"Head off" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little an' t' other so much. That Mr. 'Super' Metcalf now, as fine a man as treads shoe leather, never a doubt I doubt, yet himself judgin' it fair, since the man Wingate wanted the beast, the man Wingate should have him. Anyway, there he stands, brayin' his head off in the 'Supe's' stable, in trust for the old man'll never bestride him. Nobody rides him at all, Miss Amy says; yet here's me gineral heart-broke for him; an' the cripple goin' afoot; an' all them little Metcalfs envyin' an' covetin'; an' all because a man who's word is law said he'd ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... and I done it so natural, they were well satisfied; and I being such a big man and heavy to shift, they give up the notion of slinging me into the Irrawaddy and went off still quarrelling. I stayed on without a move out of me for a full hour; then I got up yawning my head off, and walked away with the ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... the first hour collected two hundred cars and turned them over to the Guards in Bird Cage Walk. Cody and Grahame-White and eight of his air men left Hendon an hour ago to reconnoitre the south coast. Admiral Beatty has started with the Channel Squadron to head off the German convoy in the North Sea, and the torpedo destroyers have been sent to lie outside of Heligoland. We'll get that back by daylight. And on land every one of the three services is under arms. On this coast alone before sunrise we'll have one hundred thousand men, and from Colchester ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... and tie his arms. If I were going to be bound I should like for the deed to be done with just such a beautiful piece of cloth. Meanwhile, if you cry out, my friend, I shall have to blow the top of your head off with this pistol. It's not likely that they would hear your cry, but they might hear my ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... brigadier, sinking down on the bundle. Then he turned and glared at me savagely. "Idiot!" he cried, labouring for his breath. "Espece d'imbecile. Ah! Nom d'un petit bonhomme. You were on the end. Why did you not head off ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... executions, I could not help thinking of a certain cicerone at Rome, who, albeit that he spoke very good French and Italian, always broke out in English when he saw a picture of a martyrdom of any kind soever; 'That one very good man, cut his head off.' The man had but one idea of death, and the same may be said of these primitive people, who look upon decapitation as the easiest termination to ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... do you know what 'ud happen to you? The people 'ud cut your head off at the end of ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... drinking, cursing, and violence, was leaning against a tree looking on, when he was jerked to the ground, slam bang. He swore he would not dance, and he was jerked about until it was a wonder he was not killed. At last he had to dance." "Sometimes they would be jerked about like a cock with his head off, all about the ground." The dancing I judge to have been an involuntary convulsive movement, which was the close of the general spasm. Of course, the people believed the whole was a "manifestation of the power of God." There is no reason to doubt ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... hated a traitor beyond all men, so he had Kark led away, and ordered one of his berserks to smite the head off him, thus fulfilling the murdered earl's prophecy, for a ring not of gold but of blood was put about ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... almost took Jason's head off. A blast of hatred that drove through the amplifier and into his skull. He tore off the phones, and clutched his skull between his hands. Through watering eyes he saw the black cloud of flying beasts hurtle ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... bleachers mocking their own team. Arthurs used the two pitchers he had been trying hard to develop, and when they did locate the plate they were hit hard. Ken played or essayed to play right field for a while, but he ran around like a chicken with its head off, as a Travers player expressed it, and then Arthurs told him that he had better grace the bench the rest of the game. Ashamed as Ken was to be put out, he was yet more ashamed to feel that he was glad ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... trouble 'bout my neuralgy," she returned with resigned exasperation as she stood up to pour the coffee out of the large tin boiler. "It's mine, an' I've borne worse things, I reckon, which ain't sayin' that 'tain't near to takin' my head off." ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... When he had been diligently instructed in the sword exercise, he asked the sergeant what was the use of it all. 'While I was going through that,' says he, 'some bloody-minded Russian 'd be choppin' me head off.' It was his idea that a soldier was supposed to go through the sword exercise in face of the enemy; and the notion that it was simply intended to give dexterity in the use of the weapon never occurred ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... rest, it's a long wait before you can expect an answer to a letter going abroad, even if the German submarines allow it to reach there. And if I don't find out the truth now, just think of the days and weeks I'll be worrying my head off about that letter! Oh! it makes me just sick to even think of it. I could kick myself ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... is an Englishman here, with his sister, and they seem to be rather nice people. He is remarkably handsome, but excessively affected and patronising, especially to us Americans; and I hope to have a chance of biting his head off before long. The sister is very pretty, and, apparently, very nice; but, in costume, she is Britannia incarnate. There is a very pleasant little Frenchman—when they are nice they are charming—and a German doctor, a big blonde man, ...
— A Bundle of Letters • Henry James
... know as you forgot, but I know you mighty near sneezed your head off. You'll be the death of me some day, Ira, blowin' up that way. I wonder I didn't jump clean through the bottom of that feed box when I was just reaching down to get ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... This was a matter of little moment, however, for by aiming a little lower he knew that he must hit the body. But Dick had driven the nail too often to aim at its body; he aimed at the bird's eye, and cut its head off. ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... drink, Steenie," said the figure; "for we do little else here; and it's ill speaking between a fou man and a fasting." Now these were the very words that the bloody Earl of Douglas said to keep the king's messenger in hand while he cut the head off MacLellan of Bombie, at the Threave Castle; and put Steenie mair and mair on his guard. So he spoke up like a man, and said he came neither to eat nor drink, nor make minstrelsy; but simply for his ain—to ken what was come o' the money he had paid, and to get a discharge for it; and he ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... they fell in with was the Lizard, being the most southerly point of Cornwall, which they mistook for the Ram-head off Plymouth; and as the night was at hand, they tacked out to sea, laying their account to make an attempt upon our ships in Plymouth next morning. In the mean time, while thus deceived in the land, they were discovered by captain Fleming, a pirate or freebooter who had been roving at sea, and who knowing ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... westward, but in his uncertainty as to the exact whereabouts of the Austrians, he divided his force when near the village of Marengo (June 14) and sent a contingent under Desaix southward to head off the enemy in that direction. In the meantime the whole Austrian army approached from Alessandria and the engagement began. The Austrians at first repulsed the French, and Bonaparte saw all his great plans in jeopardy as he vainly besought ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... writes in the letter before me, "that uniformity of pace leads inevitably to languor. You should deliver a pistol-shot or two. Remember Philippa is a fiery girl; she can snap. If only for variety, she should snap James' head off when she says, 'Do I speak as if ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... Minotaur made a run at Theseus, grazed his left side with his horn, and flung him down; and thinking that he had stabbed him to the heart, he cut a great caper in the air, opened his bull mouth from ear to ear, and prepared to snap his head off. But Theseus by this time had leaped up, and caught the monster off his guard. Fetching a sword stroke at him with all his force, he hit him fair upon the neck, and made his bull head skip six yards from his human body, which fell down flat ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... down tightly," he explained. "That pasture fence is no good at all, and I never trusted to it. I pegged Blossom down with a good long rope, and Daisy, too; and Daisy is gone while Blossom is still eating her head off." ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... "What's a little rain! A little soft, wet rain will do her good. And Long John seems to have been eating his fat head off; he played no end of jinks coming along just now. I'll take him round to the stables—I want to see the puppies. Hop in, Moll. We'll bring you back ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... Widow Capet,—she was a great deal more like a queen then than when she was so gay and had everything grand. I like her best then. Those howling mobs of people did not frighten her. She was stronger than they were even when they cut her head off." ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Wight, and the end of our passage in the Hudson. A sloop of war was pointing her head in towards this bluff, and all the vessels in sight now began to take new forms, varying and increasing the picturesque character of the view. We soon got a light air ourselves, and succeeded in laying the ship's head off shore, towards which we had been gradually drifting nearer than was desirable. The wind came fresh and fair about ten, when we directed our course towards the distant bluff. Everything was again in motion. The cliffs behind us gradually sunk, as those ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... nothing; and Rome, the admirable and unlovely, that had suffered the Caudine Forks, and then conquered Samnium and beheaded that noble generous Samnite Gaius Pontius, conquered in turn the conqueror at Cannae, and did for his reputation what she had done with the Samnite hero's person: chopped its head off, and dubbed him in perfect sincerity 'perfidus Hannibal.' Over that corpse she stood, at the end of the third century B.C., mistress of Italy and the Italian islands; with proud Carthage at her feet; and the old cultured East, that had known of her existence ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... but two fine cows, one fine horse, a great rooster, and twenty hens; turkeys, geese, and ducks; all lowing and neighing, and crowing, and cackling, and gobbling, and hissing, and quacking, enough to take your head off; but Mark and his mother and the fairy seemed to like it, for they clapped their hands ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... when they cracked the head off the last bottle, that the company should dine together at the Cafe Royal or Romano's, so they drove first to Drake's chambers to brush the dust off and to wash and rest. Glory was the first to be ready, and while waiting for the others she sat at the organ ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... want a hair-cut.' At first he refused ... said 'The Master' would bite his head off ... but then ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... and sure enough, Inger had got it over—another boy—and was lying down. That Inger! Only that very morning she had tried to get him to go down to the village again: "'Tis time the horse had something to do," says she. "Eating his head off all day." ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... heard much of them, and it is likely that he practised on a nettle at taking the head off Goll, and that he hunted a sheep from cover in the implacable manner he intended later on ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... age of a Hana, or of a Zaurura, or of a Pairista-khshudra. And when he has grown to the age of a Hana, or of a Zaurura, or of a Pairista-khshudra, then the worshippers of Mazda shall order a man strong, vigorous, and skilful, to cut the head off his neck, in his enclosure on the top of the mountain: and they shall deliver his corpse unto the greediest of the corpse-eating creatures made by the beneficent Spirit, unto the vultures, with ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... this time that both the OROHENA and the Hira, running in close to the shore, began firing guns and signalling frantically. The three men stepped outside in time to see the two schooners go hastily about and head off shore, dropping mainsails and flying jibs on the run in the teeth of the squall that heeled them far over on the whitened water. Then the rain ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... the feast and flow," said Mr Pitskiver; while Mr Whalley nearly shook his head off his shoulders on to the table-cloth. The young ladies looked slyly at Mr ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... he at last, "I must send the ladies to have a look at you now, I suppose. I wouldn't let them talk my head off on the first day, if ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... boys to come and visit him in turn, as one whom they were soon to lose. More than one boy kept his eye on him during his public devotions, possessed by the same feeling the man had who followed Van Amburgh about with the expectation, let us not say the hope, of seeing the lion bite his head off sooner or later. ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... no wolves with wool. An' ef he a'n't a woolly wolf they's no snakes in Jarsey, as little Ridin' Hood said when her granny tried to bite her head off. I'm dead sot in favor of charity, and mean to gin her my vote at every election, but I a'n't a-goin' to have her put a blind-bridle on to me. And when a man comes to Clark township a-wearing straps to his breechaloons to keep hisself from leaving terry-firmy ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... practice. But I guess he figgered he didn't need no practice to get Bill Talpers, and judgin' from the way things worked out, his figgerin' was right. Some artist with the little smoke machine, that boy, 'cause Bill Talpers wasn't no slouch at shootin'! I remember seein' Bill shoot the head off a rattlesnake at the side of the road, jest casual-like, and when it come to producin' the hardware he was some quick for a big man. He more than met his match this time, old Bill did. And, by gosh! ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... this was something less kindred to the succession of the seasons and the soil. This was a hitch in the upper fabric. Here in the great ugly mine-scarred basin of the Rand, with its bare hillsides, half the stamps were standing idle, machinery was eating its head off, time and water were running to waste amidst an immense exasperated disputation. Something had given way. The war had spoilt the Kaffir "boy," he was demanding enormous wages, he was away from Johannesburg, and above all, he would no ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... with it, like he got over me. I was ready to knock his head off first time he spoke to me. I was ready to knock anybody's head off that day. I'd just had that letter from Hadman. He made me sick wi' the way he pottered an' played the fool about the invention. He believed ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the Orange River, and during the advance on Kimberley and Bloemfontein, showed how ill the fortune of war served the Boers, when they just failed to capture the train which was taking out of their clutches the soldier who was to relieve Kimberley and head off Cronje at Paardeberg before the relief ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... it HIT me," the young coloured man returned, dusting his breast and knees as he rose. "I want to know what kine o' white boys you think you is—man can't walk 'long street 'thout you blowin' his head off!" He entered the stable and, with an indignation surely justified, took the pistol from the limp, cold hand of Penrod. "Whose gun you playin' with? Where you git ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... him. It spun him round and round on his back like an overturned beetle, and then scooted him across the lake's surface flat as a floor. He thought of the Crevice, but there was nothing he could do save hold his head off the ground and his two palms over his face, shielding his nostrils a little ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... that the Cobbs were coming, they went away amazingly cool and indignant. And for days I continued to hear such things attributed to me that, had that young West-Pointer been in the neighborhood, and known how to shoot, he must infallibly have blown my head off me, as any Kentucky gentleman would. Others of my visitors, having heard that I was not to sell my place, were so glad of it that they walked around my garden and inquired for my health and the prospect for fruit. For the season ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... pounder, I ran to see what he had done, and when I came near to where he was, his gun was lying up the hill behind him, and he setting down whining like a baby, and a great gore of blood hanging to his nose. I wish it had blowed his head off! I got tired of staying with the tarnation fool, who couldn't tell me a thing, when I heard you shooting, and the horn blowing for the men; and knowing the bar was dead, I started off full tilt. I hadn't ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... we widen the thought a little. At this very moment, the iron monopoly of this country is raising a fund to head off a tariff revision, or to bring about an increased duty. What can be said of the Iron Monopoly? This, as one fact; that in Pennsylvania, it employs miners at fourteen dollars a month, charges them five dollars a month each for a tenement in which to live, and charges them exorbitant ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... inventory. His snuff-box they had described as a "huge silver chest, full of a sort of dust." Into that dust one of them stepped, and the snuff, flying up in his face, caused him nearly to sneeze his head off. His pistols they called "hollow pillars of iron, fastened to strong pieces of timber," and the use of his bullets, and of his powder (which he had been lucky enough to bring ashore dry, owing to his pouch being water-tight), they could not understand, while of his watch they could make ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... calls them, for he was not learned in the nomenclature of vain recreations. "One of the players, when the Marquess stooped down to lift the bullet, fell pale, and said to them about him, 'Bless me! what is that I see?—my Lord with the head off, and all ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... shape in a resolootion to hold a spellin' school ourselves, an' invite Red Dog to stand in. Sech steps is calc'lated, we allows, to head off orig'nal action on the Red ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... said David, his irritation gone. "I saw that fellow over by the tobacco field and followed him here. I bet they have their nest in this very woods. We'll look better next spring and try to find it and see the little ones. Tut, tut," he whistled to the bird, "don't sing your pretty head off." His eyes turned to the sky and the smile left his face. "It looks threatening," he said. "I thought I heard thunder as I ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... made a little grimace across the table at Julian, who responded to it with a complacent smile—"You can talk, talk, talk—of course! every man that ever sat in clubs, smoking and drinking, can talk one's head off—but you've got to LIVE, as well as talk! What do you know about self-indulgence being 'paramount,' except in your own case, eh? Do you think at all of the thousands and thousands of poor creatures everywhere, who completely sacrifice their lives ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... steel: He comes to America and starts a saloon. No more the untamed Irish king caroms on the Saxon invader with a seasoned shillalah: He gets on the police force and helps "run the machine," or clubs the head off the harmless married man who won't go home till morning. In these degenerate days the philosopher retires not to the desert, and there, by meditation most profound, wrings from the secret treasure-house of his own superior soul, jewels to adorn his age and enrich the world: He mixes an impossible ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... assure you," said Miss Carvel. "A governor, and a senator, and two charming young gentlemen from New Orleans as far as Cairo, where I found Captain Lige's boat. And Mr. Brinsmade brought me here to the store. I wanted to surprise Pa," she continued rapidly, to head off the young gentleman's expostulations. "How mean of him not to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to see the sunset, I suppose?" she said hurriedly, as if to head off a question. "So did I. It is a beautiful evening for a ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... to your shoulder, you fool," said one of the shooters; "it'll kick your head off. Hold ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... right to show him about, while you was dressing. The carpenter came to me. 'This gentleman's got letters for Mr. Scott,' he said. So I was just taken in. He was such a smooth spoken chap. After I got to know, I could 'a' bit my head off." They spoke kindly to the man, who was evidently distressed at his mistake. They told him to give orders for a watchman to walk the gangway all day long in future, which to me sounded like locking the stable door too late. After that, I learned how to make pistol cartridges ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... energy, and alacrity, it is hard to find his match. He has made a book of travels, and will make a hundred, unless somebody finds him a place at home where he will have an indefinite number of labors-of-Hercules to keep him busy,—or unless some African prince cuts his head off, or he happens to call upon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Great Scott! Have you ever been to that Canby apartment and seen the crowd that—No, of course you haven't. Dan, if my wife heard me she'd take my head off, but you're an old friend of mine and I like your daughter. Listen to me: Don't let Gertrude go to that 'At Home' ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... storm raged all that night. It tossed the Hope about like a cork; it well-nigh blew the sails off the masts, and almost blew Mr Dicey's head off his shoulders! then it stopped as it had ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne
... which Ready and myself took our stand, half the artillerymen were already killed, and we had scarcely come there, when a cannon shot took the head off a man standing close to me. The wind of the ball was so great that I believe it would have suffocated me, had I not fortunately been standing sideways in the battery. At the same moment, something hot splashed over my neck and face, and nearly blinded me. I looked, and saw the man ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... was indeed anxious to be gone. Very likely at the white gate below by the stream, 'Bias was standing in wait to knock his head off. Cai did not care. Nothing mattered now—nothing but a desire to follow 'Bias and have another word with him. It might even be. . . . But no: 'Bias was lost to him, lost irrevocably. Yet he craved to follow, catch up with him, plead for one ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... that I take ye by your heels and snap your head off," rasped Ward, tucking his sleeves away from his corded wrists. "You ain't got your club with ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... compassionately. "Poor dear, ther ain't nawthin' fer it but to make vittles of ye now! Too bad! Too bad! Ye was always sech a fine layer an' a right smart setter!" And carrying the victim to the block on which she was wont to split kindling wood, she gently but firmly chopped her head off. ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... parlor, where she hid behind the window curtains. Just as the couple stood up to be married, she cut her little boy's throat with a razor, dragged the body in front of the bride, and before any one could move, drew a revolver, blew the top of her husband's head off, and then shot herself. The ball passed through her shoulder and broke her arm, but as you see, she was spared, as many another wildcat has been. Her friends and counsel tried to prove insanity, but the plea was too thin; so she landed here for a term of twenty years, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... one of the equerries plunged his sword into his breast, and the other cut his head off with a knife, and his corpse was thrown over the balcony into the garden where Andre's body had lain for three ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... find you outside the copse I will smash you into twenty pieces. If it was not for the squirrel, whom I love (and I have promised not to hurt anything in his copse), I would bring my papa's hatchet, and chop your tree down and cut your head off; so there." ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... at the book again. And in the book it said, "It can be maintained that the evil of pride consists in being out of proportion to the universe." So the backwoodsman put down his book, took his axe and, working eight hours a day for about a week, cut the giant's head off; and there was ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... mother all the milk she'd need and sell the rest and in that way pay for her, because forty dollars was a lot of money for me in them days. Why, when I got that cow she never give enough milk to wet down a salt risin', and she was as old as Methuselah. All she could do was to eat, and she et her head off. I couldn't see her starve and I couldn't sell her. I kept her for two years, and finally a butcher come along and offered me eight dollars for her and I let her go. Wasn't I mad! I never could abide any one by the ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... How easy it is to be mistaken in people! You take pains for them, work your head off, and they don't even feel it. I should have been glad to establish that boy in life, but he crawls into the house drunk. Now, if he's a prey to that weakness, he ought, at least, to try to hide it from me. Let him drink where he will, ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... at me, you wooden-legged little monster,' cried the virago, with another bang of the umbrella, which raised such a cloud of dust that it nearly made Slivers sneeze his head off. 'He ain't been home all night, and you've been leading him into bad ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... were tired of the show or fearful of its issue. Hermeias and Zeuxis, two of his bitterest enemies, shouted out that he was an Impostor[275] and rushed upon him. One of the two thrust a sword through his side, the other smote his head off with an axe. It was then the women's turn. Megallis's female slaves were given the power to treat her as they would. They first tortured her, then led her up to a high place and dashed her to the ground. Eunus avenged his private wrongs by the death of his own masters, ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... thing, for he employed three different messengers who took three separate methods of trying to reach Fremont. The one who succeeded in delivering the order did so only because of his successful disguise, and when it was accomplished Fremont's words and manner showed that he had expected to head off any such order. This incident reveals the peril which would have fallen to American institutions had he been more successful in his ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... force a close action. Blake tried to cut off Tromp from the north so as to block his road home. Vice Admiral Penn, leading the van, broke through the Dutch battle line and fell upon the convoy, but Blake was unable to reach far enough to head off his adversary before he rounded Cape Gris Nez under cover of darkness and found anchorage in Calais roads. That night, favored by the tide and thick weather, Tromp succeeded in carrying off the greater part of his convoy unobserved. Nevertheless he had left in Blake's ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... case of the daughter of a headman the bride-price is sometimes as high as Rs. 150. In Damoh a curious survival of marriage by capture remains. The bridegroom's party give a ram or he-goat to the bride's party and these take it to their shed, cut its head off and hang it by the side of the kham or marriage-pole. The brother-in-law of the bridegroom or of his father then sallies forth to bring back the head of the animal, but is opposed by the women of the bride's party, who belabour him and his friends with ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... young. But until this moment Raf had never felt the real careless freedom of youth. Now he was moved by a desire to disobey orders—to take the flitter up by himself and head off into the blue of the brightening sky for more than just a test flight, not to explore Hobart's city but to cruise over the vast sea of grass and find ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... you what," he said, after a long pause, "there are some things in history that I never could realize,—like Mary, Queen of Scots, for instance, putting on her best things, and stepping down into the front parlor of that castle to have her head off. But a thing like this, happening on your own balcony, helps you to ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... Well, well; if I'd known that, I shouldn't have thought you so strange and flighty. For I did say to myself, though I didn't tell anybody else, 'What was she to go away from her husband for, leaving him to mischief, only because they cut poor Bernardo's head off? She's got her father's temper,' I said, 'that's what it is.' Well, well; never scold me, child: Bardo was fierce, you can't deny it. But if you had only told me the truth, that there was a young hussey and children, I should have understood it all. Anything seen ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... scarce and industries in their infancy, and material civilization not very attractive. But it was a great age, glorious, intellectual, brilliant; with such statesmen as Burleigh and Walsingham to head off treason and conspiracy; when great poets arose, like Jonson and Spenser and Shakspeare; and philosophers, like Bacon and Sir Thomas Browne; and lawyers, like Nicholas Bacon and Coke; and elegant courtiers, like Sidney and Raleigh and Essex; men ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... tornado. The Frenchmen who were on the deck looked pale and anxious, as if they dreaded the consequences of the hurricane. Bambrick and another good hand went to the helm. A part of the fore-staysail was hoisted, just to pay the vessel's head off. We were not kept long in suspense. With a loud hiss and roar like thunder the hurricane struck us. The schooner heeled over to the gale; I thought she was going over altogether. Many fancied so likewise, and cries of terror escaped from several of ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... like you. By Jove, he's got to! You mustn't mind if he snaps your head off occasionally. His life's made him savage, but even his life—he's had an awful one, Ernestine—couldn't make him vicious. He's the gruffest, snarliest, biggest man I ever knew—meaner than the devil, and the best friend ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... as the ones he fetched first but they're nice taters, better'n we git at the store an' besides a body feels better helpin' a poor devil that's workin' his head off to do right." ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... Harlem bridge on the elevated and make another effort to head off the fugitives at the terminal of ...
— The Bradys and the Girl Smuggler - or, Working for the Custom House • Francis W. Doughty
... visit the North Pole, having several adventures on the way, including finding the remains of a Viking ship. They visit a region in Africa where they depose the existing King and install a King who is more to their taste. Then they head off for Mount Everest, where they become the first persons to sit on the summit. Here again they have more ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... figurehead of the old sloop Faith and Prudence. It is the image of a man, with a nose not unlike the one Master Lillie carries on his face. Let us saw the head off, nail it to a pole, and set it up in front of his shop with a notice attached warning all honest citizens against ...
— Under the Liberty Tree - A Story of The 'Boston Massacre' • James Otis
... excommunicated, as they thereby renounced their baptism. This was casting the highest insult on the king and all the royal family; and as the English loved their prince at that time, they could not bear to hear a writer talk of excommunicating him, tho they themselves afterward cut his head off. Prynne was summoned to appear before the Star Chamber; his wonderful book, from which Father Lebrun stole his, was sentenced to be burned by the common hangman, and himself to lose his ears.[45] His ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... not, yet have fingers five; Alive I am not, yet was once alive. Am found in every house and by the dozen, And am of flesh and blood a sort of cousin. Now cut my head off. See what I become! No longer am I lifeless, dead, and dumb. I am the very sweetest thing on earth; Royal in power and of royal birth. I in the palace reign and in the cot— There is no place where man is and I'm not. I am too costly to be bought and sold; ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... to pass the exam, Manning. Get that? I'm going to pass and then come back and beat your head off!" Turning on his heel, he ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... could: for he saw that you were playing his game. His whole object being to head off our Petition while pretending to grant it, the more nonsense you talked, within limits, the better he ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... this sergeant that he privily Shoulde the child full softly wind and wrap, With alle circumstances tenderly, And carry it in a coffer, or in lap; But, upon pain his head off for to swap,* *strike That no man shoulde know of his intent, Nor whence he came, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... Misfortune, this happen'd to be at an unlucky time, when the King himself had resolv'd on a Voyage, or Flight to to the Moon; but being deceiv'd, by the unhappy Miscarriage of the deficient Feathers, he fell down from so great a height, that he struck himself against his own Palace, and beat his Head off. ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... grow in any quantity around the lake and on the marshy places, so I'll make the size of the bundle atone for the price. If I peel you while I wait on the sap I'm that much ahead. I can spread you on drying trays in a few seconds and there you are. Howl your head off, Bel, I don't care what you have found. I wouldn't shoot anything to-day, unless the cupboard was bare and I was starvation hungry. In that case I think a man comes first, and I'd kill a squirrel or quail in season, ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... prisoners in various parts of the Tower. As for Hastings, Richard, in a stern and angry manner, advised him to lose no time in saying his prayers, "for, by the Lord," said he, "I will not to dinner to-day till I see thy head off." ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... itself to my mind. According to what my wife had said, Jack would have jumped at the girl with just what she stood up in; and had sworn to his mother, when he had been told that morning about the kiss behind the door, that he would knock that brute's head off his shoulders before many days were gone by. Looking at the matter merely on behalf of Jack, it appeared to me that Little Christchurch would, in that case, be quite safe, let Crasweller be ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... "You old frost!" he said gayly, "there's no need to keep it up any longer now; but I don't mind telling you, old man, you fairly hoaxed me that time, and actually I believed what you were saying. 'Course, I know better now; but I'll punch the head off any man that ever whispers a ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... "'You'll blow me head off,' I sez, throwin' my arm clear; 'go through under my arm-pit, ye bloodthirsty little scutt,' sez I, 'but don't shtick me or I'll wring ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... impossible: the qualms continued, deadly pains shot through my whole frame; I could bear my agonies no longer, and I fell into a trance or swoon. How long I continued therein I know not; on recovering, however, I felt somewhat better, and attempted to lift my head off my couch; the next moment, however, the qualms and pains returned, if possible, with greater violence than before. I am dying, thought I, like a dog, without any help; and then methought I heard a sound at a distance like people singing, and then once more ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... the stomach. He let go his hold on the rifle and sat down as suddenly as if he was shot, while I lost my balance and went sprawling in the other direction. I don't know which of us would have recovered first, but one of our boys settled the combat by blowing the big Boche's head off. Our three lads had cleared up all the others and we had time to think of our own condition. We were a very sorry-looking outfit; we all had wounds and bruises which we hadn't felt at the time ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... to see you doing it." Van smiled derisively. "When you fall down on an exam the rest of us better give up. You know perfectly well you'll get by. You are always worrying your head off when there's no earthly need of it. Now look at me. If there is any worrying to be done I'm the one that ought to be doing it. Do I look fussed? You don't catch your uncle losing any sleep over his exams—and yet I generally manage to ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... Beth... Well, if anything happened, you know. So I got grandpa to say it was high time we did something, and off I pelted to the office yesterday, for the doctor looked sober, and Hannah most took my head off when I proposed a telegram. I never can bear to be 'lorded over', so that settled my mind, and I did it. Your mother will come, I know, and the late train is in at two A.M. I shall go for her, and you've only got to bottle up your rapture, and keep ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... danger would have been when I let go. My mother quietly bade me hold him tight, which I suppose I had just sense enough to do, and in another moment she had snatched up the bill-hook they had been cutting wood with, and had his head off. ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... across your heel. You listen and listen until you drop your head. Pleasant, exceedingly pleasant! like the sleep after a bath. Ivan Nikiforovitch, on the contrary, is more reticent; but if he once takes up his parable, look out for yourself! He can talk your head off. ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... stopped in the act of hanging up his overcoat. "Do you mean—why, I can't shave myself! I'll cut my head off." ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... blow your head off, I say," said Miss Rosamund Hunt, with the unruffled cheeriness of one whose songs and speeches had always been safe ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... are breaking my heart. Desist,' I says. 'I ask you to desist. If you don't desist,' I says, 'I'm going to tear your head off by the roots and after that I'll probably get right rough with you. Fellow me,' I says, 'and don't speak another word of no description whatsoever. I've got a plan,' I says, 'and if it don't work I'll know them ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... away out of the water; hereat the man had his head whole and sound again. The like did he with the other two; and as the turn and lot came to the chief juggler, that he also should be beheaded, and that this lily was most pleasant, fair, and flourishing green, they smote his head off, and when it came to be barbed, it troubled Faustus his conscience, insomuch that he could not abide to see another do anything, for he thought himself to be the principal conjurer in the world; wherefore Dr. Faustus went to the table whereat the ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... the love of Heaven, no!" exclaimed Quentin. "I would rather you swept my head off with your long sword—it would better become my birth, than to die by the hands ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... marksmanship belied by the fierce joy in his brilliant black eyes, ceased firing at Terry's shouted command and detached eight of his man, who caught up some frightened ponies and raced through the woods to head off the fleeing brigands. ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... forerunner, except that it got more on my nerves. I had pegged through it in the hope that she might at least dine with us—for this was to be our last dinner on the Whim, Gates saying we would land about the following noon. But, happening upon Echochee and asking her this, she almost snapped my head off in saying that her mistress had no ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... characteristic way his high opinion of himself. "Would our ancestors have done it?" he asks, and then continues: "The villains would have drawn Buonaparte if he had been able to get to London to cut the king's head off." The writer has a definite opinion that Bonaparte would have had a boisterous reception, and that it might have cemented a friendship that would have been a blessing to the tired world, and especially to the ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... love with your sinners," responded Theron, as he shook hands with Celia, and trusted himself to look fully into her eyes. "I've had five days of the saints, over in another part of the woods, and they've bored the head off me." ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... to him, and ask.' The officers wondered. 'What Abdulka? Do you mean that lives in the mountains? The rebel never subdued? Abdul-khan?' 'Yes, that's him.' 'Why, but he'll take you for a spy, will put you in a hole full of bugs, or else cut your head off with your own sabre. And, besides, how are you going to get to him? They'll catch you directly.' 'I'll go to him, though, all the same.' 'Bet you won't!' 'Taken!' And Misha promptly saddled his horse and rode off to Abdulka. He disappeared for three ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... laughed her little curly head off when they all went round the house with her, and Peter Piper showed her the holes in the carpet and the stuffing coming out of the sofas, and the feathers out of the beds, and the legs tumbling off the chairs. She had never seen ...
— Racketty-Packetty House • Frances H. Burnett
... me!" she would say, triumphantly, to Claire, "but I guess I know what ails her.... Didn't her mother, and her uncle, and her sister's oldest child die of consumption? I tell you it's in the family. The last time I saw her she nearly coughed her head off." ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... "do stop! You will make me cry too;" and he put his paw to his eye. "I will go and see what I can get you for your tea e-e-e-e. Come, give me a hug, and kiss me for good-by, for that big cat I told you of may get hold of me, and bite my head off. If she does so, this is the last you will see ...
— The First Little Pet Book with Ten Short Stories in Words of Three and Four Letters • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... own free will. He's here to do that man and he won't be put off. And what's more, Bob Grand ought to get it good and hard. Somebody ought to spike him, and who's got a better right than Tom Braddock? I'm ashamed of you, Joey! If you'd been half a man you'd 'a' beat his head off to-night when he put his foot on your doorstep, after what he put up to Ruby. I—I wish I'd ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... Marty heard somebody drive into the yard after supper and he ran hurriedly to open the porch door. He was always expecting to have to head off some person not in the secret who would appear with the news of Mr. Broxton ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... hardly have implicated, out of pure malignity, his grandfather's old servant, who had been his own care-taker for many years. Here, however, Carteret could see where Tom's own desperate position operated to furnish a probable motive for the crime. The surest way to head off suspicion from himself was to direct it strongly toward some particular person, and this he had been able to do conclusively by his access to Sandy's clothes, his skill in making up to resemble him, and by the episode of the silk ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... Tarzan, "and you will see that which shall make you dance for joy and squeal your wrinkled little head off. Come, follow Tarzan of ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... seen above the leaves. This was a matter of little moment, however, for by aiming a little lower he knew that he must hit the body; but Dick had driven the nail too often to aim at its body; he aimed at the bird's eye and cut its head off. ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... dear friend, how can I ever thank you? But I don't want to thank you. There are some persons (very few, though) to whom it is a happiness to be indebted, and you are one of them. The books and the busts are arrived. Poor dear Louis Napoleon with his head off—Heaven avert the omen! Of course that head can be replaced, I mean stuck on again upon its proper shoulders. Beranger is a beautiful old man, just what one fancies him and loves to fancy him. I hope you saw him. To my mind, he is the very greatest ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... This man of brass, when he reached his maturity, was so loquacious, that Albert's master, the great scholastic Thomas Aquinas, one day, tired of his babble, and declaring it was a devil, or devilish, with his staff knocked the head off; and, what was extraordinary, this brazen man, like any human being thus effectually silenced, "word never spake more." This incident is equally historical and authentic; though whether heads of brass can speak, and even prophesy, was indeed a subject of profound inquiry ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... a vast number of large canvases, with figures of the proper heroical length and nakedness. The anticlassicists did not arise in France until about 1827; and, in consequence, up to that period, we have here the old classical faith in full vigor. There is Brutus, having chopped his son's head off, with all the agony of a father, and then, calling for number two; there is AEneas carrying off old Anchises; there are Paris and Venus, as naked as two Hottentots, and many more such choice ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... freckled face and hands—big hands, she said they were, and yet how they have worked like horses for her! Oh, Daisy! Daisy! I have loved her ever since she was a child, and I drew her to school on my sled and cut her doll's head off to tease her. Take me quick, please, out of her sight, where my ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes
... term "long teeth"—and had tried hard not to show how vile he found it. He had inspected two star-fishes which she had found last Fourth-of-July at Monterey and had dried; and had crumpled a withered leaf of bay in his hands and had smelled and nearly sneezed his head off; and had cracked and eaten four walnuts—also gathered from her mother's yard—and three almonds from the same source, and had stared admiringly at a note-book filled with funny ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... change in their weights every week. I watched this young lady with especial care, and was dumbfounded to notice that she was steadily gaining in weight. She never lost a pound but kept on adding fat to more fat all the time, notwithstanding that she was working her head off in the classroom—when she came to class. She skipped seven lessons of the twenty in the first month's course, reporting for only thirteen, finally insisting that the lessons were ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... Africa is neither to return them to her nor deprive her of them, but to give her a share in the pooled general control of mid-Africa. In that way she can be deprived of all power for political mischief in Africa without humiliation or economic injury. In that way, too, we can head off—and in no other way can we head off—the power for evil, the power of developing quarrels inherent ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... regard the lives of the natives as of far less value than those of the dogs that were sometimes set upon them in sport. A Spaniard riding along would make a wager with his fellow that he would cut the head off a native with one stroke of his sword; and many attempts would be laughingly made, and many living bodies hideously mutilated and destroyed, before the feat would be accomplished. Another sport was ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... you know of this case," the King called out a-gain, "or I'll have your head off, if ...
— Alice in Wonderland - Retold in Words of One Syllable • J.C. Gorham
... dare to get mad with Jill, for she'd take his head off in two minutes if he did," growled Joe Flint, still smarting from the rebuke Jill had given him for robbing the little ones of their safe coast ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott |
