1 Even in Broadway and Chestnut streets, Mediterranean mariners will sometimes jostle the affrighted ladies.
2 Now this was written at a time when the black limber bone of the Greenland or Right whale was largely used in ladies' bodices.
3 Now in the present case Erskine contended that the examples of the whale and the lady were reciprocally illustrative of each other.
Moby Dick By Herman MelvilleContextHighlight In CHAPTER 89. Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish. 4 It was also distilled to a volatile salts for fainting ladies, the same way that the horns of the male deer are manufactured into hartshorn.
5 I say, that the motion of a Sperm Whale's flukes above water dispenses a perfume, as when a musk-scented lady rustles her dress in a warm parlor.
6 As ashore, the ladies often cause the most terrible duels among their rival admirers; just so with the whales, who sometimes come to deadly battle, and all for love.
Moby Dick By Herman MelvilleContextHighlight In CHAPTER 88. Schools and Schoolmasters. 7 In cavalier attendance upon the school of females, you invariably see a male of full grown magnitude, but not old; who, upon any alarm, evinces his gallantry by falling in the rear and covering the flight of his ladies.
Moby Dick By Herman MelvilleContextHighlight In CHAPTER 88. Schools and Schoolmasters. 8 The contrast between this Ottoman and his concubines is striking; because, while he is always of the largest leviathanic proportions, the ladies, even at full growth, are not more than one-third of the bulk of an average-sized male.
Moby Dick By Herman MelvilleContextHighlight In CHAPTER 88. Schools and Schoolmasters. 9 Supper concluded, we received a lamp, and directions from Mrs. Hussey concerning the nearest way to bed; but, as Queequeg was about to precede me up the stairs, the lady reached forth her arm, and demanded his harpoon; she allowed no harpoon in her chambers.
10 Chief among those who did this fetching and carrying was Captain Bildad's sister, a lean old lady of a most determined and indefatigable spirit, but withal very kindhearted, who seemed resolved that, if SHE could help it, nothing should be found wanting in the Pequod, after once fairly getting to sea.
11 Throughout the Pacific, and also in Nantucket, and New Bedford, and Sag Harbor, you will come across lively sketches of whales and whaling-scenes, graven by the fishermen themselves on Sperm Whale-teeth, or ladies' busks wrought out of the Right Whale-bone, and other like skrimshander articles, as the whalemen call the numerous little ingenious contrivances they elaborately carve out of the rough material, in their hours of ocean leisure.
Moby Dick By Herman MelvilleContextHighlight In CHAPTER 57. Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in ...