"Harpoon" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but what could I imagine to be afraid of aboard a brig holding two persons only, with the whaler's boat and three men within a few strokes of the oar, and the old barque, Swan, full of livelies, many of them deadly in the art of casting the harpoon, within easy hail? ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... remarking, as a proof how tenacious the walrus sometimes is of life, that the animal killed to-day struggled violently for ten minutes after it was struck, and towed the boat twenty or thirty yards, after which the iron of the harpoon broke; and yet it was found, on examination, that the iron barb had penetrated both auricles of the heart. A quantity of the blubber was put into casks, as a winter's ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... by a perfect thicket of barbed-wire, and I had a bright scheme for its removal. I got hold of a trench catapult, an ingenious contrivance of elastic that hurls a bomb some hundreds of yards, and placed in it a harpoon attached to a long coil of rope. The idea was that on release of the catapult the harpoon would be hurled in the air, the rope would neatly pay out, and then, as soon as the harpoon had grappled Mahomet, all we would have to do would be to haul on the rope and over would ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... reason was made the lock of hair of the Man. Ra spake unto the god Ami-haf, and an injury was done unto his mouth, that is to say, he was wounded in [that] mouth. And Ra spake unto the god Ami-haf, saying, 'O heir of men, receive [thy] harpoon;' and the harpoon-house came into being. Behold, O god Ami-haf, two divine brethren have come into being, [that is to say], Senti-Ra came into being, and Setem-ansi-f came into being. And his hand stayed not, and he made his ...
— Egyptian Literature
... untenanted save by the wigwam and the bark canoe. As usual, upon the arrival of the steamer, the long canoe, steadily held by a single boy and paddle, in a current swift as the Niagara, shoots out into the Saut, while the Indian, standing erect in the canoe, poising his harpoon and scrap net, strikes or swoops in the large and delicious white fish, assured of a capacious basketful and more, before the steamer leaves ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... be catching some of us, or we must catch him," he observed, as he prepared a harpoon and line. Descending by the dolphin-striker, he stood on the bob-stay, watching with keen eye and lifted arm for the shark, which now dropped astern, now swam lazily alongside. Bill ordered one of the men to get out to the jibboom ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... along through the Sound, a herd of porpoises came gambolling by, their black bodies and fins now appearing, now sinking beneath the surface. Captain Truck had a harpoon ready, and he placed himself in the forechains, with a rope round his waist. He stood with his weapon high poised in the air, ready to strike. We were all on the watch. In a few moments his harpoon flew from ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... the single-minded population of that part of Suffolk should regard the bold and skilful harpooner, or lancer, with favour, as it is for the belle at a watering-place to bestow her smiles on one of the young heroes of Contreras or Churubusco. His peculiar merit, whether with the oar, lance, or harpoon, is bruited about, as well as the number of whales he may have succeeded in "making fast to," or those which he caused to "spout blood." It is true, that the great extension of the trade within the last twenty years, ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... wholesale greediness, seized the bait, and feeling the hook in his horrid jaw, tugged most fiercely to release himself, but in vain. Twelve sailors hauled him in, when, with distended jaws, he seemed to look out for the legs of the men, whereupon they rammed the butt-end of a harpoon down his throat, which put a stop to all further proceedings on his part. He was said to be quite young, perhaps the child of doting parents. The juvenile monster had, however, already cut ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... brickbat, grenade, shell, bomb, carcass, rocket; congreve[obs3], congreve rocket[obs3]; shrapnel, mitraille[Fr]; levin bolt[obs3], levin brand[obs3]; thunderbolt. pike, lance, spear, spontoon[obs3], javelin, dart, jereed[obs3], jerid[obs3], arrow, reed, shaft, bolt, boomerang, harpoon, gaff; eelspear[obs3], oxgoad[obs3], weet-weet, wommerah[obs3]; cattle prod; chemical mace. Phr. en flute; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... ingenious. Three days after they had stepped through the barrier of time at the outpost, Ross and Ashe balanced on the rounded back of a whale. It was a whale which would deceive anyone who did not test its hide with a harpoon, and whalers with harpoons large enough to trouble such a monster were yet well ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... time they kept almost in line, being pretty equally matched; but gradually the captain shot ahead, and it became evident that his harpooner, Amos Parr, was to have the honour of harpooning the first whale. Amos pulled the bow-oar, and behind him was the tub with the line coiled away, and the harpoon bent on to it. Being an experienced whaleman, he evinced no sign of excitement, save in the brilliancy of his dark eye and a very slight flush on his bronzed face. They had now neared the whale and ceased rowing for a moment, lest they ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Then a few little traps go with it which you may find useful. There's a broken fly-rod, which you can fix all right, and a little single-barrel shot-gun, not worth much, but you can always pick up a supper with it. There are also a pair of grains, a light harpoon, and a cast-net which is torn some, but Johnny can fix it. Johnny's got a rifle and all the camp kit two tough ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... yet. They look too mad. I gave 'em the harpoon in good shape, as is usual, but I didn't expect they'd run here so soon. Thought they ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... chanced that the Eskimos were to leeward of him, and a blaze of sunshine was at their backs, so that the seal when looking towards its human foes had its eyes dazzled. Ermigit had no weapons at the time, but by good-fortune a harpoon, line, and bladder were attached ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... through a bridle? He was of no brand, being one of an ear-nicked mob taken into the Bucephalus at 4l.-10s. a head to make up freight, and sold raw and out of condition at Calcutta for Rs. 275. People who lost money on him called him a "brumby;" but if ever any horse had Harpoon's shoulders and The Gin's temper, Shackles was that horse. Two miles was his own particular distance. He trained himself, ran himself, and rode himself; and, if his jockey insulted him by giving him hints, he shut up at once and bucked the boy off. He objected to dictation. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... "I know. I'll go as a mahout. Now, that's easy. Six feet of butter muslin, four pennyworth of woad, and a harpoon. And we can lock the elephant's switch and park him ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... extent by the heat of the deck as to render it unbearable; still the Abraham Lincoln had not yet breasted the suspected waters of the Pacific. As to the ship's company, they desired nothing better than to meet the unicorn, to harpoon it, hoist it on board, and despatch it. They watched the ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... although the most plentiful of all the whale family, and sometimes attaining the length of ninety feet, is never attacked by whale-boats when he is "loose," i.e., free, and is only captured when his struggles with the ferocious killers have so exhausted him that a boat can approach and dart a harpoon into or lance him. The reason for this immunity of primary attack by boats is that the finback is in the first place of little value when compared to either the humpback or "right" whale, for the coating of blubber is thin, and the plates of baleen (or whalebone) he possesses are very short; ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... the one o'clock train that afternoon. I seen her talkin' to Eddie Duke near the African Desert, and I immediately went scoutin' around for Joe, because Eddie liked him the same way the brewers is infatuated with the Anti-Saloon League and I knowed if Eddie got a chance to harpoon Joe with Gladys, he'd ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... and resumed our course to the northward, over that of last year, excepting that we steered inside of Pelican Island, and to leeward of Island 4. We passed several large sting-rays asleep on the surface of the sea, which our people ineffectually endeavoured to harpoon. On the former island large flights of pelicans were seen, and upon the sandbank, to the southward of it, there was a flock of two ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... creature, and piebald like a horse; and I saw the spouting of his breath as if a water main had burst in a London fog. The wind came in a sudden charge from the northwest, and the whale dived with a harpoon in its back; and in the confusion a reel fouled, and one of the boats was whipt under in a moment—half a mile down, perhaps—and its crew drawn with it, and their lungs, full of air, burst like bubbles. We had no time to think of them. We got the other boat-load on board, and then the gale sent ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... that poor little lady's heart and shame to her cheek; but he was there, and there was no escape. Col. Sellers hitched back his coat sleeves airily from his wrists as who should say "Now for solid enjoyment!" seized a fork, flourished it and began to harpoon turnips and deposit them in the plates before him "Let me help you, Washington—Lafayette pass this plate Washington—ah, well, well, my boy, things are looking pretty bright, now, I tell you. Speculation—my! the whole atmosphere's ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... a breathing-space, before Randolf, the eighth of them, made trial of Walter's defence (962-981). After him came Eleuther, whose other name was Helmnod, with a harpoon and a line, and the line was held by Trogus, Tanastus, and the king; Hagen still keeping aloof, though he had seen his nephew killed. The harpoon failed; three Frankish warriors were added to the slain; the king and Hagen were ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... muskets were stuck into horizontal holes along the beams. On one side was a claw-footed old table lashed to the deck; a thumbed missal on it, and over it a small, meagre crucifix attached to the bulk-head. Under the table lay a dented cutlass or two, with a hacked harpoon, among some; melancholy old rigging, like a heap of poor friars' girdles. There were also two long, sharp-ribbed settees of Malacca cane, black with age, and uncomfortable to look at as inquisitors' racks, with a large, misshapen arm-chair, ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... occasionally against the table in order to suggest to them their danger. The attitude of the children still remained that of polite spectators. True, the youngest boy did make the suggestion of borrowing the kitchen toasting-fork, and employing it as a harpoon; but even this appeared to be the outcome rather of a desire to please than of any warmer interest; and, the whale objecting, the idea fell through. After that he climbed up on the dresser and announced to them that he was an ourang-outang. They watched him break ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... they must slip up on their prey without being seen. This would be a comparatively simple matter, since the tumbled ridges of ice afforded ideal hiding-places. When close enough, Barney, who was the stronger of the two, was to drive the harpoon-point through the thick skin of the creature. This harpoon-point was fastened to a rawhide rope. He must instantly drive a copper-pointed lance into the ice, and wrapping the skin-rope about it, close to the ice-surface, hold on like grim death until Bruce dispatched the creature with his rifle. ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... now arrived. We pulled as if for life or death. Not a word was spoken, and scarcely a sound was heard from our oars. One of the men sprang to his feet, and grasped a harpoon. A few more strokes of the oar, and we were hard upon the whale. The harpooner, with unerring aim, let fly his irons, and buried them to the sockets in his huge carcass. "Stern all!" thundered the mate. ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... lay there three weeks when I sailed in the whaler Scotsman out of Glasgow, and more by token we named the place Thievish Harbor, for one of the Indians stole a harpoon out of our boat and away with it before we could reach him. 'T is a goodly river, broader and deeper than yon, and has a broad ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... which there is turtle flesh, nor approach a fire on which the flesh is cooking; she may not go near the sea and she should not walk on the beach below high-water mark. Nay, the infection extends to her husband, who may not himself harpoon or otherwise take an active part in catching turtle; however, he is permitted to form one of the crew on a turtling expedition, provided he takes the precaution of rubbing his armpits with certain ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... his skin-tent during the warmer months, and in his snow-hut in winter, existing on the seals which he catches with his harpoon, the whales occasionally cast on shore, and the bears, deer, ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... Lieutenant Sullivan with a note of gruff pleading. "You know how the papers are roasting the department just now. For every little slip, we get the harpoon or the laugh. I'll be obliged to you if you don't say anything that'll let this thing get into ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... would have been cheer and excitement in this mild activity, after their farm-house weeks; indeed Father suggested, "We ought to stay and see the movies. Look! Royal X. Snivvles in 'The Lure of the Crimson Cobra'—six reels—that sounds snappy." But his exuberance died in a sigh. A block down Harpoon Street they saw a sign, light-encircled, tea-pot shaped, hung out from a great elm. Without explanations they ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... cramped position the sapper wields his pick, a peculiar affair not unlike a harpoon, and scrapes the loosened earth back with a short grubber to another man who removes ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... green-and-brown stretch of shore, which rolled undulatingly toward the icy fringe of the polar sea, more than twoscore hunters were engaged in unusual activity. Some were lacing tight over the framework the taut skin of their kayaks. Others sharpened harpoon points with bits of flint. Tateraq busily cut long lashings from tanned walrus hides. Maisanguaq deftly took these and pieced them together into long lines, which were rolled in coils lasso-fashion. Arnaluk and a half dozen others sat on their haunches, between their knees great balls ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... the larboard bow!" sung out the captain, who stood laughing to see the labors of the poor animal, who was becoming exhausted; "let's see who'll have the first harpoon!" and he hurled a billet at the dog's head as he was going down for the second time. Harry, seeing the action, cried out, "Save him! who will save my poor Nep?" and fell fainting upon the deck. Fortunately the hard-hearted man had missed his mark for once, and by the light of the moon, ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... deserted rush the breathless hosts, Swarm round the hills, and darken all the coasts; Boats follow boats along the shouting tides, 450 And spears and javelins pierce his blubbery sides; Now the bold Sailor, raised on pointed toe, Whirls the wing'd harpoon on the slimy foe; Quick sinks the monster in his oozy bed, The blood-stain'd surges circling o'er his head, 455 Steers to the frozen pole his wonted track, And bears the iron ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... and their crews giving way with might and main, gathered round from different directions. The captain was the first to strike his harpoon into the whale, following the weapon with a couple of lances; he was fast, but he quickly backed off from the monster, which, leaping half out of the water, and turning partly round made a dash with open mouth at another boat coming up, ...
— The Two Whalers - Adventures in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... unmentionable parasite—and the great man likewise. Whale, indeed! I bide my time, Alton, my boy—I bide my time; and then let your grand aristocrat look out! If he does not find the supposed whale-unmentionable a good stout holding harpoon, with a tough line to it, and a long one, it's a ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... hand kept watch and watch with a blue star on its opposite member. Barry chuckled audibly as, in a casual flourish, one great arm was half turned, showing the comparative white of the underarm upon which was blazoned a pair of gory hearts in collision, impaled on a harpoon apparently. Around this work of art a flamboyant motto announced to the ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... St. Jean de Luz, a race of men quaint, venturesome, and fabulously bold, left many widows, from their habit of sailing out into the roughest seas to harpoon whales. Leaving their wives to God or the Devil, they threw themselves in crowds into the Canadian settlements of Henry IV. As for the children, these honest worthy sailors would have thought about them more, if they ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... enough, but his gravatana was not the weapon which Guapo was about to use. He had other weapons as well—a fish-spear or harpoon, and a regular bow and arrows, which he had made during his leisure hours in ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... this article would not obtain a market except under the more popular name of cod-liver oil. Catching sharks is not an employment entirely devoid of danger, as they are large and powerful, often measuring twenty feet and more in length. The shark, like the whale, when it is first struck with the harpoon, must be given plenty of line, or it will drag down the fishermen's boat in its rapid descent to deep water. Sometimes the struggle to capture the fish is a long and serious one, as it must thoroughly exhaust itself before it will yield. When it is finally ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... harpoon," he said, pointing to a rusty relic on the wall above the mantelpiece, "was given to me by the finest whaling captain that ever found his way into the North water. When I first went to sea I thought I'd like to be a whaler; but two voyages settled that ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... might have hands stronger than the paws of the bear, and feet swifter than the feet of reindeer; that his dart might never err, and that his boat might never leak; that he might never stumble on the ice, nor faint in the water; that the seal might rush on his harpoon, and the wounded whale might dash the waves ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... with the shark, placed the harpoons in readiness; and amused me by seeming to picture himself a whaler, flourishing his harpoon in most approved fashion. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... animal's skull. A walrus instantly killed this way generally sinks, leaving a trail of blood and oil to mark the place of his descent. When hunting these animals it is well to have an Eskimo along with harpoon and line in readiness to make fast; otherwise one is ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... few strokes of the axe, Charley lopped off all the branches save one close to the small end of the trunk. This one he cut off so as to leave a projecting stub of about four inches, thus making of the end of his sapling a sort of rude harpoon. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... his foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp, The married and unmarried children ride home to their Thanksgiving dinner, The pilot seizes the king-pin—he heaves down with a strong arm, The mate stands braced in the whale-boat—lance and harpoon are ready, The duck-shooter walks by silent and cautious stretches, The deacons are ordained with crossed hands at the altar, The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel, The ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... natives fishing; left their canoe and ran on the approach of our boats. My men wished to steal it, which of course I prevented; it was a simple dome palm hollowed. In the canoe was a harpoon, very neatly made, with only one barb. Both sides of the river from the Bahr el Gazal belong to the Nuehr tribe. Course S.E.; wind very light; windings of river endless; continual hauling. At about half an hour before sunset, ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... for many years together. Much of the cultivation is performed with very primitive implements, the ordinary old-fashioned plough being furnished with a share resembling the broad flattened lance-head of a harpoon, which penetrates the earth horizontally. Of late years, however, a constantly increasing number of improved ploughs, reaping, mowing, and steam threshing machines have come into use. In 1873, according to Consul Vivian's report, there were about 185,000 native ploughs against about ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... hunters, so the most courageous of the men try to kill them whenever they can get near enough. When the Kalopaling sits sleeping, the hunter comes up very cautiously and throws a walrus harpoon into him. Then he shuts his eyes tight until the Kalopaling is dead, otherwise the hunter's boat would be capsized and he be drowned. They dare not eat the flesh of the creatures, for it is poisonous; but ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... and the lightning of mid-August. They lay on the deck with bare feet and arms, telling one another what they would order at their first meal ashore; for now the land was in plain sight. A Gloucester swordfish-boat drifted alongside, a man in the little pulpit on the bowsprit flourished his harpoon, his bare head plastered down with the wet. "And all's well!" he sang cheerily, as though he were watch on a big liner. "Wouverman's waiting fer you, Disko. What's the news ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... they may, and tell the truth, that's sartain, shipmate. You see, the sparmacitty don't take the harpoon quite so quietly as the black whale does; he fights hard to the last, and sometimes is very free with his jaws. The very large ones are the most easy to kill; so we always look out for them when we can, as they ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... he goes!" Like a Titan in throes, With his wallopping tail, and his wave-churning nose, The spouting Cetacean Colossus! Eh? Harpoon that Monster! The thought makes one pale, With one thundering thwack of that thumping big tail, To the skies in small splinters he'd ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 23, 1892 • Various
... resource of New England outside of agriculture was the fisheries. This industry, started by hardy sailors from Europe, long before the landing of the Pilgrims, flourished under the indomitable seamanship of the Puritans, who labored with the net and the harpoon in almost every quarter of the Atlantic. "Look," exclaimed Edmund Burke, in the House of Commons, "at the manner in which the people of New England have of late carried on the whale fishery. Whilst we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice and behold ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... ants, grasshoppers, and lizards. Upon the rocks were oysters of the small, crumply kind, which seemed to indicate that the sea here is not violently agitated; and in the water we saw several large turtle, but were not able to harpoon any of them. Several of the Northumberland Isles were in sight from the top of the islet, and the ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... Nigel saw the brown little fellow shooting about like a galvanised tadpole, with a small harpoon in ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... dog leaving a room, drawn with three strokes of the pencil. Another (3) is a sailor, drawn with two squares, two circles, and two triangles. Another (5), Henry VIII, drawn with a square and nine straight lines. Another (6), invented for this book, an Esquimaux waiting to harpoon a seal, drawn with eleven circles and a straight line. The remaining figures are a cheerful pig and a despondent pig (4), and a cat (2), drawn with the ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... thick bull's-eye windows, by means of which the under-water travelers could look out into the ocean through which they were moving. As a defense against the attacks of submarine monsters there was a steel, pointed ram, like a big harpoon. There were also a bow and a stern electrical gun, of which more will ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... of course these smugglers stood little chance of detection; although vigilant looking policemen were always standing by. And though these "Charlies" might suppose there were tobacco smugglers passing; yet to hit the right man among such a throng, would be as hard, as to harpoon a speckled porpoise, one of ten thousand darting ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... stings or poisons. When wading out into the sea for shells, Mr. Pike is attacked by "a tazarre, a fish something like a fresh-water pike," which comes right at him repeatedly, "like a bulldog," and is only subdued by being speared in the head with a harpoon. Creatures elsewhere the most evasive and timid are here found fighting like gladiators: the eels bite everybody within their reach—one of these combative eels caught by our author measured twelve feet three inches; the fresh-water prawns "strike so sharply with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... called it, and made a square, fierce fight for his life. A man had a chance then to show his skill and power over the brute, he said. He held, too, that man's highest object in life was to know how to kill a whale skilfully; and he heartily despised the whale "as would submit quietly to the harpoon, and die like a lubber." He also affected great contempt for the landsman who had lived like a gentleman, and never killed a whale ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... trebucket^; bullet, slug, stone, brickbat, grenade, shell, bomb, carcass, rocket; congreve^, congreve rocket^; shrapnel, mitraille [Fr.]; levin bolt^, levin brand^; thunderbolt. pike, lance, spear, spontoon^, javelin, dart, jereed^, jerid^, arrow, reed, shaft, bolt, boomerang, harpoon, gaff; eelspear^, oxgoad^, weet-weet, wommerah^; cattle prod; chemical mace. Phr. en flute; nervos ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... enemy of their flying neighbors, tumbled playfully about in the rippling water, and at times encircled the ship in great numbers. Their motion is swift and vigorous,—so much so that it is scarcely possible to strike them with a harpoon. ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... and less savory than the corvina. The Pexe-rey (king-fish) is superior in flavor to the Pexe-sapo (toad-fish), which is a little larger, and has a thick, fleshy head. These fish are taken on rocks and under water, where they are struck by a kind of harpoon hooks ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... "-ful," plenmano, "-shake," manpremo. handkerchief : naztuko. handle : tenilo, manpreni. hang : pend'i, -igi. hansom : kabrioleto, fiakro. happen : okazi. harbour : haveno. harden : malmoligi, (health), hardi hare : leporo. harm : difekti, malutili. harness : jungi, jungajxo. harpoon : harpuno. harrow : erpi, erpilo. harvest : rikolto. hasten : rapid'i, -igi. hatch : kovi. hatchet : hakilo. haunch : kokso. hawk : akcipitro; kolporti. hawthorn : kratago. hay : fojno. hazlenut : avelo. heal : resanigi, ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... he hath the shrewdest head among them. Well, now for nobler game! I am to face this leviathan Charles, who will presently swim hitherward, cleaving the deep before him. I must, like a trembling sailor, throw a tub overboard to amuse him. But I may one day find the chance of driving a harpoon ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... hunting. The Japanese laws, which have year by year been made more stringent, have somewhat interfered with the sporting proclivities of the people. Nets and fish traps are now forbidden, and fishing for the most part is effected by means of a spear or harpoon, either from the shore or from the somewhat primitive canoes used by the people. Poisoned arrows were once largely used for the purpose of capturing game, but they are now forbidden by law. Originally ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... table, and a ship's chronometer, and a compass.... There were charts in a tin tube upon the wall, and one that showed the Harbor and the channel to the sea hung between the middle windows. In the north corner, a harpoon, and two lances, and a boat spade leaned. Their blades were covered with wooden sheaths, painted gray. A fifteen-foot jawbone, cleaned and polished and with every curving tooth in place, hung upon the rear wall and gleamed like old and yellow ivory. The chair ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... of a large cypress log. In this he often glided swiftly and noiselessly down some stream where the salmon trout lived. He held in his right hand a tough spear, made of a charred reed with a barbed end. When he saw a fish almost as large as himself close at hand he hurled his harpoon at it with all his force. And the fish darted off, leaving a trail of crimson in the clear water and dragging the boat behind it; for the boy clung to the end of the spear and soused the wounded fish in the water until its strength ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... But—damn it, Dad hurt me—shamed me, and I dug out for the West. It was this way. After leaving college I tried to please him by tackling one thing after another that he set me to do. On the square, I had no head for business. I made a mess of everything. The governor got sore. He kept ramming the harpoon into me till I just couldn't stand it. What little ability I possessed deserted me when I got my back up, and there you are. Dad and I had a rather uncomfortable half hour. When I quit—when I told him straight out that I was going ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... of holding the throwing-stick is indicated in Fig. 1 by a drawing of H.W. Elliott. The Eskimo is just in the act of launching the light seal harpoon. The barbed point will fasten itself into the animal, detach itself from the ivory foreshaft, and unwind the rawhide or sinew line, which is securely tied to both ends of the light wooden shaft by a martingale device. The heavy ivory ...
— Throwing-sticks in the National Museum • Otis T. Mason
... whaling vessels were sailers, but now powerful steamships are used, and the harpoon often gives way to the harpoon gun. A whale, when struck, will sometimes run out a mile of line before it comes up again, which is generally in about half an hour. The whalers judge as best they can, from the position of the line, in which direction ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... "You sank your harpoon pretty deep into Folly Bay this season," Norman said abruptly. "Did you do pretty ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... that sparkled in the sunlight coming inboard in shoals, pursued by their enemies the albacores, who drove them out of the sea to take refuge in the air; besides numbers of grampusses and sharks swimming round us. Adams, the sailmaker, killed one of these latter gentry with a harpoon, spearing him from the bowsprit as he came past the ship. He looked up with his evil eye, fancying perhaps that he would "catch one of us napping," but no one was unwary enough to get within reach of his voracious maw; and Mr Shark "caught a tartar" instead and got a taste of cold ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... over the Atlantic and seen whalers attack the blue whale—the largest animal now living in the world, for it often attains to a length of 90 feet. At the present day whalers use strongly built, swift, and easily handled steam-launches, and shoot the harpoon out from the bow with a pivoted gun. In the head of the harpoon is a pointed shell which explodes in the body of the whale, dealing a mortal wound, and at the butt end a thick rope is secured. The vessel follows the whale until ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... as any prophet might have foreseen, a Social Democrat had been developed. As the emperor stepped into the gilded imperial wheelbarrow at the church door, the social democrat stabbed at him fifteen or sixteen times with a harpoon, but fortunately with such a peculiarly social democratic unprecision of aim ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... hath hit thee hard. And faith, it would be hard to miss thee, even with harpoon. And thou lookest like to blubber, now. Capital, in faith! I have thee on every side, Jack, and thy sides are manifold; many-folded at any rate. Thou shalt have double expenses, Jack, for the wit thou hast provoked ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... that may be in this case, let me contrast in a single glance the momentary effect in conversation of the two neighbors, Hawthorne and Emerson. Speech seemed like a kind of travail to Hawthorne. One must harpoon him like a cetacean with questions to make him talk at all. Then the words came from him at last, with bashful manifestations, like those of a young girl, almost—words that gasped themselves forth, seeming to leave a great deal more behind them than they ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... sitting down. Sometimes, however, the rare occasion serves the rare harpooner, when the whale and canoe appear as if about to meet each other straight head-on. Then, in a flash, the man in the bow is up on his feet, with the harpoon so poised that the rocking water, the mettlesome canoe, and his watchful comrade in the stern, all form part of the concentrated energy with which he brings his every faculty to a single point of instantaneous action. There, for one fateful moment, he stands ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... for the brig, Blancard hoisted enough sail to work the boat, and Langlade ran to the prow and held up the king's cloak on the end of a sort of harpoon. Soon the voyagers perceived that they had been sighted, the brig went about to approach them, and in ten minutes they found themselves within fifty yards of it. The captain appeared in the bows. Then the king hailed him and offered him a substantial ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... go, and I will do to them whatsoever pleaseth Ra." And everything was done according to what he had said. Then this Boat of Ra was brought by the winged Sun- disk upon the waters of the Lake of Meh,[FN87] [and] Heru-Behutet took in his hands his weapons, his darts, and his harpoon, and all the chains [which he required] for ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... Although she well knew that it was the only life open to an Orkney lad, yet she was ever anxious to delay its beginning, and at these words from her my father did not urge me further, but quietly watched me as I rose from the table and took from a rack over the window a small harpoon, the sharp point of which I tested by pressing it ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... to kid me?" snarled the chauffeur. "Ye don't need to think 'cause you got on a bull's uniform ye can hurl the harpoon into me. Or if it's a drink ye're wantin' reach in under the seat an' there's a flask. If ye meant hair oil why ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... afterward, horribile dictu, pitchforks for little Margaret, and a vivid incandescent state to be maintained through eternity at vast cost of pit-coal to a gentleman who carried over his arm, so as not to step on it, a long snaky tail with a point like a harpoon's. ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... by his rough manner and the surly audacity that was expressed by his whole personality. Hearne was an American, and forty-five years of age. He was an active, vigorous man, and I could see him in my mind's eye, standing up on his double bowed whaling-boat brandishing the harpoon, darting it into the flank of a whale, and paying out the rope. He must have been fine to see. Granted his passion for this business, I could not be surprised that his discontent showed itself upon occasion. In any case, however, our schooner ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... from her portholes there protruded the muzzles of at least twenty cannon. Of course, they knew that such a vessel would have a much larger crew than their own, and, altogether, Bartholemy was very much in the position of a man who should go out to harpoon a sturgeon, and who should find himself confronted by ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... a fifth time to make his complaint, and said, "O my lord steward, the fisherman with a khut instrument ..., the fisherman with a ... killeth i-fish, the fisherman with a harpoon speareth the aubbu fish, the fisherman with a tchabhu instrument catcheth the paqru fish, and the common fishermen are always drawing fish from the river. Observe! Thou art even as they. Wrest not the goods of the poor man from him. The helpless man thou ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... at them, and he lifted his harpoon and he threw it and he struck. And this he did every day in the same manner, and made a catch each time he went ...
— Eskimo Folktales • Unknown
... that dynamite is an explosive of great power, after which it is still better for him to learn of how great power. Then he will not hit a cartridge with a hammer in order to find out, and when he dines in good society he can still lift his pie gracefully in his hand, and will not be compelled to harpoon it with an iron hook at ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... a harpoon and a coil of line, he muttered a few words to the boy, sprang up, and running out upon the smooth ice, stood by the edge of the open water. He had not waited here more than a few seconds when the black waters were cleft by the blacker head of the monster, ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... head-dress consisted of a white flowing wig made of oakum, with a green turban; on her shoulders was an ample yellow shawl; her petticoat was red bunting; on her feet were sandals made from the green hide of a bullock. In her right hand she held a harpoon; her cheeks were ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... long-foundered vessel to whom has been accorded a Nirvana of endless tavern-fellowship. None of them took any notice of Mr Sharnall, for music was exercising its transporting power, and their thoughts were far away. Some were with old Cullerne whalers, with the harpoon and the ice-floe; some dreamt of square-stemmed timber-brigs, of the Baltic and the white Memel-logs, of wild nights at sea and wilder nights ashore; and some, remembering violet skies and moonlight through the mango-groves, looked on the Creole woman, and tried to recall in her ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... however, remained till the returning inundation, as so many vivaria in which the fish were preserved for dwellers on the banks. Fishing with the harpoon, made either of stone or of metal, with the line, with a net or with traps, were all methods of fishing known and used by the Egyptians from early times. Where the ponds failed, the neighbouring Nile furnished them with inexhaustible supplies. Standing ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... was not gone. It had been quickly backed out of danger when the harpoon was thrown, and reappeared when the cataract of spray ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... Lester, reaching down into the cabin, drew out and displayed to the astonished eyes of the boys a long harpoon. ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... once, it was as full of life as ever.[1] It feigned death and lay motionless, with its eye closed; but, on being pricked with a spear, it suddenly regained all its activity. It was at last finished by a harpoon, and then opened. Its maw contained several small tortoises, and a quantity of broken bricks and gravel, taken ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... now pulled sharply round, and young Jack, standing up on the head of the boat, held the harpoon ready for use when they should ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... place his boat where he thought the whale would come up. When the whale came up to get breath, the men in the nearest boat would row toward it. The officer who stood in the bow of the boat would then throw a harpoon, which would stick fast in the whale. As soon as the whale was struck with the harpoon, he would go down into the water. There was a line fast to the harpoon, which was coiled in a tub standing ...
— Stories of American Life and Adventure • Edward Eggleston
... heroes, half ruffians, they did their work, and unconsciously brought the islands a stage nearer civilization. Odd precursors of English law, nineteenth-century culture, and the peace of our lady the Queen, were these knights of the harpoon and companions of the rum-barrel. But the isolated coasts and savage men among whom their lot was cast did not as yet call for refinement and reflection. Such as their time wanted, such they were. They played a part and fulfilled a ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... banks of the Vezere, but they exist in many other places. Sometimes they have been used as habitations and even as graves for men. Skeletons, weapons, and tools are found here together. There are axes, knives, scrapers, lance-points of flint; arrows, harpoon-points, needles of bone like those used by certain savages to this day. The soil is strewn with the bones of animals which these men, untidy like all savages, threw into a corner after they had eaten the meat; they even split the bones ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... Sproul, clacking his hard fist on the table rim. "Law will tie more knots in a man's business than a whale can tie in a harpoon-line. There ain't no justice in it—only pickin's and stealin's. Why, I had a mate once that was downed on T wharf in Bos'n and robbed, and they caught the men, and the mate couldn't give witness bonds and they locked him up with 'em, and the men got away one night and wa'n't ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... curved out from the shaft. The whole of the barb turned on a stout pivot of steel, but was kept in line with the shaft by a tiny wooden peg which passed through barb and shaft, being then cut off smoothly on both sides. The point of the harpoon had at one side a wedge-shaped edge, ground to razor keenness, the other side was flat. The shaft, about thirty inches long, was of the best malleable iron, so soft that it would tie into a knot and straighten out again without fracture. ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... not acknowledge the Portuguese authority, and even make them pay for leave to pass unmolested. Throughout the whole course of the river hippopotami were very abundant, and at one village a chase by the natives was witnessed. They harpoon the animal with a barbed lance, to which is attached, by a cord 3 or 4 fathoms long, an inflated bladder. The natives follow in their canoes, and look out to fix more harpoons as the animal rises to blow, and, when exhausted, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... till I forget where I am, and go on thinking so hard that the flames seem to turn into melting fires, and the bars of the grate into dead fish, and the smoke into sails and rigging, and I go to work cutting up the blubber and stirring the oil-pots, or pulling the bow-oar and driving the harpoon at such a rate that I can't help giving a shout, which causes Tom to ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... rope and suspended from the stern, letting it sink about a foot under the surface. C——, Smith, and I were in the captain's boat, with three sailors, under the orders of Lapworth, who had taken his stand immediately above with a harpoon. The shark came up, nibbling and smelling at the pork, so close to us in the boat that he almost rubbed along the side without apparent alarm or taking any notice of our presence. He was a monster, nearly ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... conclusions of the monikin philosopher, affirming that he should like no better sport than to hear him lecture in the streets of Stunin'tun, where, he assured me, such doctrine would not be tolerated any longer than was necessary to sharpen a harpoon, or to load a gun. Indeed, he did not know but the Doctor would be incontinently kicked over into Rhode ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... deficiencies. Inferior to many animals in strength and speed, he has manufactured weapons, and subdued them all, asserting himself as the lord of creation, conquering even the mighty mastodon, and piercing the huge Caledonian whale with his reindeer harpoon. He has remedied his want of hair by the manufacture of clothing from the spoils of his victims. He has rendered himself independent of the weather by the shelter of his house. He has ceased to be dependent on the spontaneous fruits of the forest by the ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... the honour of this achievement. In the "North Sea" lived a whale who exhibited in his own person indubitable proof of having found that elusive Anian Strait. At Herald Island, due north of Bering Strait, in 1886, a whale was caught who carried round in his inside pocket of blubber the head of a harpoon marked Ansell Gibbs. The Ansell Gibbs was wrecked at Marble Island south of Chesterfield Inlet on Hudson Bay on October 13, 1871. Imagination sees opportunity in this for establishing hyperborean letter-service between lovers kept apart by cruel ice-floes. Eskimo Evangeline wandering ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... cautious advance. One of them, armed with a very primitive harpoon—a long nail at the end of a stick—kept himself in the bow of the boat, while the other two noiselessly paddled on. They waited till the necessity of breathing would bring the manatees up again. In ten minutes or thereabouts the animals would ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... produce Logs—that is, cunningly devised instruments for ascertaining the speed of ships. Yet if I go to north country ports, such as Leith, and if I go south to Dover, or west to Cardiff, I see the "Cherub," the "Harpoon," and other Logs made by the firm of T. Walker and Sons, Oxford Street, Birmingham. As I have said, it seems a little strange, if not funny, that Birmingham should produce ship appliances. Nevertheless, the present Mr. T.F. ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... women. 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 ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... armed with barbed harpoons and with spears. The harpoon is sometimes thrown at the beluga from a considerable distance. When struck the creature rushes to the surface, plunges and rolls to get free. He never defends himself but thinks only of flight. It is an accident if a boat is upset by ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... sentimentality of their nation, throw such an air of ease and frankness, that their victims resemble the finny tribe in the famous tunny fishery. While they conceive the whole ocean is at their command—disport here and there in imagined freedom—they are already encased by the insidious nets; the harpoon is already pointed, which shall surely pierce them. Delancey plunged headlong into pleasure's vortex—touched each link between gaiety and crime. He wandered from the paths of virtue from the infatuation ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... accurate though highly personal account of the whaler's life, and to that end had assembled a mass of information upon the sperm whale to add to his own memories. Very literally the story begins as an autobiography; even the elemental figure of the cannibal, Queequeg, with his incongruous idol and harpoon in a New Bedford lodging house, does not warn of what is to come. But even before the Pequod leaves sane Nantucket an undercurrent begins to sweep through the narrative. This brooding captain, Ahab (for Melville also broods, though with characteristic ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... there was the old lady, Sieciechowa, at Zgorzelice, who could easily fulfil Jagienka's duties, did not persuade her to remain, for he knew that sorrow does not like the light on human tears, and that a man is like a fish, when it feels the penetrating harpoon in its body it sinks ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... constrain the Swiss Guards. Granier, of Marseilles, at the head of the staircase, holds two of them at arms' length, trying in a friendly manner to draw them down.[2691] At the foot of the staircase the crowd is shouting and threatening; lighter men, armed with boat-hooks, harpoon the sentinels by their shoulder-straps, and pull down four or five, like so many fishes, amid shouts of laughter.—Just at this moment a pistol goes off; nobody being able to tell which party fired it.[2692] The Swiss, firing from above, clean ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... plunged his harpoon into the monster's quivering blubber, and with a dexterity that was wonderful in a man of his size, he seized another and thrust it to the hilt beside ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... touched at one of the Puget Sound ports. The whaler went up to a part of Alaska where bears were very plentiful and bold. One day a couple of boats' crews landed; and the men, who were armed only with an occasional harpoon or lance, scattered over the beach, one of them, a Frenchman, wading into the water after shell-fish. Suddenly a bear emerged from some bushes and charged among the astonished sailors, who scattered in every direction; but the bear, said Woody, "just ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... our getting sight of any of the inhabitants, and indeed without a single incident worth notice. On the 22d, we killed a turtle for the day's provision, upon opening which we found a wooden harpoon or turtle-peg, about as thick as a man's finger, near fifteen inches long, and bearded at the end, such as we had seen among the natives, sticking through both shoulders: It appeared to have been struck ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... was left, a fierce barbarian of a New Zealander—an excellent mariner, whose stock of English was limited to nautical phrases and a frightful power of oath, but who, in spite of his cannibal origin, ranked as a sort of officer, in virtue of his harpoon, and took command of the ship when mate and captain were absent. What a capital story, by the bye, Typee tells us of one of this Bembo's whaling exploits! New Zealanders are brave and bloodthirsty, and excellent harpooners, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... I accompanied the howartis, or hippopotamus hunters, for a day's sport. There were numbers of hippos in this part of the river, and we were not long before we found a herd. The hunters failed in several attempts to harpoon them, but they succeeded in stalking a crocodile after a most peculiar fashion. This large beast was lying upon a sandbank on the opposite margin of the river, close to a bed ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... all essentials a completely evolved human being, with a whole past of slowly acquired culture lying dimly and mysteriously behind him. Already he had invented the bow with its flint-tipped arrow, the neatly chipped javelin-head, the bone harpoon, the barbed fish-hook, the axe, the lance, the dagger, and the needle. Already he had learnt how to decorate his implements with artistic skill, and to carve the handles of his knives with the figures ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... white fish, of little value in commerce. In pursuing them they have now adopted the European boat in preference to their own, and those most frequently employed are six oared, rowed by twelve men. The harpooner stands in the bow with his harpoon, or iron spear, which is stuck on a shaft one or two fathoms long, and is provided with a leathern thong of considerable length, to which are attached from five to ten bladders of seal skin. If the whale be struck he immediately dives to the bottom of the sea, where ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... of the whale, I suppose, is pulmonary in part, as he is obliged to come frequently to the surface, whence he can be pursued after he is struck with the harpoon; and may nevertheless be in part like the gills of other fish, as he seems to draw in water when he is below the surface, and emits it again when he ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... would be if we could capture it!" cried the sailor. "Ah! if we only had a proper boat and a good harpoon, I would say 'After the beast,' for he would be well worth the ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... blade of the harpoon is secured by a long and very strong rope wound round the handle: it is intended to come out of its socket, and while the iron head is firmly fixed in the animal's body the rope unwinds and the handle floats on the surface. The hunter next goes to the handle and hauls on the rope ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... given place to that of brass and iron, which, no doubt, facilitated commerce and colonization, even at this early period of the world's history. The discovery of works of art, of however primitive a character, in the drifts of France and England, indicates an early colonization. The rudely-fashioned harpoon of deer's horn found beside the gigantic whale, in the alluvium of the carse near the base of Dummyat, twenty feet above the highest tide of the nearest estuary, and the tusk of the mastodon lying alongside fragments of pottery ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... out for fins! Throppy, you steer as Budge tells you! Stand by to take the dory, Perce, and go after any fish I'm lucky enough to iron. Filippo, be ready to throw that buoy and coil of warp off the starboard bow the minute I make a strike. I'll get out in the pulpit with the harpoon. Keep alive, everybody! We're liable to ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... the Club decided to have the Brain Barbecue at the Beadle Home was that the Beadles had such beautiful big Rooms and Double Doors. There was more or less quiet Harpoon Work when the Announcement was made. Several of the Elderly Ones said that Josephine Beadle was not a Representative Member of the Club. She was Fair to look upon, but she was not pulling very hard for the Uplifting ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... the walrus dived he ran to the edge of the hole, but now, instead of falling down, he stood quite still with the harpoon raised above his head ready to be thrown. In a few moments the monsters reappeared. Two rose close at the edge of the hole; one was a male, the other a female. They were frightfully ugly to look at. Shaking the water from his head and shoulders, the bull ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne
... to enter a place of worship; "it is most wonderful, the holy love which comes upon us, for the simple, senseless, powerless things, that fill us with so much hope, and strength, and energy! I saw a whale once, who, when her young one was struck by the harpoon, came right between it and the ship, and bore the blows, and took the fatal weapons again and again into her bleeding body; and when she was struggling in her flurry, and the sea around was dyed as red as scarlet, still she tried to save her offspring, and managed so as to ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... object for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and resting-place in the progress of their victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them than the accumulated winter of both the poles. We know that whilst some of them draw the line and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude and pursue their gigantic game along the coast of Brazil. No sea but what is vexed by their fisheries; no climate that is not witness to their toils. Neither the ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... episodes of fragile boats smashed to kindling by fighting whales, of the attack renewed with harpoon and lance, of ships actually rammed and sunk, would fill a volume by themselves and have been stirringly narrated in many a one. Zanzibar and Kamchatka, Tasmania and the Seychelles knew the lean, sun-dried Yankee whaleman and his motto of a "dead whale or a stove boat." The Civil ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... comes one into whose hide I know you'd enjoy putting a harpoon—a pillar of the church. Look at the cut of those solemn Presbyterian whiskers. It makes me faint to remember how many times I've tried and failed to get my hooks into him. I know you could land the deacon. ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... postoffice mouth. Aunt Dorothy undertook to communicate assurances of my undying affection for him. As for Janet—Temple's letter, in which he spoke of her avowed preference for Oriental presents, and declared his intention of accumulating them on his voyages, was a harpoon in her side. By means of it I worried and terrified her until she was glad to have it all out before the squire. What did he do? He said that Margery, her mother, was niggardly; a girl wanted presents, and I did not act up to my duty; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... among our crew one Ned Land, a gigantic Canadian of forty, who was considered to be the prince of harpooners. Many a whale had received its deathblow from him, and he was eager to flesh his harpoon in this redoubtable cetacean which had terrified ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... be able to read of a neighbor's success without reaching for the harpoon. A man who will give his last cigar to a stranger and then go home and kick his wife on the shins because she spent forty cents ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott
... for they now approached him, and their frantic enthusiasm kept him for some time from all other thoughts. While they flourished their weapons-some the sword and buckler, and others the not less terrible net and harpoon—the time-honored cry rose from their husky throats in eager acclamation: "Hail, Caesar! those about to die salute thee!" Then, in rows of ten men each, they crossed the arena at ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... unpleasant, that voyage out. We had the customary sports on crossing the line; we fished and caught very little, though the men captured the inevitable shark with the lump of salt pork; and used the grains, as they called the three-pronged fork, to harpoon dolphins. I had my first sight of flying fish, and made friends with the officers. Then there was music and dancing on the hot moonlit nights; deck quoits under the awning by day; a good deal more sleep than we took at home; and at ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... their comrades, with lassos and harpoons, awaited them. Sometimes they harpooned the alligators, and then, fastening lassos to their heads and tails, or to a hind leg, dragged them ashore; at other times they threw the lasso over their heads at once, without taking the trouble to harpoon them. It was a terrible and a wonderful sight to witness the Negroes in the very midst of a shoal of these creatures, any one of which could have taken a man into his jaws quite easily,—whence, once between these long saw-like rows of ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... of blizzards, there was usually sufficient work to be found to keep us all employed. Thus on June 2, Watson and I were making a ladder, Jones was contriving a harpoon for seals, Hoadley was opening cases and stowing stores in the veranda, Dovers cleaning tools, Moyes repairing a thermograph and writing up the meteorological log, Harrisson cooking and ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... Jacks came tumbling up with the luggage, shouts of "Hi! that's mine," rent the air; and if Jack, in the hurry and confusion, did not attend to the cry, out would dart one or other with umbrella or stick, as the case might be, and harpoon him under the fifth rib; for, with a heavy burden on his head and shoulders, necessarily supported by both hands, defence was impossible. I must say, Jack took it all in good humour, and filing a bill "STOMACH v. RIBS," left it to Old Neptune to obtain restitution for ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... feller, until in my forty-second year I'm little better'n a beachcomber. It sure hurt me to have to beg that ornery Scraggs for a job; if I ever sighed for independence it was the other night in Halfmoon Bay when, footsore an' desperate, we stood by an' let that little wart harpoon us. So now, when you ask me what I'm goin' to do with my money, I'll tell you I'm going to save it, after first payin' up about seventy-five bucks I owe here an' there along the Front. I'm through drinkin' an' raisin' hell. Me for a ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... us. A sailor struck one with a harpoon, but it got off again. They are of a salmon colour, no more like pigs than horses, just the shape of salmon, only much larger. In swimming ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... harpoon ready," answered Anvik bravely. "Do not fear, mother. Perhaps the bear will ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... understood their ignorance. With a smile he fitted to the groove of the short stick the shaft of a short harpoon, whose head, about a foot and a half in length, they now discovered to be made of thin, dark slate, ground sharp on each edge and at the point. When the chief had fitted the butt of this dart against the ivory tip, he grasped the ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... September 27th, they saw another alcatras coming from the westward and flying toward the east, and great numbers of fish were seen with gilt backs, one of which they struck with a harpoon. A rabo-de-junco likewise flew past; the currents for some of the last days were not so regular as before but changed with the tide, and the weeds ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... fell into the water, the skipper looked down over the bulwarks, and says he to one of us that had charge of the rope that is fast to the boat at one end and to the harpoon at the other, 'Now, Jack you are a new hand; mind all I told you last night, or your mother will see me come ashore without you, and that will vex her; and, my lads, remember, if there is a single lubberly hitch in that line, you will ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... mother of pearl, or of pearls." For arms they carried bows, poisoned arrows with sharp points hardened in the fire, or tipped with bone and steeped in the juice of a herb, great stones, heavy wooden swords made of stiff wood, with three harpoon points, each more than a handbreadth long. Slung over their shoulders they had haversacks exceedingly well made out of palm leaves, and filled with biscuits made from certain roots which ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... Hurst, of the Wanderer, towed a very large fish on shore, and hauled it up on the beach for examination, the mate of that ship, after some difficulty, having killed it with a harpoon. The sailors called it a Devil Fish, because, perhaps, they had never seen one so ugly, or so large of its kind before. They endeavoured to describe it to me, as I was too late to examine it myself; many of our black labourers having ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman |
