"Strangling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sudden intentness towards the parlor door. "There is certainly something very strange about all this," he whispered a bit hectically. "I could almost have sworn that I heard a faint scuffle,—the horrid sound of a person—strangling." ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... the neck, half- throttled, and flung through the air. And while flying through the air, he continued to squall his rage. He fell into the sea and went under, gulping a mouthful of salt water into his lungs, and came up strangling but swimming. Swimming was one of the things he did not have to think about. He had never had to learn to swim, any more than he had had to learn to breathe. In fact, he had been compelled to learn to walk; but he swam ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... Berzelius Nibbidard Paragot, again. Now I am free from the forms and symbols. Yes, my son. That hat has been to me Luke's iron crown. That coat has been the peine forte et dure crushing my infinite soul into my liver." He tore off his black tie and hurled it away from him. "This has been strangling every noble inspiration. I have been swathed in mummy bands of convention. I have been dead. I have come to life. My lungs are full. My soul regains its limitless horizons. My swollen tongue is cool, and nom de Dieu de nom de Dieu, ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... because they do not realize that creeping paralysis, caused by dry rot, is gradually strangling their business. Many business men fail because they dare not look their business conditions in the face when things go wrong, and do not adopt heroic methods, but continue to use palliatives, until the conditions are beyond cure, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... for the noise, if you sleep too soundly you might roll over on your oxygen line. Then you dream about drowning. Ever do that? You're strangling and choking and you can't get any air? It isn't dangerous, I guess. Anyway, it always woke me up in time. Though I heard about a fellow in ...
— The Hated • Frederik Pohl
... the surface at the very edge of the grasses and disappeared again. In a few seconds it appeared again, and now Vandersee's red, strangling face emerged from the water. The launch shot towards him and picked him up, twenty yards from the spot where he had plunged in grips with Leyden. When he regained his breath, he pointed inshore beside the wreck, and the launch put back. Still there came no sight of Leyden; ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... enemies, soon caught in his own meshes,[4138] believing that France and the universe conspire against him, deducing with wonderful subtlety the proofs of this chimerical conspiracy, made desperate, at last, by his over-plausible romance, and strangling in the cunning toils which, by dint of his own logic and imagination, he ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... so nearly spent that if Thor kept up the attack he must wear him out. In the end he must let those powerful hands close round his throat, as he had felt them close a few minutes before, while he strangled without further resistance. He felt oddly convinced that it would be by means of strangling that Thor's quiet, awful tenacity of revenge would ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... asked her to be patient with her a little while longer. Nyoda, overjoyed at this sudden show of spirit, took her under her wing immediately. Gladys struck out bravely; lost her balance and went under; came up blind and strangling; blew the water out of her nose and laughed, and then went at it again. She repeated the performance more than a dozen times and every time she went down she came up more determined than ever to master that stroke. At the end of the ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... a smothered tone, as if he were strangling—"so you will look on and see your father perish? A word would restore him to life, and you refuse to speak that ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... Angling Reeds, And cut their legs with shels & weeds, Or treacherously poor fish beset, With strangling snares, ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... carried me back into ocean's far abysses. At one moment I felt my foot touch the sand, and then again I was in deep water; my arms began to lose their power of motion; my breath failed me under the influence of the strangling waters— a thousand wild and delirious thoughts crossed me: as well as I can now recall them, my chief feeling was, how sweet it would be to lay my head on the quiet earth, where the surges would no longer strike my weakened ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... Charon's ferry. As they are approaching the other bank of the Styx, where a three-headed Cerberus is awaiting them, the girl seems afright and is upheld by her male companion.[5] On the other hand, a bronze in Naples shows the smiling boy Herakles engaged in strangling two serpents, one with each hand. The figure rests on a cylindrical base upon which are depicted eight of the wonderful deeds which Herakles performs later on. By a rope he leads a two-headed Cerberus ...
— Cerberus, The Dog of Hades - The History of an Idea • Maurice Bloomfield
... her own species, who, in the middle of the arena, were engaged in deadly combat, using their hands, feet, and teeth as weapons, which they employed with most ferocious energy. Gripping each other by the throat with the left hand, apparently with the twofold purpose of strangling and preventing the opponent from biting, while with the right fist they battered each other savagely, occasionally using the right foot in an endeavour to throw each other, the combatants—both of whom stood well over six feet high—whirled hither and thither with astounding agility, ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... the buildings of the Acropolis, the flashing of whose helmet plumes met the sailor's eye as he approached from the Sunian promontory. And the remaining space of the wide area was literally crowded with statuary, amongst which were Theseus contending with the Minotaur; Hercules strangling the serpents; the Earth imploring showers from Jupiter; and Minerva causing the olive to sprout, while Neptune raises the waves. After these works of art, it is needless to speak of others. It may be sufficient to state that Pausanias ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... to be," said Ukridge, "considering the way you've put up that wire. You'll have them strangling themselves." ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... assistance of his knees and hands, he sought flight by backing out, while John, in extremity with the serpent, made the most terrible and pitiful cries of terror and suffering. All at once these cries became fainter and inarticulate, as if the sailor was strangling. In fact, the enraged serpent, after having, in the obscurity, stung John in the hand, the throat and face, attempted to introduce its flat and lance-like head into the open mouth of the unfortunate man, and stung his lips and tongue; but this last ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... flash that whiskey is a good antidote for rattlesnake bites. This might not be a rattlesnake and it might not even be a poisonous one, but she would take no chances. Snatching off the cap, she poured a stream of the fiery liquid into the woman's open mouth, nearly strangling her. Choking and spluttering, Aunt Maria tried to scream, but could only gasp for breath, and to Tabitha's frightened eyes her face took on a dying look. A pail of water stood on the stand under the faucet, ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... plant of discontent, The plant that only grows in prison soil, Whose root is hunger and whose fruit is pain. The springs of still delight and tranquil joy Were drained as dry as desert dust to feed That never-flowering vine, whose tendrils clung With strangling touch around the bloom of life And made it wither. Vera could not rest Within the limits of her silent world; Along its dumb and desolate paths she roamed A captive, looking sadly ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... and waited motionless. The Duchess of Palma entered the boudoir, and assuring herself by a glance that she was alone, fell rather than sat on a divan, and suffered two streams of tears to flow from her eyes. "I was strangling," said she. "I would die a thousand deaths. My cruel experiment has succeeded. He loves her yet—I am sure of it. For her sake he came to this entertainment, to which he would not have come for mine. He would have ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... friends pronounced it to be a masterpiece, and went about saying that it would revolutionise the Salon. There was stupefaction and indignation when a fresh refusal of the hanging committee was rumoured. The committee's intentions could not be denied: it was a question of systematically strangling an original artist. He, after his first burst of passion, vented all his anger upon his work, which he stigmatised as false, dishonest, and execrable. It was a well-deserved lesson, which he should remember: ought he to have relapsed into that cellar-like ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... shook these souls sunk down in grief. Esperance shrieked, "These arms, these arms, loosen these arms which are strangling me ... Deliver me, deliver me from these arms ... ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... shout one, nearly strangling me with the bight of a line circling in the air round my unfortunate head. "By your leave!" would cry another, jamming me, most certainly without my consent, against the bulwarks, and making me feel as flat ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the dove in his talons; I am devoured by an inexpressible rage; I pace my room like a wild beast, uttering inarticulate cries; I do not know whether I love or hate Louise the most, but I should take infinite delight in strangling her with her blonde tresses and trampling her, affrighted and suppliant, under ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... Ay, Constance! You ought to have thought of her before. (Passionately.) Why have you spoken to me? Why have you compelled me to speak, if you are not bold enough to break the bonds that are strangling you? ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter
... own father, and in the room where his dead mother lay had robbed Vic's home of every valuable thing. He had sworn vengeance on all who bore the name of Burleigh. What fate might await Bug, Vic dared not picture. One strangling grip now could finish the business forever, and his clutch tightened, as Gresh lay begging like a coward for his own ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... caress her in any way. This morning you smoothed the hair back from her forehead while she was stooping over her drawing, and poor Salome's eyes flashed and looked like a leopard's. She clenched her fingers as if she were strangling something, and an expression came over her face that was dangerous, and made me shiver a little. Something must be done; but I am sure I do ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... than the deep, patient murmur of the sea abashes a nigger minstrel on a popular beach. Fyne was beginning to swear at him in low, sepulchral tones when I appeared. The dog became at once wildly demonstrative, half strangling himself in his collar, his eyes and tongue hanging out in the excess of his incomprehensible affection for me. This was before he caught sight of the cake in my hand. A series of vertical springs high up in the air followed, and then, when he got ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... very nearly met with your reward, for when in the corner of that church-yard you pulled the key from your girdle, fully believing you to be the Evil One, I was on the point of strangling you." ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... for a cruel wrong inflicted upon the weak and defenseless. More than that, what brought them together was that instinct which comes to humanity at critical times when the moment has arrived to cross rivers of blood in order to rescue humanity from the grip of some strangling despotism. [Cheers.] They have done nobly. That is what has brought them together, but we want more, [cheers,] and I have no doubt ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... were cast again aboard of an Indiaman to be carried, or transported without doom or law to some of the british plantations, but they had the fate to be taken prisoners by a Salle Rover or a Turkish Privatir or Pirat, who, after strangling the captain and crew, keeped the 22 highlanders in their native garb to be admired by the Turks, since they never seed their habit, nor heard their languadgue befor, and as providence would have it, the Turks and Governor ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... intensified the pain and power of the relentless throat-grip that pinioned him. And, strangling and panic-struck, he became wilder in his fruitless efforts to wrench loose. Then, deprived of breath and with his nerve-centers shaken, he lost ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... millions like the moan of the sea borne on breezes winged with the odours of saloon and kitchen, stable and sewer—the crash of a storm of brute forces on the senses, tearing the nerves, crushing the spirit, bruising the soul, and strangling the memory of a ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... even by some of the South American republics. The paper pound, based on the national credit, can be multiplied as fast as our legislators think fit. If they do not multiply it fast enough, Mr Kitson will tell them that they are strangling trade, because the volume of production is limited by the amount of money available. At the same time bank credits will be multiplied indefinitely because, as was shown in the November Supplement, Mr Kitson supports a ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... less dreadful condition of those who had escaped the dogs only to fall into the hands of the overseer. The yell of the dogs grew louder. Escape seemed impossible. I ran down to the creek with a determination to drown myself. I plunged into the water and went down to the bottom; but the dreadful strangling sensation compelled me to struggle up to the surface. Again I heard the yell of the bloodhounds; and again desperately plunged down into the water. As I went down I opened my mouth, and, choked and gasping, I found myself once more struggling ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... streamed from Ward's eyes. He choked, grasped at his throat, writhed as if he were strangling, and stamped his foot until the camp shook. At last he ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... in no special garb, no millinery, no brass bands, no formulas, no dogmas, no organisation other than the Kingdom, to uphold and become a slave to, and in turn be absorbed by, as was the organisation that he found strangling all religion in the lives of his people and which he so bitterly condemned. What he brought was something infinitely transcending this—the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, to which all men were heirs—equal heirs—and thereby redemption ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... a while angels came and ministered to him. Thankfulness came softly, gently, to take his shaking hand in hers. The awful past was over. A false step, a momentary giddiness on the part of his enemy, and the hideous strangling meshes of the past had fallen from him at a touch, as if they had never wrapped him round. Lord Newhaven was gone to return no more. The past went with him. Dead men tell no tales. No one knew of the godless compact between them, and of how he, Hugh, had failed to keep to ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... Inspired by the best traditions of chivalry Benham came to her assistance. He was not expert with dogs. He grasped the black dog under its ear. He was bitten in the wrist, rather in excitement than malice, and with a certain excess of zeal he was strangling the brute ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... bellowing of a maddened bull, and partly arising, endeavored to clutch the throat of the unfeeling beast at my head, but too weak to accomplish my purpose I fell back into the tub exhausted. At the same time the orderly took hold of my own throat and almost strangling me, beat my head against the tub several times cursing me under his breath in the vilest of language ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... this crime everywhere. So far as I can see, there is no clue whatever beyond the Red Triangle, which, as yet, I cannot understand. The strangling points to the murder being committed by a powerful man, certainly, and it is a form of crime that may have been perpetrated silently. But beyond that I can see nothing. The apparent motivelessness of the thing makes the mystery all the ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison
... path you've cast the stone of doubt, And nobody but you can cast it out. Between my kin and me you've set a bar,— Remove the bar, the strangling noose undo— ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... Jacobin system, in spite of its surviving founders, gradually relaxes after Thermidor; if the main ligature tied around the man's neck, broke just as the man was strangling, the others that still bind him hold him tight, except as they are loosened in places; and, as it is, some of the straps, terribly stiffened, sink deeper and deeper into his flesh.—In the first place, the requisitions continue there is no other ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... behind, demanding to know if the door was being kept open to invite the whole town. The child stood her ground on the doorstep. An instant later a hand reached out, clutched her—it seemed by the hair— and dragged her inside. Then followed a strangling sob and the thud ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... under the shelter of a lurid poster—displaying a fierce gentleman in crude blue, showing all his teeth, and in the act of strangling an early Victorian ingenue with a dimple,—and lit a ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... "I dare say I shall find some plausible pretext for throwing myself upon my enemy and strangling him." ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... sergeant showed marks of the severity of the struggle in which he had been engaged. The two upper front teeth were loosened, probably by the blow he received at the outset, and there were finger-nail dents on the throat as from the grasp of a strangling hand. That his opponent should have disengaged himself from his clutch was matter of extreme surprise to all who had experienced submersion, and knew its meaning. Even to those who have never been under water against ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... she that might have intercepted thee, By strangling thee in her accursed womb, From all the slaughters, wretch, that ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... distance and infinite littleness, the poor soul was very well aware of what must follow, and struggled hard against the approaches of that slumber which was the beginning of sorrows. But his struggles were in vain; sooner or later the night-hag would have him by the throat, and pluck him, strangling and screaming, from his sleep. His dreams were at times commonplace enough, at times very strange: at times they were almost formless, he would be haunted, for instance, by nothing more definite than a certain hue of brown, which he did not mind in the least while he was awake, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... did not speak. He was making noises as if strangling, and suddenly his hands flew up to the neck of his hunting shirt, and tore at it ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... of how she used to go about in the kitchen with her mother, who chattered so pleasantly with her, and how they would stop to kiss each other now and then. She knew very well that she ought not to give way to her tears, and tried to swallow her sobs, until she felt almost strangling. ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... tell the truth, was only half believed in, and many people, having heard of the things that were done in the Temple and the Prefecture, believed that Bouvet had been assisted in his strangling, just as they had put Picot's feet to the fire. What gave colour to these suspicions was the fact that Bouvet's hands "were horribly swollen" when he appeared before Real the next day, and also the strange form of the declaration which ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... imitative, but was not naturally vicious. Any action done in its presence the animal would be certain to repeat at the first opportunity; but having done so, it did not repeat it again unless the action was performed again. The action of strangling a man in his sleep by means of a cord was performed before the ape, and afterwards the animal was allowed to steal through the hole in the chimney. The result was that Greaves ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... When Beverley heard a strangling cry for help, he pulled himself promptly together, flung off his coat, as if by a single motion, and leaped down the bank into the water. He was a swimmer whose strokes counted for all that prodigious ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... lay there before me strangling with sobs and cries. "Should Mr. Floyd know," he murmured, "should Mr. Floyd even guess, that I am the wretched wreck of a man that I am, he would not let Helen stay with me another moment. He would extenuate, he would pity, nothing: he does not know what it is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... Strangling, stoning, burning, impaling, flaying alive, tearing limb from limb, throwing from a tower, burying alive, disemboweling, enslaving, drowning, mutilating, are some of the punishments inflicted by savages and barbarians in all parts of the world on adulterous men or women. Specifications ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... went a figure. Rainey caught sight of a ghastly face, a mouth that shouted vainly for help in the pandemonium, and was instantly stoppered with strangling brine, pop-eyes appealing in awful fright as Sandy was washed away in the cascade. The halyards were held on the pin with a turn and twist that Rainey swiftly loosened, lifting the coil free, making a fast loop, and ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... what you think," he continued. "I can't blame you. But what do you know about my life? What do you know about what I've had to fight against? All my life there has been some devil in me, strangling all the good. There has been nobody to give me a helping hand—none to hold me back. I was a dog with a bad name—good enough for hanging, and ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... The bud is then shoved into a slit made in the stock, and it is held in place by tying with a soft strand. In two or three weeks the bud will have "stuck" (that is, it will have grown fast to the stock), and the strand is cut to prevent its strangling the stock. Ordinarily the bud does not grow until the following spring, at which time the entire stock or branch in which the bud is inserted is cut off an inch above the bud; and the bud thereby receives all the energy ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... strangled. The principal wife delayed the ceremony, by taking leave of those around her; whereupon Tanoa, the present king, chid her. The victim was his own aunt, and he assisted in putting the rope around her neck, and strangling her, a service he is said to have rendered on a former occasion to his own mother."[684] In the case of men who were drowned at sea or killed and eaten by enemies in war, their wives were sacrificed in the usual way. Thus when Ra Mbithi, the pride of Somosomo, was lost at sea, seventeen of his ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... stories. He had been in Mexico, it seemed. He owned a silver mine there. He got a million dollars out of it, but took it into his head one day to overturn the Government, and was captured and his money taken; barely escaped the garrote by strangling his jailer; owned the mine still, and should go back and get it some day, when he had accomplished certain purposes in this country. There were plenty of people who wished he was gone now. The President had sent for him to ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... taint will ultimately be totally eliminated; that "original sin is neither more nor less than the brute inheritance which every man carries with him, and that Evolution is an advance toward true salvation." Meanwhile what becomes of the "Survival of the Fittest", which is only a euphemism for the strangling of the feeble by the strong? We can understand how perfection, or permanence of type, individual and national, demands carnage, and entails all the dire catalogue of human woes, but wherein is altruism evolved? How many aeons shall we wait, to behold the leopard and ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... saplings, matted, multifarious underbrush, towering, venerable trees. It slipped like a river, bearing upon its balmy surface the promise of asylum, of sleep, of plenty, through the primitive, ruthless forest, which in turn pressed upon it everywhere the menace of its oblivion, its fierce, strangling life. ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the earth yawned open like a cavernous mouth, from which a long black throat, some six feet in diameter, extended to an unknown depth. This throat was filled with boiling mud, which rose and fell in nauseating gulps, as if some monster were strangling from a slimy paste which all its efforts could not possibly dislodge. Occasionally the sickening mixture would sink from view, as if the tortured wretch had swallowed it. Then we could hear, hundreds of feet below, unearthly retching; and, in a moment, it would all come up again, ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... heavily and sending the stones flying, I fought blindly on. There was a singing in my ears, a sense of strangling in my throat, and above all, a dull, half-stunned sensation, mingled with which were thoughts of the others; and then as darkness came over me, and I fell forward, there was a sharp jerk, a few encouraging words were said by some one, and I found myself ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... these remarks by listening to an old fellow at the Hotel du Nord, at Boulogne, and who is evidently of the Slasher sort. He came down and seated himself at the breakfast-table, with a surly scowl on his salmon-coloured bloodshot face, strangling in a tight, cross-barred cravat; his linen and his appointments so perfectly stiff and spotless that everybody at once recognized him as a dear countryman. Only our port-wine and other admirable institutions could have produced a figure so insolent, so stupid, so gentleman-like. ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... reception of the undulatory theory of light necessitated the assumption of the existence of an 'ether' filling all space. But whether this ether was to be regarded as a strictly material and continuous substance was an undecided point, and hence the revived atomism, escaped strangling in its birth. For it is clear, that if the ether is admitted to be a continuous material substance, Democritic atomism is at an end and ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... not given to carrying tales, and if no stir were made about the decoity until they were safely back in Karowlee they could enjoy the fruits Of their spoils, which would be, undoubtedly, great. By the use of the strangling cloth there would be no outcry, no din of battle; they of the village would think that the camp was one of sleep. Then when the bodies had been buried in a pit, the earth tramped down flat and solid, and cooking ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... again. And Nathaniel, turning his face away, saw something come up out of the shimmering sea, like a shadow before his blistering eyes, and as his own limbs went out from under him and he felt the strangling death at his throat there came from that shadow a cry that seemed to snap his very heartstrings—a piercing cry and (even in his half consciousness he recognized it) a woman's cry! He flung himself back, and for a moment he saw Neil struggling, the last spark of life ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... stick at nothing; and one o' their customs is to murder their infants the moment they are born. The mothers agree to it, and the fathers do it. And the mildest ways they have of murdering them is by sticking them through the body with sharp splinters of bamboo, strangling them with their thumbs, or burying them alive and stamping them to ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the infamous revelation, Barry writhed in the most fearful agony, and was on the eve of strangling the villain that lay helpless before him; but his good angel, rushing to the rescue, restored him to reason once more; and while great beads of perspiration stood on his brow, he endeavored to compose himself to hear the terrible recital ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... now a covey of red birds feeding on one of the little islets to the left, or again a blue-green parrot flew shrieking from tree to tree. As they moved on the country grew wilder and wilder. The trees and the undergrowth seemed to be strangling each other near the ground in a multitudinous wrestle; while here and there a splendid tree towered high above the swarm, shaking its thin green umbrellas lightly in the upper air. Hewet looked at his books again. The morning was peaceful as the night had been, ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... in its helpless stupidity. After all, this great hulking man was but a child, and he was unhappy because he must go, and give up his snug cottage and the sheep he had learned to care for and the kind mistress who gave him sides of bacon.... There was a sudden strangling spasm in her throat, and his face swam into the sky on a mist of tears, which welled up in her eyes as without ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... the same cannot be said of the hat of one hundred years ago, which, with its comparatively narrow brim and high crown, was the precursor of the modern 'chimney-pot': a wide turned-down collar is a healthier thing than a strangling stock, and a short cloak much more comfortable than a sleeved overcoat, even though the latter may have had 'three capes'; a cloak is easier to put on and off, lies lightly on the shoulder in summer, and wrapped round one in winter keeps one perfectly warm. A doublet, again, is simpler than ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... now only a question of sturdy fighting and squirming one's way through the meshes of a gigantic basketwork of every variety of fantastic branch and stem and stout strangling thorn-set vine, made the denser with snaky roots—not merely twisting about one's feet, but dropping from the boughs in nooses and festoons for one's neck; air-plants too, like birds' nests, further choking up the meshes, and hanging moss, like rotting carpets, adding still more to ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... together. The man was inside, on the bottom of the cage, the woman was outside it. Her huddled but still resisting body was locked and jammed halfway across the narrow door. One of her opponent's great, ape-like strangling arms was about her neck. But the fingers at the end of it were caught between her strong white carnivorous teeth; and they became stained with blood as, in her frenzy, she fought and bit and struggled, with the blind fury of some final ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... take in water; they were surprised to see me, but more so at hearing the particulars of my adventures. "You fell," said they, "into the hands of the Old Man of the Sea, and are the first who ever escaped strangling by his malicious embraces. He never quitted those he had once made himself master of till he had destroyed them, and he has made this island notorious by the number of men he has slain." They carried ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... the language. These are the authors, after all, whose faults it is of most consequence to point out; and criticism performs her best and boldest office,—not when she tramples down the weed, or tears up the bramble,—but when she strips the strangling ivy from the oak, or cuts out the canker from the rose. The faults of the fable we have already noticed at sufficient length. Those of the execution we shall now endeavour ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... might here also dilate upon Job's case, and the lesson God set him, when, at one stroke, he did beat down all (Job 1:15), only spared his life, but made that also so bitter to him that his soul chose strangling rather than it (Job 7:15). O when every providence of God unto thee is like the messengers of Job, and the last to bring more heavy tidings than all that went before him (Job 1); when life, estate, wife, children, body, and soul, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... this immoderate love of country lead? To a passion for aggrandizement at the expense of others, and what was this but selfishness with a gloss so bright as to make it look like a virtue? It led to the strangling of conscience in national affairs, so as to make wrong seem right, and, more than that, to persistence in a course when it was well known to be wrong. It taught false ideas of honor and made the world one grand dueling field, where the energy of nations was spent ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... loud; they shook the house. I fled to an angle of the wall and crouched upon the floor. I tried to pray. I tried to call the name of my dear husband. Then I heard the door thrown open. There was an interval of unconsciousness, and when I revived I felt a strangling clutch upon my throat—felt my arms feebly beating against something that bore me backward—felt my tongue thrusting itself from between my teeth! And then I ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... tears fell like rain; And near him, with the cold, calm look And tone of one whose formal part, Unwarmed, unsoftened of the heart, Is measured out by rule and book, With placid lip and tranquil blood, The hangman's ghostly ally stood, Blessing with solemn text and word The gallows-drop and strangling cord; Lending the sacred Gospel's awe And sanction to the crime ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... throws one look around. Then the hangman dhrew near, an' the people grew still, Young faces turned sickly, and warm hearts turn chill, An' the rope bein' ready, his neck was made bare, For the gripe iv the life-strangling cord to prepare; An' the good priest has left him, ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... Abner Sawyer had a strangling sense of another link to his biscuit-riven chain and passed his hand over his forehead in ...
— Jimsy - The Christmas Kid • Leona Dalrymple
... boat heeled over, Chester hurled himself upon the German, who had succeeded in clutching Hal by the throat and was slowly strangling him. He seized the German by both shoulders, and, putting his knee in his back, pulled with ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... as she had never suffered before. George Ramsey was her first love; the others had been merely childish playthings. She was strangling love, and that is a desperate deed, and the strangler suffers more than love. Maria, with the memory of that marriage which was, indeed, no marriage, but the absurd travesty of one, upon her, was in almost a suicidal frame of mind. She knew perfectly well that if ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... idea of Shudraka's variety, we have only to recall the names of the acts of the play. Here The Shampooer who Gambled and The Hole in the Wall are shortly followed by The Storm; and The Swapping of the Bullock-carts is closely succeeded by The Strangling of Vasantasena. From farce to tragedy, from satire to pathos, runs the story, with a breadth truly Shaksperian. ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... talked about killing the animal, Lucien opposed the idea with great vehemence. He wanted either to carry it away alive or to let it go—both being plans which could not be allowed. Gringalet, however, cut short the discussion by strangling it, l'Encuerado's carelessness having left it in his way. The boy, both angry and distressed, was astonished at the cruelty of his dog, and was ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... roaring ocean of clamorous delusions which then enveloped them to everybody, and are held steadily in view, said ocean being well run off to the home of it very deep underground. Lies do fall silent; truth waits to be recognized, not always in vain. No reader ever will conceive the strangling perplexity of that situation, now so remote and extinct to us. All I can do is, to set down what features of it have become indisputable; and leave them as detached traceries, as fractions of an outline, to coalesce into something of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... Mrs. Hatchard, almost strangling him. "He made me kneel in front o' him and keep touching ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... a close thing for Gordon. If those lean, strong fingers had been given a few seconds more at his throat they would have snapped the cord of life. But gradually the distorted face resumed its natural hue as the coughing, strangling man ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... keep the thing she had chosen. George had tired of her—here was the sharpest sting—a man had tired of her after a few months—had tired of her while she was still deeply in love with him. Her humiliation, while she sat there strangling her sobs, was so intense that it ran in little flames over her body. At the moment she was not angry with George, she was not even angry with Florrie. It was as if all the slumbering violence of her nature was aroused to a burning and relentless hatred of her own weakness. This emotion, which ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... Jimmie, his arm about her in proper bridegroom fashion, but loosely, for Kirsty was not to be trifled with, even on her wedding day. He sat up, erect and stiff, strangling ecstatically in a flaring white collar, and striving manfully to keep his broad smiles from overflowing into loud laughter, for poor Jimmie's belated joy bordered on the hysterical. His magnificent appearance almost eclipsed the bride. He wore a coat of black, such as the minister himself might have ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... wake her every morning an hour before daybreak, and say, "Sister, relate to me one of those delightful stories you know," or "Finish before daybreak the story you began yesterday." The sultan got interested in these tales, and revoked the cruel determination he had made of strangling at daybreak the wife he had married the ...
— 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.
... middle mast, of course. What's the matter with you?" he added, turning suddenly upon Archie, who seemed to be on the point of strangling. ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... upon him, but though we lifted him clear off the ground we could not loosen that two-handed strangling grip. At we were struggling there a light hand touched my ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor
... another thing that I saw I shall now describe. There is in the city of Mallus, in Cilicia, an oracle of Amphilochus, that gives responses by means of dreams. It had given warning also to Sextus, in a way that he indicated by a drawing. The picture that he put on a board represented a boy strangling two serpents and a lion pursuing a fawn. I was with my father, then governor of Cilicia, and could not comprehend what they meant until I learned that Sextus's brothers had been, as it were, strangled by Commodus (who later emulated Hercules), just as Hercules, ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... of which he had nothing to complain, although it barely served its purpose, like most of the inexpensive objects about him, was a charming. Italian bronze ink-stand, over whose cover wrestled the infant Hercules in the act of strangling a goose—in friendly aid of "drivers of the quill." My father wrote with a gold pen, and I can hear now, as it seems, the rapid rolling of his chirography over the broad page, as he formed his small, rounded, but irregular letters, when filling his journals, in Italy. He leaned very much on, ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... strong dissuasion; but having, on this occasion, gone so far as to harbour the design of killing him, isn't this a fixed purpose on your part to cut short my own existence? But as you are bent upon strangling him, be quick and first strangle me before you strangle him! It will be as well that we, mother and son, should die together, so that if even we go to hell, we may be able to rely ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... water, had I not been prevented. Once and again I attempted it, but the men held me back. For this, I am now thankful, but at that time my life appeared of so little importance, and the punishments I knew were in reserve for me seemed so fearful, I voluntarily chose "strangling and death rather than life." The captain and sailors were all Romanists, and seemed to vie with each other in making me as unhappy as possible They made sport of my "new fashioned clothing," and asked if I "did not wish to run away again?" When they found I did not notice them they used ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... for two New Zealand erect or sub-scandent flowering trees, often embracing trunks of forest trees and strangling them: the Northern Rata, Metrosideros robusta, A. Cunn., and the Southern Rata, M. lucida, Menz., both of the N.O. Myrtaceae. The tree called by the Maoris Aka, which is another species of Metrosederos ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... as irrepressible as ague. All her energies seemed strained to suppress a fit, with which she was then breathlessly tugging; and at length a low convulsive cry of suffering broke from her, and gradually the hysteria subsided. "There! That comes of strangling people with hymns!" she said at last. "Hold me, hold me still. It is ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... suspend the carnage and extinguish the fires until Melanchthon's arrival. Should the hopes of these good people be disappointed, the bloodhounds may succeed in creating even greater bitterness, and proceed with burning and strangling. So that I think that Master Philip cannot with a clear conscience abandon them in such straits, and defraud them of ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... leaped forth; and before the hunters could procure a torch and reach the spot, the huge hound had seized the quarry by the throat, and finished its struggles by strangling it ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... had cast anchor, to take in water. They were surprised to see me, but more so at hearing the particulars of my adventures. "You fell," said they, "into the hands of the old man of the sea, and are the first who ever escaped strangling by his malicious tricks. He never quitted those he had once made himself master of, till he had destroyed them, and he has made this island notorious by the number of men he has slain; so that the merchants and mariners who landed ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... you did afore. It's you an' me, an' the White Rose, this time, sure," and he pressed his lips together grimly, and peered out from under his bent old hat at the storm which was driving furiously against his broad breast, and into his white, anxious face, almost blinding and strangling him. His boat was a small one—too small for the seas of the lower Columbia—but it was trim and light, and steered easily. Besides, the old mountaineer was a skilled oarsman, albeit this accomplishment was not a part of the education ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... junk and the schooner drew near seemed like a huge black boat floating bottom up. Over it and upon it swarmed and clambered thousands of sea-birds, while all around and below the water was thick with gorging sharks. A dreadful, strangling decay fouled ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... their own lives to a conquering army of vigorous parasites which had clothed their skeletons with an unapproachable and indistinguishable beauty, and over trees and parasites the tender tendrils of great mauve morning glories trailed and wreathed themselves, and the strong, strangling stems of the ie wound themselves round the tall ohias, which supported their quaint yucca-like spikes of leaves ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... garuda, hawadiga[3], or whatever else they call him, is as a rule but a poor impostor. He goes about with one fangless cobra, one rock snake, and one miserable mongoose, strangling at the end of a string. My dweller in tombs was richer than all his tribe in his snakes, and in his eyes. I have never seen anybody else with real cat's eyes: eyes with exactly that greenish yellow luminous glare which you see when you look at a cat in the dark. They gleamed ...
— An Essence Of The Dusk, 5th Edition • F. W. Bain
... Harben, but they recovered none of that old friendship that had been theirs before they married. Too many things were now between them. By the end of that month Maggie longed to return to Skeaton. It was not only that she felt crushed and choked by the strangling green that hemmed in the old house—the weeds and the trees, and the plants seemed to draw in the night closer and closer about the windows and doors—but also solitude with Paul was revealing to her, in a ruthless, cruel manner, his weaknesses. They were none of them, perhaps, ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... to heel, now hot, now cold, and strangling with the fierce desire for her whom I was losing more hopelessly every moment, I started aimlessly through the starlight, pacing the stockade like a caged beast, and I thought my swelling heart would choke me if it broke not to ease ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... and then the others—all save Beziers and Daimamoto, French ace and Japanese surgeon, whose work was forever at an end. Enemark, engineer and scientist, shot through the left shoulder, was dragged ashore, strangling, by eager hands. ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... angling reeds, And cut their legs with shells and weeds, Or treacherously poor fish beset With strangling snares or ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... so horribly identical with the first two, came about at weekly intervals, and the city was in the grip of strangling terror. There was no rime or reason for the crimes, and yet the diabolical precision of the murderer seemed to indicate he was a madman of uncanny intelligence. In all four cases his victims were vagabonds and people of the lowest order. In none of ...
— The Homicidal Diary • Earl Peirce
... occur sometimes in tragedies, and Nic's heart gave a tremendous leap, for a peculiar twitching suddenly contracted the face beside which he knelt, and the man sneezed violently, again and again. A strangling fit of coughing succeeded, during which he choked and crowed and grew scarlet, and in his efforts to get his breath he rose into a sitting position, opened his eyes to stare, and ended by struggling to his feet and standing panting and ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... Strangling, Weaver grabbed desperately at the door-frame as it went by. He swung with a sickening thud into the inner wall, but he hung on and pulled himself ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... disposal of my Lord, I determined to make an unflinching stand against wife-beating and widow-strangling, feeling confident that even their natural conscience would be on my side, I accordingly pled with all who were in power to unite and put down these shocking and disgraceful customs. At length ten Chiefs entered into an agreement not to allow any more beating of wives or strangling of ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... have spoken of the manner in which the railways of Ireland had long been abused. This abuse, as the years went on, instead of diminishing grew in strength if not in grace. The Companies were strangling the country, stifling industry, thwarting enterprise; were extortionate, grasping, greedy, inefficient. These were the things that were said of them, and this in face of what the railways were accomplishing, ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... gave him none), and installed her present concubine and future wife and mistress of himself and furniture. At the end of a month, in which she demeaned herself as ill as possible, he found out a correspondence between her and some former keeper, and after nearly strangling, turned her out of the house, to the great scandal of the keeping part of the town, and with a prodigious eclat, which has occupied all the canals and coffee-houses in Venice. He said she wanted to poison him; and she says—God knows what; but between them they have made a great deal of noise. I ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... behold them dangling, In the agony of strangling! And their necks grow long and longer, And their groans grow ...
— Max and Maurice - a juvenile history in seven tricks • William [Wilhelm] Busch
... work that man went through, leaping on his crutch till the muscles of his chest were fit to burst, was work no sound man ever equaled; and so thinks the doctor. As it was, he was already thirty yards behind us, and on the verge of strangling, when we reached the brow of ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to prevent an immense new importation of slaves from Africa to fill the Territory; but Mr. Randall would have shown far greater insight, had he added to this half-truth, that the idea of legally grasping and strangling this curse flows from the ideas of the "Notes" as hot metal flows from fiery furnace,—that the Ordinance of 1784 was but a minting of that true metal drawn from those old glowing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... of the reflection appertained to the actual present, into which the long-ago past was then rapidly merging. But you, coming in a few moments sooner, and being far more en rapport with the spirit of the scene, saw the tall man in a red cloak—whom you call the Avenger—strangling the girl. By the way, why do ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... of all and broke it with as much violence as if he were strangling a man, and then he began to eat voraciously, swallowing great mouthfuls quickly. But almost immediately the smell of the meat attracted him to the fireplace, and, having taken off the lid of the saucepan, he plunged a fork into it and brought ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... crept round, and the completed coil of each one was a further heavy, strangling noose. Alvina had passed her twenty-sixth, twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth and even her twenty-ninth year. She was in her thirtieth. It ought to be a laughing ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... whose sounds and cries came up into his cell. He had lost the fiery vision of the conqueror's welcome; it was like a tale heard long ago. Now he was beaten down by physical facts, by the gross details of the tragedy, the strangling, the blood, the smoke, the acrid smell of the crowd, and heaven was darkened by ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... to see. His hands gripped the table, while his body shook with sobs, though his eyes gave forth no tears. It was an inward convulsion, which gave his face the look of unrelieved tragedy and suffering—Laocoon struggling with the serpents of sorrow and hatred which were strangling him. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Prince Squeaky stealed," exclaimed Flea, dropping Flukey's fingers. There was something in the kindly eyes of the man that forced her forward a step. She thrust out her hand in appealing anxiety. "We was all hungry," she continued, a dry sob strangling her. "Flukey nor me nor the pig nor Snatchet ain't e't in a long time. We did steal; but if I ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... serpent train, Springing and clinging from tree to tree, Now darting upward, now down again, With a twist and a twirl that are strange to see; Never took serpent a deadlier hold, Never the cougar a wilder spring, Strangling the oak with the boa's fold, Spanning the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... from the tree. But he soon came to the end of his tether; and the quick jerk, which caused the tree itself to crack, brought him to his haunches, while the noose tightening on his throat was fast strangling him. But for the thick matted hair it would have done so, but this saved him, and he continued to sprawl and struggle at the end of the rope. The tree kept on cracking, and as I began to fear that it might give way and precipitate me to the ground, I thought it better ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... Hartshorn, and Sal—Volatile.—Alkalis are seldom taken or given with the view of destroying life. They may, however, be swallowed by mistake.—Symptoms produced in those who have swallowed them. There is at first a burning, acrid taste in, and a sensation of tightness round, the throat, like that of strangling; the skin touched is destroyed; retching mostly followed by actual vomiting, then sets in; the vomited matters often containing blood of a dark brown colour, with little shreds of flesh here and there, and always changing vegetable blue colours green. There is now great tenderness over the ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... their own will. The one who came to the trysting-place and missed the other was sore grieved, and in special Osberne, whose child's heart swelled nigh to bursting with sorrow mingled with wrath, and at such times the Sundering Flood seemed to him like the coils of a deadly serpent which was strangling the life out of him, and he would wend ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... requiem; for this was death and its visions. The perspiration started out over his whole body, for nearer and nearer,—and see there, on the window-pane there, there they are now; and he heard his name. Overpowered with dread he struggled to shout, for he was strangling; a dead, cold hand already clenched his throat, when he regained his voice in a shrieking "Help me!" and awoke. At that moment the window was burst in with such force that the pieces flew on to his bed. He sprang up; a man stood in the opening, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... writing man moved his head, and a monstrous shadow fled across the ground; a yelp as of a strangling dog broke out suddenly close behind him, and, as he turned, a moaning figure sat up on the roof, sobbing itself awake. Another moved at the sound, and then as, sighing, the former relapsed heavily against the wall, once more the priest went back to his place, still doubtful as to the ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... you are not likely to see much of him, else I should expect to see you flying at his neck and strangling him as you ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... cried Will, strangling a sob of anger. "It's not fair! You have no right. The money ought to be mine—I ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... crested billow pursued us hungrily, as though at each moment it would fall aboard and destroy us. The Streak was pulsing and vibrating and roaring like a thing alive. The wind of our progress was like a gale—a forty-five-mile gale. We could not face it and draw breath without choking and strangling. It blew the smoke straight back from the mouths of the smoke-stacks at a direct right angle to the perpendicular. In fact, we were travelling as fast as an express train. "We just streaked it," was the way Charley told it afterward, and I think his description ...
— Tales of the Fish Patrol • Jack London
... leopard are invariably the same, it prowls stealthily about sunset and throughout the night in search of prey. It seizes by the throat and clings with tenacious claws to the animal's neck, until it succeeds either in breaking the spine, or in strangling its victim, should the bone resist its strength. When the animal is dead, the leopard never attacks the hind-quarters first, according to the custom of the tiger, but it tears the belly open, and drags out all the viscera, making its first meal upon the ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... to the earth again and Tarzan came quickly to seize the rope, but Sabor had now found that it was only a slender cord that held her, and grasping it in her huge jaws severed it before Tarzan could tighten the strangling noose ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... affectionate to one another. His worst fear had been that they would compel him to do murder; and he would have died, he declared, rather than consent; but, fortunately, he was spared. The reason of this, he said, was because they always do their murder by strangling, since the shedding of blood is not acceptable to their divinity. He could not do this, for it requires great dexterity. Almost all their strangling is done by a thin, strong cord, curiously twisted, about six feet in length, with ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... mid-morning sunshine, bright and unreal. His mind was dazed, his thinking processes stopped in a kind of stunned unbelief. He could not even quit now. An undercurrent of fear ran close to the surface of his confused mind. It was the end of science, the end of all his work. All of the stifling, strangling restrictions of security on his work, on his private life, came whirling back as a monstrous, formless threat, something unspeakably big and powerful and unbeatable against which he could ...
— Security • Ernest M. Kenyon
... to him now—Maude with her bright black eyes and brilliant color. But she was neither crying nor strangling him with kisses. She was shaking hands with him very decorously, and telling him how pleased and glad she was. And in his hand he held her roses, which he occasionally smelled as he listened, and smiled upon her with that peculiar smile of his which made him so attractive. ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... lit. a deceiver. The Thags are a class but too well known in India as those who make their living by deceiving and strangling travellers. Meadows Taylor's somewhat sensational book, The Confessions of a Thug, has made their doings familiar enough, too, in England. In the Indian Penal Code a thag is defined as a person habitually associated with others for the ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel |
