick on the back of a slippery sea lion, and the guard soon came up to the surface of the water blowing and spouting like a porpoise. ...
— Billy Whiskers' Adventures • Frances Trego Montgomery
... etymologically is 'un grand poisson,' but, biologically, it is no fish at all, being a mammal, mid-way between a dolphin and a porpoise." ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... animal was used partly as a lubricant, but mainly for illuminating purposes. For this purpose, however, it has been superseded by coal-oil, gas, and electricity. It is still in demand as a lubricant, but the whale-oil of commerce is quite as apt to come from the blubber of the porpoise or the sea-cow as from the right whale. Whalebone is a horny substance taken from the animal's jaw, and is worth from three dollars to eight dollars per pound. It is used chiefly in the manufacture of whips. For other purposes, steel, ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... you look like a boiled porpoise with parsley sauce!' exclaimed Mr. Waffles, pulling up where the unfortunate youth was spluttering and getting emptied like a jug. 'Confound it!' added he, as the water came gurgling out of his mouth, 'but you must have drunk ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... mottled, carp, turbot, tench, perch, fresh sturgeon with whelks, porpoise roasted, memis fried, crayfish, prawns, eels roasted with lamprey, a leche called the white leche flourished with hawthorn leaves and red haws, and a march pane, garnished with figures of angels, having among them an image of St. Katherine ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... of bones in the hand of a man, wing of a bat, fin of the porpoise, and leg of the horse—the same number of vertebrae forming the neck of the giraffe and of the elephant—and innumerable other such facts, at once explain themselves on the theory of descent with slow and slight successive modifications. ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... 1. (HUZZA PORPOISE).—This is the common porpoise found almost all over the globe. The name is of my own bestowal; for there are more than one sort of porpoises, and something must be done to distinguish them. I call him thus, because he always swims in hilarious shoals, which ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the said cape being E.N.E. of us, and the river Sesto E. The 20th we fell in with Cape Mensurado or Mesurado, which bore S.E. 2 leagues distant. This cape may be easily known, as it rises into a hummock like the head of a porpoise. Also towards the S.E. there are three trees, the eastmost being the highest, the middle one resembling a hay-stack, and that to the southward like a gibbet. Likewise on the main there are four or five high hills, one after the other, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... could be dislodged from their lurking places in a biscuit. As for the pork, we were cheated out of it more than half the time, and when it was obtained one would have judged from its motley hues, exhibiting the consistence and appearance of variegated soap, that it was the flesh of the porpoise or sea hog, and had been an inhabitant of the ocean, rather than a sty. * * * The flavor was so unsavory that it would have been rejected as unfit for the stuffing of even Bologna sausages. The provisions were generally damaged, and from the imperfect manner ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... sea, the o—pen sea, the blue, the fresh;' but here we halt; Mr. CORNWALL knew very little about the sea, or he would have written SALT. 'The whales they whistled, the porpoise rolled, And the dolphins bared their backs of gold;' Worse and worse; more blunders than words, and such a jumble! Whales spout, but never whistle; dolphins' backs are silver; and porpoises never roll, but tumble. 'It plays with the clouds, it mocks the skies, And ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... "I don't want you to do that. I don't mind tellin' you that I don't trust you. I've got very heavy responsibility on me, and I don't know who you are no more than if you was a porpoise come a-bouncin' up out of the sea. I don't want you and your skipper holdin' no conversation with each other until I've got this matter settled to my satisfaction, and then I can put you on board your vessel, and go ahead on my course, or I can ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... for the life of me how long it was before I first sat up and took notice of the fat little man. He was bobbing up and down in the surf for all the world like some ungainly porpoise, and every time he moved he shot sunlit streams of water off his gross body. I've seen fat men in my time, but this one was just about the limit. He was all up and down and then across. I know that doesn't ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... blackbirds, bullfinches, chaffinches and green canaries, a reward was formerly paid for the destruction of birds in St Michael's, and it is said that over 400,000 were destroyed in several successive years between 1875 and 1885. There are valuable fisheries of tunny, mullet and bonito. The porpoise, dolphin and whale are also common. Whale-fishing is a profitable industry, with its headquarters at Fayal, whence the sperm-oil is exported. Eels are found in the rivers. The only indigenous reptile is the lizard. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... here. Talk of your fashionable watering-places! Why, Dab, there aint anything else in the world prettier than that reach of water and the sand island with the ocean beyond it. There's some ducks and some gulls. Why, Dab, do you see that? There's a porpoise inside the bar." ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... that a gannet could scarcely live upon. He had pushed aside the men who remonstrated with him, turning on them a face ghastly in the moonlight. 'Stand aside, men,' he cried, 'and if I fail, see to the girsha!' He was the strongest man in all the Island, and as much at home in the water as a porpoise. They saw his sleek head now and again flung out of the trough of the waves, and his huge shoulders labouring against the weight of the storm. Then suddenly the rope they were holding fell slack in their hands,—they said afterwards it had snapped on a ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... table." When he worked, law books sprang up around him and sprawled over his desk and lay half open on chairs and tables near him until he had found his point; then he would get up and begin rollicking, slamming books together, cleaning up his debris and playing like a great porpoise with the litter he had made. At such times—and, indeed, all the time unless he was in what he called a "legal trance"—Hedrick was bubbling with good spirits, and when he left his office for politics ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... expirations of satisfaction; then, as the first cold stream from the "tinpot" courses down your spine, what electric thrills start from a dozen ganglia and flush your whole nervous system with new life! Finally, there is the plunge and the wallow and the splash, with a feeling of kinship to the porpoise in its joy, under the influence of which the most silent man becomes vocal and makes the walls of the narrow ghoosulkhana resound with amorous, or patriotic, song. A flavour of sadness mingles here, for you must come out at last, but the ample gaol ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... myself spoke for some time in the Tuscan tongue before we discovered that neither of us was Italian, after which we paid each other some handsome compliments upon fluency and perfection of accent. The gentleman was a pleasant purple porpoise from the waters of Chili, whither he had wandered from the English coasts in early youth. He had two leading ideas: one concerned the Pope, to whom he had just been presented, and whom he viewed as the best and blandest ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... the boat, may read or write. Then there is one's berth, a never-failing resort, where one may analyze at one's leisure the life and emotions of an oyster in the mud. Walking the deck is a means of getting off some half hours more. If a ship heaves in sight, or a porpoise tumbles up, or, better still, a whale spouts, it makes an ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... swimming. Some of the latter, such as the pala (not the palu)—a long, scaleless, beautifully-formed fish, with a head of bony plates and teeth like a rip-saw—are of great size, and afford splendid sport, as they are game fighters and almost as powerful as a porpoise. They run to over 100 lbs., and yet are by no means a coarse fish. In the shallow water on the top of this mountain reef there are some eight or nine varieties of rock cod, none of which were of ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... the light ripples melted away into a blue and white haze upon the water, a small black smudge, like the back of a porpoise, seemed to be sliding ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... at every step of his pilgrimage, to seek the relief of some propitious omen. The few which are supported by scientific causes give support to the many that have their origin only in his own excited and doubting temperament. The gambols of the dolphin, the earnest and busy passage of the porpoise, the ponderous sporting of the unwieldy whale, and the screams of the marine birds, have all, like the signs of the ancient soothsayers, their attendant consequences of good or evil. The confusion between ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... of a song thrush and that of the jackdaw; or to discern how the cuckoo's head is hollow where the organ of the love of offspring is located, whilst the same part presents a striking protuberance in the partridge. In the dolphin, the porpoise, the seal, and many other animals, the male could there be distinguished from the female by the form of the back part of the skull, where the same organ lies. Nor could any one fail to mark the form of head that is the invariable, and evidently indispensable, concomitant of the ferocious ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... hath made more bad faces with his oppression than ever Michael Angelo made good ones. He lifts up 's nose, like a foul porpoise before a storm. ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... Broadstairs: "In a bay window sits, from nine o'clock to one, a gentleman with rather long hair and no neckcloth, who writes and grins as if he thought he were very funny, indeed. At one o'clock he disappears, presently emerges from a bathing machine, and may be seen a kind of salmon-colored porpoise, splashing about in the ocean. After that, he may be viewed in another bay window on the ground floor, eating a good lunch; and after that, walking a dozen miles or so, or lying on his back on the sand reading. Nobody bothers him, ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... day he laid the sloop ashore) he attempted to get some swans, but met with none that could not fly. He saw several large fish, or animals that came up to the surface of the water to blow, in the manner of a porpoise, or rather of a seal, for they did not spout, nor had they any dorsal fin. The head also strongly resembled the bluff-nosed hair seal, but their size was greater than any which Mr. Flinders had seen before. He fired three musket balls into one, and Bong-ree threw a spear ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... Oakes made ten trips, carrying in all 35,000, by count. He continued in this trade about six years, taking the combined catch of about five or six fishermen. At this same period the smack Hulda B. Hall, 50 tons, of New London, Conn., Captain Chapell, was carrying lobsters from Cape Porpoise, Gloucester, Ipswich Bay, and occasionally Provincetown, to Boston, making 15 trips in the season of four months, and taking about 3,500 lobsters each trip. Captain Chapell was supplied with lobsters ...
— The Lobster Fishery of Maine - Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, Vol. 19, Pages 241-265, 1899 • John N. Cobb
... Base I boarded the leave-boat. Several officers were already on board, their boots still bearing the mud of Flanders upon them. It was squally weather, and as we headed for the open sea I saw a dark object gambolling upon the waves with the fluency of a porpoise. A sailor stopped near me and passed the time ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... kind; but no sooner had we passed Finisterre than a gale struck us, and for many woeful days the Asia behaved like a drunken porpoise. I do not think a single passenger escaped sea-sickness. The gale continued until the night before we reached Madeira. I shall never forget the enchanting prospect which Funchal afforded as we glided to our anchorage in the early morning. The misery of the previous week ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... Miss Fairfield," said the Englishman, looking at her through his single eyeglass, "tradition demands that steamer passengers shall always make a fuss over a passing porpoise. To be sure it's only a fish, but the fuss is because of tradition, ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... mostly in listening and interjecting questions. He wallowed in the cold tank like a porpoise; caught me and ducked me until I yelled for mercy, and while I was trying to get my breath, half drowned me with the water he splashed over me with both hands; talking incessantly, except when his head was under water. When we lay ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... would be dangerous. She rolls like a porpoise in a seaway, and she'd crush us like an egg shell if we got too close. All we can do is to hold off a bit, until this blows out. And it can't last very long at this season of the ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... Editor of a daily noosepaper. He took it into his nozzle one day to rite some essays 'on what he knowed of farmin,' which he was about as well posted on as a porpoise is about ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... other watch plunged down on the main deck to haul up the sail. Men's heads bobbed up as the water flung them irresistibly from side to side. Mr. Baker grunted encouragingly in our midst, spluttering and blowing amongst the tangled ropes like an energetic porpoise. Favoured by an ominous and untrustworthy lull, the work was done without any one being lost either off the deck or from the yard. For the moment the gale seemed to take off, and the ship, as if grateful ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... first, time to look at the boats lying on Bagley's wharf, their ominous porpoise-like appearance gave me a peculiar sensation. I had expected rough-water, but this was the first understanding I had that the journey was to be more or less amphibian. On a day when the waves on Lake Michigan were running high we took them out for trial. The crews were filled ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... long time and was beginning to think that his trip had been in vain, when he heard a soft crackling of the twigs above him, a heavy tread crashing through the bushes, a puffing snorting breath from the porpoise-like Pat, and he held his own breath and lay very still. Suppose Pat should take a new trail and discover his hiding place? His heart pounded with great dull thuds. But Pat slid heavily down to the little clearing below him, fumbled a ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... partner said to my old friend, "I would like to make a bet, but I am unlucky; will you bet this $50 for me?" He took the $50, put it up, and won. Then he put up $50 for himself, and lost. My partner wanted to know how he had made such a mistake, when he swelled up like a porpoise, and said: "I believe that is the same fellow that beat me out of my money before." He walked away, and my partner followed him. They were standing at the bar when I came up, and I invited all hands to join me in a drink. Everybody accepted the invitation, except my ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... wants a pair of long porpoise-hide waterproof boots sending out; they are quite an essential, as after the heavy rains water stands inches deep in our yards, and he has so much walking into the marshes. In the spring, when the snow has melted, the "sloughs" or mudholes along all the tracks and ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... first flying fish. He was very much alone. I saw him. Five other pairs of eager eyes scanned the sea all day, but never saw another. So sparse were the flying fish that nearly a week more elapsed before the last one on board saw his first flying fish. As for the dolphin, bonita, porpoise, and all the other hordes ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... (Figure 1) must have been very large, seven or eight feet being the ordinary length, while specimens measuring from twenty to thirty feet are not uncommon. The large head is pointed, like that of the Porpoise; the jaws contain a number of conical teeth, of reptilian form and character; the eyeball was very large, as may be seen by the socket, and it was supported by pieces of bone, such as we find now only in the eyes of birds of prey and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... about with him. The next fall, while going along the coast, he saw a pack of white foxes approaching, and having with him neither a trap nor a gun, he thought of his spoon-hook. Tearing a rag off his shirt, he rubbed on it some porpoise oil which he was carrying in a bladder, fastened the rag about the hook, laid it on a log directly in the path of the approaching foxes, and, going to the end of the line, lay down out of sight to watch what would happen. When the foxes drew near, one of them seized the bait, ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... shaking himself and lifting his shoulders, when he had passed beyond hearing of the sentinel at the gate, "ziff! I can punch a good stiff stroke yet, Monsieur le Gouverneur. Ah, ziff!" and he blew like a porpoise. ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... his flock, and every plough had to plough one acre of land for him annually.' He had the 'right of pre-emption of fish in all his ports, and the choice of the best fish.' Conger-eels were specially mentioned in a marginal note. Besides this, he claimed every porpoise caught in the sea or other neighbouring waters, but paid for it with twelve pence and a loaf of white bread to each sailor, and two to the master of the boat from which it was caught. Lastly, the Prior claimed the half of every dolphin. But ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... true I was dead and dacently buried, but here I am for my sins turned into a sale as other sinners are and will be, and if you put an end to me and skin me maybe it's worser I'll be, and go into a shark or a porpoise. Lave your ould forefather where he is, to live out his time as a sale. Maybe for your own sakes you will ever hereafter leave off following and parsecuting and murthering sales who may be nearer to yourselves ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... fireplace with a very important air. A fat little servant disappeared frequently through the dining-room door, where she seemed to be laying the cover for a feast. With that particular dexterity of country girls, she made three trips to carry two plates, and puffed like a porpoise at her work, while the look of frightened amazement showed upon her face that every fibre of her intelligence was under unaccustomed tension. Before the fire, and upon the range, three or four stew-pans were bubbling. A plump chicken was turning on the spit, or, rather, the spit and its victim ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... grabbed Bullard's right wrist. "Teddy, take the madman away," he cried, and Teddy removed Guidet, who went obediently, but blowing like a porpoise, to ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... only companions we had in this vast ocean, except, now and then, we saw a whale or porpoise; and sometimes a seal or two, and a few penguins. In the latitude of 58 deg. S., longitude 213 deg.[16] east, we fell in with some ice, and, every day, saw more or less, we then standing to the east. We found a very strong current setting ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... polish : poluri. politics : politiko. pompous : pompa. poodle : pudelo. poor : malricxa, kompatinda. pope : papo. poplar : poplo. poppy : papavo. -"coloured", punca popular : populara. porcelain : porcelano. porcupine : histriko. porous : pora, truajxa. porpoise : fokeno. porridge : kacxo. port : haveno. porter : portisto, pordisto. portion : parto, (ration) porcio, portmanteau : valizo. position : pozicio, situacio. positive : pozitiva, definitiva. possess : posedi, havi possible ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... incident where I bravely faced an old lioness. Upon consulting my watch, I found I had been almost four hours climbing out. At that moment, Frank poked a red face over the rim. He was in shirt sleeves, sweating freely, and wore a frown I had never seen before. He puffed like a porpoise, and at first ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... shark or porpoise swimming away from that schooner," he began patiently. "I saw it myself. You recall, on that night anything that moved in the water burned like fire. The ship was brilliant, the oars of the dinghy shone. The thing you saw had nothing ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... Readings from Dickens are also spoken of. An occasional whale is seen blowing in the distance, and many grampuses come rolling about the ship,—most inelegant brutes, some three or four times the size of a porpoise. Each in turn comes up, throws himself round on the top of the sea, exposing nearly half his body, and then ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... cried, puffing like a stranded porpoise, "what—WHAT do you suppose has happened? Aunt Laviny ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the ship. Her upper jaw reached far up above the main-top mast truck, and the lower one, I'd no doubt, dipped far away down below her keel. Well, as I was a-saying, on she came, roaring away like a young porpoise, and heaving the foam right over our mast-heads. I knew what would happen, and so it did. Just as easily as the big shark in Port Royal harbour would swallow a nigger boy, she made a snap at the ship and bolted us all, masts and spars and hull, ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... is so. The first of these hideous monsters has the snout of a porpoise, the head of a lizard, the teeth of a crocodile; and it is this that has deceived us. It is the most fearful of all antediluvian reptiles, the world—renowned Ichthyosaurus or ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne
... there. Full fathom five thy father lies. At one, he said. Found drowned. High water at Dublin bar. Driving before it a loose drift of rubble, fanshoals of fishes, silly shells. A corpse rising saltwhite from the undertow, bobbing a pace a pace a porpoise landward. There he is. Hook it quick. Pull. Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor. We have him. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... M. Bue and Miss Antonie Zimmermann, who translated the tale into German, were fairly beaten: the reason for the whiting being so called, from its doing the boots and shoes, and for no wise fish going anywhere without a porpoise, ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... in hand, hurrying stragglers, thrusting off the stranded, leading his phalanxes wisely round curves and angles, lest they be jammed and fill the river with a solid mass. As the great sticks come dashing along, turning porpoise-like somersets or leaping up twice their length in the air, he must be everywhere, livelier than a monkey in a mimosa, a wonder of acrobatic agility in biggest boots. He made the proverb, "As easy as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... "You are an old porpoise, and I believe it all owing to you that my husband neglects his wife and family. What's vampyres to him, I should like to know, that he should go troubling about them? I never heard of vampyres taking ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... for the sake of argument, that a savage has more brains than seems proportioned to his wants, all that can be said is that the objection to natural selection, if it be one, applies quite as strongly to the lower animals. The brain of a porpoise is quite wonderful for its mass, and for the development of the cerebral convolutions. And yet since we have ceased to credit the story of Arion, it is hard to believe that porpoises are much troubled with intellect: and still more difficult is it to imagine that their big brains are ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... mouth of the Saguenay, and often in water but little over their own depth. On the western coast they also enter the great rivers, and have been captured up the Yukon seven hundred miles from its mouth. In their columnar movements they somewhat resemble the porpoise,—long processions being frequently seen, composed of three in a row, perhaps led by ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... desired, and with the intention of becoming a first-rate swimmer, I went about it in right earnest. Once and sometimes twice each day during the warm weather—that is, after school was out—I betook myself to the water, where I might be seen splashing and spluttering about like a young porpoise. Some bigger boys, who had already learnt to swim, gave me a lesson or two; and I soon experienced the delightful sensation of being able to float upon my back without assistance from any one. I well remember ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... from Cape Mensurado, we set our course E. by N. the said cape being E.N.E. of us, and the river Sesto E. The 20th we fell in with Cape Mensurado or Mesurado, which bore S.E. 2 leagues distant. This cape may be easily known, as it rises into a hummock like the head of a porpoise. Also towards the S.E. there are three trees, the eastmost being the highest, the middle one resembling a hay-stack, and that to the southward like a gibbet. Likewise on the main there are four or five high hills, one after ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... cardinal hath made more bad faces with his oppression than ever Michael Angelo made good ones. He lifts up 's nose, like a foul porpoise before a storm. ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... inhabited by animals than those of the Orinoco, we no longer heard the howlings of the monkeys. The dolphins, or toninas, sported by the side of our boat. According to the relation of Mr. Colebrooke, the Delphinus gangeticus, which is the fresh-water porpoise of the Old World, in like manner accompanies the boats that go up towards Benares; but from Benares to the point where the Ganges receives the salt waters is only two hundred leagues, while from the Atabapo to the mouth of the Orinoco is more ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... composite, cream mottled, carp, turbot, tench, perch, fresh sturgeon with whelks, porpoise roasted, memis fried, crayfish, prawns, eels roasted with lamprey, a leche called the white leche flourished with hawthorn leaves and red haws, and a march pane, garnished with figures of angels, having among them an image of ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... nine hundred thousand dollars, there were more than one million collected for the Tammany campaign. No one can show where so much as two hundred thousand dollars were honestly disbursed. Let me tell a story; it may suggest an idea to our diligent friends of the Dailies. There is a rotund, porpoise-shaped globular gentleman known of these parts as 'Bim the Button Man.' This personage went into the printing business at the beginning of the late campaign and went out of it—like blowing out a candle—at ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... object he described, but it puzzled him to understand how eyes, even though so dim with age, could have mistaken any sea-creature for the mermaid he described; for the man had lived his life by the sea, and even the unusual sight of a lonely white porpoise hugging the shore, or of seal or small whale, or even a much rarer sea-animal, would not have been at all likely to deceive him. It would certainly have been very easy for any person in mischief or malice to have played the hoax, but no locality ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... fitful gusts. Then again it blew steadily. I had caught some whispers from it years before. On the deck of the great, populous, electric-lighted ocean-hotel that was hurrying me across the Atlantic, racing the porpoise-schools to get to New York City; and later at Washington, when the red sunset-fires burned low behind the Capitol, it spoke to me in the wonderful, beloved voice I shall never hear on earth any more. Yet once more the wind came faintly sighing, in the giant blue shadow of Table ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... too hot here," remarked Ebony, going to a pool a little further from the fountain-head, where the water had cooled somewhat. There the negro dropped his simple garments, and was soon rolling like a black porpoise in his warm bath. It was only large enough for one, but close to it was another small pool big enough for several men. There Mark and Hockins were soon disporting joyously, while the Secretary looked on and laughed. Evidently he did ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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' (meaning, as I suppose, a porpoise), and undertook to break the subject to him. It is quite common to find candidates for service very deaf, and if they contrive to pass their 'entrance examination' (for which no doubt they sharpen their faculties), they stay with you for a month ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... skipper," said the mate as he brought the axe to take the battons off the forehatch. "A fellow might as well try to work a crab at low tide as to keep her to it in a blow like that. She minds her helm like a porpoise in the breakers. Old Davy must have put his mark upon her some time, but I never know'd a lucky vessel to be got as she was. She makes a haul on the underwriters every time she drifts across; for I never knew her to sail ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... retaliation by attacking a British squadron, but the effort miscarried. The British cruiser Birmingham caught a glimpse of her wake and with a well-aimed shot destroyed her periscope. The submarine dived, but shortly afterwards came up again making what was called a porpoise dive—that is to say, she came up just long enough for the officer in the conning tower to locate the enemy, then submerged again. Brief, however, as had been the appearance of the conning tower, the British put a shell into ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... me to him instantly! Don't dare say he's out, for I know that he's at home! It's a matter of life and death! Woman dying—children starving—and the devil to pay generally. Wake Snakes, you fat porpoise, and conduct me ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... our soundings were between forty and forty-six fathoms. A very large natives' fire was burning about two or three miles inland, but the Indians did not show themselves. Last night our people caught a porpoise, which helped to diminish the ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... increasing the displacement of the Dewey and causing it to settle in the water. First one tank was filled, and then another, until the vessel was submerged on an even keel. This was a revelation to the boys, for they had supposed it was only necessary to tilt the ship and dive just like a porpoise. ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... I dink mineselluf," answered the German youth, and did as requested. Then he, too, took a dive, coming up and blowing like a porpoise. ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... bit uneasy as yet, though; for he greeted me quite cheerily when I at last managed to clamber up on the poop and make my way aft to where he was standing, holding on to everything I could clutch to maintain my footing. The ship was rolling from side to side like a porpoise, and the wind nearly blew the hair off my head, my cap having gone away to leeward the first step I took up the ladderway on emerging ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... blessed void repose Of oily days at sea, when only rose The porpoise's slow wheel to break the sheen Of satin water indolently green, When for'ard the crew, caps tilted over eyes, Lay heaped on deck; slept; mumbled; smoked; threw dice; The sleepy summer days; the summer nights (The coast pricked out with rings of harbour-lights), The motionless ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... Now and then we had glimpses across the tree-tops of brilliant green jungle hills further inland, everywhere were huge splendid trees, the stack-shaped mango, the soldier-erect palm heavy, yet unburdened, with cocoanuts. Some fish resembling the porpoise rose here and there, back and forth above the shadows winged snow-white cranes so slender one wondered the sea breeze did not wreck them. Above all the quiet and peace and contentment of a perfect tropical day enfolded the landscape in a silence only occasionally disturbed by the cry ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... the water made him turn back to regain the hole he crept out of. In coming near the staging where the sentinel was posted, he heard the poor fellow breathe, and at length got sight of him;—"Ah," says Paddy, "here is a porpoise, and I'll stick him with my bayonet." On which the terrified young man exclaimed—"don't kill me, I am a prisoner." The sentinel held out his hand, and helped him on to the staging, and then fired his gun to give the alarm. The guard turned out, and the officers ran down in a fright, not being ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... white, and red the morn, In the noisy hour when I was born; And the whale it whistled, the porpoise rolled And the dolphins bared their backs of gold; And never was heard such an outcry wild As welcomed to life ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... occasionally undergoes periods of nervous depression which require the administration of the stimulant already referred to. It is a singular fact that the present voyage is strangely illustrative of remarkable events in the life of the late Fusby; there has not been a sail or a porpoise in sight that has not called up some reminiscence of the early career of the major; indeed, even the somewhat unusual appearance of an iceberg, has been turned to account as suggestive of the intense suffering undergone by the major during the period of his ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... a well-rounded matron in her early forties, rose to the bait like a porpoise being hand-fed at a Florida zoo. "Dear Swami Chandra! How perfectly wonderful to see you again! You're looking ...
— Psichopath • Gordon Randall Garrett
... was still more astonishing to see how cleverly the Evil One exposed their foul sins, and how he answered with a home-thrust their false excuses. When these were about to receive their infernal doom, forty scholars were borne forward by porpoise-shaped fiends, uglier, if possible, than Lucifer himself. And when they heard the labourers pleading, they too waxed bold to give excuses, but what ready answers the old Serpent had for them with all their knavery and ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... at Saco, our explorers proceeded on their voyage. When they had advanced not more than twenty miles, driven by a fierce wind, they were forced to cast anchor near the salt marshes of Wells. Having been driven by Cape Porpoise, on the subsidence of the wind, they returned to it, reconnoitred its harbor and adjacent islands, together with Little River, a few miles still further to the east. The shores were lined all along with nut-trees and grape-vines. The islands about Cape Porpoise were matted all ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... the fishery was let for L6 per annum. The rent was afterwards increased to L8, and a lease upon those terms expired in 1780. Since 1786 this fishery has been abandoned. Mention is also made that occasionally a porpoise was caught here, and, as a matter of fact, two watermen shot one here lately; but it was confiscated, and the men fined for discharging firearms on the river. The ferry at the time of the Conquest yielded 20s. a year to the Lord of the Manor, and Putney appears at all times to have been a considerable ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... I knew there was the fore-royal gone. I ran forward, bawling blue hell; and just as I came by the foremast, something struck me right through the forearm and stuck there. I put my other hand up, and by George! it was the grain; the beasts had speared me like a porpoise. 'Cap'n!' I cried.—'What's wrong?' says he.—'They've grained me,' says I.—'Grained you?' says he. 'Well, I've been looking for that.'——'And by God,' I cried, 'I want to have some of these beasts ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... personality of porpoises. They swam beside the ship, playing about in the water all the while, rolling over and diving, and chasing each other just as if they knew they had a "gallery." We did not reward them very well either, for the Prophet shot one, and we ate bits of him for lunch—the porpoise, I mean, not the Prophet. I thought he would make a good companion-piece for the polar bear, and he was quite edible. He only needed a rasher of bacon to make you believe he was ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... were belaboring to break open, but the storm was too heavy, and, raising a sash, I went through: and, in good faith, I believe she bounced through after me; for, when I got fairly into the street and looked round, there she went, bounce, flounce, pell-mell, all in a rage, steam up, puffing like a porpoise—though, thank Jupiter! she took another course from myself. I was glad to get out of her clutches, I ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... after midday, and Glover, keeping a wary look out for Wilson, proceeded slowly to the quay with his friend, leaving the latter to walk down and discover the schooner while he went and hired a first-floor room at the "Royal Porpoise," a little bow-windowed ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... mile out, where the light ripples melted away into a blue and white haze upon the water, a small black smudge, like the back of a porpoise, seemed to be ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... carried the corpse to the grave; this they do in order to throw the ghost off the scent and so prevent him from following them home. This practice clearly shews the fear which the natives feel for the ghosts of the newly dead. A man is buried with money, porpoise teeth, and some of his personal ornaments; but, avarice getting the better of superstition, these things are often secretly dug up again and appropriated by the living. Sometimes a dying man will express a wish to be cast into the sea; his friends will ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... The old porpoise, as I opened the drawing-room door, was sitting with his feet upon the mantel-piece, and a bumper of port in his paw, making strenuous efforts to ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... part becoming gradually and slowly fashioned, as if there were an artificer at work in each of these complex structures that we have mentioned. This embryo, as it is called, then passes into other conditions. I should tell you that there is a time when the embryos of neither dog, nor horse, nor porpoise, nor monkey, nor man, can be distinguished by any essential feature one from the other; there is a time when they each and all of them resemble this one of the Dog. But as development advances, all the parts acquire their ...
— The Present Condition of Organic Nature • Thomas H. Huxley
... clung to me like sheets of ice. I thought I should never get them off. So numb and lifeless were my fingers, and so weak was I that it seemed to take an hour to get off my shoes. I had not the strength to break the porpoise-hide laces, and the knots defied me. I repeatedly beat my hands upon the rocks to get some sort of life into them. Sometimes I felt sure ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... the only companions we had in this vast ocean, except, now and then, we saw a whale or porpoise; and sometimes a seal or two, and a few penguins. In the latitude of 58 deg. S., longitude 213 deg.[16] east, we fell in with some ice, and, every day, saw more or less, we then standing to the east. We found a very strong current setting to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... (not the palu)—a long, scaleless, beautifully-formed fish, with a head of bony plates and teeth like a rip-saw—are of great size, and afford splendid sport, as they are game fighters and almost as powerful as a porpoise. They run to over 100 lbs., and yet are by no means a coarse fish. In the shallow water on the top of this mountain reef there are some eight or nine varieties of rock cod, none of which were of any great size; but far below, at a depth of from fifty to seventy ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... the long, yellow arms of the Chinaman protruding above the surface of the river. This time, Tad was determined that the cook should not escape him. Tad made a long, curving dive not unlike that of a porpoise. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... seemed to find articulation difficult. He blew and sputtered like a stranded porpoise and his face became redder than ever, but he did not answer ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... helmsmen; washed Dodd away like a cork, and would have carried him overboard if he had not brought up against the mainmast and grasped it like grim death, half drowned, half stunned, sorely bruised, and gasping like a porpoise ashore. ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... satisfaction; then, as the first cold stream from the "tinpot" courses down your spine, what electric thrills start from a dozen ganglia and flush your whole nervous system with new life! Finally, there is the plunge and the wallow and the splash, with a feeling of kinship to the porpoise in its joy, under the influence of which the most silent man becomes vocal and makes the walls of the narrow ghoosulkhana resound with amorous, or patriotic, song. A flavour of sadness mingles here, for you must come out at last, but ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... The porpoise dived, and the line ran out at a rapid rate. Truck sprang in board, and quickly checked it. We then got two running bowlines ready, one in the fore part of the vessel, and the other ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... in the anatomy of the Cetacea is unquestionably due to Cuvier; but his dissections were almost confined to the genus Delphinus, or the common Porpoise of our coasts. I repeated all his dissections, and found them, as they almost always were, scrupulously exact; but when I came to examine Cetacea with whalebone instead of teeth, I was surprised to find how different, in ...
— Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society - Vol. 3 - Zoology • Various
... a porpoise. I've simply GOT to. Come on, Wheedles, nothing else will work off my pent-up excitement," cried Polly, diving off the float to tumble and turn over and over in the water very like the fish she named, for Polly's training with Captain Pennell during the winter had made her almost as much ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... tug of a lusty schnapper, and then the determined downward pull, strong and steady, which he makes when once hooked. Slaney, who was using a line as thick as signal-halliards, was the first to haul his fish over the side, and drop him, kicking and thrashing like a young porpoise, into the boat; the rest of us, whose tackle was much thinner, were a long way behind him, and Slaney's line was over the side again before our fish were laid beside the first arrival. What a beautiful fish is a ten-pound schnapper—a brilliant pink back, sides and tail, dotted ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... asked a voice behind them, which made Dolly spring to his feet and Stuffy roll over like a startled porpoise. ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... the rounded forehead and projecting muzzle of which its own bullet head and bill exactly correspond. In its plunge, if you watch it bathing, you may see it dip its breast just as much under the water as a porpoise shows its back above. You can only rightly describe the bird by the resemblances, and images of what it seems to have changed from,—then adding the fantastic and beautiful contrast of the unimaginable change. It is an owl that ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... "Educated!" Sharon imitated a porpoise without knowing it. "Educated out of books! All any of that rabble rout of his knows is what they read secondhand. They don't know people. Don't know capitalists. Don't even know these wage slaves they write about. That's why they can't stop the war. They may be educated, ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... consisted of the frigates "Cumberland" (flagship), "Potomac," and "Raritan"; the steam frigate "Mississippi"; the sloops-of-war "Falmouth," "John Adams," and "St. Mary's"; the steam-sloop "Princeton"; and the brigs "Lawrence," "Porpoise," and "Somers." Before the close of the war some of these ships were recalled, at least one was wrecked, and the squadron was from time to time ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... hill to watch the play till their call should come. Father Dennis, whose duty was in the rear, to smooth the trouble of the wounded, had naturally managed to make his way to the foremost of his boys and lay like a black porpoise, at length on the grass. To him ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... was not the case. All our food appeared to be damaged. As for the pork, we were cheated out of it more than half the time; and when it was obtained, one would have judged from its motley hues, exhibiting the consistence and appearance of variegated fancy soap, that it was the flesh of the porpoise or sea-hog, and had been an inhabitant of the ocean rather than of the stye. The pease were generally damaged, and, from the imperfect manner in which they were cooked, were about as indigestible as grape-shot. The butter ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... at, you porpoise?" spluttered mulberry-coat. "A fine tale this'll make at home! Admiral van der Kuylen first loses his fleet in the night, then has his flagship fired under him by a French squadron, and ends all by being captured by a pirate. I'm ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... sea-animals, the most common that we saw in use amongst them as food is the porpoise; the fat or rind of which, as well as the flesh, they cut in large pieces, and having dried them, as they do the herrings, eat them without any farther preparation. They also prepare a sort of broth from this animal, in its fresh state, in a singular manner, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... attributes of fire, lightning and combinations of forces not found in any one creature, are common to the popular fancy. In Japan, the kappa, half monkey half tortoise, which seizes children bathing in the rivers, as real to millions of the native common folk as is the shark or porpoise; the flying-weasel, that moves in the whirlwind with sickle-like blades on his claws, which cut the face of the unfortunate; the wind-god or imp that lets loose the gale or storm; the thunder-imp or hairy, cat-like creature that on the cloud-edges beats his drums in crash, roll, or rattle; the ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... solemnities; they thought it was possible to obtain the soul of the departed in some tangible transmigrated form. On the beach, near where a person had been drowned, and whose body was supposed to have become a porpoise, or on the battlefield, where another fell, might have been seen, sitting in silence, a group of five or six, and one a few yards before them with a sheet of native cloth spread out on the ground in front of him. Addressing some god of the family he said, "Oh, be kind to us; let us obtain ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... sure the Indian thought the white man had outrun him and maybe he did not think how it was done. He stood there perfectly still, and I guard over him. I thought he looked ugly and mad; he would hardly say a word. In two or three minutes Crandell came up, puffing-and blowing like a porpoise. The sweat was running off him in profusion, and while wiping it from his brow with his hands, he said to the Indian: "You would not stop when I told you to, if I had got a good sight of you I would ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... feat. That was the thought of the old Coast-guardsman, as he watched the lad (he was scarcely more than a boy) as he took stroke after stroke for Calais. Now he rested on the back of a treacherous porpoise that soon ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 22, 1891 • Various
... harbour were two other vessels: one a New York brig, under English colours. The anchor had not been long down when a visit was received from the Captain of the Port, who proved to be an old acquaintance of Captain Semmes, he having piloted the brig Porpoise about the island at the time when the latter officer was First Lieutenant of that vessel. He seemed much pleased to renew the acquaintance, and volunteered to take on shore, to the Governor, Captain Semmes' request for permission to ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... descendants of common progenitors. The wonder would then be if they could not be so classed. Again, how astonishing on the creative, how natural on the evolutionary hypothesis, that the arrangement of bones in the hand of a man, the wing of a bat, the fin of a porpoise, the leg of a horse, should be precisely the same; the number of vertebrae in the neck of a giraffe, and in that of an elephant the same; the primitive germs from which a man, a dog, a frog, and a lobster are gradually evolved, to all appearance ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... power, and finally with desertion of his post! The Society in consternation applied to Government for an expedition of investigation, and the Rev. R.R. Gurley, Secretary of the Society, and an enthusiastic advocate of colonization was despatched in June on the U.S. schooner Porpoise. The result of course revealed the probity, integrity and good judgment of Mr. Ashman; and Gurley became thenceforth his warmest admirer. As a preventive of future discontent a Constitution was adopted at Mr. ...
— History of Liberia - Johns Hopkins University Studies In Historical And Political Science • J.H.T. McPherson
... ancient fisherman: "Oh, what was that, my daughter?" "'Twas nothing but a pebble, sir, I threw into the water." "And what is that, pray tell me, love, that paddles off so fast?" "It's nothing but a porpoise, sir, that's been ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... you old fool; if you make a noise we have six more girls waiting in a boat to fling you in the river and drag you up and down for a while tied on to a rope like a porpoise. Do ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... I said, was a fresh one, with a sea in the bay that kept the Suffolk rolling like a porpoise. A heavier lurch than ordinary sent her main channels grinding down on the mackerel boat's gunwale, smashing her upper strakes and springing her mizzen mast ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Jih-hsing, who is in that curio shop of ours, unexpectedly brought along, goodness knows where he fished them from, fresh lotus so thick and so long, so mealy and so crisp; melons of this size; and a Siamese porpoise, that long and that big, smoked with cedar, such as is sent as tribute from the kingdom of Siam. Are not these four presents, pray, rare delicacies? The porpoise is not only expensive, but difficult to get, and that kind ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... he touched the shore— The shore of the Bristol Channel, A sea-green Porpoise carried away His wrapper of scarlet flannel. And when he came to observe his feet, Formerly garnished with toes so neat, His face at once became forlorn On perceiving that all his toes ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... faster?" Said a whiting to a snail, "There's a porpoise close behind us, And he's treading on my tail. See how eagerly the lobsters And the turtles all advance! They are waiting on the shingle— Will you come and ...
— Story Hour Readers Book Three • Ida Coe and Alice J. Christie
... hands. The swimmer, when long in the water, will soon find himself tired, changes of action are therefore necessary; there are many which are highly advantageous to learn, such as swimming like a dog, porpoise, etc. To swim like a dog, he must strike with each hand and foot alternately, beginning with the right hand and foot, he must draw the hand towards the chin, and the foot towards the body, at the same time; he then must kick backwards with the foot, and strike out in a right line ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... gentleman with rather long hair and no neckcloth, who writes and grins as if he thought he were very funny, indeed. At one o'clock he disappears, presently emerges from a bathing machine, and may be seen a kind of salmon-colored porpoise, splashing about in the ocean. After that, he may be viewed in another bay window on the ground floor, eating a good lunch; and after that, walking a dozen miles or so, or lying on his back on the sand reading. Nobody bothers ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... gardens, they have succeeded in bringing one of the smallest of the order, a porpoise, to the Zoological Gardens. His speedy dissolution showed that even the bath of a hippopotamus or an elephant was too limited for the dwelling of this pre-eminently marine creature. But he had begun ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... him annually.' He had the 'right of pre-emption of fish in all his ports, and the choice of the best fish.' Conger-eels were specially mentioned in a marginal note. Besides this, he claimed every porpoise caught in the sea or other neighbouring waters, but paid for it with twelve pence and a loaf of white bread to each sailor, and two to the master of the boat from which it was caught. Lastly, the Prior claimed the half of every dolphin. But no Prior is likely to ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... transformation of the mariners is supposed by Bochart to have been founded on the adventure of certain merchants from the coast of Etruria, whose vessel had the figure of a dolphin at the prow, or rather of the fish called 'tursio,' probably the porpoise, or sea-hog. They were probably shipwrecked near the Isle of Naxos, which was sacred to Bacchus, whose mysteries they had perhaps neglected, or even despised. On this slender ground, perhaps, the report spread, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... in the evening, probably nine o'clock, with a bright fire burning, and the boys spreading down their beds for the night, suddenly the horses were heard running, and the next moment they hobbled into camp like a school of porpoise, trampling over the beds and crowding up to the fire and the wagon. They almost knocked down some of the boys, so sudden was their entrance. Then they set up a terrible nickering for mates. The boys ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... 1) must have been very large, seven or eight feet being the ordinary length, while specimens measuring from twenty to thirty feet are not uncommon. The large head is pointed, like that of the Porpoise; the jaws contain a number of conical teeth, of reptilian form and character; the eyeball was very large, as may be seen by the socket, and it was supported by pieces of bone, such as we find now only in the eyes of birds of prey and in the bony fishes. The ribs begin at the neck and continue to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... orders tend to a similar smoothness of brain. But, in the higher orders, and especially the larger members of these orders, the grooves, or sulci, become extremely numerous, and the intermediate convolutions proportionately more complicated in their meanderings, until, in the Elephant, the Porpoise, the higher Apes, and Man, the cerebral surface appears a perfect labyrinth ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... the canine of a giant which proved to be nothing but a tooth of a spermaceti whale (Cetus dentatus), quite a common fish. Hand described an alleged giant's skeleton shown in London early in the eighteenth century, and which was composed of the bones of the fore-fin of a small whale or of a porpoise. ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... Fend l'Air's shoulder. Very little of him was above water, but that little was as brown as an Egyptian. He was puffing and blowing like unto a porpoise. In one hand he held a huge pitchfork—the trident ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... Marathon legs into play then, and soon captured the obese footman, who puffed like a porpoise in the firm and muscular grasp of the detective, who nabbed him just at the head of ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... itself seemed alive with an abundance of life. The black back of a porpoise showed above the surface; far away the sun glinted on the silver scales of a leaping tarpon. The red sides of a mangrove snapper were seen as it tried in vain to escape the jaws of a steel-gray barracuda, and a moment later half of the slim barracuda ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... man swooped around quiet, bobbin' up in unexpected places, like a porpoise, and askin' questions once in a while. He asked about most everybody, but about Willie, especial. I judged Peter T. had dropped a hint to him and to Gabe. Anyhow, the old critter give out that he wouldn't trust a poet with the silver handles on his grandmarm's ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... splashing in the water, quite different from the regular, diagonally crossing surges that the boat swept upon the bank. Looking at it more intently, he saw a black object turning in the water like a porpoise, and then the unmistakable uplifting of a black arm in an unskillful swimmer's overhand stroke. It was a struggling man. But it was quickly evident that the current was too strong and the turbulence of the shallow water too great for his efforts. ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... swell, that anything like foam could be seen under her forefoot. A long line of swift-receding bubbles, however, marked her track, and she no sooner came abreast of any given group of spectators than she was past it—resembling the progress of a porpoise as he ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... to time a porpoise swam up, and with a sudden roll disappeared below the scarcely ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... the sea, the o—pen sea, the blue, the fresh;' but here we halt; Mr. CORNWALL knew very little about the sea, or he would have written SALT. 'The whales they whistled, the porpoise rolled, And the dolphins bared their backs of gold;' Worse and worse; more blunders than words, and such a jumble! Whales spout, but never whistle; dolphins' backs are silver; and porpoises never roll, but tumble. 'It plays with the clouds, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... cut four square haystacks quite round, and I lost twenty tons of hay; it twisted the iron lamp-post at the entrance just as a porpoise twists a harpoon, and took up a sow and her litter of pigs, that were about a hundred yards from the back of the house, and landed them safe over the house to the front, with the exception of the old ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... forward that the islanders should dispute the porpoise-spearing monopoly of the Quoddy Indians that were already sailing across the channel for their annual summer's sport, but this likewise ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... little while when a fat woman came rollin' up to me an' catchin' me by the arm said, 'Here, I am not payin' for this pew for other people to sit in, this is my pew.' I was mad then, I knew she wasn't a lady, an' I made a face when I was gettin' out, an' says I, 'Oh, dear' Missis Porpoise, who said it wasn't your pew, you want a whole pew to yourself anyhow.' The aisles was all wet, for 'twas a rainy mornin', an' I wasn't goin' to kneel there with my green shawl on, so I made a bold stroke and darted into another pew. This time 'twas alright: this was a kept one for strangers, ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... sovranty, recoiling with a blow, Have forced my swimming brain to undergo Their doubt and dread, and blindly to forsake Thy purity of likeness and distort Thy worthiest love to a worthless counterfeit: As if a shipwrecked Pagan, safe in port, His guardian sea-god to commemorate, Should set a sculptured porpoise, gills a-snort And vibrant ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... return on deck, lo and behold, your seat is occupied, and you must go and stand by the rail till one is vacant, when another gall that ain't ill, but inconveniently well, she is so full of chat, says, 'Look, look, Sir, dear me, what is that, Sir? a porpoise. Why you don't, did you ever! well, I never see a porpoise afore in all my born days! are they good ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... translation, say, from In Allgemeine Fishcherei-Zeitwung, or Economic Circular No. 10, "Mussels in the Tributaries of the Missouri," or the last biennial report of the Superintendent of Fisheries of Wisconsin, or a scientific paper on "The Porpoise in Captivity" reprinted by permission of Zoologica, of the New York Zoological Society. To find each week for reprint a poem appropriate in sentiment to the feeling of the paper. One of the "Salt Water Ballads" would do, or John Masefield singing of "the whale's ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... some Bluenoses most properly bit, you may depend. You've seen a boy a-slidin' on a most beautiful smooth bit of ice, hain't you, larfin', and hoopin', and hallooin' like one possessed, when presently sowse he goes in over head and ears? How he outs, fins, and flops about, and blows like a porpoise properly frightened, don't he? and when he gets out there he stands; all shiverin' and shakin', and the water a squish-squashin' in his shoes, and his trousers all stickin' slimsey-like to his legs. ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... submarines which were left from the fight had already put out to try conclusions with the Flying Fishes; but a porpoise might as well have tried to hunt down a northern diver. As soon as each Flying Fish had finished its work of destruction it spread its wings and leapt into the air—and woe betide the submarine whose periscope showed for a moment above the ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... every step of his pilgrimage, to seek the relief of some propitious omen. The few which are supported by scientific causes give support to the many that have their origin only in his own excited and doubting temperament. The gambols of the dolphin, the earnest and busy passage of the porpoise, the ponderous sporting of the unwieldy whale, and the screams of the marine birds, have all, like the signs of the ancient soothsayers, their attendant consequences of good or evil. The confusion between things which are explicable, ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... hair and no neckcloth, who writes and grins as if he thought he were very funny indeed. His name is Boz. At one he disappears, and presently emerges from a bathing-machine, and may be seen—a kind of salmon-colored porpoise—splashing about in the ocean. After that he may be seen in another bay-window on the ground-floor, eating a strong lunch; after that, walking a dozen miles or so, or lying on his back in the sand reading a book. Nobody bothers him unless they know he is ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... slush, with which, however, it would be practicable to "douse his glim." This great man, with his attendant, was bound for the sea-baths of Revel, where he would doubtless soon be buffeting the waves like a porpoise—or possibly, in virtue of the commanding powers vested in him by nature and the Czar of Russia, would sit down by the sea-shore like Hardicanute the Dane, and ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... Caves of Hercules, where the samphire grows neglected, and wild ferns thrive in unexpected places. I remember once scaring noisy seabirds from what seemed to be a corpse, and how angrily the gorged, reluctant creatures rose from what proved to be the body of a stranded porpoise, that tainted the air for fifty yards around. On another evening a storm broke suddenly. Somewhere in the centre rose a sand column that seemed to tell, in its brief moment of existence, the secret of the origin of the ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... round his rock home. When the lion felt something alight on his back, he dove to the bottom of the pool in a flash, taking the guard with him. But no human being could stick on the back of a slippery sea lion, and the guard soon came up to the surface of the water blowing and spouting like a porpoise. ...
— Billy Whiskers' Adventures • Frances Trego Montgomery
... the Nautilus floated in these brilliant waves, and our admiration increased as we watched the marine monsters disporting themselves like salamanders. I saw there in the midst of this fire that burns not the swift and elegant porpoise (the indefatigable clown of the ocean), and some swordfish ten feet long, those prophetic heralds of the hurricane whose formidable sword would now and then strike the glass of the saloon. Then appeared the smaller ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... sociable in their habits. Porpoises race and play with each other and dart out of the sea, performing almost as many antics as the circus clown. They feed on mackerel and herring, devouring large quantities. Years ago the porpoise was a common and esteemed article of food in Great Britain and France, but now the skin and blubber only have a commercial value. The skins of a very large species are ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton
... wholly ludicrous. Whether sleeping, quarrelling, or playing, whether curious, frightened, or angry, its interest is continuously humorous, but the Adelie penguin in the water is another thing; as it darts to and fro a fathom or two below the surface, as it leaps porpoise-like into the air or swims skimmingly over the rippling surface of a pool, it excites nothing but admiration. Its speed probably appears greater than it is, but the ability to twist and turn and the general control of movement ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... were white with horror at the death we so narrowly had avoided, old Davie did not even breathe more quickly. The man had no more imagination than a porpoise. ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... dangerous. She rolls like a porpoise in a seaway, and she'd crush us like an egg shell if we got too close. All we can do is to hold off a bit, until this blows out. And it can't last very long at this season of the ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... came to our camp early, followed by his squaws bearing gifts of salmon, porpoise meat, clams and crabs; and at his command two of the girls of his family picked me a basketful of delicious wild strawberries. He sat motionless by my fire all the forenoon, smoking my leaf tobacco and pondering ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... the stand. He was a porpoise of a man. His eyes dodged about the room in dread. It was as though he were looking ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... subject met with only now and then, Much fitter for the pencil than the pen; Hogarth would draw him (Envy must allow) E'en to the life, was Hogarth[316] living now. With such accoutrements, with such a form, Much like a porpoise just before a storm, 180 Onward he roll'd; a laugh prevail'd around; E'en Jove was seen to simper; at the sound (Nor was the cause unknown, for from his youth Himself he studied by the glass of Truth) He joined their mirth; nor shall the gods condemn, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... came. One might have inferred that, when his wife spoke like that, he usually came. He treated a wooden porpoise to a thoroughly wooden stare and repeated ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... no monotony, but every day seemed full of interest. All the wonders of the great deep were about them—strange fish, sea porpoise, and whales, by day, and ever-new phosphorescent gleams and starry heavens by night. Then the wonderful interest of a sail at sea, or a distant steamship; some other humanity than that on their own ship passing them on the ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... Like a bird that seeketh its mother's nest; And a mother she was and is to me; For I was born on the open sea! The waves were white, and red the morn, In the noisy hour when I was born; And the whale it whistled, the porpoise rolled, And the dolphins bared their backs of gold; And never was heard such an outcry wild As welcomed to life the ocean-child! I've lived since then, in calm and strife, Full fifty summers a sailor's life, With wealth to spend and a ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... this same luck that caused the colonel, later that day, when the shadows of evening were falling, to take his limp satchel and slip out of the house. He went afoot to the ferry dock, and when the Allawanda floundered in like a porpoise he went on board. It was his first visit to this part of the inlet that separated Lakeside from Loch Harbor, and this means of getting to the yachting center was seldom used by any guests of The Haven. They went around by the ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... of degrees of kindred was thus: a man used to call a woman, my lean bit; the woman called him, my porpoise. Those, said Friar John, must needs stink damnably of fish when they have rubbed their bacon one with the other. One, smiling on a young buxom baggage, said, Good morrow, dear currycomb. She, to return him ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... comprehend, as the chances were in favor of a broken back, or neck, or some other consummation equally out of the range of gratitude, in an ordinary way. He came up out of the water blowing and snorting like a porpoise with a cold in his head, and waded to the shore. 'Come down,' he shouted, which I did, not quite so far or fast as he did, but fast enough to make an involuntary plunge, head foremost, into the pool at the bottom. The occasion ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... he laid the sloop ashore) he attempted to get some swans, but met with none that could not fly. He saw several large fish, or animals that came up to the surface of the water to blow, in the manner of a porpoise, or rather of a seal, for they did not spout, nor had they any dorsal fin. The head also strongly resembled the bluff-nosed hair seal, but their size was greater than any which Mr. Flinders had seen before. He fired three musket balls into one, and Bong-ree threw a spear ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... was like that which I have before described as crisp. I noticed that their spears were all pointed with bone, and that the shafts in those used for fishing were large, with a coil of line attached, and a string also connecting the head, which came loose when a porpoise or turtle was struck; whilst the wood, floating, acted as a drag. At daylight on the 21st ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... rolling and tumbling by, turning up their sleek sides to the sun, and spouting up the briny element in sparkling showers. No sooner did the sage Oloffe mark this than he was greatly rejoiced. "This," exclaimed he, "if I mistake not, augurs well—the porpoise is a fat, well-conditioned fish—a burgomaster among fishes—his looks betoken ease, plenty, and prosperity. I greatly admire this round fat fish, and doubt not but this is a happy omen of the success of our undertaking." ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... near. They had some good system of signalling from the shore, however, for I had not got to the North Foreland before three destroyers came foaming after me, all converging from different directions. They had about as good a chance of catching me as three spaniels would have of overtaking a porpoise. Out of pure bravado—I know it was very wrong—I waited until they were actually within gunshot. Then I sank and we saw each other ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the mighty storms of the month of falling leaves root up from the bottom of the ocean, and scatter along the margin of the feathery strand where we now dwell. Upon his face, which was shaped like that of a porpoise, he had a beard of the colour of ooze. Around his neck hung a string of great sea-shells, upon his forehead was bound another made of the teeth of the cayman, and in his hand was a staff formed of the rib of a whale. But, if our people were frightened at seeing a man who ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... suddenly awoke. He lifted himself, wagging his sword, showing his great silvery side. Then he began to thresh. I never felt a quarter of such power at the end of a line. He went swift as a flash. Then he leaped sheer ahead, like a porpoise, only infinitely more active. We all yelled. He was of great size, over three hundred, broad, heavy, long, and the most violent and savage fish I ever had a look at. Then he rose half—two-thirds out of the water, shaking his massive head, jaws open, sword sweeping, and seemed ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... all the satirists I have named the one who at bottom presents most affinity with Lowell, but the differences are marked. The intellectual sphere of the German is vaster, but though with certain aims before him, he rather floats and tumbles about like a porpoise at play than follows any direct perceptible course. With Lowell, on the contrary, every word tells, every laugh is a blow; as if the god Momus had turned out as Mars, and were hard at work fighting every inch of him, grinning his ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... long procession of united and glowing curves astern. That fiery jumble was an enchanting thing to look at, and we stayed out the performance; one cannot have such a show as that twice in a lifetime. The porpoise is the kitten of the sea; he never has a serious thought, he cares for nothing but fun and play. But I think I never saw him at his winsomest until that night. It was near a center of civilization, and he ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the first, time to look at the boats lying on Bagley's wharf, their ominous porpoise-like appearance gave me a peculiar sensation. I had expected rough-water, but this was the first understanding I had that the journey was to be more or less amphibian. On a day when the waves on Lake Michigan were running high we took them out for trial. The crews ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... You know those round stone balls that sit on the balustrades of formal gardens such as this ... we only meant to frighten the Law, a splash was all that we intended, but the sun was in my Friend's eyes as he dropped the ball. It struck the bow of the boat, which went under like a frightened porpoise. There were two men in it, besides the Law itself, and they all came up spitting and spouting, and stood up to their necks in water. Oaths bubbled up to us. The boat came up badly perforated, and I expect we shall get into trouble. It was funny, but the War has rather ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... in whose stomach they found a smaller shark, enclosing in its turn one still smaller, "both alive," says the traveller, which is manifestly an exaggeration; then, after describing the remora, the dactyloptera, and the porpoise, he speaks of the sea near the Maldive Islands in which he counted an enormous number of islands, among them he mentions Ceylon by its Arabian name, with its pearl fisheries; Sumatra, inhabited by cannibals, and rich in gold-mines; Nicobar, and the Andaman Islands, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... on purpose;" added he, bursting into a hearty roar as he caught Mrs. Bates' eye fastened upon his rotund proportions, as if to ascertain where the bones were. "Oh! well, my good woman," continued he, "even a porpoise couldn't stand the bumping and thumping that we poor mortals are subject to when we trust ourselves on shipboard. Why, I solemnly protest that I've been pitched from my berth, many a time, quite across the cabin into my neighbor's and back again, ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... the port-hole might most of the time have been wholly ornamental for all the good it did them, for it was generally splashed with grey October sea, but, at least, as Nancy lucently explained, you could see things—once there had actually been a porpoise—and that neither of them, in their present condition, would have worried very much about it if their cabin had been an aquarium was ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... Instead of finding a harbour (Bunder), as the name of the village implied, the shore was a gradual shelving open roadstead, in which two buggaloes were lying at anchor, waiting for cargoes, and four small sailing-boats were preparing, with harpoon and tackle, to go porpoise-hunting for oil. ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... difficult to please: they had good teeth, and their palates, having become accustomed to the flesh of the cormorant, heron, and crane, without difficulty appreciated the delicacy of the nauseous sea-dog, the porpoise, and even the whale, which, when salted, furnished to a great extent all the markets ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... became intense, and our fuel ran short. At the end of three months the crew complained of scurvy, and could not move about the decks. At the end of the fourth month, they had all died except the chief harpooner, a fat porpoise ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... sea-gulls—so many were there, and so thick were they, that the fluttering of their wings was like a swift fall of snow. Over the gulls were eagles soaring and watching their chance. The halibut, the cod, the porpoise, and the finback whale had followed the little ones out of the deep; and there was confusion worse confounded, and chaos came again in the hours of wild excitement that followed the advent of the small fry, for each and all ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... aged decrepitude, swore peace again and everlasting. Then was discussed the matter of starting a German plantation twenty miles down the coast. The land, of course, was to be bought from Koho, and the price was arranged in terms of tobacco, knives, beads, pipes, hatchets, porpoise teeth and shell-money—in terms of everything except rum. While the talk went on, Koho, glancing through the window, could see Worth mixing medicines and placing bottles back in the medicine cupboard. Also, he saw the manager complete his labours by taking a drink of Scotch. Koho ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... our ears save the soft puff now and then of a porpoise, the slow creak of the masts, as we swayed gently on the swell, the patter of the reef-points, and the occasional flap of the hanging sails. An awning covered the fore and after parts of the schooner, under which the men composing the watch ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... cool air, the creation of their own progress, fanned their cheeks. Still further to add to the charm, flocks of sea-birds circling in the air or dipping in the water, a berg or two floating in the distance, a porpoise showing its back fin now and then, a seal or a walrus coming up to stare in surprise and going down to meditate, perhaps in wonder, with an occasional puff from a lazy whale,—all this tended to prevent monotony, and gave life to ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... never yet for such a triumph of that particular sense. To be still frank, he was little less than a monster—for mere unresisting or unresilient mass of personal presence I mean; so that I fairly think of him as a form of bland porpoise, violently blowing in an age not his own, as by having had to exchange deep water for thin air. Thus he impressed me as with an absolute ancientry of type, of tone, of responsible taste, above all; this last I mean in literature, since it was literature we sociably explored, to my at once charmed ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
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