Kidnapped

“ Everything that money could do was done to find the man and the little boy he had kidnapped, but he proved too cunning for them all, and although several times traces were found of his being at some foreign city, when a hunt was made he had again vanished. ”

“ Every person found guilty of kidnapping, shall be confined in the penitentiary for a term not less than one year, and not more than seven years, for each person kidnapped or attempted to be kidnapped. ”

“ I would have to ken, for instance, what ye gave Hoseason at the first off-go?”
“Hoseason!” cries my uncle, struck aback. “What for?”
“For kidnapping David,” says Alan.
“It’s a lee, it’s a black lee!” cried my uncle. “He was never kidnapped. He leed in his throat that tauld ye that. Kidnapped? He never was!”
“That’s no fault of mine nor yet of yours,” said Alan; “nor yet of Hoseason’s, if he’s a man that can be trusted.”
“What do ye mean?” cried Ebenezer. “Did Hoseason tell ye?{282}”
“Why, ye donnered auld runt, how else would I ken?” cried Alan. “Hoseason and me are partners; we gang shares ”

“ I cried. “Come you on!”
“Ten pounds if ye take that lad!” cried the lawyer. ‘“He’s an accomplice. He was posted here to hold us in talk.”
At that word (which I could hear quite plainly, though it was to the soldiers and not to me that he was crying it) my heart came in my mouth with quite a new kind of terror. Indeed, it is one thing to stand the danger of your life, and quite another to run the peril of both life and character. ”

“ Even in the stories that would be classed as those of incident and adventure merely, Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and the rest, there is a sense as of some unaffected but fine symbolism that somehow touches something of possibility in yourself as you read. ”

“ Cole then presented two cards I had addressed to Mr. Cantlie, stating:
"I was kidnapped on Sunday last by two Chinamen, and forcibly taken into the Chinese Legation. I am imprisoned, and in a day or two I am to be shipped off to China, on board a specially-chartered vessel. I am certain to be beheaded. Oh! woe is me."
Dr. Manson heartily joined with his friend in his attempt to rescue me, and proceeded to interrogate Cole. Mr. Cantlie remarked:
"Oh, if Sir Halliday Macartney were only in town, it would be all right. It is a pity he is away; where can we find him?" ”

“ Thomson were to come out, we might find that we had burned our fingers. The kidnapping, to be sure, would be a court card upon our side, if we could only prove it. But it may be difficult to prove; and my advice (upon the whole) is to make a very easy bargain with your uncle, perhaps even leaving him at Shaws where he has taken root for a quarter of a century, and contenting yourself in the meanwhile with a fair provision. ”

“ By my way of it, my only friend in that wild country was blood-guilty in the first degree; I held him in horror; I could not look upon his face; I would have rather lain alone in the ram on my cold isle, than in that warm wood beside a murderer. ”

“ Nagkidlap ang sugà sa patrul, The police car’s light is flashing. n flash, sparkle. paN- v [A13] sparkle intermittently and rapidly. Nagpangidlap [465] ang linantip sa kaháit, The bolo is sparkling, it is so sharp.
kidnap v [A; a] kidnap, abduct. Mga ribildi nga mikidnap sa upisyal, The rebels who kidnapped the official. Gikidnap siya sa sinalikwayng trátu, She was abducted by the man she had spurned. maN-r- n a kidnapper. paN- n kidnapping.
kig- (←) prefix, short form for nakig- and makig-. ”

“ The offence alleged against Sun Yat Sen is that his medical character is a mere cloak for other designs, and that he is really Sun Wên, the prime mover in a conspiracy which was discovered in 1894, and which had for its object the dethronement of the present reigning dynasty. The first step of the conspirators was to be the capture of the Viceroy of Canton, who was to be kidnapped when inspecting the arsenal ”

“ He sprang to his feet, and looked a question at me as clear as if he had spoken.
“O!” cried I, “they’re all murderers here; it’s a ship full of them! They’ve murdered a boy already. Now it’s you.”
“Ay, ay,” said he ”

“ I cried. “The innocent should surely come before the guilty.”
“Why, David,” said he, “the innocent have aye a chance to get assoiled in court; but for the lad that shot the bullet, I think the best place for him will be the heather. Them that havenae dipped their hands in any little difficulty, should be very mindful of the case of them that have. ”

“ At that, forgetting everything but my anger, I ran in upon him, put aside his knife with my left, and struck him in the mouth with the right. I was a strong lad and very angry, and he but a little man; and he went down before me heavily. By good luck, his knife flew out of his hand as he fell. ”

“ He never grew used to my being there, stared at me continually (sometimes, I could have thought, with terror) , and more than once drew back from my hand when I was serving him. I was pretty sure from the first that he had no clear mind of what he had done, and on my second day in the round-house I had the proof of it. We were alone, and he had been staring at me a long time, when all at once, up he got, as pale as death, and came close up to me, to my great terror. ”

“ We lay there for what seemed like a terribly long time before any of us did anything except listen to ourselves breathe. I was also listening to my heart beat. But not a one of us was as scared as we would have been if we hadn’t known that the kidnapper was all nicely locked up in jail and nobody needed to be afraid of him at all. I guess I never had such a wonderful feeling in my life for a long time as I did right that minute, ’cause I realized we’d followed the trail like real scouts and we’d actually run onto the kidnapper’s hideout, and we might find the ransom money. ”

“ You will object that you are innocent; well, but so is he. And to be tried for your life before a Highland jury, on a Highland quarrel and with a Highland Judge upon the bench, would be a brief transition to the gallows. ”

“ Once, when I could not reach the yard, and now, the second time, when these fishers turned a deaf ear to my cries. But this time I wept and roared like a wicked child, tearing up the turf with my nails, and grinding my face in the earth. If a wish would kill men, those two fishers would never have seen morning, and I should likely have died upon my island. ”

“ As soon as we came to the inn, Ransome led us up the stair to a small room, with a bed in it, and heated like an oven by a great fire of coal. At a table hard by the chimney, a tall, dark, sober-looking man sat writing. In spite of the heat of the room, he wore a thick sea-jacket, buttoned to the neck, and a tall hairy cap drawn down over his ears; yet I never saw any man, not even a judge upon the bench, look cooler, or more studious and self-possessed, than this ship-captain. ”

“ The fact that kidnapping persists in spite of these recognized discouragements probably accounts for the proneness of policemen and citizens to interpret into every abduction case some moving force other than mere hope of gain. ”

“ There were numberless knooks from the forest, as rough and crooked in appearance as the gnarled branches of the trees they ministered to. And there were dainty ryls from the fields, each one bearing the emblem of the flower or plant it guarded. Behind these were many ranks of pixies, gnomes and nymphs, and in the rear a thousand beautiful fairies floated along in gorgeous array. ”

“ Are ye to lie in your warm bed and think upon us, when the wind gowls in the chimney and the rain tirls on the roof? Are ye to eat your meat by the cheeks of a red fire, and think upon this poor sick lad of mine, biting his finger ends on a blae muir for cauld and hunger? ”

“ It is well known that child snatchers almost never succeed with this part of the business. The cases in which the kidnapper has actually got the ransom and made off without being caught and punished are so thinly strewn upon the long record that any criminal who ever takes the trouble to peruse it must shrink with fear from such offenses. Finally, it is familiar knowledge among police officers that professional criminals usually are aware of this fact and consequently both dread and abhor abductions. ”

“ The moon shone big and white in the sky, and the snow lay crisp and sparkling on the ground as Santa Claus cracked his whip and sped away out of the Valley into the great world beyond. The roomy sleigh was packed full with huge sacks of toys, and as the reindeer dashed onward our jolly old Santa laughed and whistled and sang for very joy. ”

“ Nothing except a natural cataclysm is so excitant of mass terror as the first suggestion that there are child-stealers abroad. What fevers and rages of the public temper may result from such crimes will be seen from some of what follows. The most celebrated instance is, of course, the affair of Charlie Ross of Philadelphia, which carries us back more than half a century. We have here the classic American kidnapping case, already a tradition, rich in all the elements that make the perfect abduction tale. ”

“ In almost all cases of man stealing, the stolen beings were of those who had tasted the sweets of liberty. To the kidnapper, who made these his prey, there were great facilities for escaping with impunity; not only because, in the depth and darkness of a dungeon, his limbs loaded with fetters, and utterance choked with a gag, his suffering could not be made visible or audible, but also because the deadness of sensibility on this subject, which still pervaded the public, though in a less degree than formerly, seemed to have unnerved every eye and palsied every ear. ”

“ When I had been at Auburn prison about six months I grew again exceedingly desperate, and made several wild and ill-thought-out attempts to escape. I would take no back talk from the keepers, and began to be feared by them. One day I had a fight with another convict. He struck me with an iron weapon, and I sent him to the hospital with knife thrusts through several parts of his body. Although I had been a thief all my life, and had done some strong arm work, by nature I was not quarrelsome, and I have never been so quick to fight as on my third term. ”

“ If she could only escape, now, with the child, nothing else would matter in the least. And between her and freedom there lay but the thickness of a single door, and yet it seemed that she could not pass it.
She lifted the child from his hiding place and stood him upon the floor, then quickly swung the heavy slab of plaster back into position. At least, she reasoned, the kidnappers, when they returned, should not at once learn that their captive had escaped. ”

“ So the thief entered, he and the husband; and when they were both in the chamber, she locked on them the door, which was a stout one, and said to the thief, ‘Out on thee, O fool! Thou hast fallen [into the trap] and now I have but to cry out and the officers of the police will come and take thee and thou wilt lose thy life, O Satan!’ Quoth he, ‘Let me go forth;’ and she said, ‘Thou art a man and I am a woman; and in thy hand is a knife and I am afraid of thee.’ Quoth he, ‘Take the knife from me.’ So she took the knife from him and said to her husband, ‘Art thou a woman and he a man? ”

“ And so he thought the more of the men, the more of vengeance, the more of the hour which would see him face to face with them, and see them face to face with punishment. He rejoiced to think that abduction was one of the two hundred crimes which were punishable with death: and he swore that if he devoted his life to the capture of these wretches they should be taken. ”

“ Reducing the facts to their essentials and then trying to reason, the possibilities became a very general preoccupation. The deductive steps may be briefly set down. First, there were the alternative propositions of voluntary or involuntary absence, of hiding or abduction. Second, if the theory of forced absence was to be entertained, there were only two general possibilities—abduction for ransom or kidnapping by some maniac. The ideas of murder, detention for revenge, and the like, come under the latter head. ”

“ When we stopped to breathe, and I had time to see all about me, the clearness and sweetness of the night, the shapes of the hills like things asleep, and the fire dwindling away behind us, like a bright spot in the midst of the moor, anger would come upon me in a clap that I must still drag myself in agony and eat the dust like a worm. ”

“ To the prisoner he said: “You may be seated, sir. I want to talk to you.”
Then to the guard: “I will excuse you, guard. I wish to question the prisoner alone.”
Turning to the prisoner: “Now, sir, I should like to hear something about yourself. Why were you sentenced, and have you registered under your real name?”
“I have, sir. I am not a criminal. I have been sentenced because of strong circumstantial evidence. I am innocent. I did not commit the crime for which I am here.”
“Well, my opinion of you is good. I do not believe that you are a murderer—at least, I hope not. ”

“ Never a word they spoke as they pulled ashore, being stunned with the horror of that screaming; but they had scarce set foot upon the beach when Hoseason woke up, as if out of a muse, and bade them lay hands upon Alan. They hung back indeed, having little taste for the employment; but Hoseason was like a fiend, crying that Alan was alone, that he had a great sum about him, that he had been the means of losing the brig and drowning all their comrades, and that here was both revenge and wealth upon a single cast. ”

“ Turn the water on in my tub and I'll be slipping into decent duds in a jiffy. Here's an extra I picked up downtown. The scream of the evening is a kidnaping—most deplorable line of business! Have you ever noticed a certain periodicity in child stealing? About every so often you hear of such a case. Despicable; a foul crime hardly second to murder. Hanging is not too severe a punishment. Clear out now, for if we begin talking I'll never get dressed!"
The account of the kidnaping in the park was little more than a bulletin, but Archie soon had it committed to memory. ”