"Decapitated" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... effort. After a short search we captured a savage possessed of a surfuria, or native cooking pot. Memba Sasa scrubbed this with sand. First we made tea in it, and drank turn about, from its wide edge. This warmed us up somewhat. Then we dumped in our few potatoes and a single guinea fowl that F. had decapitated earlier in the day. We ate; and passed the ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... Honorable the Lord-Mayor's toast; then, if I mistake not, there was another prodigious flourish of trumpets and twanging of stringed instruments; and finally the doomed individual, waiting all this while to be decapitated, got up and proceeded to make a fool of himself. A bashful young earl tried his maiden oratory on the good citizens of London, and having evidently got every word by heart, (even including, however he managed it, the most seemingly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... knowledge of its past to the mind of the reader. I will only say that it came into the hands of the jovial Henry VIII. through the loss of several of its owners' heads, a means of acquisition not so distasteful to him as to them, and after its restitution to the much decapitated family it continued in their possession till a few years ago. It remains with me a vision of turrets and gables, perfect in their Tudor kind, rising upon a gentle level of fields and meadows, with nothing dramatically picturesque in the view from its straight-browed windows. The present owner, ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... hands outstretched. And the girl seemed to fling herself on his neck. He caught her in his arms, winding them tightly around her. Her bosom was flattened against his shoulder and her thighs beat against his own, while her decapitated head rolled upon the floor. The shock was so violent that Mahoudeau was carried off his legs and thrown over, as far back as the wall; and there, without relaxing his hold on the girl's trunk, he remained as ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... marching against his Syrian rival, Niger, who had formerly been his friend, and who was not wanting in military skill, he overthrew him in three great battles. Niger fled to Antioch, the seat of his late government, and was there decapitated. Meantime Albinus, the British commander-in-chief, had already been won over by the title of Caesar, or adopted heir to the new Augustus. But the hollowness of this bribe soon became apparent, and the two competitors met to ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... on the morrow, Robespierre, and all that survived, were all executed amidst the acclamations and applause of the citizens. On the two following days, likewise, eighty-three heads, mostly of municipal councillors and revolutionary judges, were decapitated. All Paris and France resounded with triumph. But the victory was not yet complete: the partisans of the system of terror were still numerous, both in the convention itself and throughout the city and the country. Their present ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... two large fleets hove in sight. The first was the expedition which had been despatched against the decapitating King of the North, and which now returned heavily laden with his rescued subjects. The other was the force which had flown to the preservation of the body of the decapitated King of the South, and which now brought back his Majesty embalmed, some Princes of the blood, and ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... the inflexible monk, and bring the head before the throne, in case he should disobey the order for the fourth time. As Tao Sin was told of the order of the Emperor, he stretched out his neck ready to be decapitated. The Emperor, learning from the messenger what had happened, admired all the more the imperturbable patriarch, and bestowed rich gifts upon him. This example of his was followed by later Zen masters, who would ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... and debased passion—that damnable magazine of disease physical and moral. It is undeniable that there were many there whose faces were passport to the Court of Lucifer—murderers, and dire malefactors; but better to have decapitated them than to have committed them to the slow torture of this citadel of woe. There were inmates who had been immured for years—inmates for debt whose hair had whitened in the fetid imprisonment, whose laugh had in it a harsh ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... the Mississippi to press east and the Army of the Potomac to press south. It may take a time, but if we keep a stiff upper lip we're bound to have the rebels whipped. I reckon they're whipped already in spite of Lee. I've heard of a turtle that an old nigger man decapitated. Next day he was amusing himself poking sticks at it and the turtle was snapping back. His master comes along and says to him, 'Why, Pomp, I thought that turtle was dead.' 'Well, he am dead, massa,' says Pompey, 'but the critter don't know enough ter be sensible ob it.' I ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... to which Noah, by an indiscretion at court, was suddenly reduced; and, but for my prompt interference, he would probably have been simultaneously decapitated at both extremities, in obedience to an etiquette which prescribes that, under the circumstances of a court trial, neither the king's nor the queen's rights shall be entitled to precedence. In defence of my client I urged his ignorance of the usages of the country, and, indeed, ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... knife of another priest-led fanatic, the wretched but unflinching instrument of a great conspiracy, had at a blow decapitated France. No political revolution could be much more thorough than that which had been accomplished in a moment ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... on to the front veranda for a mild cigar after the mulberry just as she brought her scythe round with an admirable sweep and decapitated a whole ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... dagger by the chief constable of the fleet, who was sent to do this by Ferdinand Magellan in a boat with certain men. The said three ships having thus been recovered, five days later Ferdinand Magellan ordered Gaspar de Quexixada to be decapitated and quartered; he was captain of one of the ships and was one of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... is the attitude toward pain, inasmuch as barely a trace of intelligence is required, in order to know that it is necessary to wipe away a hot liquid drop that has fallen on the body. Every physiological text-book mentions the fact that a decapitated frog makes such wiping movements when it is wet with acid. From this unconscious activity of the understanding to the technically highest-developed treatment of a burn, a whole series of progressively higher expressions of intelligence may be interpolated, ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... inches long each, have their ends bevelled off at an angle of 60 degrees, and are laid with their ends touching. Two semi-circles of 24 and 22 inch radius are drawn on the boards to indicate the positions of the rails, and short decapitated brass nails are driven in on each side of a rail, about an inch apart, as it is laid along one of these lines. (See Fig. 44. A.) The inside nails must not project sufficiently to catch the wheel flanges. The spring of the brass will prevent the rail falling out ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... to "come and get me," all the boys took a header into the river, only their faces and hair-covered heads appearing above the surface; they treaded water, or swayed around on the bottom. As "Al-f-u-r-d" looked back on them they seemed like so many decapitated heads floating in space, a sight that dwelt ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... amongst the Christian part of the population. It happened, at the first opening of the campaign, that the Christians were equally courted by the Sultan's generalissimo, Solyman, the Pacha of Thessaly. For this, however, that Pacha was removed and decapitated; and a new leader was now appointed in the person of that very enemy, Ismael Pasho, whose attempted murder had brought the present storm upon Ali. Ismael was raised to the rank of Serasker (or generalissimo), and was also made Pacha of Yannina and Del vino. Three other armies, besides ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... their victim and his attendants, to go to Lower Sandusky, and there execute the sentence which they had pronounced upon him. But what was their surprise and disappointment, when they arrived at the place of encampment, where they found their trusty friends scalped and decapitated, and that their prisoner had made his escape?—Chagrined beyond measure, they immediately separated, and went in every direction in pursuit of their prey; but after having spent a number of days unsuccessfully, they gave up the chase, and returned to their encampment. [Footnote: ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... the brain is not the sole organ of the mind is in a measure substantiated by a wonderful case of a decapitated rooster, reported from Michigan. A stroke of the knife bad severed the larynx and removed the whole mass of the cerebrum, leaving the inner aspect and base of the skull exposed. The cerebrum was partly removed; the external auditory meatus was preserved. Immediately ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... insects. Analysis of 38 stomachs of the brush mouse (Table 2) show acorns to be the most commonly used food in winter and spring. Seed coats were only rarely found, and insects were absent. Two captive females preferred acorns. Live beetles and grasshoppers of numerous kinds were decapitated and their inner parts eaten. Seeds (wheat, corn, and oats) were also eaten. Inasmuch as acorns appear to be the chief food, it is not surprising that the brush mouse is usually found on cliffs that support ...
— Natural History of the Brush Mouse (Peromyscus boylii) in Kansas With Description of a New Subspecies • Charles A. Long
... to death at him," said Trix. "I know he has a large cupboard at home with the heads of all the wives he has decapitated hanging up in a row ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... Albania, a very venerable old fellow, who was never at Constantinople till now. The Pasha tells me in confidence that he is enormously wealthy. His fortune was made by brigandage in Greece, from which he retired a few years ago, shocked by the sudden death of his brother, who was decapitated at Corinth with five others. The Bey is a nice, gentle-mannered, simple-hearted old man, kind to the poor, and eminently hospitable. He has invited me down to Prevesa for the pig-shooting. If I have your permission to accept the invitation, I shall make ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... calm, and put the point to a test that never fails!' Here I gave him one of those pats on the shoulder so impressive, and pulled out a double-headed cent, like unto those so much in use in General Jackson's time, when shaving decapitated the deposits he found himself mounted on the back of a brass jackass. 'Here!' I continued—'Heads, I win; tails, you lose.' To come the sharp over him in a more square sort of way, I gave him an unmoved look straight in the eye, as I ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... mental processes. The dispositions are here working like the setting of switches which turn the nervous process into special tracks. In the simple cases, of course no one doubts that a purely physiological basis is involved. The decapitated frog rubs its skin where it is touched with a drop of muriatic acid in a way which is ordinarily referred to the trained apparatus of his spinal cord, as no brain is left, and the usefulness of the action and its adjustment is very well understood as the result of ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... a manner which would have revolted the most illiterate of Carpathian peasants. We extirpated the salivary glands of dogs in order to find out if they would slobber without them. We cut off the tails of mice to discover if the operation affected their greatgrandchildren. We decapitated, emasculated, malnourished, and poisoned rodents against whom we had no personal animus for no other reason than to keep ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... milk, too, which I could not at all account for, till one morning happening to take a stroll along the beach among some fishermen's boats, I saw Hosea's brindled cow feeding on fish remnants, and marching along the sand with each foot in a cod's decapitated head, looking very slip-shod, I assure ye. 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, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... sacrifice, was so indignant, that, with his wife, he suddenly presented himself, confounded the sacrifice, dispersed the gods, and chasing Yajna, 'the lord of sacrifice,' who fled in the form of a deer, overtook and decapitated him. ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... stupefied and dismayed that day and night I could think of nothing but the welfare of all.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} But when the bright light of all the world was put out,(162) or, rather, when the Roman Empire was decapitated, and, to speak more correctly, the whole world perished in one city, "I became dumb and humbled myself, and kept silence from good words, but my grief broke out afresh, my heart was hot within me, and while I was musing the fire ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... the Empire, so brilliant from the economic stand-point, is much less so from the intellectual: here we touch its great weakness. Destroying so many governments, especially in the Orient, Rome had at the same time decapitated the intellectual elites of the ancient world; for the courts of the monarchies were the great firesides of mental activity. Rome had therefore, together with states and governments, destroyed scientific and literary institutions, centres of art, traditions of ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... life. It was not till about the eighteenth century that the Government began to resort to the usual methods of eradicating heresy. Katharina Weigel, a lady famous for her beauty, who embraced Judaism, was decapitated in Cracow at the instigation of Bishop Peter Gamrat. On the deposition of his wife, Captain Vosnitzin of the Polish navy was put to death by auto-da-fe (July 15, 1738). The eminent "Ger Zedek," Count Valentine Pototzki, less fortunate ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... seize Blis Creek Fort that was held by the Confederates. As the Federal troops marched ahead, they were followed by the volunteer slaves. Most of these unfortunate slaves were slain by "bush whackers" (Confederate snipers who fired upon them from ambush.) After being killed they were decapitated and their heads placed upon posts that lined the fields so that they could be seen by other slaves to warn them of what would befall them if they attempted to escape. The battle at Blis Creek Fort was one in which both armies displayed great heroism; most of the Federal troops ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... lady's dainty slipper scurrying about like a little red mouse.... What was he to do?... Reply to these looks, this touch?... Yes... but an amorous intrigue in this part of the world can have terrible consequences. In his imagination Tartarin already saw himself seized by eunuchs, decapitated or even worse, sewn into a sack and tossed into the sea with ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... Peter Stuyvesant turned like an angry bear upon the foe, and seizing him, as he fled, by an immeasurable queue, 'Ah, whoreson caterpillar,' roared he, 'here's what shall make worms' meat of thee!' so saying he whirled his sword and dealt a blow that would have decapitated the varlet, but that the pitying steel struck short and shaved the queue forever from his crown. At this moment an arquebusier leveled his piece from a neighboring mound, with deadly aim; but the watchful Minerva, who had just stopped to tie up her garter, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... cowardly running away at once, pursued by yelping savages; and who knows how it all would have terminated? Forty spears against forty guns—but how many guns would not have decamped? Perhaps all, and I should have been left with my boy gunbearers to have my jugular deliberately severed, or to be decapitated, leaving my head to adorn a tall pole in the centre of a Kigogo village, like poor Monsieur Maizan's at Dege la Mhora, in Uzaramo. Happy end of an Expedition! And the Doctor's Journal lost for ever—the fruits of ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... despatched to the port of Butuan returned in a fortnight with the news that there was much gold, wax, and cinnamon in that district. A small vessel was also sent to Cebu, and on its return reported that the natives showed hostility, having decapitated one of the crew whilst he ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... would individuals be morally bound to submit to such a decree if they could contrive to evade it, any more than sexquipedalians would be bound to lay their heads on the block in obedience to a law directing everybody six feet high to be decapitated. All such partial legislation would be tyrannical, and circumstances must be very peculiar indeed to make submission to tyranny a duty. But of all conceivable legislation, none could possibly be more partial, or therefore more tyrannical, than such as should ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... with the feeling that Tammas alone could look like a Christian in it. Like the whole congregation, of course, he had to stand during the prayers—the first of which averaged half an hour in length. If he stood erect his head and shoulders vanished beneath funereal trappings, when he seemed decapitated, and if he stretched his neck the pulpit tottered. He looked like the pillar on which it rested, or he balanced it on his head like a baker's tray. Sometimes he leaned forward as reverently as he could, and then, with his long, lean arms dangling over the side of his box, he might ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... by the frenzied Alcalde, who rushed toward Rosendo. The old man swung his enormous machete with a swirl that, had it met the official, would have clean decapitated him. But, fortunately, one of the priest's supporters threw out his foot, and the corpulent Alcalde fell heavily over it and bit the dust. Jose threw himself upon Rosendo. The old man staggered with the shock and gave way. The priest turned to the excited crowd. Holding up both hands ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... heaven and a chief in Brittany? There is a God above us, I know, and I believe there is a just Duke in the Breton land. Mighty ruler, make war upon the Frank, defend our country, and give us vengeance—vengeance for Karo my son, Karo, slain, decapitated by the Frankish barbarians, his beauteous head made into a balance-weight for their ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... in the days when the British public were intense believers in bear's grease as the producer of hair, and no one troubled himself or herself to investigate the precise configuration of the exhibited animal and compare it when hung up, decapitated, and shorn of its feet, with the ordinary well-fatted domestic pig, albeit the illusion was kept up by its being possible to see through the gratings outside the shop-window Ramball's black bear still "all alive-o," parading and snuffling up and ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... taking care not to lose sight of it. If the person who happened to pick up the douro, put it into his pocket and passed on, Bou-Akas made a sign to his chinaux (who followed him, also in disguise, and knew the Scheik's will) rushed forward immediately, and decapitated the offender. In consequence of this summary method of administering justice, it is a saying amongst the Arabs that a child might traverse the regions which own Bou-Akas's sway, wearing a golden crown on his head, without a single ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... The decapitated colossus reeled like a drunken giant; but it did not fall over. It recovered its balance by a miracle, and, no longer heeding its steps and with the camera that fired the Heat-Ray now rigidly upheld, it reeled swiftly upon Shepperton. The living intelligence, the Martian within the hood, was slain ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... landrail run serious risk from scythe and plough while sitting on the nest. Landrails have before now been decapitated by the swing of the scythe, and a case is on record in which a sitting partridge, seeing that the plough was coming dangerously near her nest, actually removed the whole clutch of eggs, numbering over a score, to the shelter ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... to play merrily all day long; beheading the gourds of claret by one slicing blow with their sickle-shaped scepters. Wide round them lay empty calabashes, all feathered, red dyed, and betasseled, trickling red wine from their necks, like the decapitated pullets in the old baronial barn yard at Kenilworth, the night before Queen Bess dined with ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... this opinion, he quotes p. 457, the contradictions of the historians of the execution of the Marquis of Argyle; a fact nevertheless not doubted. But the cases are by no means parallel; that a rebel should be decapitated is a fact of notorious frequency in British history and very probable in itself, and as it is a fact without consequence, no man will be inclined to doubt it, if it be affirmed by history, notwithstanding some contradictions in the accounts of ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... man are rarely in combination. Intelligence, clear-sightedness, virtue, character, independence, leisure, fortune, consideration already acquired, and devotion,—all this is seldom united in one individual. An entire society is not decapitated with impunity. Nations are like their soil: after having pared off the vegetable earth, we find only the sand beneath, and that is unproductive. The Constituent Assembly had forgotten this truth, or rather its abdication had assumed ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... the Marseillaise of the spirit; he made a revolution and not with {716} rose-leaves, either, but with a certain, "divine brutality." He gave his people language, Kant gave them thought; Luther deposed the pope; Robespierre decapitated the king; Kant disposed of God: it was all one insurrection of Man against the same tyrant under ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... clear for an instant, and I caught sight of a bare leg disappearing into a big black box, and a moment later I saw Hassel's smiling face on the top of the box. A shudder passed through my frame — he looked as if he had been decapitated. On further consideration, his features were too smiling; the head could not be severed from the body yet. Now the steam began to clear away little by little, and at last one could see clearly what was going on. I had to laugh; it was all very easy to understand ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... the anterior one. The shining matter was fluid and very adhesive: little spots, where the skin had been torn, continued bright with a slight scintillation, whilst the uninjured parts were obscured. When the insect was decapitated the rings remained uninterruptedly bright, but not so brilliant as before: local irritation with a needle always increased the vividness of the light. The rings in one instance retained their luminous ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... of Anjou, the brother of that King Louis of France who became famous as Saint Louis. This led to more warfare. Conrad V, the son of Conrad IV, and the last of the Hohenstaufens, tried to regain the kingdom, and was defeated and decapitated at Naples. But twenty years later, the French who had made themselves thoroughly unpopular in Sicily were all murdered during the so-called Sicilian ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... began to be crowned with wreaths of tender green and pink which trailed down its sides in garlands that spread themselves out over meadow and farm away beyond the river bend. Overnight, rows of jonquils in Mrs. Poteet's straggling little garden lifted up golden candlestick heads to be decapitated at an early hour and transported in tight little bunches in dirty little fists to those of the neighbors whose spring flowers had failed to open at such an early date. In spite of what seemed an open neglect, ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Then we will light us a good fire in the yard below, and feast there on the beef and wine of those brute peasants. The legionaries fancy that they can starve us out; but they know not how well we are provided. Hark you, my Niger. Go down and butcher those two beeves, and when they are flayed and decapitated, blow me a good loud trumpet blast and roll down the heads over the battlements. Long ere we have consumed our provender, Catiline will be down on them in force! I go to look around the place, and ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... in the street almost at a bound, and he was in time—in time to see something which at first glance froze the blood. The cries appeared to come from a decapitated ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... the enemy within the walls; the rest either perished or were made slaves. Mutila and Faveria were also attacked and levelled with the ground, and quiet reigned in Istria. Livy says that at that time 5,622 persons were sold into slavery, the authors of the war were beaten and then decapitated, and Istria was garrisoned with Roman troops. In 129 B.C. the Istrians rose in revolt when Rome was occupied with the Gepid war. The Consul Caius Sempronius Tuditanus crushed this revolt, and after that colonies were established ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... gets killed—and not any too soon. If it only were practicable to kill him in real life! A story—to be called The Passing of Polonius—in which a king issues a decree condemning to death every long-winded, didactic person in the kingdom, irrespective of rank, and is himself instantly arrested and decapitated. The man who suspects his own tediousness is yet ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... called Cibot the Great. A Chouan implicated in the Breton insurrection of 1799. Decapitated by his cousin Cibot, alias Pille-Miche, and by Marche-a-Terre for having unthinkingly betrayed the brigand position to the "Blues." ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... preached in Arabia, in Persia, in Abyssinia, to have baptized among the Iberi, the races of the Caucasus, and, like Saint Thomas, in India, but there is no authentic evidence to show this. According to some writers he was decapitated; others say he was flayed alive and then crucified, ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... others. The mere wish was sufficient—Rome fell at his feet. The patent of divinity was in the genuflections of a nation. At once he had a temple, priests and flamens. Inexhaustible Greece was sacked again. The statues of her gods, disembarked at Rome, were decapitated, and on them ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... the Count of Poictesme, and explained to him as between old friends how the matter stood, and that afternoon the high Count was confessed and decapitated. Poictesme being now a vacant fief, King Ferdinand ennobled Manuel, and made ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... policy of extermination which Kiyomori had pursued against the Minamoto was now remorselessly enforced by the Minamoto against the Taira. The prisoners who were taken in the battle were executed to the last man. Munemori was taken prisoner and decapitated. Whenever a Taira man, woman, or child was found, death was the inevitable penalty inflicted. Yoritomo stationed his father-in-law Hojo Tokimasa at Kyoto to search out and eradicate his enemies as well as to supervise the ...
— Japan • David Murray
... been slashed and cut and stabbed in twenty places; his throat had been cut at least three times, and he had almost been decapitated. The wounded Calera wasn't dead yet; however, even if he had been at the moment on the operating table of a First Level Home Time Line hospital, it was doubtful if he could have been saved, and under the circumstances, his life-expectancy could be measured ...
— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper
... contents, that I describe it. The floor was covered with the corpses of men, women, and children, mingled indiscriminately together, fugitives who had there taken refuge and been relentlessly butchered. The bodies had been decapitated, and the bloody heads stuck up on a long row of spikes which surmounted the wooden partition over the counter. Both Chung and the mandarin uttered a cry of terror as we caught sight of those distorted countenances, grinning upon us with the livid ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... before him arose a vision of another corpse, that of the fair, pretty child ripped open by a bomb and stretched yonder, at the entrance of the Duvillard mansion. Blood streamed from her delicate flesh, just as it had streamed from that decapitated neck. It was blood paying for blood; it was like payment for mankind's debt of wretchedness, for which payment is everlastingly being made, without man ever being able to free ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... interwoven that they produce quite a novel effect." Some of the bracelets are furnished with studs set with agate or coral. Some gold-plated ornaments have been found, among them a "bracelet formed by a double-headed snake grasping between its jaws a decapitated human head and a snake about four inches long." Ling Roth, commenting upon the workmanship of these smaller objects, says that generally speaking it is good, but "it is not as a rule equal to that of the large Benin metal workings; this is ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... frenzy, he uses medicated draughts, cuts and lacerates himself till the blood flows, lashes himself with a huge whip, presses a burning torch to his breast, drinks the blood which flows from his own wounds, or drains the blood of the sacrifice, putting the throat of the decapitated goat to his mouth. Then, as if he had acquired new life, he begins to brandish his staff of bells, and to dance with a quick but wild unsteady step. Suddenly the afflatus descends; there is no mistaking that glare, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... pointed out to us by means of the candle carried by the guide, which told their own story. In the centre of this dreary vault was a well whose water was level with the river, into which it opened some twenty feet from the surface, and into which the decapitated bodies of the criminals were cast and left to float away with the ebb and flow of the Jumna's tide. The bed of the river showed that at certain seasons it must be at least half a mile in width, but ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... was under sentence of decapitation, and was about to be instantly decapitated, and an express arrived with a pardon for the condemned convict Grewgious if he wrote a play, I should be under the necessity of resuming the block, and begging the executioner to proceed to extremities,—meaning,' said Mr. Grewgious, ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... Ust Padenga that Corp. Chas. A. Thornton gave up his chair to a weary Supply Company man, Comrade Carl G. Berger, just up from Shenkursk with an ambulance, and a Bolo three-inch shell hurled through the log wall and decapitated the luckless supply man. In the hasty retreat the hospital men, like the infantry men, had to abandon everything but the clothes and equipment ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... avoided as much as possible in the entire costume. A glove that ends exactly at the wrist bone, or a boot at the ankle joint, with a straight line, is always ugly; so are dresses when they are cut in a circle close to the juncture of the neck with the shoulder, giving the neck a decapitated appearance. The line of contrast should always be softened with an edge of lace, or a necklace, and only round, pretty throats should dare such ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... footsore, you are ready to æstheticise till the café closes; for you the homeless ones are waiting: there they are, some three or four, and you will take them to your strange room, furnished with the American organ, the fountain, and the decapitated Venus, and you will give them a crust each and cover them with what clothes you have; and, when clothes are lacking, with plaster casts, and though you will take but a glass of milk yourself, you will find a few sous to give them ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... worth knowing. He always slept in the afternoons. It annoyed him to think that his people slept too. He might suddenly want them for something, he said. He commanded that they should stay awake, and decapitated several hundred who were found napping. When he saw that the habit was ingrained in their natures and that nothing would avail save a total extermination of the populace, he gave way, gracefully. Then hi instituted these popular theatricals in honour ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... blossomed and gone to seed till the harvest of flowers in their season was past gathering, and any child in the neighborhood was at liberty to pluck them by handfuls, while the wicked ones played at "chicken fighting" and littered the ground with decapitated bodies. There is no heartsease nowadays, only the magnificent pansy of which it was the modest forerunner. But one little cluster of dark, spicy blooms like those I used to gather in that old garden would be more to me than the most splendid pansy created ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... for exhibition; but a former confidential agent obtained it from the executioner for a higher price than the merchant had offered; and together with the heads of his three sons and grandson, who, according to custom, were all seized and decapitated, had them deposited near one of the city gates, with a tombstone ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various
... to escape. Four men who were working on this estate must have been all killed. The bodies of two of them, Victor Chaudre and Thomas Prosper, were discovered two months later buried together near the buildings which had been burned. Both had been decapitated, and Thomas's head was smashed ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... of these unfortunate physicians were put to death as a penalty for their failure to restore health to the dying chief. Finally, there were very few medicine men remaining in the vicinity; those who had not been decapitated having proved their strong desire for further life by discreetly retiring ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... gaze, a swarm of swallows was in silhouette—black dots crawling along across the dome of light. Out in one of the public squares of the city great crowds of people were gathering. Cornelia knew the reason of the concourse—the heads of two noble Romans, just decapitated, were being exposed to the gibes and howls of the coarse Greek and Egyptian mob. And Cornelia wished that she were herself a swallow, and might fly up into the face of the sun, until the earth beneath ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... ceremonial ground, while the women grouped themselves in the background. As the procession of men approached bearing the skull, the mourners shot arrows over their heads as a sign of anger at them for having decapitated their relation. But this was a mere pretence, probably intended to soothe and flatter the angry ghost: the arrows flew over the men without hurting them.[293] Similarly in ancient Egypt the man who cut open a corpse for embalmment had no sooner done his office than ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... authority, Ramiro soon froze the whole province into comparative tranquillity. But it did not suit Cesare to incur the odium which the man's cruelty brought on his administration. Accordingly he had him decapitated one night and exposed to public view, together with the block and bloody hatchet, in the square at Cesena. Of the art with which Cesare first reduced Romagna to order by the cruelty of his agent, and then avoided the odium of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... scene to the murmur of the breeze agitating the foliage, and by another to the sound emitted by the breaking of a harp-string. All agreed upon one point, the duration of the apparition, which they stated to have lasted about ten minutes. The black drapery, the decapitated victim, the stream of blood which had inundated the platform, all had disappeared with the phantoms; every trace had vanished except a crimson spot, which still stained the slipper of Charles, and which alone ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... I, rubbing my eyes, and opening them in time to see the last muscular spasms of the decapitated body; "true, Mr. Slick, it is a happy illustration of our previous conversation—A BODY ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... tree two soldiers, one with the haft of a blood-stained knife between his teeth, had mutilated horribly a living girl. Little Papeete had been decapitated just where his skull lay now; the shrieks and wails of the tortured tore the sky above Berselius; but Adams heard nothing and saw nothing but Berselius raving ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... in the roof with?" demanded Bob, and when offers were made to drop an axe down to him he had difficulty in calming the woman who had so nearly strangled Louise, and who had visions of being accidently decapitated. ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... of the Lao-tsze sect inhabiting prisons under the jurisdiction of the Principal Bonze were decapitated, and the P.B. laid his own head upon his pillow with some approach to peace of mind, trusting that the knowledge of the Elixir of ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... Agricultural Experiment Station, the operation is very successfully performed on old vines as follows: Preparatory to grafting, the earth is removed from around the stock to a depth of two or three inches. The vines are then decapitated at the surface of the ground and at right angles with the axis of the stock. If the grain is straight, the cleft can be made by splitting with a chisel, but more often it will have to be done with a thin-bladed saw through ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... unusual, though unhappy, opportunity of observing the same phenomenon in the brain structure of a man, who, in a paroxysm of alcoholic excitement, decapitated himself under the wheel of a railway carriage, and whose brain was instantaneously evolved from the skull by the crash. The brain itself, entire, was before me within three minutes after the death. It exhaled ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... turkey was decapitated that Eph remembered the heaven-born inventor and hastened to his rescue. He was still in the trap, but he was quite content, for he was figuring out a plan for an automatic release from the same, something which should hold ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... throne, the Tartars entered his dominions, carrying fire and sword everywhere, but they were eventually repulsed and driven out by Stephen. In the course of this campaign he took a son of the Tartar chief prisoner, and when envoys came to treat for his liberation he ordered the prince to be decapitated in their presence, a deed which may have been justified as a lesson to the ruthless tribe who had invaded his country. Not content with this, however, he impaled all the envoys but one, whose nose and ears he cut off, and sent him back to his master in that dreadful condition. 'But,' ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... conversion of a Moslem lady, who had taken the name of Leocritia, under which she was canonized at a later date. It was said that the woman had become a Christian through his efforts, and that he had hidden her for a time in the house of his sister. He was decapitated, and his body was thrown into the river; and if the legend be true, a white dove flew over it as it floated down the stream. Leocritia also was put to death. Here, however, the record of these martyrdoms apparently comes ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... and sometimes I have seen it eight feet long. Before now, I have seen a couple dining near the corner of a room, with their roll of bread thrown like a cane against the wall, and as often as they wanted a fresh slice, the roll was very coolly brought over and decapitated. The Frenchman eats little meat, but enormously of the staff of life. The chocolate and coffee which are to be had in the French cafes, are very delicious, and though after a fair and long trial I never could like French cookery as well as the English, yet I would not ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... regiment that was lying idle under the tree. The commanding officer evidently was not doing his duty, and this major was endeavoring to rally his men and get them at work. He was swinging his hat and cheering his men forward, when a solid shot decapitated him. His poor body went down as though some giant had picked it up and furiously slammed it on the ground, and I was so near him that I could almost have touched him ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... the old expedient of procuring her abduction by a crew of pirates while on an excursion to the Pharos. The vessel of the captors is, however, chased by a guard-boat, and on the point of being taken, when Leucippe is brought on deck and decapitated by the pirates, who throw the headless body into the sea, and make their escape; while Clitophon stays the pursuit, to recover the remains of his mistress for sepulture. Clitophon now returns to Alexandria ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... him in the knee, smashing the kneecap. He was surrounded, pounced upon, beaten mercilessly, and last but not least, all his fingers were one by one crushed into pulp between two heavy stones. In this condition he was dragged before the Lamas, only to be decapitated! Mr. Sturt, an able and just officer, who was then Deputy Commissioner at Almora, became acquainted with these facts, and, having fully ascertained their accuracy, reported them to the Government, strongly advising ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... King was on ill terms with the Kirk; England had secretly abetted Bothwell; the clan of Stewart, including Lennox, lent aid and countenance, but Bothwell's success was due to Gowrie's mother, the widow of the decapitated Earl, and to his sister, Lady Atholl. Bothwell entered Lady Gowrie's house, adjoining the palace, spent the night there, stole into Holyrood by a passage-way left open by Lady Atholl, and appeared ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... of the new-born baby's hand has a surprising power, but the baby himself has little to do with it. The muscles act because of a stimulus presented by the touch of the fingers, very much as the muscles of a decapitated frog contract when the current of electricity passes over them. This is called reflex grasping, and Dr. Louis Robinson,[B] thinking that this early strength of gasp was an important illustration of and evidence for evolution, tried experiments on some sixty new-born babies. ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... of a decapitated frog is irritated, there is an instant contraction of the corresponding limb; if the irritation is intense the other limb also contracts. These motions indicate the existence, in some part of the spinal cord, of a distinct nerve-centre, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... she exclaimed. "Oh! Look there!" she cried, pointing ahead of them. A chaparral cock strutted from its decapitated enemy, a rattlesnake, ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... distinctly and she saw that there were the bodies of both men and women, and that they were beautifully proportioned, and that their skin was similar to hers, but of a slightly lighter red. At first she had thought that she was looking upon a shambles and that the bodies, but recently decapitated, were moving under the impulse of muscular reaction; but presently she realized that this was their normal condition. The horror of them fascinated her, so that she could scarce take her eyes from them. It was evident from their groping ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of comparable importance was made. Then Marshall Hall, the most famous of English physicians of his day, made his classical observations on the phenomena that henceforth were to be known as reflex action. In 1832, while experimenting one day with a decapitated newt, he observed that the headless creature's limbs would contract in direct response to certain stimuli. Such a response could no longer be secured if the spinal nerves supplying a part were severed. Hence it was ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... taken up my affair, and kept me for a week or two careering through the public prints, in my decapitated state, like Irving's Headless Horseman, ghastly and grim, and longing to be buried, as a political dead man ought. So much for my figurative self. The real human being all this time, with his head ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... decapitated while in this hibernating condition, the action of the heart is not affected for some time, a second life seeming to outlive the one taken. An experiment has been made in which the brain of the sleeper was removed, then the entire spinal cord, but for two hours hardly ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... of the creek were a party of sixty or seventy savages, all armed with spears and clubs. Four of them who were leading were carrying on poles from their shoulders the naked and headless bodies of our two unfortunate sailors, and the decapitated heads were in either hand of an enormously fat man, who from his many shell armlets and other adornments was evidently the leader. So close were they—less than fifty yards—that we easily recognised one of the ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... left on the crown and another over the forehead; but this is not the fashion amongst adults. Abu Hanifah, if I am rightly informed, wrote a treatise on the Shushah or long lock growing from the Nasiyah (head-poll) which is also a precaution lest the decapitated Moslem's mouth be defiled by an impure hand; and thus it would resemble the chivalry lock by which the Redskin brave (and even the "cowboy" of better times) facilitated the removal of his own scalp. Possibly the Turks had learned the practice from the Chinese ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... on white-beet leaves, spread a gigantic Cantal cheese, cloven here and there as by an axe; then came a golden-hued Cheshire, and next a Gruyere, resembling a wheel fallen from some barbarian chariot; whilst farther on were some Dutch cheeses, suggesting decapitated heads suffused with dry blood, and having all that hardness of skulls which in France has gained them the name of "death's heads." Amidst the heavy exhalations of these, a Parmesan set a spicy aroma. ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... her form; if I cast mine eyes upon the fire in the kitchen-grate, the coals will glow and cool until I see her face; nay, but yesterday, the shoulder of mutton upon the spit gyrated until it at last assumed the decapitated head of Mary. 'Think of her faults and magnify them'—nay, that were unjust and unchristian. Let me rather correct mine own. I fear me that when Ovid wrote his picture he intended it for the use of young men, and not for an old fool like me. Behold! I have again ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the apartments and pushing up through the place of the roofs;—grass- grown alleys ravined by rains;—fruit-trees strangled by lianas; —here and there the stem of some splendid palmiste, brutally decapitated, naked as a mast;—petty frail growths of banana- trees or of bamboo slowly taking the place of century-old forest giants destroyed to make charcoal. But beauty enough remains to tell what the sensual ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... to study my work in good faith, I have nevertheless not succeeded in establishing legal proof that Gurn is Fantomas. Deibler and the Public Prosecutor, and people generally, think that it is merely Gurn who is going to be decapitated now. I may have secured this man's condemnation, but none the less he has beaten me and deprived me of the satisfaction of having brought him, Fantomas, to the scaffold! I have only consigned Gurn to the scaffold, ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... insisting upon their right to go to their homes to vote in the fall. National politics was to them a matter of profound indifference until, after the inauguration of General Jackson, hundreds of them found themselves decapitated by the Democratic guillotine, without qualifications for any other employment had the limited trade of Washington afforded any. Many of them were left in a pitiable condition, but when the Telegraph was asked what these men could do to ward off starvation, the ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... the Maltese cross on the bodies of the slain, and, tying them to planks, let them drift with the receding tide into the other branch of the harbour still defended by the Christians. The Grand-Master, in resentment of this cruelty, caused his Turkish prisoners to be decapitated and their heads thrown from mortars into the camp of ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... man was about to be initiated into a secret society called Olala, his friends drew their knives and pretended to kill him. In reality they let him slip away, while they cut off the head of a dummy which had been adroitly substituted for him. Then they laid the decapitated dummy down and covered it over, and the women began to mourn and wail. His relations gave a funeral banquet and solemnly burnt the effigy. In short, they held a regular funeral. For a whole year the novice remained ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... who, having incurred the displeasure of the sublime Emperor, has been decapitated ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... debris to watch his toil's result, first was heard a rustle of leaves, as if a passing whirlwind had alighted there; next came the crack of bursting sinews; then the groan of a great riving spasm, and the tree, decapitated at its foot, crashed to earth, with a vain attempt to clutch for support at the stiff, unpitying ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... fifteenth century. On the platform over the finely sculptured porch, rich in foliage like the Folgoet, placed between the two towers, is the equestrian statue of King Gradlon, to whom is attributed the introduction of the vine into Brittany. The statue was decapitated in 1793, but restored ten years back. On St. Cecilia's day companies of musicians used to mount on the platform. While they sang a hymn in praise of King Gradlon, one of the choristers, provided with a flagon of wine, ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... run like a cart horse. No one can be always at the "top of his form." But after making all allowances for human weakness and occasional lapses, when he once reached a definite conclusion he was as abrupt and remorseless as a guillotine. Many a hopeful athlete had been decapitated so swiftly and neatly, that, like the man in the fable, he did not know his head was off until he ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... Wrongs of Man." A token: bust of Paine, with his name; reverse, "The Mountain in Labour, 1793." Farthing: Paine gibbeted; reverse, breeches burning, legend, "Pandora's breeches"; beneath, serpent decapitated by a dagger, the severed head that of Paine. Similar farthing, but reverse, combustibles intermixed with labels issuing from a globe marked "Fraternity"; the labels inscribed "Regicide," "Robbery," "Falsity," "Requisition"; legend, "French Reforms, 1797"; near by, a church ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... the slope of the ground helping us, we managed to set it on its feet; as soon as it was turned over, it rushed at Lucien. The enormous rolls round its neck, being all distended, made it carry its head very forward, so, with a single blow of his cutlass, l'Encuerado decapitated the assailant. We were then witnesses to a strange sight, for while Gringalet was furiously attacking the motionless head, the feet, continuing to move, bore along the body, which in a moment disappeared in the lake. Although we had often before ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... my child, which is the most destructive of all the consequences entailed by the Revolution? You would never guess. In Louis XVI. the Revolution has decapitated every head of a family. The family has ceased to exist; we have only individuals. In their desire to become a nation, Frenchmen have abandoned the idea of empire; in proclaiming the equal rights of all ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... In 1785 an Englishman visiting France boasts of the political liberty enjoyed in his country. As an offset to this the French reproach the English for having decapitated Charles I., and "glory in having always maintained an inviolable attachment to their own king; a fidelity, a respect which no excess or severity on his part has ever shaken." ("A Comparative View of the French and of the English Nation," by John ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... by which another protector was known. If any members of the family went to fight at sea, they collected some sea-weed to take with them. If in pursuit of a canoe, they threw out some of it to hinder the progress of the enemy, and make the chase successful in obtaining a decapitated head or two. If the enemy tried to pick up any of this deified sea-weed it immediately sank, but rose again and floated on the surface if one of its friends ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner |
