United States or Colombia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It's like an ox, an't it?" "It's very like a whale," replied Courtenay. At this moment one of the herd, startled at the near approach of the cavalcade, rose from the stagnant pool, where he had been lying, and presented his immense carcass, covered with mud, to Prose's wondering eyes. "Lord, Molly, what a fish!" exclaimed Courtenay, with affected surprise, alluding to an old standing naval joke.
Clap eye on Captain Ahab, young man, and thou wilt find that he has only one leg." "What do you mean, sir? Was the other one lost by a whale?" "Lost by a whale! Young man, come nearer to me: it was devoured, chewed up, crunched by the monstrousest parmacetty that ever chipped a boat! ah, ah!"
The whale was out of sight in a flash and the line began to run over the bow with a speed that made the woodwork smoke. I bent on another line and then dipped up some water in the bailer to throw upon the smoking gunwale. It was at this moment that I came as close to death as ever whaleman experienced.
No one regards the external similarity of a mouse to a shrew, of a dugong to a whale, of a whale to a fish, as of any importance. These resemblances, though so intimately connected with the whole life of the being, are ranked as merely "adaptive or analogical characters;" but to the consideration of these resemblances we shall recur.
The first intimation the intended victim had of the fate in store for her was the shriek of the roundshot athwart her bows. This was the signal, universally known as such, for her to back her topsails and await the coming of the gang, already tumbling in ordered haste into the armed boat prepared for them under the tender's quarter. And yet it was not always easy for the sprat to catch the whale.
Finally they were wrecked on Moreton Island, and had lived with the blacks ever since a period of seven months. The latter was never heard of. Next day Finnegan turned up, and both he and Pamphlet, agreeing that at the south end of the bay there was a large river. Messrs. Oxley and Stirling started the following morning in the whale boat to look for it; taking Finnegan with them.
They had worked hard on the carcass of the huge whale and were rebuilding the sixty towns and villages that had been destroyed, with the bones of the monster, using the skin as coverings for their tents. With the help of the magic diamond, Rabba called the ziz, and it took the ship which had been carried into the forest in its beak and flew with it to the sea.
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.
They had been on a whaling excursion and were towing a large dead whale to their village. In the bow of one of the boats stood a stout young man who had harpooned the whale. He looked at Kiviung keenly and Kiviung looked at him. Then, of a sudden, they recognized each other. It was Kiviung's own son whom he had left a small boy, but who was now become a grown man and a great hunter.
At first I thought he might be dead, he was so quiet. Then I heard his lips move in the rhapsodic deglutition of babyland dreams. "Dinky-Dunk," I demanded, "what would we do if Babe should die?" And I shook him to make him answer. He stared up at me with a sleepy eye. "That whale?" he commented as he blinked contentedly down at his offspring and then turned over and went to sleep.
Word Of The Day