Slasher

“ Thirteen or fourteen yards of warp are always drying. Although the moisture has been expelled, the twist is now in a very hot state, and on its passage into the headstock a couple of fans are used for cooling purposes. Systems of drying by currents of air have been introduced, but seem to take no hold in the cotton industry. It is important that the surface of the drying cylinders be kept smooth.
FIG. 12.
The headstock of the slasher consists of framework, holding the rods and reed necessary for separating the sized threads, and the apparatus for winding the yarn on the weavers’ beam. ”

“ I can't help you! It's too late! Turn your face away; don't let me see it; it isn't fair. It was the devil did it—the devil! It wasn't I. And then it took him by the throat with a dozen hands, and with a hundred knives cut at his face, until, before my eyes, I saw him losing his likeness to a man. And then it loosed him, and the great knife struck him from the back, and he fell on his face—what was his face, and then the hack, hack, hacking! And all the time that horrid noise. ”

“ And, as he reached trembling hands for the cards, that thing in his soul which he had believed slain sprang to life again, man-high and demon-strong, and through eager lips he heard it calling him—calling him—that old undying devil of the thousand lures that snare man's feet. ”

“ How, then, could they grasp in a moment, let alone comprehend, the sudden transformation of Slaughter from a soured and indifferent man to one of keen, quick, resolute character, whose tightly closed lips and lowering brow only emphasized the flash and glitter of his eyes? ”

“ It is the terrific materialisation of evil power from evil minds, all focussed upon the single thought that evil must triumph and good die!”
She sat, gripping the arms of her chair, pale, rigid, terribly alert, dreadfully enlightened, now, concerning the awful and new menace threatening the sanity of mankind.
She said in her steady, emotionless voice: “When the Yezidee Sorcerers desire to overwhelm a nomad people—some yort perhaps that has resisted the Sheiks of the Eight Towers, then the Slayer of Souls rides with his Black Banners to the Namaz-Ga or Place of Prayer. ”

“ Yet the treatment of the sacrilegious slayer seems to resemble so closely the treatment of hunters and fishermen who have killed animals for food in the ordinary course of business, that the ideas on which both sets of customs are based may be assumed to be substantially the same. Those ideas, if I am right, are the respect which the savage feels for the souls of beasts, especially valuable or formidable beasts, and the dread which he entertains of their vengeful ghosts. ”

“ I must get away, to escape from myself, or in another minute I shall be in the thick of this maddened, death-doomed mob.... I stumble over the rifle-pits.... I race out into the night, and tread on quaking flesh ... step on hard heads, and stumble over weapons and helmets ... something is clutching at my feet like hands, so that I race away like a hunted deer with the hounds at its heels ... and ever more bodies—breathless—out of one field into another.... Horror is crooning over my head ... horror is crooning beneath my feet ... and nothing but dying, mangled flesh.... ”

“ This had been no ordinary murder; the work of no everyday assassin. The presumption was that, taken wholly by surprise, she had seen enacted in front of her some spectacle of supreme horror; so close had she been standing as to have been actually drenched by the victim’s blood. My vision—if it was a vision—might not have any legal value, but it was full of suggestion for me; and the impression was still strong upon me that some strange creature had been present in the room, by which the crime had been actually committed. ”

“ The relations of the slayer and of the slain assemble. An animal is killed, and every person present is smeared with its blood on his face and breast. They think that the guilt of manslaughter is thus atoned for, and that no punishment will overtake the homicide.116.4 In Car Nicobar a man possessed by devils is cleansed of them by being rubbed all over with pig’s blood and beaten with leaves. The devils are supposed to be thus swept off like flies from the man’s body to the leaves, which are then folded up and tied tightly with a special kind of string. ”

“ If this nest of man-eaters was hellish before in its bloodstained horror, words fail to describe its aspect now. The savage shouts of the assailants, the despairing screeches of women and children, who have come forth only to find all escape cut off, the gasping groans of the wounded and of the slain, the gaping gashes and staggering forms, and ever around, grim, demon-like countenances, with teeth bared and a perfect hell of blood-fury gleaming from distended eyeballs. All is but another inferno-picture, too common here in the dark places of the earth. ”

“ The blood-lust grew in the dog’s savage heart with each fresh massacre. The first four had sated his appetite and filled his maw to repletion, but his mission was to kill without mercy. His strong jaws snapped out their lives one by one, and the bell-wether went last. He was old, and had seen killers at work before. He had always kept well in the background until the bloodthirsty invader had got his fill, and gone away. To-night he had stayed on the further side of the flock, expecting the killer to leave after each victim. ”

“ The fingers of one were twined savagely in the black hair, and the other grasped a long-bladed knife, and with it hacked, and gashed, and tore, and stabbed at the bare white throat of the woman, and the blood gushed forth from the jagged wounds, reddening the spectre hand and flowing in one continuous stream to the oak floor, where I heard it drip, drip, drip until my brain seemed as if it would burst, and I felt as if I was going raving mad. ”

“ When the blow descends on the knob of the punch, the sharp part is driven with great force into the skull, and the animal drops to the ground stunned. It is not dead, and it has to he "pithed" and its throat cut in the usual way before death takes place. The theory on which humane slaughterers go is that the animal is rendered by the first blow unconscious to everything afterwards. ”

“ While under the lash, the bleeding victim writhes in agony, convulsed with torture. Thirty-nine lashes on the bare back, which tear the skin at almost every stroke, is what the South calls a very moderate punishment! Many masters whip until they are tired—until the back is a gore of blood—then rest upon it: after a short cessation, get up and go at it again; and after having satiated their revenge in the blood of their victims, they sometimes leave them tied, for hours together, bleeding at every wound.—Sometimes, after being whipped, they are bathed with a brine of salt and water. ”

“ He had never expected anybody off the melodramatic stage to look so much like a murderer. Scarey, that face, a countenance almost majestic in its ruthlessness and force: gangster, gunman, typically personified. ”

“ Yet when the student recoils with horror from his half-accomplished task and sees the creature maliciously peering through the window, our hatred leaps to life once more and burns fiercely as the monster adds to his crimes the murder of Clerval, Frankenstein's dearest friend, and of Elizabeth on her wedding night. We follow with shuddering anticipation the long pursuit of the monster, expectant of a last, fearful encounter which shall decide the fate of the demon and his maker. ”

“ Asking to be forgiven after slamming a door is like touching off a Rodman gun, and then calling out to the fort in front to 'look out' 'take care!' 'do get out of the way.' A first class slam is cumulative long after the noise has ceased—the nerves go on slamming—the valves of the heart flap to and from—the tympanum roils a revelrie to all the shattered senses, the offender slammed at, at once subsides from rage to fear ”

“ There came the odour of burning flesh; the white beard curled and burned to a crisp; the body fell back limp upon the red-hot iron, and then shot up again in fresh agony; cry after cry, the most awful in the world, rang out with deadened sound between the four walls; and again the panel slid back creaking, and revealed the dreadful face of the torturer.
Again the name was asked for, and again it was refused; and this time, after the closing of the panel, a door opened, and the tall thin man with the evil face came slowly into the chamber. ”

“ A moment later I heard the dull sound of a blow, followed by the thud of a falling body; and when I opened my eyes the first victim of the diabolical rite of “smelling out” lay stretched out upon his face, dead, with skull cloven and a bangwan wound that must have cut his heart in twain. It was a sickening sight; but there was one redeeming feature about it, the mode of death was at least merciful, for the Slayers had done their work so well and so quickly that the unhappy man must have died instantly, with perhaps scarcely a pang to mark his dissolution. ”

“ Back in the spruces they slew with clubs and knives, feeling for one another in the dark. Their war-cries and shouts of hate rang fearfully on the night air, and awoke unholy echoes along the valley.
In the front of the battle Wolf Slayer fought like a man. His lack of stature saved him from death more than once in that fearful encounter. Many a vicious blow glanced harmless, or missed him altogether, as he stumbled and bent among the alders. At first he fought with a long, flint knife,—the work of the old arrow-maker. ”

“ Your eyes are mocking, but I see and know that remorse, terror, and the tortures of hell are raging in your heart.”
A hideous silence on the part of all followed this outbreak of temper. Then a voice from the crowd was heard to exclaim—
“Is he drunk?”
These three words relaxed all the terrible tension of the situation; but at the same moment let loose afresh—just as a few hours previously in Schleyfer’s den of infamy—all the evil spirits of orgy. There was shrieking, hooting, stamping, jumping, and dancing; the whole room was turned in a trice into an indescribable, savage, motley chaos. ”

“ Stop the murderer who is going to kill me—he has a razor to cut my throat!’ His face wore a terrible expression of fear, the furrows on the brow, the dilated nostrils, contracted lips, the gnashing of the teeth, gave evidence of a desperate struggle. ”

“ These buttons, pinches, fringes, jagges,
With them he (the Devil) weaveth woeful harms.”
We have seen how bitterly the slashing of good cloth exercised good men. The “cutting in rags” was slashing.
A favorite pattern of slashing is in small, narrow slits as shown in the portrait here of James Douglas. These jerkins are of leather, and the slashes are of course ornamental, and are also for health and comfort, as those know who wear chamois jackets with perforated holes throughout them, or slashes if we choose to call them so. They permit a circulation of the skin and a natural condition. ”

“ For a searing moment the emptiness and the agonies of the past four years rose to the surface like a two-edged razor in his brain, rose slashing wildly to torture and torment, and then, as suddenly, they were lost in the devils and the blood and the white, pine-scented thighs of the girl and Hall stopped thinking and gave himself completely to the one, to the only one, to the only thing that could answer the devils and the pain and the moment. ”

“ As if by magic, the savages appeared at every point, yelling like demons of death, and slaughtering all they met. The men in the fields were killed with their own hoes and hatchets. Those in the houses were murdered on their own hearth-stones. So unlooked-for and terrible was the assault that in that day of blood three hundred and forty-seven men, women, and children fell victims to their merciless foes. ”

“ As soon as each boy has disappeared within the precincts, a dull chopping sound is heard, a fearful cry rings out, and a sword or spear, dripping with blood, is thrust through the roof of the shed. This is a token that the boy's head has been cut off, and that the devil has carried him away to the other world, there to regenerate and transform him. So at sight of the bloody sword the mothers weep and wail, crying that the devil has murdered their children. ”

“ The thud of the bullet ploughing through ribs and vitals, was music to his ears as that savage flattened out more completely, beating the earth in his death throes; and a very shout of exultant snarling laughter escaped him—mingling with the roar of rage that went up from his enemies. He was growing terrible now—ferocious, bloodthirsty, as his ruthless foes, yet cool and firm as the rock behind which he lay. ”

“ Keeping now steadily in mind the points to which I have drawn your attention—that peculiar voice, that unusual agility, and that startling absence of motive in a murder so singularly atrocious as this—let us glance at the butchery itself. Here is a woman strangled to death by manual strength, and thrust up a chimney, head downward. Ordinary assassins employ no such modes of murder as this. ”

“ If the monster executed his threat, death was inevitable; yet, again, I considered whether my marriage would hasten my fate. My destruction might indeed arrive a few months sooner, but if my torturer should suspect that I postponed it, influenced by his menaces, he would surely find other and perhaps more dreadful means of revenge. He had vowed to be with me on my wedding-night, yet he did not consider that threat as binding him to peace in the meantime, for as if to show me that he was not yet satiated with blood, he had murdered Clerval immediately after the enunciation of his threats. ”