"Skull" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Another figure in the background to the spectator's left—that of a goitred cretin who is handing stones to one of the stoners, has some of the same remarkably living look as is observable in the two already referred to; so also has another man in a green skull-cap, who is holding a small battle-axe and looking over the stoner's shoulders. Two of the stoners are very powerful figures. The man on horseback, in the background, appears to be a portrait probably of a benefactor. In spite of restoration, the work is still exceedingly ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... lay the earth on Willy's breast, His chicken-heart so tender; But build a castle on his head, His skull will prop it under. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... you have come to poison me!" he growled. "All hakims are alike. There was an Egyptian tried it a month ago. Look yonder on the ledge, where his skull hangs. May devils ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... bodyguard swaggers along behind him, the ball and horns on his helmet flashing in the sunlight, his big sword swinging in its sheath as he walks; and a Libyan bowman, with two bright feathers in his leather skull-cap, looks disdainfully at him as he shoulders his way through ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie
... fell, as falls A wild goat from a crag, the hunter's shaft Deep in its heart: so nerveless-flung he fell, And fled away from him the precious life. Wroth for his friend, a stone Aeneas hurled, And Philoctetes' stalwart comrade slew, Toxaechmes; for he shattered his head and crushed Helmet and skull-bones; and his noble heart Was stilled. Loud shouted princely Poeas' son: "Aeneas, thou, forsooth, dost deem thyself A mighty champion, fighting from a tower Whence craven women war with foes! Now if Thou be a man, come forth without the wall In battle-harness, and so learn to ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... to silence. In fact, he repeated after the boy, in English he did not understand, a most blood-curdling oath of secrecy, and made the pirate sign—which, as every one knows, is a skull and crossbones—in ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... balasses." The favourites of James I. wore earrings of emeralds set in gold filigrane. Edward II. gave to Piers Gaveston a suit of red-gold armour studded with jacinths, a collar of gold roses set with turquoise-stones, and a skull-cap parseme with pearls. Henry II. wore jewelled gloves reaching to the elbow, and had a hawk-glove sewn with twelve rubies and fifty-two great orients. The ducal hat of Charles the Rash, the last Duke of Burgundy of his race, was hung with pear-shaped ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... as another. I can ride, and, I think, I can shoot better than George; but then my brother had the head, sir, the head!" says Harry, tapping his own honest skull. "Why, I give you my word, my lord, that he had read almost every book that was ever written; could play both on the fiddle and harpsichord, could compose poetry and sermons most elegant. What can I do? I am only good to ride and play at cards, and drink Burgundy." And the penitent hung down his ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... saw there was no escape, and the time had come when he was going to present to you one of the most popular of all dishes at a New England banquet, tongue garnished with brains. He seems, following the late teachings of Harvard and Yale, to have invited the guests to enter for a sort of skull-race. [Laughter.] Now, I suppose that, in calling first upon those on his right and left, it is a matter of convenience for himself, and he has acted from the same motives that actuated a newly fledged dentist who, when his first patient applied, determined ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... effect; how it comes to pass that at the one end of the chain there is an impression upon a nerve, and at the other there is pain; how at the one end there is the throb of an inch of matter in a man's skull, and at the other end there are thoughts that breathe and words that burn, and that live for ever. That brings us up to the edge of a gulf over which no materialist philosopher has ever been able to cast a bridge. The scalpel ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... be buried, observing that, wretch as she was, she was of royal blood. But the vulture and the jackal had been before him: naught remained of that haughty, revengeful, and heaven-defying woman, save the skull, the feet, and the palms of her hands. Thus, to the very letter, was fulfilled the prediction of a prophet, one of her contemporaries: it was the same individual who had sent an epistle to her son-in-law, the late husband of our heroine, announcing his fate. ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... wish that one day, after winning a great victory over the Ostrogoths, and conquering a province in northern Italy (where he took up his abode, and which bears the name of his race), he bade her fill her father's skull with wine and pledge him by drinking first out of this ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... memoir prefixed by Wm. Harvey, Esq., in which, p. xiii., it is stated that while a vault was being made close to Shakspeare's, when Dr. Davenport was rector, a young man perceiving the tomb of Shakspeare open, introduced himself so far within the vault that he could have brought away the skull, but he was deterred from doing so by the anathema inscribed on ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... lands of Aegypt, traversing Reaches of air and floating fields of foam, At last on all Pandion's folk it swooped; Whereat by troops unto disease and death Were they o'er-given. At first, they'd bear about A skull on fire with heat, and eyeballs twain Red with suffusion of blank glare. Their throats, Black on the inside, sweated oozy blood; And the walled pathway of the voice of man Was clogged with ulcers; and ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... among them he is near them," was Lourenco's certain reply. "He has been seen both by other Blackbeards and by the Mayorunas. I, too, have seen him. He bears on his bones the sign that his mind is out of his skull. His eyes are green and his hair touched with white. Umanuh and his men know ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... throw Antar hurled the lance and it found its mark, but the lion bounded forward and Antar stood unarmed. Then with a mighty wrench he jerked a young tree from the ground and with powerful blows beat down the attack of the lion. He gave a mighty swing and cleft the beast's skull and it fell down and died, and Antar departed for the tent of the king. Then the men marvelled, for none dared follow to see the terrible combat nor did people believe until they ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... not move hand or foot—only, as the blood flowed from his face, he said, "In the name of Christ, and for the defence of the Church, I am ready to die." Tracy struck him again twice on the head: he staggered, and, as he was falling, the fourth stroke, given by Brito, cleft off the top of his skull with such violence, that the sword broke ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the gunner of the Adventure. There had been a quarrel in which Moore accused Kidd of having ruined them all, on which Kidd called him a 'lousy dog'; to which Moore replied in a rage, that if he was a dog it was Kidd who had made him one. At this Kidd hurled a bucket at him and fractured his skull. The jury found him guilty. He was then tried, together with nine of his crew, for the taking of the Quedah Merchant. His line of defence was that it was sailing under a French pass, and therefore a lawful prize, but he evaded ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... Master Constable, thou wilt never more drink ale nor smell beef. Know that once in Palermo there came upon me a great brown bear that had got loose from his ward, and I hit him fair and square between the eyes, and he fell, and when they took him up, his skull it was cracked. Is thy skull ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... pyramidical shape, and is made up of thirty thousand skulls, contributed by the rebellious Servians in the early part (I believe) of this century: I am not at all sure of my date, but I fancy it was in the year 1806 that the first skull was laid. I am ashamed to say that in the darkness of the early morning we unknowingly went by the neighbourhood of this triumph of art, and so basely got off from admiring “the simple grandeur of the architect’s conception,” and “the exquisite ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... many respects, like the human skull, although it closely resembles the skull of the monkey. A sponge may be so held as to remind one of the unfleshed face of the skeleton, and the meat of an English walnut is almost the exact representation of the brain. Plums and black cherries resemble ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... But the deacon's bump of inquisitiveness was counterbalanced by one representing dignity, and he thought that it would be hardly the proper thing for a deacon and a school-teacher to be seen running through the snow with a skull-cap and dressing-gown on; therefore he watched his pupils from the window, but without being able to satisfy his curiosity in ...
— A District Messenger Boy and a Necktie Party • James Otis
... this manner should be skinned, and care should be taken to send with the skin the feet and head, with the brain taken out, or if that cannot be done, the jaws, at least, should be sent. In preparing the head, care should be taken not to damage the skull. The brain can be extracted with care without ...
— Movement of the International Literary Exchanges, between France and North America from January 1845 to May, 1846 • Various
... behold! O wretched man, to God, meek prayers address. Thy lusty strength, thy wit, thy daring bold, All shall lie low with us in charnel cold: Proud king, 'tis thus thy pamper'd corpse shall rot; Thus, in the dust thy purple pomp be roll'd, Mark then, in peeled skull, thy ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 554, Saturday, June 30, 1832 • Various
... from his cabin an' along the deck, not troublin' to cast an eye aloft. Whereby he missed what was happenin'. Whereby he had just come abreast of the mainmast, when—sock at his very feet—there drops a man. 'Twas Eli, that had missed his hold, an' dropped somewhere on the back of his skull. 'Hallo!' says the Cap'n, 'an' where the devil might you come from?' Eli heard it, poor fellow—an' says he, as I lifted him, 'If you please, sir, from Botusfleming, three miles t'other side of Saltash.' ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... came forward to where the invalid lay. He was a gaunt old man with white hair and a pallid face, which looked almost ghastly in contrast to his black velvet skull cap. So far as Mr. Quest could see, he appeared to be almost totally paralysed, with the exception of his head, neck, and left arm, which he could still move a little. His black eyes, however, were full of life and intelligence, and roamed about ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... the following words. Miss Green gives her compliments to Miss Vans, and informs her that her aunt Deming quite misunderstood the matter about the queen's night-Cap.[59] Mrs. Deming thou't that it was a black skull cap linn'd with red that Miss Vans ment which she thou't would not be becoming to Miss Green's light complexion. Miss Green now takes the liberty to send the materials for the Cap Miss Vans was so kind as to say she would make for her, which, when done, she engages to take special care ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... General Castro's house she had paid no attention to the snarling muzzles thrust against her gown. But suddenly a cadaverous creature sprang upon her with a savage yelp and would have caught her by the throat had not a heavy stick cracked its skull. A tall officer in the uniform of the United States navy raised his cap from iron-gray hair and looked at her with blue eyes as ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... They had been wrapped up in paper. Grasping them all, I rolled them up with a pen-knife and pencil-case, and some small coin, and rammed them all down into the two barrels together—a regular charge of langrage. I knew that none of this was likely to go through his skull, and I feared that my gun might burst, but it was my only chance. If it failed—the full horror of my situation flashed across me. How I blamed myself for having engaged in the useless, I might say senseless and cruel ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... unction: 'Ah! M'yes. Leeches and hot fomentations.' This effectually banished sleep. If there were two things in the world that he loathed, they were leeches and hot fomentations, and the School doctor apparently regarded them as a panacea for every kind of bodily ailment, from a fractured skull to a cold in the head. It was this gentleman who had just spoken, but Grey's alarm vanished as he perceived that the words had no personal application to himself. The object of the remark was a fellow-sufferer in the next bed but one. Now Grey ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... bloodshot eyes glaring with the fire of rage and terror, while the woods seemed to tremble with its loud and deep-toned bellowing. Twice in its passage across the open glade it ran, in its blind fury, straight against a tree, almost beating in its skull, and for a moment arresting its progress; but it instantly recovered the shock and burst away again as madly as ever. But no effort that it was capable of making could relieve the poor creature from its deadly burden, ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... Saint Aignan, if he should come, I would split his skull to the teeth. By God! if there were three of them I should not fear them. I should ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... an ambassador of Charles VIII., moved by the repentance of a German lady, whom her husband compelled to drink out of her lover's skull, reconciled husband and ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... to himself, "our good knight has now given us a specimen of what he is; doubtless the curds have softened his skull, and ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... this address, but every gentleman who finds himself excited by the subject, instead of crying 'Hear, hear!' as is the custom with us, darts from the rank and tramples out the life, or crushes the skull, or mashes the face, or scoops out the eyes, or breaks the limbs, or performs a whirlwind of atrocities on the body, of an imaginary enemy. Several gentlemen becoming thus excited at once, and pounding away without the least regard to the orator, that illustrious person ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... that "burnt the topless towers of Ilium" for the smile of Helen, and fired the palaces of Babylon by the hand of Thais, but the beauty which springs up in all times and places, and carries a torch and wears a serpent for a wreath as truly as any of the Eumenides. Paint Beauty with her foot upon a skull and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... lessens the singular, or the feminine gender, the masculine. Nor does the superlative mean, what a certain learned Doctor understands by it—namely, "the greatest or least possible degree." If it did, "the thickest parts of his skull," for example, would imply small room for brains; "the thinnest," protect them ill, if there were any. (6.) It is improper to say, "The simple word becomes [the] comparative by adding r or er; and ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... seeing Kathinka carried off, gathered all his strength and with a mighty blow hurled the monk to the ground. There was a dull crash. The priest's head had struck the pavement with such force that his skull was crushed and a crimson stream of blood gushed from his lips and nostrils, his body quivered, his maimed arm fell heavily at his side. Mikail, the ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... pater meus numismata auri congerere.) "Plunge thy hand in", said the messenger, "and search them down to the very bottom". The King stooped low to plunge his hand into the coins, and while he stooped the messenger lifted high his battle-axe and clove his skull. "Thus", says the pious Gregory, who tells the story, "did the unworthy son fall into the pit which he had digged ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... now," the man said without paying any attention to his words. "He must have a thick skull or that sword-cut would have finished him. Give him some wine and water now, and some soup presently. We must not let him slip through ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... fell like a sledge-hammer on his adversary's skull, and the man collapsed with a broken neck. Moti, well named "the Pearl," seemed to play this sort of game with the skill that a trained polo-pony shows in following the ball. He stopped almost of his own accord, ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... scrutinised my knife, blade and haft, yet found nowhere on it any trace of blood, so that 'twas manifest the fellow had worn some protection—chain-shirts were common enough and many a rogue went with a steel skull to line his hat. So it seemed the fellow lived yet and (black rogue though he was) I was vaguely glad 'twas not my hand had ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... his brothers killed Ymir. They broke his body in pieces and made the world of them. His bones and teeth became mountains and rocks; his hair became leaves for trees and plants; out of his skull was made the sky. ...
— Famous Men of The Middle Ages • John H. Haaren, LL.D. and A. B. Poland, Ph.D.
... calm and gave a tremendous yell of joy, and, advancing, shook Rob warmly by the hand. "Heap shoot!" said he. "I see!" And, taking the bear by the ear, he turned its head over to show the small red hole in the side of the skull. ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... fellow, grasped him by the ears, and flung him back against the wall. Thump! thump! thump!—Jack banged the head of the helpless wretch against the wall till it seemed that Paulding's skull would crack. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... hard-headed persons I mean those beyond the ordinary, those so far gone that a pin-prick through the skull would yield not so much as a drop of ooze; persons whose brain convolutions did they appear in fright at the aperture on the insertion of the pin—like a head at a window when there is a fire on the street—would ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... over-anxious not to commit itself, and refining and diminishing nature as in a drawing-room mirror. This fancy was strengthened in the course of conversation, by his expatiating on the greatness of Racine. I think he had a volume of the French Tragedian in his hand. His skull was sharply cut and fine; with plenty, according to the phrenologists, both of the reflective and amative organs; and his poetry will bear them out. For a lettered solitude and a bridal properly got up, both according to law and luxury, commend us to the lovely Gertrude of Wyoming. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 407, December 24, 1829. • Various
... the yellow flag still flew there, guarded by some sorely wounded soldiers and a couple of guns. Here the last stand was made, and here the gallant captain was hit by a bullet, "which pierced his skull into the brain." The little band of brave men now went to pieces before the rush of pirates. Some of them fell back, still fighting, to the wall, over which they flung themselves "into the sea," dying thus honourably rather than surrender. About thirty of ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... curiosity of a simian is as excessive as the toil of an ant. Each simian will wish to know more than his head can hold, let alone ever deal with; and those whose minds are active will wish to know everything going. It would stretch a god's skull to accomplish such an ambition, yet simians won't like to think it's beyond their powers. Even small tradesmen and clerks, no matter how thrifty, will be eager to buy costly encyclopedias, or books of all knowledge. Almost every simian family, even the dullest, will think it is due to themselves ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... Scrotton, heavily distinguished in the world of literature and politics, had died only the year before. Gregory remembered him as a vindictive and portentous old man presiding at Miss Scrotton's tea-parties in a black silk skull-cap, and one could but admire in Miss Scrotton the reverence and devotion that had not only borne with but gloried in him. If the amplitude of his mantle had not descended upon her one might metaphorically say that the black skull-cap ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... do that," I repeated. Something in my voice, I suppose, must have arrested him, for he stood there, staring at me, with a little knot coming and going on one side of his skull, just in ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... Lamas are above all sorcerers and necromancers, and are very similar to the kam of the Northern Turks, the bo of the Mongols, and lastly to the Shamans. During their operations, they wear a tall pointed black hat, surmounted by the feather of a peacock, or of a cock, and a human skull. Their principal divinities are the White God of Heaven, the Black Goddess of Earth, the Red Tiger and the Dragon; they worship an idol called Kye'-p'ang formed of a mere block of wood covered with garments. Their sacred symbol is the svastika turned ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... at the strewn bones lying amongst the fallen logs. Beyond them, inside the boundary of the stockade lay a skull, a human skull, as clean and whitened as though centuries had passed since it lost contact with the frame ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... swelling at the back of the skull," he said. "But there appears to have been another blow on the forehead. There is a puffiness, and a ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... Minutes passed as he sat thus, too dazed to think. He was conscious of a dull pain in his heart, and his brain felt numb and pinched as though an iron band were being drawn tighter and tighter about his skull. Gradually his mind began to function. The words of Ike Stork recurred to him: "They're floatin'. If anyone kin make 'er through, them two will." Very possibly his wife was alive—but, where? Why had she ridden after this Texan, and why ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... him. Old Balmerino keeps up his spirits to the same pitch of gaiety. In the cell at Westminster he showed Lord Kilmarnock how he must lay his head; bid him not wince, lest the stroke should cut his skull or his shoulders, and advised him to bite his lips. As they were to return, he begged they might have another bottle together, as they should never meet any more till—-, and then pointed to his neck. At getting into the coach, he said to the gaoler, "Take care, or you will break my shins ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... where that beautiful skull is, the one white as the meat of a cocoanut, with a complete set of teeth, which I had over there at the foot of the cross under ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... stared at one another, for they had purposely caused the horse to stand still on the very spot where both the father and son had been found dead. They digged, and deep, deep below the road they found part of the slender bones and skull of a young female, which they deposited decently in the church-yard. The family of the Sandisons is extinct, the Mysterious Bride appears no more on the Eve of St. Lawrence, and the wicked people of the ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... to the sound of anti-aircraft guns firing at aeroplanes which they never bring down. The bullets, falling back from exploding shells, swish to the earth with a sound like burning (p. 305) magnesium wires and split a tile if any is left, or crack a skull, if any is in the way, with the neatest dispatch. It is wise to remain in shelter ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... plains one would not be able to distinguish them from the ordinary Kachari or Rabha. The nose in the Khasi is somewhat depressed, the nostrils being often large and prominent. The forehead is broad and the space between the eyes is often considerable. The skull may be said to be almost brachy-cephalic, the average cephalic index of 77 Khasi subjects, measured by Col. Waddell and Major Hare, I.M.S., being as high as 77.3 and 77.9, respectively. According to these data the Khasis are more brachy-cephalic than ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... show that the beast was closely akin to the elephant, but had a longer and more compressed skull, and wore his tusks in a different manner. Tusks have been found more than nine feet long, and I am told that one discovered some years ago, exceeds ten feet in length. The skull from the Lena mammoth weighed four ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... of our employer's time, but somehow we do hate to squander that thirty-three minutes, which is the exact chronicide involved in despoiling our skull of a ten weeks' garner. If we were to have our hair cut at the end of eight weeks the shearing would take only thirty-one minutes; but we can never bring ourselves to rob our employer of that much time until we reckon he is really losing prestige by our unkempt appearance. ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... arm broken, a shoulder crushed and a fractured skull. He was rushed to a hospital on a chance that his life might be saved after so much effort. The work was not in vain, for a few days ago a letter was received from him, well again at his home in England, saying to the ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... as I told thee, 'tis a custom with him I' th' afternoon to sleep: there thou may'st brain him, Having first seiz'd his books; or with a log Batter his skull, or paunch him with a stake, Or cut his wezand with thy knife. Remember First to possess his books; for without them He's but a sot, as I am, nor hath not One spirit to command: they all do hate him As rootedly as I. Burn but his books; He has brave utensils,—for ...
— The Tempest • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... of this busy world into the quiet regions of rest beyond. And yet I know every bone and every joint in it as well as my own fist. And that old battle-axe looks as if any moment it might be caught up by a mailed hand, and, borne forth by the mighty arm, go crashing through casque, and skull, and brain, invading the Unknown with yet another bewildered ghost. I should like to live in THAT room if I ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... indeed, he must have been a fine young chap, free from blood taint or vicious complication, whose flesh had healed like an infant's. It should be recorded that it was at this juncture that Mrs. Forsyth first learnt that a SILVER PLATE let into the artful stranger's skull was an adjunct of the healing process! Convinced that this infamous extravagance was part and parcel of the conspiracy, and was only the beginning of other assimilations of the Forsyths' metallic substance; that the plate was probably polished and burnished with a fulsome inscription ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... Signior, all a foote, euery one hauing his harquebush, who be his gard, all clothed in violet silke, and apparelled vpon their heads with a strange forme, called Cuocullucia, fashioned in this sort: the entering in of the forehead is like a skull made of white veluet, and hath a traine hanging downe behind, in manner of a French hoode, of the same, colour, and vpon the forepart of the said skull, iust in the middes of his forehead there is standing bolt vpright like a trunke of a foote long of siluer, garnished most richly ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... as a jester, you'll need To consider each person's auricular: What is all right for B would quite scandalise C (For C is so very particular); And D may be dull, and E's very thick skull Is as empty of brains as a ladle; While F is F sharp, and will cry with a carp, That he's known your best joke from his cradle! When your humour they flout, You can't let yourself go; And it DOES put you out When a person says, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... life, I would not have harmed one hair of her viperish head, as flat on top as if the stone of the Indian had been bound upon its crown from babyhood, yet full of brains to bursting around the base of the skull. ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... daughter was saved by the timely arrival of a Mexican employee. The murderer, only known as Jesus, was captured the following day by a posse of settlers and, after full determination of guilt, was hanged to a tree. The murderer's skull now is in possession of Dr. Ezra Rich of ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... (which are applied to still other places) signify HEALTH-WELL, or even HOLY-WELL,—these two words, HEALTHY and HOLY (what is very remarkable), being the same in old Teutonic speech.] with its old Monastery; where the bones of our Hohenzollern Forefathers rest, and Albert Achilles's "skull, with no sutures visible." On the gloomy Church-walls their memorials are still legible: as for the Monastery itself, Margraf George, tour memorable Reformation friend, abolished that,—purged the ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... suffering, their doctors bound up his wounds and gave him water to quench his raging thirst, and left him for his own comrades to carry away and nurse—that, instead of gouging his eyes out with a bayonet's end or bashing in his skull with the butt of a gun! Strange people! They never could become good slaves of Kultur; so the wounded Germans whose agonies they had assuaged, rose up on their ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin
... the traces of the encounter had not disappeared. As we followed the route leading to the field, I turned from the beaten track and rode among the trees. Ascending a slight acclivity, I found my horse half-stumbling over some object between his feet. Looking down, I discovered a human skull, partly covered by the luxuriant grass. At a little distance lay the dismembered skeleton to which the skull evidently belonged. It was doubtless that of some soldier who had crawled there while wounded, and sunk exhausted at the foot of a tree. The bits of clothing covering the ground showed ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... chair made of his mistress's bones, drank out of her skull, and was lighted by a candle made of the substance ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... first time I had used a gun in many years, and was the only time on the trip. I felt rather guilty, but the carcass was a godsend to two old Indians who were sickening on a long diet of salt pork, and that Lynx furnished them tender meat for three days afterward; while its skin and skull went ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... of that enterprise, for which your oppressed country calls with the voice of a parent, entreating her children for aid—or against that noble revenge which your father's blood demands from his dishonoured grave. His skull is yet standing over the Rikargate, [The northern gate of Carlisle was long garnished with the heads of the Scottish rebels executed in 1746.] and even its bleak and mouldered jaws command you to be a man. I ask you, in the name of God and of your country, will you draw your sword and go with me ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... We had entered the desert by noon; the warm, red sands fell away from the wheels with soft, hissing sounds. Occasionally a little horned toad sped panting along before us, suddenly darting aside to watch with bright, cunning eyes as we passed. Some one had placed a buffalo's skull beside a big bunch of sage and on the sage a splendid pair of elk's antlers. We saw many such scattered over the sands, grim reminders of ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... of dis matter Josh?" demanded Simon, whose skull having the well-known density of his race, did not let internal ideas out, or external ideas in as readily as most men's. "Our young mate was at de light-house beyond all controwersy; and how can he be den on dat rock over ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... water in his hand, and the next moment would find him crushed to earth, blinded and stunned. Something tugged at his sword. He opened his eyes, and saw the huge carcass bend, reel, roll slowly over to one side dead, tearing out of his hand the sword, which was firmly fixed into the skull. ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... his hair line to the back of his skull, lifting the soft cap partly from his head. Then ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... "The skull and brain belonged to a boy who was born on the 4th of October, 1869, the last of four children. Paul was scrofulous from his youth. He did not get his teeth until the end of his second year, and they were quite brown in color ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... stand beating in her skull with a hatchet or something, wade in warm blood, break open the lock and rob and tremble, blood flowing all around, and hide myself, with the hatchet? O God! is this indeed possible, and must it be?" He trembled like a ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... and loves the air, And splits a skull to win my praise; But up the nobly marching days She ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... perpetually, and also of his knights. First in the Abbey of Westminster at Saint Edward's shrine remaineth the print of his seal in red wax closed in beryl, in which is written 'Patricius Arthurus, Britanniae Galliae Germaniae Daciae Imperator.' Item, in the castle of Dover ye may see Gawain's skull and Caradoc's mantle; at Winchester the round table; in other places Lancelot's sword, and many other things. Then all these things considered, there can no man reasonably gainsay but here was a king of this land named Arthur; for in all places, Christian ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... me—he struck me first. The bruise is here," resumed Will, in the same eager attempt at self justification. "Then I hit him on the head with a hammer and his skull gave way. I didn't hit hard. I swear it was a little blow; but he's dead. I left him stone dead in ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... seemed to have impressed him most was my remarkable agility, and time and again he described the wondrous way in which I had leaped completely over an antagonist, cleaving his skull wide open with my long-sword as ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to the head of the stairs and held up the lamp for him to see. The light fell upon the white locks thinly straggling from beneath his velvet skull-cap, and he looked like some mediaeval scholar of those who lived and died for learning in Florence when letters were a passion there almost as strong ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... Sylvia should see no change in him; he was trying to persuade himself that there was no change in him. Yet at every tenderly inquiring glance of hers he felt that the blood must start forth on his forehead, that body and skull must burst from the tumult going ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... hole in the roof. The beds are merely open frames filled with feathers or down, over which they throw their blankets, and cover themselves with a counterpane of divers colors. Their seats are, in general, the bones of a whale or a horse's skull. But much is said and done in these rude huts which ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... I'm consarned, he knows. I spoke my mind plain enough to pound through anybody's skull, ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... in him. His lips are not thicker than the lips of many a roast-beef-loving John Bull. His nose is not flat, and his heels do not protrude unnecessarily. True, his hair is woolly, but that is scarcely a blemish. It might almost be regarded as the crisp and curly hair that surrounds a manly skull. His skin is black—no doubt about that, but then it is intensely black and glossy, suggestive of black satin, and having no savour of that dirtiness which is inseparably connected with whitey-brown. Tribes in Africa differ materially in many respects, physically ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... exists in Madagascar, and some of the Eastern islands, to which the name of Maki has been given, and which, although differing in the formation of the skull and teeth, must, from having four hands, be placed among the Quadrumana. They are nocturnal in their habits, very gentle and confiding, with apparently one exception, which is called the Vari. M. Frederic Cuvier has told us, that two of these being shut up in a cage together, one killed and eat ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... at the shingle and moist sand, scattering it behind her, and burying her nose deep down. Then a strange, grim object was unearthed. In the midst of the stones, Hercus, to his horror, saw lying there a ghastly human skull, with the great cavities where the eyes had been, staring at him. Hesitating at the sight of this frightful spectacle, he at last mustered courage to take the thing in his hand. He was in the act of examining it, ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... accusing scowl, no light sneer could help melting away before their glance. Joshua Rann gave a long cough, as if he were clearing his throat in order to come to a new understanding with himself; Chad Cranage lifted up his leather skull-cap and scratched his head; and Wiry Ben wondered how Seth had the pluck to think of ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... Sanderson to try bone, enamel, and dentine, in artificial gastric juice, and he found that they were after a considerable time completely dissolved. Dr. Klein examined some of the small lamellae, into which part of the skull of a cat became broken up after about a week's immersion in the fluid, and he found that towards the edges the "matrix appeared rarefied, thus producing the appearance as if the canaliculi of the bone-corpuscles had become larger. Otherwise the ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... pessimist enlarges on the power of melancholy that lie may justify despair. The poet touches the pathetic string that he may flutter the heart. Fiction dramatizes the tragic sentiment for the sake of literary effect. Cultured wickedness drinks wine out of a skull, that by sharp contrast it may heighten its sensuous delight; whilst estheticism dallies with the sad experiences of life to the end of intellectual pleasure, as in ornamental gardening, dead leaves are left on ferns and palms in the service of the picturesque. But ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... 'mid thy towers, Myself a nursling, Granta, of thy lap; My brow seems tightening with the Doctor's cap, And I walk gowned; feel unusual powers. Strange forms of logic clothe my admiring speech, Old Ramus' ghost is busy at my brain; And my skull teems with notions infinite. Be still, ye reeds of Camus, while I teach Truths, which transcend the searching Schoolmen's vein, And half had ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... died by violence. His dress and person denoted that of a passenger rather than that of a seaman, and he had evidently been dead but a very few hours, probably not twelve. The cut of a sabre had cleft his skull. Agreeing not to acquaint the ladies with this horrible discovery, the body was hastily covered with the sand, the pockets of the dead man having been first examined; for, contrary to usage, his person had not been stripped. A letter ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... would have kissed my hands," said Jim savagely, "and, next moment, he starts foaming and whispering in my face, 'If I had the time I would like to crack your skull for you.' I pushed him away. Suddenly he caught hold of me round the neck. Damn him! I hit him. I hit out without looking. 'Won't you save your own life—you infernal coward?' he sobs. Coward! He called me an infernal coward! Ha! ha! ha! ha! He called ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... with a great bleat summoned mine to battle. It seemed to me that heaven was raining thunderbolts, so loud was the noise of their charging; and looking out of my dreams I saw the two rams backing away from each other, making ready for another onset. My ram's skull was the softer, he being a youngling, it had been already shaken in several charges, and it was broken in this last one, a terrible one it was, I can still hear them, they are still at it in my mind—the ewes of both flocks gathered ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... presents in Acilisena (Strabo, loc. cit.) and the communistic theory does not seem to account for the details of the custom prevailing in the temple of Thebes. There the horror of blood clearly appears. On the discovery of a skull (having served at a rite of consecration) in the temple of the Janiculum, see the article cited above, "Dea ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... crib, and little Frances lay smiling at the friendly universe, with her wet mouth wide open and her blue eyes, so like George's, sparkling with laughter. The down on her head, as fine and soft as spun silk, made tiny rings over her pink skull, which was as clear and delicate as an eggshell; and these golden rings filled Gabriella with a tenderness so poignant that it brought tears to her eyes. Whatever her mother may have thought about the world, it was perfectly obvious that Frances Evelyn considered ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... came to meet with Pringle of Haining; but, alas! it is two nights since this poor young man, driving in from his own lake, where he had been fishing, an ill-broken horse ran away with him, and, at his own stable-door, overturned the vehicle and fractured poor Pringle's skull; he died yesterday morning. A sad business; so young a man, the proprietor of a good estate, and a well-disposed youth. His politics were, I think, mistaken, being the reverse of his father's; but that is nothing at such ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... which must have proved fatal; at this fearful juncture, a noble-hearted tar, who had been so badly wounded as to lose the use of his hands, seeing no other means of saving his commander, rushed between him and the uplifted sabre, and received the blow on his own head, which fractured his skull. We love to pause and honor great actions in humble life, because they speak well for human nature. Men of rank and station in society, often do gallant deeds, in a manner from necessity. Their conspicuous station obliges them to do so, or their eagerness for ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... a spring for the head of the animal Jack bestrode. It was no time for half measures. The heavy quirt, with its loaded handle, hung from the horn of the saddle. With a quick movement, Jack secured it, and brought the loaded end down on the fellow's skull. He fell like a ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... home, while the sea beyond was only paper painted blue. All the same, though, and in spite of his holding one end of the gun, Chips was there, wearing a scarlet sash and waving a black flag upon which was a grinning skull and cross-bones. ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... treacherous opportunity of throwing it at Conor, while he was displaying himself, according to the custom of the times, to the ladies of an opposing army, who had followed their lords to the scene of action. The ball lodged in the king's skull, and his physicians declared that an attempt to extract it would prove fatal. Conor was carried home; he soon recovered, but he was strictly forbidden to use any violent exercise, and required to avoid all excitement ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... shortening the disgusting time Spent lying in a gutter. Against throwing oneself off a bridge. Against hitting friends in the mouth. Against suddenly, while dogs bark, Tearing the clothes off a well-fed body. Against hurling into any old beloved woman's Thighs one's dark skull. ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... took off his helmet to cool his head, and a droll picture he made. His head was as round as an apple, and eke as smooth in spots. A fringe of close curling black hair grew round the base of his skull, but his crown was bare and shiny as an egg. His cheeks also were smooth and red and shiny; and his little gray eyes danced about with the funniest air imaginable. You would not have blamed Robin Hood for wanting ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... of dried salmon had been devoured, and perhaps five pounds of flour remained to tide them over two hundred miles of wilderness. Ruth returned to her husband, while Malemute Kid cut up the warm body of one of the dogs, the skull of which had been crushed by the ax. Every portion was carefully put away, save the hide and offal, which were cast to his fellows of ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... had been called in to see Mr. Axworthy, and arrived at seven o'clock A. M. Found him dead, from a fracture of the skull over the left temple, he should imagine, from a blow from a heavy blunt instrument, such as the stock of a gun. Death must have been instantaneous, and had probably taken place seven or eight hours before he was called in. The marks upon the rifle before ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... itself upon men of a very different stamp—upon the unworldly Emerson, and upon the captious Carlyle, whose respect was not willingly accorded to any contemporary, much less to a representative of American democracy. Webster's looks and manner were characteristic. His form was massive; his skull and jaw solid, the under-lip projecting, and the mouth firmly and grimly shut; his complexion was swarthy, and his black, deep-set eyes, under shaggy brows, glowed with a smoldering fire. He was rather ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... people put up the head of an ass, or some portion of the bones of that animal. The same superstition prevails in all the oases that stud the north of Africa, from Egypt to the Atlantic, but the people are unwilling to explain what especial virtue there exists in an ass's skull. We go sometimes to shoot doves in the gardens; but these birds are very shy, and after the first shot fly from tree to tree and keep out of range. So we stroll about making observations, to console ourselves for the loss of sport. We noticed several ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... inherited the shell of some able old ancestor and not a bit of the skull furniture. Nature often plays tricks like that. But I could forgive him for being dull if he weren't such a ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... pure romance of his reckless youth, the face of one so estranged, so serenely aloft from all memories of youth, of romance, of passion, smote him in the midst of the new hopes of the new career, as the look on the skull of the woman he had so loved and so mourned, when disburied from her grave, smote the brilliant noble who became the stern reformer of La Trappe. And while thus gloomily meditating, the letter of the poor Louise Duval was forgotten. She ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... after Norris's death, Mrs. Barry was acting the character of "Calista." In the last act, where "Calista" lays her hand upon a skull, she [Mrs. Barry] was suddenly seized with a shuddering, and fainted. Next day she asked whence the skull had been obtained, and was told it was "the skull of Mr. Norris, an actor." This Norris was her former husband, and so great was the shock ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... sensations more unpleasant than this application. The tar descended in warm and sluggish streams, trickling over my forehead, dropping from my eyelids, rolling over my cheeks, sealing my mouth, gluing my ears to my skull, identifying itself with my hair, pursuing the path indicated by my spine beneath my shirt,—in short, enveloping me with a close-fitting armor of a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... Tuileries, which faced the courtyard, when, on May 28, 1795, the populace surged in waves against its sturdy barrier. The Deputy Feraud met them at the steps. "You may enter only over my dead body," he said. No reply was made but to crack his skull, behead the trunk and carry the head aloft on a pike to the very Tribune where ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... speak of; indeed, the visage might have been taken for that of a sun-dried corpse had it not been for a pair of large black eyes, still full of fire and intelligence, which gleamed and played under the snow-white eyebrows, and the projecting parchment-coloured skull, like jewels in a charnel-house. As for the head itself, it was perfectly bare, and yellow in hue, while its wrinkled scalp moved and contracted like the ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... there was a short bench and a three-legged stool; on the hearth the remains of a faggot fire were smouldering; before a shrine, which was lighted by a single candle, knelt an aged man, and on an old wooden box at his side lay an open book and a human skull. The man was of large, bony frame; his hair and whiskers were very long and snowy white; he was clothed in a robe of sheepskins which reached from his neck to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... something inside my mind, a part of my brain, a province of my proper being, had thrown off allegiance and set up for itself, or perhaps for the somebody else who did the paddling. I had dwindled into quite a little thing in a corner of myself. I was isolated in my own skull. Thoughts presented themselves unbidden; they were not my thoughts, they were plainly some one else's; and I considered them like a part of the landscape. I take it, in short, that I was about as near Nirvana as would be convenient ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... father flew upon me with both his fists, and not thinking that sufficient, stepped hastily to the place where his cane stood, and catching that up, laid on me, I thought, with all his strength. And I, being bareheaded, thought his blows must needs have broken my skull had I not laid mine arm over ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... man acts as though he had been struck on the head," was the physician's verdict. "No bones of the skull are broken. The odor of liquor is on his coat, but I can't seem to detect ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies • Victor G. Durham
... me! Or if still There be a something sentient in the body, Through all corruption's stages, till our frames Rot, rot, and seem no more,—and thus the soul Is cag'd in bones through which the north wind rattles, Or haunts the black skull wash'd up by the waves Upon the moaning shore—poor weeping skull, From whose deep-blotted, eyeless socket-holes The dank green seaweed drips its briny tear— If it be so, that round the festering grave, Where yet some earth-brown, human ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... his giant form; and the gods, seeing that it was a mountain-giant with whom they had to deal, feeling that their oath did not bind them, called on Thor. He at once ran to them, and paid the builder his fee with a blow of his hammer which shattered his skull to pieces and threw him down headlong ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... herself had unlocked the desk and peered timidly within. She remembered now the faultless order of the few dry, uninteresting papers, an ink well made of the skull of a tiny monkey, a bamboo pen, a half-finished manuscript of wild adventure in some out-of-the-world spot in the South Pacific. There had been nothing more. But the desk was one of intricate ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... the dead body of Timat he smashed her skull with his club and scattered her blood to the north wind, and as a reward for his destruction of their terrible foe, he received gifts and presents from the gods ...
— The Babylonian Legends of the Creation • British Museum
... she could be rounded to; but the man was a strong swimmer, and struck out bravely. While we were watching the poor fellow an immense albatross came sweeping down towards him. Several of us cried out that he would be killed. Those birds with their strong bills can drill a hole in a man's skull in a moment. We shouted at the top of our voices, but the man could not hear us. Fortunately he saw the bird coming, and whipping off his shoe he held it in his hand to defend himself. Down swooped the albatross, when ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... festoon of flowers and fruit, emulating nature in all save colour; and on the work-table itself, growing under the master's hand, was a long wreath, entirely composed of leaves and seed-vessels in their quaint and beauteous forms—the heart-shaped shepherd's purse, the mask-like skull-cap, and the crowned urn of the henbane. The starred cap of the poppy was actually being shaped under the tool, copied from a green capsule, surmounted with purple velvety rays, which, together with its rough and wavy leaf, was held in the hand of a young maiden who knelt by ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was a mass of blackened ruins—the scathed walls of the barrack, in which the wretched garrison had been so barbarously done to death: the other a human head impaled upon a spike on the gable of the building. That blanched skull had rested on the shoulders of our traitor host, and we, doomed to "midnight murder," were mercifully destined to witness a repulsive, but just evidence, that Providence interposes often between the villain ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... weakest points which you present. However, I took particular care that my man did not get home; but, on the other hand, I fear that I did not do him much harm either. He bored in with his head down; and I, like a fool, broke my knuckles over the top of his impenetrable skull. Of course, theoretically I should either have stepped back and tried an undercut, or else taken him into chancery; but I must confess to feeling flurried and rattled from the blow I had had, as well as from the suddenness of the whole ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... shut up?" Johnny swung his gun, a heavy, forty-four caliber Colt, of the type beloved of the West. Its barrel came down fairly on the top of Cliff's leathern helmet and all but cracked his skull. Cliff shut up suddenly and completely, sliding limply down ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... grow faint and had to ask for a drink of water; and when they tied the wrapper round her throat it is related that she would have immediately torn it asunder if her courage had not failed her. And when at the first movement of the shears she felt the cold iron against her skull, I tell you it seemed to her as if they were piercing her heart with a bright dagger. It is possible that she did not keep her head still for a moment while this tonsuring was taking place; she moved it in spite of herself, now to one side, now to another, to flee from the clipping scissors, ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various
... warriors. Two powerful Senecas seized one of the bound prisoners, dragged him to his feet, and held him up before her. She uttered a shout, whirled the great tomahawk about her head, its blade glittering in the moonlight, and struck with all her might. The skull of the prisoner was cleft to the chin, and without a cry he fell at the feet of the woman who had killed him. Paul uttered a shout of horror, but it was lost in the joyful yells of the Iroquois, who, at the command of the woman, offered a second victim. Again the tomahawk descended, and again ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... child, who to make matters worse was much neglected, his mother being wholly taken up with her lover, and his father with art. He grew up puny, serious like a little man; at five years his head had grown quite out of proportion to his height, but as his skull increased in size his intelligence diminished. His head alone continued to grow, verging on cretinism, until, in 1869, the unfortunate child died of some ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... feelings almost overpowered me. I gasped for breath, and seizing my club, endeavoured to spring to my feet; but Jack's powerful arm pinned me to the earth. Next moment one of the savages raised his club, and fractured the wretched creature's skull. He must have died instantly; and, strange though it may seem, I confess to a feeling of relief when the deed was done, because I now knew that the poor savage could not be burned alive. Scarcely had his limbs ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... province called Zambales, they wear the head shaved from the middle forward. On the skull they have a huge lock of loose hair. [53] The women throughout this island wear small jackets [sayuelos] with sleeves of the same kinds of cloth and of all colors, called varos. [54] They wear ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... could be distinguished a few feet beyond the torch, when, carefully aimed between them, a hollow, express bullet crashed through the monster's skull, killing ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... of a tree lay near. By climbing on it we got a view of the spot where the gorilla had fallen; but, as we looked towards it, scarcely a particle of the monster could be seen. The skin was there and the huge bones and monstrous skull, but nearly all the flesh had been eaten away by myriads of ants, which swarmed about it. So engaged were they in their work of destruction, that ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... said, after contemplating it for some minutes, "this is a strange scarabaeus, I must confess: new to me: never saw anything like it before—unless it was a skull, or a death's-head—which, it more nearly resembles than, anything else that ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... Affgh[a]n female is worn a small skull cap, keeping in place the hair in front, which is parted, laid flat, and stiffened with gum, while the rest hangs in ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem |
