"Dastardly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his possession and procured him a sound thrashing. Some short time afterwards a carthorse was found in the fields stabbed in several places, though, fortunately, not severely. Having already the bad name that hangs the dog, he was strongly suspected of this dastardly act in revenge for the thrashing from the carter, and threat of dismissal from the employer. No evidence, however, could be procured, and though he was sent about his business he escaped punishment. As he grew older he fell in with a tribe of semi-gipsies, and wandered in ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... her, and swing him or her to the nearest tree," was the verdict of many. "The law is all well enough, but this dastardly ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... in his behalf, walked to a bridge of planks a little distance up stream. Bower joined her there. He had deliberately resolved to do a dastardly thing. If Spencer was the cause of Helen's refusal, that obstacle, at any rate, could ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... man's narrow escape from the rolling log. Though he felt that Sydney Bramshaw had something to do with the affair, he had no definite proof. He naturally connected him with the murder. But what object would the man have for doing such a dastardly deed? He wondered much about the envelope, and how it got there. He had never been to that spot before, and he was quite certain that David did not have it with him. Somebody, then, must have obtained possession of the envelope and dropped it near the body in order to ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... for the sacrifice. Others have done so in sadder seriousness. Doubtless, Curtius rode at his last leap without a speck on his burnished mail: purple, and gold, and gems flamed all round Sardanapalus when he fired the holocaust in Nineveh: even that miserable, dastardly Nero was solicitous about the marble fragments that were to line his felon's grave. So it befell that, on this particular evening, Cecil went through a very careful toilet, though it was as simple as usual; for the ultra-gorgeous style she utterly eschewed. The ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... assailants with the fragments; several of the Turks were wounded by the stones thrown with such force by these brawny Amazons that some of the gun-barrels were indented. Many of these brave women had been shot by the dastardly Turks, and one was in the act of being carried off by the "pleasant robber," when a native, running to her rescue, drove his spear through his chest and killed him on the spot. Unfortunately for the Latookas, some of ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... "Oh! this dastardly wretch is profiting by his knowledge of secrets which a long intimacy has enabled him to discover. Do not believe him, I entreat ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and Miss Eliot would consent to shield the organization when we find them? Why, Penny, you're mad! We must call up the chief of police! We must scour the country! I propose to go right to the newspapers! The more people who know of this dastardly thing the sooner we shall recover ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... found solace in the most sweeping and vehement invectives his vocabulary could afford against the unknown author of the dastardly outrage upon his rudder-line. By an easy effort of imagination he included the whole schoolhouse, root and branch, in his anathemas, and by a very trifling additional effort he discovered that the objects of his censure were guilty, every one of them, ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... precisely while the Prussian batteries were playing their briskest at Longwi in the North-East, and our dastardly Lavergne saw nothing for it but surrender,—south-westward, in remote, patriarchal La Vendee, that sour ferment about Nonjuring Priests, after long working, is ripe, and explodes: at the wrong moment for us! And so we have 'eight thousand ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the principal headquarters for conspiracies against governments. Not only do the anarchists and nihilists look upon Paris as their Mecca; but other scoundrels working out nefarious plans for wicked governments also meet here to lay their dastardly plots. Gortchky may be coming here to secure new agents to take the place of those already known to the Americans who are watching him and his men; or he may be coming here to hold a conference with the men higher up, who are directing his scoundrelly ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... me, devil or angel, which will not give up. Nothing has ever conquered it yet and Molly was like wax in my hands—so long as 'Mother' need not know. I do not attempt to excuse myself; what I did was dastardly, but it did not seem so then. The night before she left, she stole away from home. I had a license and we were married by a Methodist minister. He knew neither of us and probably forgot the whole incident immediately. It was a marriage only in name ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... Anne, and wrote, with interruption of a nap (in which my readers may do well to imitate me), till two o'clock. I wrote with care, having digested Comines. Whether I succeed or not, it would be dastardly to give in. A bold countenance often carries off an indifferent cause, but no one will defend him who shows the white feather. At two I walked till near four. Dined with the girls, smoked two cigars, and to work again till supper-time. Slept like ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... that a virtuous woman Should rather face and overcome temptation, That flight was base and dastardly, and no man Should ever give her heart the least sensation, That is to say, a thought beyond the common Preference, that we must feel, upon occasion, For people who are pleasanter than others, But then they only seem so ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... comes only from within. Now Thoreau's content and ecstasy in living was, we may say, like a plant that he had watered and tended with womanish solicitude; for there is apt to be something unmanly, something almost dastardly, in a life that does not move with dash and freedom, and that fears the bracing contact of the world. In one word, Thoreau was a skulker. He did not wish virtue to go out of him among his fellow-men, but slunk into a corner to hoard it for himself. He left all for the sake of certain virtuous ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... answered he coolly: "I am ready, if he desire it, to hold out my throat to him. Your conduct, my dear Flahaut, touches me; but your country wants you: remain in the army, and forget, like me, the Prince of Eckmuhl and his dastardly menaces." ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... the following ballad is the atrocious and dastardly assassination of James Sharp, Archbishop of St Andrews and Primate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... stories of houses burned with all the inmates, of women and young children butchered, of near relations compelled by torture to be the murderers of each other, of corpses outraged and mutilated, were told and heard with full belief and intense interest. Then it was added that the dastardly savages who had by surprise committed all these cruelties on an unsuspecting and defenceless colony had, as soon as Oliver came among them on his great mission of vengeance, flung down their arms in panic terror, and had sunk, without trying the chances of a single pitched field, into that ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a man whose dastardly intention is, when the whim takes him, to send you to your ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... Spermaceti whale was much hunted by sportsmen, that being accounted better pastime, than pursuing the Behemoths on shore. Besides, it was a lucrative diversion. Now, sometimes upon striking the monster, it would start off in a dastardly fright, leaving certain fragments in its wake. These fragments the hunters picked up, giving over the chase for a while. For in those days, as now, a quarter-quintal of ambergris was more valuable than a whole ton ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... of Worms, after due deliberation, declared Luther an outlaw before God and man, and forbade all Germans to give him shelter or food or drink, or to read a single word of the books which the dastardly heretic had written. But the great reformer was in no danger. By the majority of the Germans of the north the edict was denounced as a most unjust and outrageous document. For greater safety, Luther was hidden in the Wartburg, ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... The girl wondered. At any rate, she would have that last letter then—the letter that was to contain whatever defense her young friend could offer to explain his dastardly act. She waited ...
— The Agony Column • Earl Derr Biggers
... I order you to retire. If this unknightly lord venture to carry out his foul threats against me, let him do so. England will ring with the dastardly deed, and he will never dare show his face again where Englishmen congregate. Let him do his worst. I ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... the ball entered the cheek, glanced against the bone, and finally lodged in his neck: he fell, and for some time was supposed to be dead, but revived, and afterwards recovered from this severe wound. The most prompt and diligent enquiry as to the author of this cruel and dastardly act, failed to lead to his detection. No doubt was entertained that this attempt at assassination was made by a white man, stimulated perhaps by no better excuse than the memory of some actual or ideal wrong, inflicted on some of his own race by an unknown hand of kindred colour ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... shrewd a man to have a fool for a son. I see plainly that you were leagued with Druce and Anson to blacken the woman I love. But right is might and love is right. The whole dastardly affair enlightens me as to the nature of your alliance with that dive. Why did you renew the lease to Druce against my protest? I never realized until tonight the horror of your extensive holdings of tenderloin property. I don't want ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... and sharpness of eye by the instinct of self-preservation, Mr. Idle contrived, by jumping deftly aside at the right moment, and by using his bat (ridiculously narrow as it was for the purpose) as a shield, to preserve his life and limbs from the dastardly attack that had been made on both, to leave the full force of the deadly missile to strike his wicket instead of his leg; and to end the innings, so far as his side was concerned, by being immediately bowled out. Grateful ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... perished had it not been for the timely assistance of his friend. On one occasion, in particular, an Englishman came behind him, and was in the very act of inserting a spear between the clasps of his armour, when his companion struck the dastardly fellow to the earth, and resumed the fight ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... I have to say to you is that what you did down there has never been seen in any other war. Never in any country in the world has such a dastardly act been committed as the shooting of one who goes to ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... I stabbed a fellow-student in the neck—a dreadful wound—because he taunted me about my mode of dress. I was wearing the only clothes my eccentric father would provide me with. I am wearing the same style of costume yet, as penance for that dastardly act—caused by an ungovernable temper with which I have been cursed from my birth. I would have entered the service of God had it not been for that temper. I am unable to control it, except by avoiding undue contact with my fellow men. That is why. I am living here, a recluse, when I should be ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... constitution allows him: that power is to be watched in its very first encroachments; nor is any thing ever gained by timidity and submission: that every concession adds new force to usurpation; and at the same time, by discovering the dastardly dispositions of the people, inspires it with new courage and enterprise: that as arms were intrusted altogether in the hands of the prince, no check remained upon him but the dependent condition of his revenue; a security, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... are very superficial and dastardly: they begin upon a thing, but, meeting with a difficulty, they fly from it discouraged; but they have the means if they would ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... as the Duke has often told you; and now it is a thousand to one that you have ruined yourself with the Countess. She will never take your view that it was a justifiable piece of revenge; she will only see in it a cruel and dastardly deception, practised on a woman whose only fault was that, not loving, she discovered her mistake in time. A man should rejoice when a woman draws back from an engagement, reflecting what his life might have been had she ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... view of it, and as directed principally against "the pretended Member of our Academy" (mischievous Voltaire, to wit), whom it characterizes as "such a manifest retailer of lies," a "concocter of stupid libels:" "have you ever seen an action more malicious, more dastardly, more infamous?"—and other hard terms, the hardest he can find. This is the privilege of anonymity, on both ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... began its march to Petersburg, the men anticipating that they would soon be mustered out and returned to their homes. At Nottoway Court House I heard of the assassination of the President. The first news came to us the night after the dastardly deed, the telegraph operator having taken it from the wires while in transmission to General Meade. The despatch ran that Mr. Lincoln had been, shot at 10 o'clock that morning at Willard's Hotel, but as I could conceive of nothing to take ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... plainly that the chief motive of man to practise morality must be his fear of ultimate punishment. His was an attempt to draw away the curtain which hides this world from the next, and to horrify men into living purely and kindly. But the mind only revolts against the dastardly injustice of a God, who allows men to be born into the world so corrupt, with so many incentives to sin, and deliberately hides from them the ghastly sight of the eternal torments, which might have saved them from recklessness of life. No one who had trod the dark caverns of Hell or the ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... "I might wish to satisfy you, mother, and other good folks, but not to put myself in bondage to what has led blindfold to half the dastardly and cruel acts on this earth, beautiful ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... troops go where they listed, undertaking to send to Naples by sea as many as desired to go there. About a thousand accepted; the rest dispersed, forming the first nucleus of the semi-political and wholly dastardly brigandage which was later to become the scourge of Southern Italy. Their earliest exploit was the savage murder of General Briganti, whom they called a traitor, after the fashion of cowards. This happened ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... life at the broken bridge that time, of course I would not dream of such a dastardly trick," the Spaniard resumed. "I had to make other plans. I tried to get out of it altogether, but that man would not let me. So I decided to sacrifice myself. I would myself blow up the dam, or, rather, make a little explosion that would scare prospective shippers. I did not care ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... "Where is that dastardly dog? Where is that villain of a cook?" I heard him roar on the stairs. "Bring me that scoundrel that I may slit his ears!" At this moment he burst through the doors, a terrific spectacle of fury, ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... those two dastardly prisoners the impudence to mock me thus, and propose that I should wed such a loathsome creature as that? They shall die for it! Away with that hussy and her nurse, and the fellow who brought them here; cast them into the ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... not hidden it yourself, then you knew nothing about the book and its enclosure? When you told Mr Griffith down at Coed that you had something to divulge, were you not then almost driven to tell the truth by your dastardly cowardice as to this threatened trial? And did you not fail again because you were afraid? You mean poltroon! Will you dare to say before us, now, that when we entered the room this morning you did not know what the book contained?" Cousin Henry once more opened his mouth, but no word came. ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... in bed, chloroformed, with her hands tied securely behind her back. At the time of going to press she had not recovered consciousness, but the doctor, Emile Peytin, is in attendance upon her, and it is hoped that she will be able shortly to throw some light on this dastardly affair. The police are properly reticent as to the details of the crime, but the following statement ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... justified. Details were given of the curious type of ear-mark, which was stated to be Mr. Wyckliffe's device. The Sydney correspondent telegraphed the surprise felt in the highest circles, and the indignation expressed at the dastardly act, as Mr. Wyckliffe was well-known there. The Brisbane correspondent sent all that could be gleaned from their Dalby and Toowoomba agents, and the romance and the excitement grew in equal proportions. Later ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... voice, like an open book, and she knew it; though she had never acknowledged it till now. All unconsciously he would wrest her secret from her by force of sympathetic insight; and she, who implicitly believed in God, who held suicide to be the most dastardly sin a human being can commit, knew that she would take her own life without hesitation rather than stand proven disloyal to Evelyn, disgraced in the eyes of the man she loved. She did not think this thing in detail. She merely knew it, with the instinctive ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... have denied it could he have found words in which to do it, had he had time to frame a denial, but he was so entirely off his guard, so confounded by Seabrooke's sudden accusation and this evidence of the dastardly deed he had performed that he was utterly overwhelmed, and stood speechless, and the picture of ...
— Bessie Bradford's Prize • Joanna H. Mathews
... imagine the pitching and the tossing in the mind of our French buccaneer. The more he thought of the attractions of the fair widow and of the wealth and position which had been offered him, the more he hated all thoughts of his piratical crew, and of the dastardly and cruel character of the work in which they were engaged. If he could have trusted the officers and citizens of the town, there is not much doubt that he would have married the widow, but those officers and citizens were Spaniards, and he was a Frenchman. A week before the inhabitants ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... the European residents who lived close by, and who, without any previous warning of the terrible fate in store for them, fell easy victims to the murderers. It made our blood run cold, when visiting the ruins of these houses, to think of the dastardly crimes which had been committed in and around the spots on which we were standing. Defenceless and unarmed, helpless in the hands of these human tigers, our unfortunate men, women, and children were immolated without mercy. Turning back, we entered the city by the Calcutta Gate, ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... a satisfaction to record that Gaston gained nothing by his dastardly act. Pierre's brother, Sir Jean, stood to his post in Lourde as stoutly as Pierre had done; and the count did not obtain the fortress. In fact he does not seem even to have pursued his attempt upon it farther. He doubtless thought he had done enough ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... them in returning back from the scene of his paltry depredations; and, with his former good fortune, escaped the chastising hand of our hero, who continued every where seeking him in vain. His lordship, indeed, however aware of the dastardly disposition of the enemy, could scarcely think it possible for such a very superior force as the combined fleet thus timidly to ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... seemed, Hugo must have snatched up a knife—"a little ornamental Norwegian dagger," the report said, "which happened to lie close by on the cabinet in the drawing-room," and plunged it into his wife's heart. "The unhappy lady died instantaneously, by all appearances, and the dastardly crime was not discovered by the servants till eight o'clock this morning. Mr. Le ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... had risen to her feet, she had recognised the voice of one of the speakers—he had spoken once only, but that was enough—she had snatched up the naked sword that since the previous morning had leant in the chimney corner. As Colonel John crossed the threshold—oh, dastardly audacity, oh, insolence incredible, that in the hour of his triumph he should soil that threshold!—she lunged with all the force of her strong young arm ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... very well what you have done," she said evenly. "If you had a spark of manhood left in you, you would know what a dastardly thing you are doing now in coming here to ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... life-preserver, the physical repulsion I felt when he carried me in his arms. In such men the animal instinct is stronger at times than the trained will. Whether you give him a measure of your sympathy or not, at any rate do not believe that his short-lived liaison with Althea was a matter of deliberate and dastardly seduction. Nor must you think that I am setting down anything in disparagement of a child whom I once loved. Long ago I touched lightly on the anomaly of Althea's character—her mid-Victorian sentimentality ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... magnanimity to be extended to these men, whose crimes have produced a misery so vast and incalculable. The wretches who have tortured the weak and the helpless, who have secretly plotted to supplement, by dastardly schemes of murder and arson, that strength which failed them in fair fight, have been commiserated as brave generals and unfortunate patriots, and efforts are made to place them within ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... (striving to propitiate THE CONDUCTOR by a dastardly amiability). Oh, yes, yes. There's no mistake about the car—the Governor Marcy. She telegraphed the name just before you left Albany, so that I could find her at ...
— The Sleeping Car - A Farce • William D. Howells
... defeat of spirit. Shillings and pence; shillings and pence—never a question of pounds, unfortunately; and always too few of them. He understood how men have gone mad under pressure of household cares; he realised the horrible temptation which has made men turn dastardly from the path leading homeward and leave those ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... No wonder, when the dastardly taking off was bruited through the beaten but ever gallant South, they knew that they had lost "their best friend!" as General Pickett styled ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... thin Bread and Butter between Whiles. This mocks the strong Appetite, relaxes the Stomach, satiates it with trifling light Nick-Nacks which have little in them to support hard Labour. In this manner the Bold and Brave become dastardly, the Strong become weak, the Women become barren, or if they breed their Blood is made so poor that they have not Strength to suckle, and if they do the Child dies of the Gripes; In short, it gives an effeminate, weakly Turn ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... The dastardly attack angered Ben beyond endurance, and leaving Gilbert resting comfortably on some cut cane, he leaped to the front. "Come, boys, we will root them out!" he cried, and ran on toward the house as fast as he could, firing as he went. Sorrel was at his heels, and the others fired, each "red-hot" ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... onslaught, and those who escaped injury reached the street hatless, and with coats half-torn from their backs. The mob, now being complete masters of the room, tore down all the banners, destroyed the ballots, and made a complete wreck of everything. The Whig leaders, enraged at such dastardly, insulting treatment, despatched a messenger in all haste to the Mayor for help, but he replied that he could not furnish it, as all the available force was away in other sections of the city on duty. The excitement among the Whigs now became ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... searching into dark recesses and driving out bats and impure vermin by his intolerable presence, and unveiling ugliness and hatefulness, so is Truth. Withersoever she turns her shining mirror there Error may not abide, but like a dastardly coward, flies from the glory. Believe, Master Arundel, that He who is uncreated, Truth will magnify ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... was obvious. So far as Captain Redfield was concerned, he felt that he had been forsaken, betrayed. There was no man who stood with him. In vain he pleaded with his men to stand by him in his defense against a most dastardly plan to wrong him. He then inquired their attitude towards Brisbau, and ...
— Money Island • Andrew Jackson Howell, Jr.
... cheap seats, and the purchaser of the cheap seat has come there to have his money's worth. Directly the curtain goes up he is ready to collaborate. It is perfectly safe for the Villain to come on at once and reveal his dastardly plans; the audience is alert ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... Sainte Honore there was a very great tumult, and I saw, borne away on litters, many dead and wounded, who had been at first carried into the neighboring houses of Rue Sainte Nicaise. Many groups had formed, and with one voice all were cursing the still unknown authors of this dastardly attempt. Some accused the Jacobins of this, because three months before they had placed the poniard in the hands of Cerrachi, of Arena, and of Topino Lebrun; whilst others, less numerous perhaps, thought the aristocrats, the Royalists, could alone ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... but time and again her brain pictured each detail with a distinctness that was in the nature of physical pain. From the moment she awoke, which had been unaccountable to her, to find herself still propped against the foot-rail of her bed, to the finish of the dastardly scene in the sick-room was a living nightmare. She remembered the start with which she had opened her eyes. As far as she knew she had heard nothing; nothing had disturbed her. And yet she found herself sitting bolt upright, awake, listening, intent. Then her rush to ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... did it," sneered Distin; "but there are not brains enough in your head to originate such a dastardly trick. That was Vane Lee's doing, and he'll hear of it another time, as sure as ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... anger and said, grasping the back of a chair until he broke it, "If Madame du Gua has committed some dastardly wrong—" ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... crossbones) at the main, a red flag at the fore, and the cross of St. George at the ensign staff. The Greenwich and the Ostender, having a better wind than the Cassandra, had got some distance away. In vain Macrae fired gun after gun at the Greenwich to make Kirby heave to. In a most dastardly way the captain of the Greenwich pursued his course, taking the Ostender with him, till he had got well to windward; when, at a distance of two or three miles, he hove to and watched the fate ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... "A dastardly piece of work!" exclaimed Mr. Britton. "The death of that young express clerk was in some ways even sadder than that of Harry Whitcomb. I knew him well; the only child of a widowed mother; a poor boy who, by indomitable energy and unswerving integrity, ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... standing army? Not freedom. What's general happiness? Not universal misery. Liberty ain't the window-tax, is it? The Lords ain't the Commons, are they?' And the red-faced man, gradually bursting into a radiating sentence, in which such adjectives as 'dastardly,' 'oppressive,' 'violent,' and 'sanguinary,' formed the most conspicuous words, knocked his hat indignantly over his eyes, left the room, and slammed ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... of Adam was to the last degree dastardly. When the awful time of reckoning comes, and the Jehovah God appears to demand why his command has been disobeyed, Adam endeavors to shield himself behind the gentle being he has declared to be so dear. "The woman ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... his pictures found their way across the Channel: besides those which were stolen, when a dastardly Yankee left him alone in London with two English pence, and perhaps twice as many words of English. If any one who reads these lines should have a scene of sheep, in the manner of Jacques, with this fine creature's signature, let him tell himself ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... getting even—and in the hurly-burly and excitement there are no witnesses. The sergeant is ever on the lookout for such mutinies, and his revolver often sends to the dust the head revolutionary before the dastardly plot can be carried out. In war-time ...
— Love, Life & Work • Elbert Hubbard
... The rule in this dastardly work is always to select a man smaller and weaker than one's self. As I looked about I saw a man coming up the Bowery who seemed to answer to the requirements, and I said to myself, "This is my man!" I walked up to him ...
— Dave Ranney • Dave Ranney
... considering the matter when we, feeling like heartless criminals, stole away from the room, leaving it locked, and leaving two trustful and trusting little dogs incarcerated within. We told the proprietor of our dastardly conduct, but cautioned him not to liberate the captives until the steamer was hull down on the horizon. So by this time I suppose there are two little white dogs searching Mombasa for two missing Americans and wondering at the ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... concealment and watch for the upshot of Henshaw's presence. The suggestion did not, however, altogether commend itself to him. He disliked the idea of spying even upon such a man as Henshaw, whom he had good reason to suspect of playing a dastardly game. It was probable, too, that Henshaw had recognized him and might be on the look-out; it would be intensely humiliating to be caught watching. So, turning the pros and cons over in his mind, Gifford walked slowly on in a state of irresolution till he came to ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... into the crevices in the wall. Four, or more, of these tubes are thrust into the wall, I suppose, and connected in series, so that they can be fired by the same electric spark. These tubes and the wires are water-proofed. The negro is only the dastardly workman in this case. It was never he who invented the trick. But he must be an excellent workman, who ought to be employed in much more honest effort. I wonder if the fellow is going to use more than ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... soon as what had passed in the council of war was whispered about the streets, the spirit of the soldiers and citizens swelled up high and fierce against the dastardly and perfidious chief who had betrayed them. Many of his own officers declared that they no longer thought themselves bound to obey him. Voices were heard threatening, some that his brains should be blown out, some that he should be hanged on the walls. A deputation ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... present ease, and to secure his low pleasures, at any price—ready to give up the honour of his country, and submit to the conqueror—that he had been secretly intriguing with the enemy, had been suspected, and this suspicion was confirmed by his dastardly capitulation when the means of defence were in his power and the spirit of his people eager ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... of both decency and liberty. Thus we have lately been told that it is "wanton cruelty" to keep a weak or sickly child alive; and the medical man, under a reformed system of medical ethics, is to have leave and licence to put an end to its life in a painless manner. To what enormities and dastardly agreements this might lead need hardly be suggested; and I am quite confident that the members of the honourable profession of physic, to which I am proud to belong, have no desire whatever for such a reform of ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... glanced fearfully and covertly at his fiancee. She must not know the truth at any cost. Possibly he lost his head! At all events, that is the kindest construction to put on his subsequent action, for, dastardly as his behaviour had been to Jean in the past, one can hardly imagine him capable of deliberately murdering her, and in so horrible a fashion. There was not a second to lose; an instant more, and the secret, that he had so assiduously hidden from the lady beside him, ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... the disbelief of the existence of a soul, to wake up after death a soul, and to find one's self a lost soul. Yes, methought I would come to the conclusion that one has a soul. Choosing the safe side, however, appeared to me to be playing a rather dastardly part. I had never been an admirer of people who chose the safe side in everything; indeed I had always entertained a thorough contempt for them. Surely it would be showing more manhood to adopt the dangerous ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... He knocks his antagonist down, and there an end. Pope seems to have nursed his grudge, and then, watching his chance, to have squirted vitriol from behind a corner, rather glad than otherwise if it fell on the women of those he hated or envied. And if Dryden is never dastardly, as Pope often was, so also he never wrote anything so maliciously depreciatory as Pope's unprovoked attack on Addison. Dryden's satire is often coarse, but where it is coarsest, it is commonly in defence of himself against attacks that were themselves ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... impertinent peace talk. We, who have forfeited our right to sit at the peace conference, who are busily making money off the war, having prudently kept our own skins out of danger, are officiously ready with proposals of peace. What a peace! The only peace that could be made to-day would be a dastardly treason to every one of the millions whose blood has watered Europe, to every woman who has given a son or a father or a husband to the settlement of the cause. The parochialism of the American intelligence has never ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... story would follow me to my grave. Things like that are never forgotten among fellows so intimate as soldiers. There was a chap in our regiment who jilted a nice girl at the Cape—sailed for home secretly only a week before the wedding." He paused to let her take in the dastardly nature of the flight. "Well, he rejoined at the depot. He stayed—but he didn't stay long. The Rangers got too hot for him—or too cold. The last I ever heard of him he was giving ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... anyone on board the ship. Some of us felt convinced that we had—the wish, doubtless, being father to the thought; but, for my own part, I was exceedingly doubtful. For, as a rule—to which, however, some most shameful and dastardly exceptions have come under my own notice—sailors are always most eager to help their distressed brethren, even at the cost of very great personal inconvenience and peril; and, knowing this, I believed that, had only a momentary and exceedingly doubtful view of us been ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... every evening. Impossible to entrust the kind of letter she wished to write to any mode of delivery so public—especially now, when her movements were watched. To open and read another's letters is a low and dastardly act, but she believed that Lady Caroline would do it like a shot. She longed to pour out her heart to Geoffrey in a long, intimate letter, but she did not dare to take the risk of writing for a wider public. Things were bad enough as it was, after ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... and Leslie Gage entered the room. Gage had been Merriwell's bitter enemy at one time during the summer encampment, having made two dastardly attacks on Frank, who had been generous enough to rescue him from death after that, and had saved him from expulsion by refusing to give ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... got foot-hold from which he caught the top hinge and scaled, a feat of which he considered Harris incapable; and, instead of helping him up, leapt down with a new feeling of lightness, hearing from the other side "Dastardly treachery...!" ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... quarreled violently. He was for publishing the story of his taking off in type as black as the dastardly act. Smith had a difficult time in holding him down, however much he pointed out that Ryan had no shadow of proof against his new adversary on the yacht, and that public sympathy in an affair of this sort was always with the successful. ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... banners of the armies, just as it did during the middle ages, and sent its adherents out to slaughter; but first took great care that the minds of the devout be completely drugged with the poison of its creed. A creed that told its followers that do what you might, no matter how dastardly that act might be, so long as you repent and confess your sins, life everlasting will be the reward. What is the value of a church that has claimed the moral leadership of the world when such things ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... he answered sharply, "that this is all a matter of sentiment. I regret extremely that my son should have behaved in such a cowardly and dastardly manner—it has hurt and surprised me more than I can say—but, were that all, it were surely better to bury the whole affair as soon as may be. I cannot believe that you are keeping the letters with no intention of making public ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... surrender. He therefore, we are told, sent to the Colonel "his priest, a discreet Negro, to remonstrate."[213] The Colonel put the priest to death, and apparently suffered no worse punishment for this dastardly act than to have the cattle he had gone away with discovered and brought back to the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... world, laughing to himself in the safety of his namelessness—knowing her futile anger and indignation—satisfied to have shamed and insulted her—and her mother—her great, resourceful, splendid mother, away and ill when this dastardly attack was made. Impulsively she turned to run to her aunt, and lay the matter before her, but paused and sat down on the little chair before her writing desk. Covering her eyes with her clenched hands she tried to think. Tante Lydia was worse than useless, ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... been lacking to the red race. No federation has been possible to it except as that federation is controlled by the European brain. The controlling power in the execution of this dastardly crime lay with desperate but eminently able white men. Their appeal to the Osages, however, was a fruitless one. For a third of a century the faithful Jesuits had labored with this tribe. Not in ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... by the rector talking calmly with him about the punishment we could mete out to the dastardly accuser, when one of the men suddenly cried out with an oath. We looked toward them; there lay a hat half buried in the loose earth. "We have found him," cried Bruus. "That is Niels's hat; I would ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... reflecting, with bright eyes, upon this dazzling future, and wondering what would be the best way of letting the dastardly Blackbeard know whose guns they were which had sunk his ship, when a boat was seen coming around the headland. This was one of his own boats, which had been posted as a sentinel, and which now brought the news that two vessels were ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... assaulting the very life of the League, for it must now be apparent that these disappearances were not coincidences, but links in a connected chain of crime. What and whose was the unseen hand behind these dastardly deeds? What secret enemies of the League were so cunningly and assiduously at work? Was murder their object, or merely abduction? Whose turn would it be next? (At this last inquiry a shudder rippled over the already agitated assembly.) But MM. les Dlgus might rest ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... troops, by their dastardly desertion of the fort of the Mississi, at which they were stationed, nearly disconcerted all the arrangements. Great numbers of the inhabitants had already gone on board the ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... one of us—perhaps only a little less than you barristers, gentlemen—the real sense of the pogroms. Every time that some dastardly event or some ignominious failure has occurred, after executing a martyr in a dark corner of a fortress, or after deceiving public confidence, some one who is hidden and unapproachable gets frightened of the people's anger and diverts ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... often obscene. These books describe, without disapproval, polygamy, slavery, concubinage, lying and deceit, treachery, incest, murder, wars of plunder, wars of conquest, massacre of prisoners of war, massacre of women and of children, cruelty to animals; and such immoral, dishonest, shameful, or dastardly deeds as those of Solomon, David, ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... army; but the choice of other armies, afterwards confirmed by the senate, settled upon Probus, a general already celebrated under Aurelian. The two competitors drew near to each other for the usual decision by the sword, when the dastardly supporters of Florian offered up their chosen prince as a sacrifice to his antagonist. Probus, settled in his seat, addressed himself to the regular business of those times,—to the reduction of insurgent provinces, and the liberation of others from ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... smile bitterly. "All, every thing," I answered. "The whole requisition, from first to last, is base, dastardly—crime-confessing, too—if seen with discriminating eyes. Why, if innocent of fraud toward me and mine, should you ask a formal acknowledgment on my part as to your just administration of my affairs, and a recantation of all I have said to the contrary, ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... mantle. With this feeble buckler he received the thrust of the lance. It penetrated the mantle, but missed his body. Then, rising upon his stirrups, Sir Huon struck Charlot so terrible a blow with his sword that the helmet was cleft asunder, and his head too. The dastardly prince fell dead ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch |
