"Decapitated" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is suddenly 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... interminable period of silence. The entire train seemed deserted. Helpless, bereft of its engine, a huge, decapitated monster it lay, half-way around a curve, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... 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 ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... replies the aged man. "Is there a God in 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 ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... taken unhurt; and 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 leaders, indeed, Billaud-Varennes ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... sure augury that I shall, in discharge of my duty, one day cut off your head with the weapon which has just now spontaneously unsheathed itself.' The nobleman lost no time in leaving his place of refuge; but, engaging in some of the plots of the period, was shortly after decapitated by that very ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... offered. With the idea of paying a high compliment to Troubridge, who had so splendidly protected the Royalists, fought the French, and subdued the revolutionists, they made him the recipient of a decapitated head which had proudly sat on the shoulders of a revolutionist. This trophy was actually sent to him with his basket of breakfast grapes. In making the present the gallant fisherman conveyed his compliments to the Admiral, and reminded him that it was a ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... of chapel etiquette. I raised the tune, and every other pair of lungs there joined in without fear of criticism or favor of his neighbors' ears. Some of the duller and lesser children smothered or decapitated a word here and there in the main body of the hymn. All knew the chorus, and it shook ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... were 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 it was a meagre ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... threw the Hindus into a panic, and they began to give way. Rama Raya was conducted by the officer who commanded the artillery of Hussain Nizam to his Sultan, who immediately ordered his captive to be decapitated, and the head to be elevated on a long spear, so that it might be visible to ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... coach chattering like magpies, and going at the rapid speed of about five miles an hour. At Cambray we dined and slept. We visited the cathedral, which, thanks to those honest, religious men, the Republicans, was in total ruins. All the Virgins and saints were decapitated and the quiet repose of the dead disturbed by their pure, delicate hands. "Erin's curse be upon them!" exclaimed my man of medicine. "The devil has them by this time," said the purser. "What a set of impious ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... monarch ordered the messenger to behead 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 not condescend to bend their knees before temporal ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... abbey of Maubuisson and had for lovers two Norman gentlemen, Philippe and Gaultier d'Aulnay. The king, Philippe le Bel, being informed, caused the two Normans to be arrested, in 1314; they confessed under torture, and were condemned to be flayed alive, mutilated, decapitated, and hung up by the arm-pits. The two princesses, after having had their heads shaved, were conducted to the Chateau-Guillard, where they were most ingeniously persecuted. When the husband of Marguerite ascended the throne, ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... passed. One was the brave death of the major of this 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 ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... tremendous strength, the billows springing up, after each gust, like india-rubber balls that had been pressed flat and then suddenly released, for they spirted up into the air, flinging their crests aloft one brief moment only to be decapitated the next by ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... 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, or those frantic leaps. He snorts, he stares, he gyrates. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... David standing, his fingers clutched into the hair of decapitated Goliath. As Saul sees David standing there holding in his hand the ghastly, reeking, staring trophy, evidence of the complete victory over God's enemies, the king wonders what parentage was honored by such heroism, and in my text he asks David ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... several such localities within a few hours' travel of one another form a friendly group. Outside of this group all other Ilongot as well as all other peoples are blood enemies, to be hunted, murdered and decapitated as occasion permits. ...
— The Negrito and Allied Types in the Philippines and The Ilongot or Ibilao of Luzon • David P. Barrows
... well by the "bad fella boys too much" that stopped along the bush. He could see him, as he had last seen him, stripped of the shot-gun and all the naturalist's gear of his master, lying on the narrow trail where he had been decapitated barely the moment before. Yes, within a minute the thing had happened. Within a minute, looking back, Bassett had seen him trudging patiently along under his burdens. Then Bassett's own trouble had come ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... ask Eames about him, he must have been a man 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 ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... Doge's Palace the black veil painted over Faliero's picture, and the staircase whereon he was first crowned Doge and subsequently decapitated. This was the thing that most struck my imagination in Venice—more than the Rialto, which I visited for the sake of Shylock: and more, too, than Schiller's 'Armenian,' a novel which took a great hold of me when a boy. It is also called the 'Ghost ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... many was sealed on the site of the Church of the English Martyrs. On the 5th of January, 1715, we are told that sixteen rebels "were hanged upon Gallows Hill, for high treason and conspiracy." In the following year "42 condemned prisoners of all religions were hanged and decapitated at Preston;" and amongst them were five belonging Preston and the neighbourhood. They were "Richard Shuttleworth, of Preston, Esq.; Roger Moncaster, of Garstang, attorney; Thomas Cowpe, of Walton-le-Dale; William Butler, of Myerscough, Esq.; William Arkwright, of Preston, gentleman;" and all of ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... members 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 Immortality had ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... influenced me, and among them was the thought that if "Fruitfulness" were not presented to the public in an English dress, M. Zola's new series would remain incomplete, decapitated so far as British and American readers were concerned. After all, the criticisms dealing with the French original were solely directed against matters of form, the mould in which some part of the work was cast. Its high moral purpose was distinctly recognized ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... the dilemma 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 ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... wall-paintings, limbs of decapitated goddesses gleaming white through the grass and rioting weeds, tottering columns, arches, and vaults, and deserted galleries receding in endless perspective, leaped out lifelike on a background of night ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... 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 affairs of ...
— Japan • David Murray
... plane, but, unfortunately, his final effort dislodged the cap from the rod between it and the base, and it flew off malignantly into space. Here was a calamity; few things are more useless than a decapitated collar-button, and William had no other. He had made sure that it was his last before he put it on, that day; also he had ascertained that there was none in, on, or about his father's dressing-table. Finally, in the possession of neither William ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... five-franc pieces, which can hardly be told from the genuine. This multiplication of finance was punished under the beys with death. The bey of Constantina arrested in one day the men of three tribes notorious for counterfeiting, and decapitated a hundred of them. There was lately to be seen at Constantina the executioner who was charged with this punishment, the very individual who cut off the ingenious heads of all these poor money-makers, and did not "cut them off with a shilling." He appeared to modern ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... butter lying 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. Then there came three Brie cheeses displayed on round platters, and looking ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... woman was fleeing, pursued by a black mounted soldier. She turned around and shot at him with a revolver. The horse-soldier was furious, and struck her down with one stroke of his sabre. I did not have the time to interfere. I dismounted from my horse to take the woman up. She was dead, and almost decapitated. I uttered not one word of reproach to the Turkish soldier, who smiled fiercely, ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... 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 stands of blackjack oak (Quercus marilandica). Other oaks are present, but I have no ...
— Natural History of the Brush Mouse (Peromyscus boylii) in Kansas With Description of a New Subspecies • Charles A. Long
... decade after. Not long since five hundred skulls supposed to have been those of English prisoners were unearthed here; as they were all found massed together, the theory is that the entire number had surrendered and been summarily decapitated, methods of warfare that have apparently found advocates in ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... rock which seemed to be streaming up past me, and me motionless. Then I looked down and saw in the darkness the river and the dead Sepoy rushing up towards me. But in the indistinct light I also saw three Chins, seemingly aghast at the sight of me, and that the Sepoy was decapitated. At that I wanted to ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... her so well that when she was accused of flirting with another man he had the gentleman decapitated and his head preserved in a jar of alcohol as a mantel ornament for Catherine's room. When he died she reigned in his stead, recalling to her side as a favorite the prince who had purchased her when ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... are being pulled, poor reluctant beasts, right to the steps of the shrine, there to be dedicated to the god within. Then they will be dragged, still reluctant, round the temple walls outside, then decapitated. ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... contested until this occasion. The courtiers who had been so well treated by the unhappy man, did everything they could with the judges and the King to obtain the release of the accused. It was all in vain. Fargues was decapitated at once, and all his wealth was given by way of recompense to the Chief- President Lamoignon, who had no scruple thus to enrich himself with the blood ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... summoned from every direction. A number 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 ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... 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
... The christening robe, heavy with embroidery, hung as if for a crime from its temporary gallows. Juliet stepped in, viewing them but an instant, then withdrew, locking the door behind her. Had she seen the seven hanging heads of Bluebeard's decapitated wives, she would not have been more pained. She returned to her room to weep over her poor baby, which she regarded as a martyr. Yes, ill-treated had he been, contemptuously treated; she could have no more pride in him: henceforth he ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... stronger than death! Taken literally, never has an aphorism received a more striking confirmation. Here was a creature decapitated, amputated as far as the middle of the thorax; a corpse which still struggled to give life. It would not relax its hold until the abdomen itself, the seat of the ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... with a constant notification that, after hanging, the criminals would be decapitated: otherwise the threat loses its sting. It seems to be a superstition universal amongst Southern Asiatics, unless possibly amongst the Malay race, that to suffer any dismemberment of the body operates disastrously upon the fate in the unseen world. And hence, no doubt, it has arisen ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... as Concord and Victory, or of the personification of a local providence in the city of Rome itself, could not satisfy the longing of the human soul. As religion decayed the worship of the gods was superseded by the worship of the emperor. Their statues were decapitated and the head of the emperor was placed upon them. On the statue of Olympic Jove appeared the bust of the contemptible Caligula; and this incongruous adaptation represented the change of the popular faith from its former heavenly idealisations to the most grovelling fetish worship of the time. ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... glistening floor; a thin layer of water rushed to and fro. In the bed-places men lay booted, resting on elbows and with open eyes. Hung-up suits of oilskin swung out and in, lively and disquieting like reckless ghosts of decapitated seamen dancing in a tempest. No one spoke and all listened. Outside the night moaned and sobbed to the accompaniment of a continuous loud tremor as of innumerable drums beating far off. Shrieks passed through the air. Tremendous dull blows made ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... sacred books prepared; Made war when angry and made peace when scared. New taxes he inspired; new laws he made; Drowned those who broke them, who observed them, flayed, In short, he ruled so well that all who'd not Been starved, decapitated, hanged or shot Made the whole country with his praises ring, Declaring he was every inch a king; And the High Priest averred 't was very odd If one so competent were not ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... from a clan of Rajputs near Agra, who refused to bend their heads before the king of Delhi. He summoned all the Agharias to appear before him, and fixed a sword across the door at the height of a man's neck. As the Agharias would not bend their heads they were as a natural consequence all decapitated as they passed through the door. Only one escaped, who had bribed a Chamar to go instead of him. He and his village fled from Agra and came to Chhattisgarh, where they founded the Agharia caste. And, in memory of this, when an Agharia makes a libation to his ancestors, he first pours a little ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... 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 ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... billet of wood underneath it; all this time the poor woman, suffering even more from shame than from fear, was kept in suspense; at length, when she was properly adjusted, the executioner touched the spring, the knife fell, and the decapitated head, falling on the platform of the scaffold, bounded two or three times in the air, to the general horror; the executioner then seized it, showed it to the multitude, and wrapping it in black taffetas, placed it with the body on a bier at the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... in convincing intelligent people, who were ready 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, and ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... forced to play the part of the terrible Bluebeard during the day voluntarily enters upon a second term of a hundred years' enchantment, so as to free the wife whom he loves, and who goes off safely with her two sisters and numerous other decapitated beauties, restored to life by the self-immolation of the prince. The White Dove is another curious and pretty fable which has many variations in different provinces—a story in which the King's promise cannot be broken, though it ties him to ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... 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
... following April, set the plants entire, three feet apart in each direction. As they progress in growth, remove all of the side-shoots, and encourage the main sprout, that will push up through the centre of the head. Seeds from the side-shoots, as well as those produced from decapitated stems, are of little value. No cabbage-seed is really reliable that is not obtained from firm and symmetrical heads; and seed thus cultivated for a few successive seasons will produce plants, ninety per cent of which will ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... base winds the river Lahn. Our travellersdrove through the one long street, composed entirely of hotels and lodging-houses. Sick people looked out of the windows, as they passed. Others were walking leisurely up and down, beneath the few decapitated trees, which represent a public promenade; and a boy, with a blue frock and crimson cap, was driving three donkeys down the street. In short, they were in a fashionable watering-place; as yet sprinkled only by a few pattering drops of the summer rain of strangers, ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... blessed and cursed with a mistress, one of the most beautiful women in an age of beauty. He loved her, and she tormented him, until, to set forth his sufferings, he painted la belle dame sans mercy as Judith, holding his own decapitated head by ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... 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 casual improvisations of the moment), he really spoke like a book, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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, ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... 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
... 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 before the King, sword in hand, when his Majesty was half dressed. Meanwhile ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... 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 ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... discovery 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 ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... book inscribed "The 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," ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... place a hundred times, and scarcely noticed the little church, except for the marble high relief over the door, showing the grizzly head of the Baptist in the charger, and for the iron cage close by, in which were formerly exposed the heads of criminals; the decapitated, or, as they call him here, decollated, John the Baptist, being apparently the ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... out 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 ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... the reenforcements that he took to Macan, put in at the kingdom of Sian with one of your Majesty's ships, some artillery, and seventy Spaniards. As I have been informed, endeavor was made to carry matters with so high a hand that the natives, aided by Japanese, decapitated him and most of his men; while about thirty of them are in prison, and most of the property of your Lordship from this place, quite a large amount, is in the power of that king. I shall endeavor with all my power to collect them peaceably; for the enemy, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various
... 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 ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... this fashion, with plenipotentiary 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 this cruelty by using the wretched creature as an appalling example ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... enormous body, writhing in a thousand terrific convolutions, churned the blue waters of the basin into diamond-tinted spray. For full ten minutes the amazed trio stood gazing in breathless astonishment at the amazing twistings and writhings of the decapitated body, and then George, taking advantage of a momentary cessation of movement, dashed into the shallow water, seized the creature with both hands by its quivering tail, and drew it ashore. Then, impaling ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... own ship by stabs with a 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 those ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... by the court of justice are not by any means buried in the graves of their ancestors; but there are two graves appointed for them by the court of justice,—one for the stoned and burnt; the other for the decapitated and strangled." Just as the Prophet had, in the preceding verse, said that the Servant of God would die a violent death like a criminal, so he says here, that they had also fixed for Him a grave in common with executed criminals. And with a rich [Pg ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... supposed to be sacrificial stones, on which victims were extended at full length, face downward. In this position they were easily slain by being decapitated or the neck or head being broken with a club or a stone. That they were utilized for some definite purpose is evident from the fact that the projecting ends of both have been broken off square, the spalls splitting back ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... however, by the words "for the purpose of new scientific discovery and for no other purpose," absolutely prohibits any kind of demonstration. It would debar me from showing the circulation in the web of a frog's foot or from exhibiting the pulsations of the heart in a decapitated frog. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... were around her mother's neck and for one awful moment it looked as if both were to be decapitated by the trunk lid, so violent had been Mrs. Brewster's ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... 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, the Poteet flowers were always more prolific and ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Amadani I arrived: at Barza-Nistun 105 To Dandamusa the fortified city of Ilani son of Zamani I drew near and laid siege to it: my warriors like birds of prey rushed upon them; 106 600 of their warriors I put to the sword and decapitated; 400 I took alive; 107 3,000 captives I brought forth; I took possession of the city for myself: the living soldiers, and heads to the city of Amidi[52] the royal city, I sent; 108 heaps of the heads close by his great gate I piled; the living soldiers ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... almost totally destroyed. She informed me that the good Russian captain had been the first to fall a sacrifice to the attack of the Persians; for almost immediately after the explosion in my room, he had rushed out to see what had happened, when two Persians seized him, one of whom at once decapitated him: this was the head that I saw brandished before me, when first I sallied forth. She then took me to a place of shelter, and put on me ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... said to have 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, near ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... 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
... 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, the ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... 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 tried ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... straight." The proposal sounded tempting, but was a little risky, and after consulting together we decided to let things remain as they were. "Do not blame me then," continued Thelamis, "if you will not accept my offer. But take the two pastilles, and if it ever happens that you are decapitated a second time, make use of them in the way I have shown you, and each will get back his own head." So saying he presented us with the pastilles, and we ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... portal under the Northern tower. Here they paused before statues of various saints and angels that overhang the blackened doorway while Coquenil said something to a professional beggar, who straightway disappeared inside the church. Caesar, meantime, with panting tongue, was eying the decapitated St. Denis, asking himself, one would say, how even a saint could carry his head in ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... out, saying, "Allaho Akbar! I am Gharib, King of Irak. There is no Faith save the Faith of Abraham the Friend!" Now when Barkan heard Gharib's words, he said, "This is he who seduced my cousin from his religion; so, by the virtue of my faith, I will not sit down on my throne till I have decapitated this Gharib and suppressed his breath of life and forced my cousin and his people back to their belief: and whoso baulketh me, him will I destroy." Then he mounted an elephant paper-white as he were a tower plastered ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... itself, and, besides, Split, to whom Jack Cody had loaned it, was doubtless looking all over for it at this very moment. Lying luxuriously flat upon the floor and eating chocolate, Sissy had just got to that part where Jack Harkaway "with one flash of Abu Hadji's ruby-incrusted simitar decapitated the unfortunate Arab, and Dick Lightheart, seizing the bewitching Haidee, had mounted his horse"—when ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... Sangleys in the provinces of this mainland [of Luzon] who had not taken refuge in the Parian in time were decapitated. Those who thus took refuge were confined to the point of Cavite or to the Parian of the city, so that we might keep them within range of our guns, and where they would be of advantage for whatever had to be done for the fortification of both posts and the protection of the shore. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... with their bright clear colours, the desert appears, and shows quite brown by contrast; one sees the great yellow swell of sand and stones above the pictures of these decapitated people. It rises like a colossal wave and stretches out to bathe the foot of the Libyan mountains beyond. Towards the north and west of the solitudes, shapeless ruins of tawny-coloured blocks follow one another in the sands until the dazzling distance ends in ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... declared guilty of the murder of his Roman Catholic daughter, was beggared and banished; Voltaire succeeded, after eight years, in effecting the reversal of the sentence. La Barre was tortured and decapitated for alleged impiety. Voltaire was not strong enough to overpower the French magistracy supported now by the French monarch. He turned to Frederick with a request that he would give shelter to a colony of philosophes, who should through the printing-press ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... beings could be made pets, like Miss Tabitha's snake or toad, Selwyn would have fondled a hangman. He loved the noble art of execution, and was a connoisseur of the execution of the art. In childhood he must have decapitated his rocking-horse, hanged his doll in a miniature gallows, and burnt his baubles at mimic stakes. The man whose calm eye was watched for the quiet sparkle that announced—and only that ever did announce it—the flashing wit within the mind, by a gay crowd of loungers at Arthur's, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... mead of the gods. Indian magicians who drink the blood of the goat sacrificed to the goddess Kali, are believed to be temporarily possessed by her spirit, and thus enabled to prophesy.[56] Malayan exorcists still expel demons while they suck the blood from a decapitated fowl.[57] ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... maintains their credibility nevertheless, and in justification of 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 ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... were to pass to his presence he fixed a sword at the height of a man's neck. The haughty Agharias came to the door, holding their heads high and not seeing the sword, and as a natural consequence they were all decapitated as they passed through. But there was one Agharia who had heard about the fixing of the sword and who thought it better to stay at home, saying that he had some ceremony to perform. When the king heard that there was one Agharia who had not passed through the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... 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 ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... insult offered to high Heaven. But Friar Fiacre, of the Hotel-Dieu, finding himself some time later at the point of death, and feeling disturbed in conscience, revealed the fact that from religious considerations he had himself decapitated the image, "in order to have the Huguenots accused of it, and thus lead to their complete extermination!" Recordon, Protestantisme en Champagne, ou recits extraits d'un MS. de N. Pithou ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... challenged, Omura was obliged to act promptly, especially as Navarette declared that he (Navarette) did not recognize the Emperor of Japan but only the Emperor of Heaven. The two fanatics were seized, conveyed secretly to the island of Takashima, and there decapitated; their coffins being weighted with big stones and sunk in the sea, so as to prevent a repetition of the scenes witnessed at the tomb of the fathers mentioned above. Thereupon, the newly elected superior of the Dominicans at once sent three ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... enterprises carry subconscious mental photographs of the perils with which their callings are invested and they react involuntarily to them. Buddy had heard of drillers decapitated by flying cables, of human bodies caught within those wire loops and cut in twain as if made of lard, for when a wedged tool resumes its downward plunge it straightens those coils above ground in the twinkling ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... sword and drawing his bow, he urged him and drove him within it. Ukeshi the elder being guilty before heaven, and the matter not admitting of excuse, of his own accord trod upon the engine and was crushed to death, His body was then brought out and decapitated, and the blood which flowed from it reached above the ankle. Therefore that place was called Udan no chi-hara. After this Ukeshi the younger prepared a great feast of beef and sake, with which he entertained ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... whatever may be said against his methods, he certainly succeeded. At the end of a few months' campaign, every single brigand, and all their friends and relations, were wiped off the face of the earth—together with a very considerable number of innocent persons. The high roads were lined with decapitated bandits, the town walls decked with their heads; some villages had to be abandoned, on account of the stench; the Crati river was swollen with corpses, and its banks whitened with bones. God alone knows the cruelties which were enacted; Colletta confesses that he "lacks courage to ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... corpse coming to life in its coffin; the First Napoleon in the flames of hell, with a multitude of women shaking at him the bloody severed limbs of their sons and husbands; a child burned alive in its cradle; the head of a decapitated criminal, and the visions that filled its brain,—such are some of the ghastly imaginings of this diseased and uneducated nature. Compare such works as these with Dore's crudest conceptions, and the difference between the inventions of genius and those of a morbid intellect becomes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... again seen rising above the level of the window-sill, and another and another follows, till the three, as if decapitated, heads are ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... into the midst of his assailants he cleft down the two sons of Burke, whose followers immediately turned and fled. Then alighting from his saddle, the wounded chief received the last solemn rites of religion from the hands of Dr. Allen. His body was decapitated by one of his followers, that the noble head might not be subjected to indignity; but the trunk being but hastily buried was soon afterwards discovered, carried to Kilmallock, and there hung up for a target and a show. This tragical occurrence ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... the fluttering drapery of some worshipper to be the decapitated bodies of goats and bullocks lying in their blood, and from which would rise the millions of ever-moving flies which had given them a semblance ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... been provided. They found, however, an old wooden chest, made to contain arrows, lying in one of the apartments of the tower, which they used instead. They first laid the decapitated trunk within it, and then adjusted the dissevered head to its place, as if vainly attempting to repair the irretrievable injury they had done. They hurried the body, thus enshrined, to its burial in a chapel, which ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... 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 the ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus |
