Whence came they? how planted upon this once scraggy scoria of a country?

Likewise, there was a parcel of outlandish bone fish hooks on the shelf over the fire place, and a tall harpoon standing at the head of the bed.

The rest of his toilet was soon achieved, and he proudly marched out of the room, wrapped up in his great pilot monkey jacket, and sporting his harpoon like a marshal's baton.

And the Eskimo community basically camps out on the edge of the ice here, waits for a whale to come close enough to attack.

Ha! thought I, ha, as the flying particles almost choked me, are these ashes from that destroyed city, Gomorrah?

With this once long lance, now wildly elbowed, fifty years ago did Nathan Swain kill fifteen whales between a sunrise and a sunset.

You shuddered as you gazed, and wondered what monstrous cannibal and savage could ever have gone a death harvesting with such a hacking, horrifying implement.

I was watching to see where he kept his razor, when lo and behold, he takes the harpoon from the bed corner, slips out the long wooden stock, unsheathes the head, whets it a little on his boot, and striding up to the bit of mirror against the wall, begins a vigorous scraping, or rather harpooning of his cheeks.

Afterwards I wondered the less at this operation when I came to know of what fine steel the head of a harpoon is made, and how exceedingly sharp the long straight edges are always kept.

His greatest admirer could not have cordially justified his bringing his harpoon into breakfast with him, and using it there without ceremony reaching over the table with it, to the imminent jeopardy of many heads, and grappling the beefsteaks towards him.

And where but from Nantucket, too, did that first adventurous little sloop put forth, partly laden with imported cobblestones so goes the story to throw at the whales, in order to discover when they were nigh enough to risk a harpoon from the bowsprit?