"Ransom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... passed from lip to lip, growing in sensation and absurdity as they went. A report, telegraphed by an anonymous idiot from Liverpool, to the effect that six air-ships had appeared over the Mersey, and demanded a ransom of L10,000,000 from the town, was eagerly seized on by the cheaper evening papers, which rushed out edition after edition on the strength of it, until the St. James's Gazette put an end to the excitement by publishing a telegram from the Mayor of Liverpool denouncing ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... at strife About a ransom to preserve my life? Though to save yours I did my interest give, Think not, when you were his, I meant ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... the Tulip from Batavia's shore; The thrifty Fleming for my beauty rare Pays a king's ransom, when that I am fair, And tall, and straight, and pure my ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... ravaged, and the property of his subjects considered by his enemies as their lawful plunder. As a matter of fact it was a trap he was preparing. He hoped that his brother and other relatives in Cibao would, either by force or by trickery, capture as many Spaniards as would be required to pay his ransom. Divining this plot, Columbus sent Hojeda, but with an escort of soldiers sufficient to overcome all resistance of the inhabitants of Cibao. Hardly had the Spaniards entered that region when the brother of Caunaboa assembled about 5000 men, equipped in their fashion, that is to say, ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... and laughter, the Countess strictly forbade. The practical result was that the young ladies fell back upon gossip and ghost-stories, until there were few nights in the year when Roisia would have dared to go to bed by herself for a king's ransom. An hour before bed-time wine and cakes were served. After this Mistress Underdone recited the Rosary, the girls making the responses, and at eight o'clock—a late hour at that time—they trooped off ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... are submitted to a council of war and to the religious houses, respectively. Among the former are the expulsion of Japanese and Chinese traders from Manila; the accumulation of provisions; agreement that no one will, if captured, accept ransom; and establishment of a refuge in the hills near Manila for the women, children, and sick. The religious are asked to give their opinion on certain points: whether it would not be well to take from the Indians their gold, as a pledge for their good behavior in the event of hostilities; ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume VIII (of 55), 1591-1593 • Emma Helen Blair
... Conover, Cooper, Davis, Edmunds, Frelinghuysen, Hager, Hamilton of Maryland, Howe, Ingalls, Johnston, Jones, MeCreery, Merrimon, Morrill of Maine, Norwood, Ransom, Scott, Sherman, Wadleigh, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... to feed his own stock next morning, while Mrs. Tolliver took on in great alarm and wanted a posse formed to rescue Homer from wherever he was. Her first idea was that he had been kidnapped and was being held for ransom; but someway she couldn't get any one else very hearty about this notion. So then she said he had been murdered, or was lying off in the brush ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... appeared to be a War Captain belonging to the Sachem of the Doegs, (whose Original I find must needs be from the Old Britons) and took me up by the middle, and told me in the British Tongue, I should not die, and thereupon went to the Emperor of Tuscorara, and agreed for my Ransom, and the Men that were with me. They then wellcomed us to their Town, and entertained us very civilly and cordially four months; during which time I had the opportunity of conversing with them familiarly in the British Language, ...
— An Enquiry into the Truth of the Tradition, Concerning the - Discovery of America, by Prince Madog ab Owen Gwynedd, about the Year, 1170 • John Williams
... plague upon the host, so that the folk began to perish, because Atreides had done dishonour to Chryses the priest. For the priest had come to the Achaians' fleet ships to win his daughter's freedom, and brought a ransom beyond telling; and bare in his hands the fillet of Apollo the Far-darter upon a golden staff; and made his prayer unto all the Achaians, and most of all to the two sons of Atreus, orderers of the host; "Ye sons of Atreus ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... silent seems to me the most graceful, if accompanied with a grave and constant countenance); or if those miserable prisoners, who fall into the hands of the base hangman soldiers of this age, by whom they are tormented with all sorts of inhuman usage to compel them to some excessive and impossible ransom; kept, in the meantime, in such condition and place, where they have no means of expressing or signifying their thoughts and their misery. The poets have feigned some gods who favour the deliverance of such as ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... of Bretigny. In the course of this campaign Chaucer was taken prisoner; but he was released without much loss of time, as appears by a document bearing date March 1st, 1360, in which the king contributes the sum of 16 pounds for Chaucer's ransom. We may therefore conclude that he missed the march upon Paris, and the sufferings undergone by the English army on their road thence to Chartres—the most exciting experiences of an inglorious campaign; and that he was actually set free ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... them free on the condition of working a certain number of days for the profit of the plantation; give the slaves a part of the net produce, to interest them in the increase of agricultural riches;* fix a sum on the budget of the public funds, destined for the ransom of slaves, and the amelioration of their condition—such are the most urgent objects for colonial legislation. (* General Lafayette, whose name is linked with all that promises to contribute to the liberty of man and the happiness of mankind, conceived, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... the critical days just before the Civil War, when every hour made history. Joe Ransom learns of the plan to assassinate President Lincoln on the way to his inauguration, and is sent by the United States Government officials to warn the President-elect. His mission is accomplished, and largely ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... feet beneath my horse, and thus bore me out of the camp for all the first day. Then, I own he let me ride as became a knight, on my word of honour not to escape; but much did I marvel whether it were revenge or ransom that he wanted; and as to ransom, all our gold had all been riding on horseback with my poor father. What he had devised I knew not nor guessed till late at night we were at his rat-hole of a Tower, where I looked ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... manifest resolutions. We poor shepherds have no wealth but our flocks, and therefore can we not make requital with any great treasures; but our recompense is thanks, and our rewards to her friends without feigning. For ransom, therefore, of this our rescue, you must content yourself to take such a kind gramercy as a poor shepherdess and her page may give, with promise, in what we may, never to prove ingrateful. For this gentleman that is hurt, young Rosader, he is our ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... the day of the robber, and all things lay to his hand if he were bold enough to grasp them. Prisoners of war suffered horrible tortures, being hung up by their feet and hands in the hope that their friends would ransom them the sooner. Villages were burned down, and wolves howled near the haunts of men, seeking food to appease their ravening hunger. It was said that fierce beasts gnawed through the walls of houses and devoured little children in their cradles. Italy ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... expedition on the Potomac, captured Pocahontas and brought her prisoner to Jamestown in an attempt to deal with her father, Powhatan. She was well received at Jamestown, where earlier she had often visited, and when her father refused to pay the price asked for her ransom, she was detained. Later, she preferred life with the English and did not wish to return to her native village. She was placed under the tutelage of Reverend Alexander Whitaker who instructed her in the Christian faith. Eventually she was baptized, and, in April ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch
... Castle. And the Earl restored to the Countess the two Earldoms, he had taken from her, as a ransom for his life; and for his freedom, he gave her the half of his own dominions, and all his gold, and his silver, and his ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 1 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... tells how Dorothy was found on the doorstep, taken in, and how she grew to be a lovable girl of twelve; and was then carried off by a person who held her for ransom. She made a warm friend of Jim, the nobody; and the adventures of the pair are as interesting as ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer
... how long shall this slaughter of women endure? Shall I tell thee what is in my mind in order to save both sides from destruction?" "Say on, O my daughter," quoth he, and quoth she, "I wish thou wouldst give me in marriage to this King Shahryar; either I shall live or I shall be a ransom for the virgin daughters of Moslems and the cause of their deliverance from his hands and thine."[FN22] "Allah upon thee!" cried he in wrath exceeding that lacked no feeding, "O scanty of wit, expose not thy life to such peril! How durst thou address me in words so wide ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... its nearer approach, it seemeth him to be a ship; and at a dear ransom he freeth his speech ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the bordj of Toudja, at last," Victoria said, looking out between the curtains of her bassour. "Aren't you thankful, Saidee? You'll feel happier and freer, when Cassim's men have gone back to the Zaouia, and our ransom has been paid by the return of the little boy. That volume of your life will be closed for ever and ever, and you can ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... buying his way by presents through the great tribes and fighting his way through the small ones. You may travel down to the sea some day with me if I join the caravans of the Arabs, and then if there are countrymen of yours on the coast, as I have heard, and they would pay me a good ransom for you, we may see about it. You are ungrateful ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... "Ransom," Mara said fervently, gazing into the globe, her dark eyes bright. "Their biggest City, half ...
— The Crystal Crypt • Philip Kindred Dick
... after sending several messengers and agents in vain, the proud and indolent Earl of Howth came himself, with a large ransom, to buy back his heir. Grace O'Malley refused the money with scorn, but offered to restore the child to him, if he would solemnly promise that the gates of Howth Castle should always be thrown wide ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... take my heart, first, And since I cannot hope now to enjoy him, Let me but fall a part of his glad ransom. ...
— Beggars Bush - From the Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... driver a duke's ransom. There was no porter about, and he carried Marie Louise's suit-cases to the parcel-room. Her baggage had had a long journey. She retreated to the women's room for what toilet she could make, and came forth with a very much washed face. Somnambulistic ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... chap!" yelled the C.O., "every fifty yards is worth a monarch's ransom to Haig. Let's see if we can't carry that wood yonder while their searchlights last"; and he pointed to the ridge beyond the captured trench. "I'd like to know who silenced that machine-gun just now. I suppose half a dozen men will claim ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... soldiers had already bound and secured their prisoner. Milnwood returned at this instant, and, alarmed at the preparations he beheld, hastened to proffer to Bothwell, though with many a grievous groan, the purse of gold which he had been obliged to rummage out as ransom for his nephew. The trooper took the purse with an air of indifference, weighed it in his hand, chucked it up into the air, and caught it as it fell, then shook his head, and said, "There's many a merry night in this nest ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... to be a man of ill principles,' thought it improper to order any man on such a risky service, but Lieutenant Mackintosh, in consideration of a gratuity of one thousand rupees, undertook to go, and departed for Colaba, with Rs.30,000 as ransom for the European prisoners, the convention sealed with the Council's seal, and ships to bring back ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... with his life. It seems that the news of "Rich Spencer's" wealth had travelled as far as the Continent, and there tempted the cupidity of a notorious Dunkirk pirate, who conceived the bold idea of kidnapping the merchant and holding him to a heavy ransom. How the attempt was made, and how providentially it ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... heathens, monasteries were burned, monks were killed or captured, and the emperor, Charles the Fat, was boldly defied. When Charles brought against the plunderers an army large enough to devour them, he was afraid to strike a blow against them, and preferred to buy them off with a ransom of two thousand pounds of gold and silver, all he got in return being their ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... said, "O folk, to- morrow I will go forth into the battle-plain and place where cut and thrust obtain, and slay their champions and make prize of their families after taking them captives and I will ransom Sa'adan therewith' by the leave of the Requiting King, whom no one thing diverteth from other thing!" Wherefore their hearts were heartened and they joyed as they separated to their tents. Meanwhile Jaland entered his pavilion and sitting down on his sofa of estate, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... After tarrying there so long, Milk and honey, wine and welcome Wait you 'mong the ransom'd throng; Wear your arms, advance to warfare, Onward go, and bravely fight, Fair the land, and there shall lead you Cloud by day ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... been for weeks fighting out in silence and apparent impassiveness; but it was impossible not to feel that therewith was manifested the wrestling with the Prince of Darkness, ere his subject should escape from his territory, and claim the ransom of his manumission. Mr. Audley—after the second night—would not let Felix remain, but took the watch entirely on himself, and fought the battle with the foe by prayer and psalm. Sleep used to come ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... again, running as it were to meet them that chased him: whereupon suddenly all the bushes were turned into horsemen, which also ran to encounter with the knight and his company, and coming to them, they enclosed the knight and the rest, and told them they must pay their ransom before they departed; whereupon the knight seeing himself in such distress, besought Faustus to be good to them, which he denied not but let them loose; yet he so charmed them, that every one, knight and other, for the space of a whole month did wear a pair of goat's horns on their brows, and every ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... Accordingly, at night the jailer took him from the said prison to a house of his up the river and told him that the king of Borney and many Indians had fled up the river; and that he should write a note, so that his relative should pay his ransom. While here, his relative aforesaid, named Siandi, came and gave him a culverin [24] of three quintals weight, with other Spaniards—he alone remaining, for the other man, his relative, turned back, leaving this witness in the power of the Spaniards. Likewise this witness declared that ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson
... aimed at the falcon and shot the goose. Here is Edgar Atheling prisoner. Shall we put him to ransom?" ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... broke in, easy and unmoved. "Hold yore hawses, cap. We got no call to be threatening this young lady. We keep her for a ransom because that's business. But she's as safe here as she would be at the Rocking Chair. She's got York ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... If Ransom [Dr. Ransom of Nottingham.] had not overworked himself, I should probably ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... Chinon in Touraine! Try it soon, my boy. Quebec is a sack full of pearls!" Hortense pulled him mischievously by the coat, so he caught her hand and held it fast in his, while he proceeded: "You put your hand in the sack and take out the first that offers. It will be worth a Jew's ransom! If you are lucky to find the fairest, trust me it will be the identical pearl of great price for which the merchant went and sold all that he had and bought it. Is not that Gospel, Father de Berey? I think I have ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... "in the height of his ascendancy he did not disdain to stand in the public place in Sienna, and, trembling in every vein, beg money from the people to ransom a friend from captivity. Do I appear to thee to speak with mysterious significance? Thy countrymen shall too soon help thee ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... servants to the regular soldiers. It is easy to understand that no one can endure such conditions of military life, the result being that each and every one of these non-Moslems sells whatever property he has in order to pay the ransom and get away from the army, and from Turkey as well. In ten days, since this peculiar recruiting began, fully ten thousand Greeks found a way of escaping from Constantinople, many of them finding a refuge in the free and hospitable United States. This getting away is ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... side of Ancaster town, where the Ermin Street runs among woods, we were fallen on, but who the men were I cannot say. Why they should fall on us seems plain enough, seeing that the ransom of a princess is likely to be ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... bred amidst running sores and vermin, was one of the mysteries I pondered over when we took to our canoes. For such a pair of eyes, for those exquisite features, some scraggy denizen of Vanity Fair would have given a king's ransom. Yet here was a thing of beauty, dropped by a vile freak of Nature into an appalling environment of filth and ignorance; a creature destined, no doubt, to spring into mature womanhood, and lapse, in time, into a counterpart of the bleared Hecate who mumbled her Cree ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... said Ransom, an exceedingly handsome and bright-looking boy and a great pet of his mother,—"there are things that are not deep ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... then, as we were saying, the 94 Getae returned after a long siege to their own land, enriched by the ransom they had received. Now the race of the Gepidae was moved with envy when they saw them laden with booty and so suddenly victorious everywhere, and made war on their kinsmen. Should you ask how the Getae ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... Salvian:—"We call that a gift which is a purchase, and a purchase of a condition the most hard and miserable. For all captives, when they are once redeemed, enjoy their liberty: we are continually paying a ransom, yet are ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... What of them? He could not go gallivanting about the country with a half million dollars' worth of precious stones in his possession. A king's ransom strapped on his back! He would not be able to sleep a wink. Indeed, he could see himself wasting away to a mere shadow through worry and dread. Precious stones? They would develop into millstones, he thought, ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... "the captain has a more substantial awe of this man than you or I,—and for more substantial reasons. He was aware of his wealth and power when we were not. How, without his knowledge, could the treasures worth a king's ransom, that adorn yonder coop, have been smuggled in or arranged there? But I am resolved, right or wrong, to ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... the southern frontier, I overran the left bank of the Nile in all directions. When I came to a town I threw down its walls, I seized its chief, I imprisoned him at the port (landing-place) until he paid me ransom. As soon as I had finished with the left bank, and there were no longer found any who dared resist, I passed to the right bank; like a swift hare I set full sail for another chief.... I sailed by the north wind as by the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... were twenty thousand times more right in this struggle, is your justification worth the disasters it costs? Does justice demand that millions of innocents should fall, a ransom for the sins and the errors of others? Is crime to be washed out by crime? or murder by murder? And must your sons be not only victims but accomplices, assassinated ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... of ordinary arithmetic all fail here; and we are constrained to say, that He alone who paid the ransom for sinners, and made the souls of men his "purchased possession," can comprehend and solve the arduous question. They are, indeed, "bought with a price," but are "not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold; but with the precious blood of Christ, ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... people therefore who went a short time before to Great Estates, women who arrived with their maids and luggage containing personal equipment of amazing perfection and unlimited quantity (to say nothing of jewels worth a king's ransom), and men who usually travel with their own man-servants and every variety of raiment and paraphernalia, on being invited to "rough it" with the Kindharts at Mountain Summit Camp, are the very ones who most promptly and enthusiastically telegraph ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... Mussulmans belonged, for the most part, to rich families, who wished to buy them back for gold. The Portuguese refused to accept a ransom, however large it might be. They had only to make foreign gold. What they lacked were the arms so indispensable then for the work of the growing colonies, and, to say it all, the arms of ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... him the right to marry as often as he chose. His mistresses were queens. After the episodes in Gaul, when he entered Rome his legions warned the citizens to have an eye on their wives. At seventeen he fascinated pirates. A shipload of the latter had caught him and demanded twenty talents ransom. "Too little," said the lad; "I will give you fifty, and impale you too," which he did, jesting with them meanwhile, reciting verses of his own composition, calling them barbarians when they did not ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... to me a bill of exchange, payable in something more precious to me than gold. I am going to keep you here until you are ransomed. The ransom is the man you have been shielding. If he isn't here by midnight you vanish. Oh, we shan't harm you. Merely you will disappear until my affairs in America are terminated. You are clever and resourceful for so young a woman. ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... prisoners of the country of Ponthieu and of Vimeu. The king right courteously demanded of them, if there were any among them that knew any passage beneath Abbeville, that he and his host might pass over the river of Somme: if he would shew him thereof, he should be quit of his ransom, and twenty of his company for his love. There was a varlet called Gobin Agace who stepped forth and said to the king: 'Sir, I promise you on the jeopardy of my head I shall bring you to such a place, whereas ye and all your host shall pass the river of Somme ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... believe a word of what they say about your friends," said Cameron to Dick in a low tone while the Indians were thus engaged. "Depend upon it they hope to hide them till they can send to the settlements and get a ransom, or till they get an opportunity of torturing them to death before their women and children when they get back to their own village. But we'll baulk them, my friend, ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... couple strolled Detective Ransom, of the Central office. Ransom was the only detective on the force who could walk abroad with safety in the Stovepipe district. He was fair dealing and unafraid and went there with the hypothesis that the inhabitants were human. Many liked him, and now and ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... sale to the Rio Pongas, where he was exhibited in the market-place, his ankles still adorned with massy rings of gold which he wore when captured. The refusal of his captors to listen to his offers of ransom drove him mad, and he ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... straight-way, and offered him goods and gold that he might be set at liberty, and he sware that he would be the king's man, and hold all his lands henceforward from him, and would depart from the kingdom with all his folk. Thus must the king, being captive, stand at King Arthur's pleasure to pay him such ransom as he might think good. Of him will I speak ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston
... during your momentary absence for a glass of wine, she was abducted by a daring robber, who wished to secure the diamonds she wore, and hold her as well for a heavy ransom; that, all in an instant, while she awaited your return, she was chloroformed, a black cloak thrown over her, and the last thing she was conscious of was being borne with lightning-like rapidity down a ladder, a strong pair of burly arms ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... stars No slave float over, Man joins in harmony, Helper and lover! Ransom the chained and pained, Nations and stations! On—till our Flag of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father." John 10:15, 17, 18. And lest any should think that he died simply in the character of a martyr, he elsewhere explains that "the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many"—more literally, "a ransom instead of many" (Matt. 20:28; Mark 10:45), where the sacrificial and vicarious nature of our Lord's death is ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... great. Sorry am I his numbers are so few, His soldiers sick, and famish'd in their march; For, I am sure, when he shall see our army, He'll drop his heart into the sink of fear, And, for achievement offer us his ransom.[4] ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... the savages with pity, and induced them to exercise an unusual lenity towards their captives. In March, Boone was carried to Detroit, where the Indians refused to liberate him, though an hundred pounds were offered for his ransom, and from which place he accompanied them back to Chillicothe in the latter part of April. In the first of June, he went with them to the Scioto salt springs, and on his return found one hundred and fifty choice warriors of the Shawanee nation, painting, arming, and otherwise equipping ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... the gnome begged and implored to get it back, but instead of that, the peasant caught him up in his arms and carried him to his house, where he kept him as a captive until the other gnomes sent a herald to him and offered him a large ransom. Then the gnome was again set free and the peasant made his fortune ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... beauteous Altara, sister of our gracious Emperor, and upon the annual feast of Beelzebub, that vile demon they worship, the dark dogs would have sacrificed and devoured her, according to their rites, had not our Emperor dispatched a ransom of six fair maidens to take ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... the Arts of extras. He does not wish to make a profit; oh no! but—ahem—he makes it. As for the outsiders who straggle in casually for luncheon and want to be sharp with "Mr." afterwards, they are soon settled. One who won't be done, complains of a prince's ransom for a potato-salad.—"If you haf pertatas, you pay for pertatas."—TALLEYRAND could not have ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 27, 1892 • Various
... proposals of Pyrrhus, presenting them in a light as favorable and attractive as possible. Pyrrhus was willing, he said, to make peace on equal terms. He proposed that he should give up all his prisoners without ransom, and that the Romans should give up theirs. He would then form an alliance with the Romans, and aid them in the future conquests that they meditated. All he asked was that he might have the sanction of the Roman government to his retaining ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... According to the doctrine quoted elsewhere, that God infallibly accomplishes everything at which He aims, all must infallibly be saved. For God certainly aimed at that consummation in giving His Son as a ransom for all. Here is a crux from which, it seems to me, there is ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... hope that the humanity of the pursuers would impel them to stop and rescue the struggling negroes, thus giving the slave-ship a better chance of escape. Sometimes these hapless blacks thus thrown out, as legend has it Siberian peasants sometimes throw out their children as ransom to pursuing wolves, were furnished with spars or barrels to keep them afloat until the pursuer should come up; and occasionally they were even set adrift by boat-loads. It was hard on the men of the navy to steel their hearts to the cries of these castaways as the ship sped by them; ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... box, he said. After tying the box with heavy ropes, Colassit started toward the river with it. He repeated a jingle which informed the man inside of his imminent fate. The latter replied (also in verse) that he would give a thousand pesos ransom. Colassit accepted, and so became rich. [The narrator says that this is only one of ten adventures belonging to the complete story. It is a pity that ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... Rebel soldiers one rainy evening. It was dark and lightning every now and then. General Ransom was at the hotel porch when Sherman turned the bend one mile to come in the town. It was about four o'clock in the evening I judge. General Ransom's company was washing at Boom's Mill three miles. About ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... for a passage to Berwick, whence I might put myself aboard a vessel that traded to Bordeaux for wine from that country. The sailors I made my friends at no great cost, for indeed they were the conquerors, and could afford to show clemency, and hold me to slight ransom as a ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... away, and, as a consequence, goods of which there was no natural glut became artificially glutted, till their prices also were broken down, and their makers thrown out of work and deprived of income. The crisis was by this time fairly under way, and nothing could check it till a nation's ransom had been wasted. ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... him at Barca, whither he had fled for refuge. Pheretimo came to Egypt to seek the help of Aryandes, just as Laarchos had formerly implored the assistance of Amasis, and represented to him that her son had fallen a victim to his devotion to his suzerain. It was a good opportunity to put to ransom one of the wealthiest countries of Africa; so the governor sent to the Cyrenaica all the men and vessels at his disposal. Barca was the only city to offer any resistance, and the Persian troops were detained for nine months motionless before its ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... distressing part of the subject. Nothing makes me feel it so painfully as to see with how much more keenness the English feel the disclosures of my book than the Americans. I myself am blunted by use—by seeing, touching, handling the details. In dealing even for the ransom of slaves, in learning market prices of men, women, and children, I feel that I acquire a horrible familiarity ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... distinguished for the courage she displayed during the Wars of the Roses, though, after a struggle of nearly twenty years, she was defeated at Tewkesbury and committed to the Tower, from which, after four years of incarceration, she was afterwards released by ransom (1429-1482). ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... capable of being proved and substantially maintained. Does it require human ingenuity or plausible and sophistic reasoning to make it appear from the scriptures that Jesus Christ, by the grace of God, tasted death for every man; that he gave himself a ransom for all to be testified in due time; that he is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world; that it is the will of God that all men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth; that he worketh all things after the council ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... you. What if this stranger, of whom nothing is known, be leagued with the robbers; and these lures for your credulity bait but the traps for your property,—perhaps your life? You might come off cheaply by a ransom of half your fortune; you smile indignantly well! put common-sense out of the question; take your own view of the matter. You are to undergo an ordeal which Mejnour himself does not profess to describe as a very tempting one. It may, ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "Only old Mrs Ransom at the Hall, and Farmer Dikeby's wife. The old woman's got nothing the matter but ninety-one, and as for Mistress Dikeby, she has had too much physic as it is, and if I go she won't be happy till I give her some more, which she ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... Indian was the very limit of imaginative prowess. It was too easy, and in an hour, tiresome, to kill birds, snakes and anything one chanced upon that had life. Only the grasshopper could escape with the ransom of some molasses from the jug he carries hidden, no one knows where. You never knew a grasshopper was provisioned with a molasses jug? Well then you have never studied the boy's traditional natural history. Therein are recorded ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... a Mass wou'd ransom Kings: Was all this Beauty given for one poor petty Conquest? —I might have made a hundred Hearts my slaves, In this lost time of bringing one to Reason.— Farewel, thou dull Philosopher in Love; When Age has made me wise, I'll ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... [Revised Version "iniquity at my heels", that is, enemies who would work iniquity.] They that trust in their wealth, and boast themselves in the multitude of their riches; none of them can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him; (for the redemption of their soul is precious, and it ceaseth [faileth] for ever;) that he should still live for ever, and not see corruption. For he seeth that wise men die, likewise the fool and the brutish person perish, and leave their wealth to others. Their inward thought ...
— Christian Devotedness • Anthony Norris Groves
... found, half-dead, two young knights named Palamon and Arcite, whom the heralds recognised, from the cognisances on their armour, as of blood-royal, and born of two sisters. Theseus sent them to Athens to be held to ransom in prison perpetually, and himself returned home ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... I knew that Ariamanes had the greatest influence over Xerxes. I knew that the great king would at any cost seek to regain the liberty of his friend. I urged upon Ariamanes the wisdom of a peace with the Greeks even on their own terms. I told him that when Xerxes sent to offer the ransom, conditions of peace would avail more than sacks of gold. He listened and approved. Did I wrong in this, Pausanias? No; for thou, whose deep sagacity has made thee condescend even to appear half Persian, because thou art all Greek—thou thyself ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... is that the child has been kidnapped for the purpose of levying ransom. You have not had any demand ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... have parted with a pearl or two, of which he did not know the value, to end a feud against the Church and safeguard his title and his daughter. And now, in your madness, you've burnt them—burnt a king's ransom, or what might have pulled down a king. Oh! had you but guessed it, you'd have hacked off the hand that put a torch to Cranwell Towers, for now the gold you need is lacking to you, and therefore all your grand schemes will fail, and ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... no resistance, and the Adelantado never permitted wanton bloodshed. When the poor savages saw their prince a captive, they filled the air with lamentations; imploring his release, and offering for his ransom a great treasure, which they said lay concealed in ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... Arthur, in his impetuous way, gathering words and emotion as he went on. "Whose life is not a disappointment? Who carries his heart entire to the grave without a mutilation? I never knew anybody who was happy quite: or who has not had to ransom himself out of the hands of Fate with the payment of some dearest treasure or other. Lucky if we are left alone afterwards, when we have paid our fine, and if the tyrant visits us no more. Suppose I have found out that I have ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in a living human soul? "He to whom much is forgiven, loveth much," said our blessed Saviour; and in Derry this truth was abundantly verified. The Christ whose blood could wash such as he, was a Lord for whom he was willing to suffer even unto death. The mercy that could stoop to ransom such a transgressor, claimed an affection before which poor Derry's deep love for his earthly darling paled, as the things of time fade into insignificance before ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... deep interest to the wearer of the scarlet letter. He was lodged in the prison, not as suspected of any offence, but as the most convenient and suitable mode of disposing of him, until the magistrates should have conferred with the Indian sagamores respecting his ransom. His name was announced as Roger Chillingworth. The jailer, after ushering him into the room, remained a moment, marvelling at the comparative quiet that followed his entrance; for Hester Prynne had immediately become as still as death, although ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to follow your suggestion, Harry, but we must first try to get back to the river to land our guide according to our promise. He has proved faithful, and we will supply him with goods with which he may be able to ransom his companion." ...
— The Mate of the Lily - Notes from Harry Musgrave's Log Book • W. H. G. Kingston
... and its emperor. Cortez eagerly and unscrupulously possessed himself of these royal gems, and kept them concealed upon his person until his return to Spain. They are represented to have been worth "a nation's ransom," but were lost in the sea, where Cortez had thrown himself in a critical emergency. The broad amphitheatre, in the midst of which the capital of Anahuac—"by the waters"—was built, still remains; ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... joke was becoming a little frequent, a little bold, a little too grim for the white traders' sense of security. The Sandwich Islanders had actually formed the plot of capturing every vessel that came into their harbors and holding the crews for extortionate ransom. How many white men were victims of this plot—to die by the assassin's knife or waiting for the ransom that never came—is not a part of this record. It was becoming a common thing to find white men living in a state of quasi-slavery among the {284} islanders, each white held as hostage for the ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... hadn't arrived when I left this morning. I don't know whether they are here now or not. I'm to have one of them. Virginia Gaines has gone to Livingstone Hall. She has a friend there. Two of the new girls will have her room. Florence Ransom will have to take ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... the sympathy was universal. The pretty Jeanne Angelot, who had been left so mysteriously, had awakened romantic interest anew. A few years ago this would have been a common incident, but why one should want to carry off a girl of no special value,—though a ransom would be raised readily enough if such a ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... scrimmage showed me just what the men were after," Stoddard said. "Buckheath plainly wanted me put out of the way; but the others had some vague idea of holding me for a ransom and getting money out of the Hardwicks. Dawson complained always that he thought the mills owed him money. He said they must have sold his girl's body for as much as a hundred dollars, and he felt that he'd been ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... collecting the price of his ransom Bobby was exploring the intricately cut-up interior of old St. Giles, sniffing at the rifts in flimsily plastered partitions that the Lord Provost pointed out to Mr. Traill. Rats were in those crumbling walls. If there had been a hole big enough ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... order to save a place from being plundered by a hostile force. (See RANSOM.) Also, a sum raised among merchants, where goods have been thrown overboard in stress of weather, towards the loss ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... grows dark as midnight approaches, so that the many lights from doorway and window seem less garish and strange than they do a month earlier. In the Northern there was good business doing. The new bar fixtures, which had cost a king's ransom, or represented the one night's losings of a Klondike millionaire, shone rich, dark, and enticing, while the cut glass sparkled with iridescent hues, reflecting, in a measure, the prismatic moods, the dancing spirits of the crowd that crushed past, halting at the gambling ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... pledges of what he intended." Early the next morning the beach of Santa Maria bay was thronged with cattle in charge of negroes and planters. Some of the oxen had been yoked to carts to bring the necessary salt. The Spaniards delivered the ransom, and demanded the six hostages. Morgan was by this time in some anxiety for his position. He was eager to set sail before the Havana ships came round the headland, with their guns run out, and matches lit, and all things ready for a fight. He refused to release the prisoners until the vaqueros ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... accompany the coaster. Towards noon we discovered an English brig, which proved to be a merchantman, and the customary pursuit and capture ensued. The cargo consisted of rum, for the vessel was bound for Liverpool from Jamaica. The English captain, who was an old acquaintance of mine, offered to ransom his vessel, and begged me to make the arrangement for him; this I gladly did, and the brig was ransomed for four hundred doubloons and eight casks of rum. The Englishman, who had a considerable amount of cash on board, pressed upon me, at parting, ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... Masefield Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson Last of the Chiefs, Joseph A. Altsheler The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper Last of the Plainsmen, Zane Grey Lone Bull's Mistake, J. W. Shultz Ranche on the Oxhide, Henry Inman The Ransom of Red Chief and O. Henry Other Stories for Boys, Edited by F. K. Mathiews Scouting With Daniel Boone, Everett T. Tomlinson Scouting With Kit Carson, Everett T. Tomlinson Through College on Nothing ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... out another ship to pay the fine demanded. That was no joke, I can tell you, for the prison was so hot and crowded, and the food so bad, that we got fever, and pretty near half of us died before our ransom came. Then at Constantinople the Genoese stirred the people up against us once or twice, and all the sailors ashore had to fight for their lives. Those Genoese ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... white officers did you know in our army? 'Answer. I knew Captain Meltop and Colonel Ransom; and I cooked at the hotel at Fort Pillow, and Mr. Nelson kept it. I and Johnny were cooking together. After they shot me through the hand and head, they beat up all this part of my head (the side of his head) with the breach of ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... trouble for making a dubious peace with the Saracens, while Renaud got into trouble by making an equally dubious war on the Saracens. Renaud exacted from Moslem travellers on a certain road what he regarded as a sort of feudal toll or tax, and they regarded as a brigand ransom; and when they did not pay he attacked them. This was regarded as a breach of the truce; but probably it would have been easier to regard Renaud as waging the war of a robber, if many had not regarded Raymond as ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... I saw in my dream human beings as well as a house. I saw a priest, old, bent, and grey, and a domestic—old, too, and picturesque; and a lady, splendid but strange; her head would scarce reach to my elbow—her magnificence might ransom a duke. She wore a gown bright as lapis-lazuli—a shawl worth a thousand francs: she was decked with ornaments so brilliant, I never saw any with such a beautiful sparkle; but her figure looked as if it had been broken in ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... had been the guardian of Troy. And while he sat in his grief, thinking of his noble son lying so far from those who would have wept over him, behold! there appeared before him Iris, the messenger of Zeus, the greatest of the Gods. Iris said to him, "King, thou mayst ransom from Achilles the body of Hector, thy noble son. Go thou thyself to the hut of Achilles and bring with thee great gifts to offer him. Take with thee a wagon that thou mayst bring back in it the body, and let only one old henchman go ...
— The Adventures of Odysseus and The Tales of Troy • Padriac Colum
... He advances towards the king, whom, with eager look, he addresses in a strange language. What he says they cannot tell, till another man of their own colour speaks, and then they know that he is pleading for their lives; not only pleading, but offering a large ransom if they be given up to him. How anxiously they listen for the reply! The king will not hear of it. The spirit of his father complains that he has been neglected; that his nation must have become degenerate; that they have ceased to conquer, since so few captives have been sent to bear him company ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... it, and it is truth: I killed the Morholt. But I crossed the sea to offer you a good blood-fine, to ransom that deed and get me quit ...
— The Romance Of Tristan And Iseult • M. Joseph Bedier
... all. He was wounded for our transgressions, and bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was laid on him, and by his stripes we are healed.' 'Deliver him from going down to the pit; I have found a ransom.' Even backsliders, among whom I stand chief, have been recalled. 'My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and have hewn out to themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... is to strike at the rich. My idea is to establish some place in an out of the way quarter where there is no fear of prying neighbours, and to carry off and hide there the sons and daughters of wealthy men and put them to ransom. In the first instance I am going to undertake a private affair of my own; and as you will really run no risk in the matter, for I shall separate myself from you after making my capture, I shall pay you only a earnest money of twenty crowns each. In future affairs we shall act ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... half, but all of this money, I will give as a ransom for the three unfortunates you name, ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... Meidanov recited portions from his poem 'The Manslayer' (romanticism was at its height at this period), which he intended to bring out in a black cover with the title in blood-red letters; they stole the clerk's cap off his knee, and made him dance a Cossack dance by way of ransom for it; they dressed up old Vonifaty in a woman's cap, and the young princess put on a man's hat.... I could not enumerate all we did. Only Byelovzorov kept more and more in the background, scowling and angry.... Sometimes ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... for his brother, Gunnlaug; but Sverting, Hafr-Biorn's son, was Raven's shield-bearer. Whoso should be wounded was to ransom himself from the holm ...
— The Story Of Gunnlaug The Worm-Tongue And Raven The Skald - 1875 • Anonymous
... already began to doubt the feasibility of our remaining in the first line of rifle-pits when we should have carried them. I discussed the order with Wagner, Harker, and Sherman, and they were similarly impressed, so while anxiously awaiting the signal I sent Captain Ransom of my staff to Granger, who was at Fort Wood, to ascertain if we were to carry the first line or the ridge beyond. Shortly after Ransom started the signal guns were fired, and I told my brigade commanders to go for ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan |
