Silver bullion

“ So the alms you have given me will be the price of blood. You have sold a just man to death. For the Knight I told you of is chaste, temperate and pious, and I hate him for this cause. 'Tis you will have brought about his murder. You have laid a weight of silver in the scale of crime, to bear it down. ”

“ She put her hands to her sides and laughed and danced around the room. “Lead can’t kill a deer and her fawn. It takes silver! Silver! Do you hear that, Tinie? Silver hammered and molded round to load the gun. And when, I’d like to know, would skinflint Amos Tingley, the miser, ever destroy a silver coin by pounding it into a ball to load a gun? There’s nothing to fear. Rest easy, Tinie. Besides all living creatures must eat. It is their right. Only silver, remember, not lead, can harm the deer. A miser will keep his silver and let his garden go!” ”

“ And in a moment the men fell on Silver-Leg with the vigour born of terror and greed, and for the first moment or two of their desperate tussle it seemed as if the man with the wooden leg must succumb to the fury of his assailants. Darkness encompassed them all round, and the deep silence which dwells in the heart of the woods. And in the darkness and the silence these men fought—and fought desperately—for the possession of a few hundred francs just filched at the muzzle of a pistol from a few peaceable travellers. ”

“ Strickland wrapped a towel round his hand and took the gun-barrels out of the fire. I put the half of the broken walking stick through the loop of fishing-line and buckled the leper comfortably to Strickland's bedstead. I understood then how men and women and little children can endure to see a witch burnt alive; for the beast was moaning on the floor, and though the Silver Man had no face, you could see horrible feelings passing through the slab that took its place, exactly as waves of heat play across red-hot iron—gun-barrels for instance. ”

“ No sooner had the cows seen the dog than they also stood upright, [372] and imitated all his movements. The farmer crept stealthily out of the field, went home, loaded his gun with a silver coin, which he cut into slugs,—for it is a well known fact that no baser metal than silver will wound a sorcerer,—returned to the field, where he found the dance still going on as fast and furious as ever, and fired at the dog, which ran off howling, and limping on three legs. ”

“ For a long time these consignments were delivered with perfect safety. Then, after a particularly rich vein had been struck, it became necessary to forward a very large consignment of bullion. Contrary to the usual practice, only two men were sent in charge of it. Their dead bodies were afterwards discovered, and the gold was never recovered. ”

“ Of course the story in the country has ever been that a "witch hare" was hunted that day, and "every one knows" that nothing but a silver bullet can destroy a witch.
The belief that only a silver bullet can harm a witch is illustrated in my next story. It was related to me by the Rector of a certain parish in Pembrokeshire, who said that though the people it concerned had been dead some years, the incident was still repeated with conviction by the country-folk of the district. ”

“ The girl sprung forward and landed at White Tiger’s side.
“I’ve killed him,” he cried. “Now we must fight the devils in the corridor.”
There was no time to look, for the savages who had followed them from the lake shore were quite near, and, as the couple waited for them to turn a curve that they might fire, a low, angry growl issued from the corridor.
“They’ve roused a bear among the rocks,” said Silver Rifle, “and the beast is being driven down upon us. He has turned the bend now; I hear him among the loose rocks; wait till the Indians follow his example. There! they’re around now. ”

“ Then Silvio lowered his hand.
"'I only regret,' he said, that the pistol is not loaded with cherry-stones. My bullet is heavy; and it always seems to me that an affair of this kind is not a duel, but a murder. I am not accustomed to aim at unarmed men. ”

“ The signal is given, and the unfortunate bull gets a banderille which when thrust into his neck blazes up that same instant.
The points wound in their own way, and in their own way rolls of smoke surround the head of the beast, the rattle of fireworks stuns him; great sparks fall into his wounds, small congreve rockets burst under his skin; the smell of burnt flesh and singed hair fill the arena. [236] In truth, cruelty can go no further; but the delight of the public rises now to its zenith. ”

“ With a wild bellow of rage and pain the furious brute makes at another foe in his path, but distracted by the number of his persecutors dancing like demons around him, and exhausted by the loss of blood, [Pg 167] he sinks fainting to the earth, though still to the last defiant, amongst the yells of the excited crowd.
In a few minutes a man with a bright, naked sword, called the espada, entered the arena, and demanded permission from the autoridad to kill the bull. ”

“ He was not a soft and ductile metal as before, but Iron hardened into tough blue steel. Showers of sparks flew from him, snapping, burning, threatening; and from among them sprang swords and spears and battle-axes, and daggers keen and pointed. Out of the smithy and out through the great world these cruel weapons raced, slashing and clashing, [42] thrusting and cutting, raging and killing, and carrying madness among men.
The wicked hornet, idling under the eaves, rejoiced at the mischief he had wrought. But the Smith was filled with grief, and the music of his anvil became a jangling discord. ”

“ The once modest street row with a bully twice his size was enlarged in cast. There were now, as befitted a king, two bullies, who writhed in pain, each with a broken arm, while the slight but muscular youth with a knowledge of jiu-jitsu walked coolly off, flecking dust from one of his capable shoulders. Sometimes he paused long enough to explain the affair, in a few dignified words, to an admiring policeman who found it difficult to believe that this stripling had vanquished two such powerful brutes. ”

“ To me the worst part of a bull-fight was the barbarous cruelty to the horses. They had no chance. They were simply brought into the arena to be gored, and, when they fell, they were beaten most brutally with sticks to get them to rise again. When they staggered to their feet, and tottered in the death agony, the Spaniards shouted with laughter. Even when the poor beasts lay in the last quiver of death, they were barbarously ill-used by the assistants, who tore the harness from them to put it on other victims. A more dastardly exhibition of brutality I never witnessed in my life. ”

“ On one side is the brute with his terrible horns, with his enormous strength, his thirst for blood, maddened by pain, blinded by rage, fierce, bloody, terrible; on the other, a young man of twenty, dressed like a dancer, on foot, alone and defenceless but for the short, slender sword in his hand. But the gaze of twenty thousand eyes is bent upon him. The king has a gift at hand; his sweetheart is above there in a box, with her eyes fixed upon him; a thousand ladies are trembling for his life. The bull pauses and looks at him; he looks at the bull and waves the red cloth before him. ”

“ The express companies went to great lengths to engage only the most fearless and law-abiding men they could find for this dangerous task, and time and time again thousands upon thousands of dollars in bullion rode across the lonely trails with no more than one man, his shotgun, and his reputation for bravery guarding it. ”

“ The banderillas for the mayor! fire for the mayor!”
The agony of the bull is terrible. Sometimes the torero does not strike where he should, and the sword is buried to the hilt, but not in the direction of the heart. Then the bull commences to run about the arena with the sword sticking in his body, sprinkling the ground with blood, bellowing deeply, writhing and twisting in a thousand ways to free himself from that torture; and in his impetuous course sometimes the sword flies out, sometimes it is driven deeper in and causes death. ”

“ If war has its chivalry and its pageantry, it has also revolting hideousness and demoniac woe. The young, the noble, the sanguine were writhing there in agony. Bullets respect not beauty. They tear out the eye, and shatter the jaw, and rend the cheek, and transform the human face divine into an aspect upon which one can not gaze but with horror. ”

“ The bully looked at him fixedly for a moment, and then drawing back his short upper lip after a way he had, and which made his face resemble that of a snarling wolf, with fangs exposed, he remarked:
"It makes me laugh to think of such a lot of tenderfeet in the woods. Be careful not to shoot yourselves, kids. Guns are mighty dangerous sometimes. And just make up your minds that we ain't agoing to be scared by big words. The fellows that train with me have been up against hard knocks too often to knuckle down before a lot of bluster and brag. ”

“ In the act of firing upon this monster is represented an unobtrusive human levelling an obtrusive gun, once the colour of bright gold. Now the legend above the picture is faded beyond conjecture; the gun’s relation to the title is a matter of faith; the menaced animal, wearied of the long aim of the hunter, has resolved itself into a shapeless blot. ”

“ Silver’s the stuff. You are a man of war, and might bring a regiment against him in vain; but this little silver bullet, if it can but reach him, will put an end to his mischief forever. See”—he pulled open a drawer in a little table and took out an old-fashioned, heavy-barrelled pistol and a small instrument, shaped almost like a pair of pincers, for moulding bullets—“I am all prepared. The silver is good, the pistol aims truly. He shall not trouble her any more.”
The captain, glancing at him in perplexity, saw in his eyes a madness of determination he had not seen in any face before ”

“ The gold, king, is assailed by the other six metals, because they themselves wish to be gold. The king is killed. Essentially the same thing happens as above.] Then the son in anger, and at the instigation of his companions, kills his father on the throne. He collects the father's blood in his garment. A grave [the lion's den, the grave] is dug, into which the son intends to throw the father, but they both fall in. [Cf. the dangerous walk of the wanderer on the wall, Section 8, where the people fall off.] The son makes every effort to get out again, but some one comes who does not permit it. ”

“ He is thrown down struggling furiously, and repeatedly dashes his head against the ground in rage and despair. Then, his legs being also tied, the man with the hissing red-hot iron in the form of a letter, brands him on the side with the token of his dependence on the lord of the soil. Some of the bulls stand this martyrdom with Spartan heroism, and do not utter a cry; but others, when the iron enters their flesh, burst out into long bellowing roars, that seem to echo through the whole country. ”

“ He lays the point of his sword between the bull's horns, as lightly as a lady who touches her cavalier with her fan, and he falls dead as a stone.
If the blow is a clean, well-delivered one, the enthusiasm of the people is unbounded. ”

“ If doors and windows had not of late been strengthened with bars of iron in anticipation of some such occasion, they would have been broken in with the onset of the fierce and now yelling crowd who rushed against them with the force of a battering-ram, to recoil in baffled rage from the vain assault. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A bully will fight a duel, upon occasion, to prove himself a man of brute 223 courage, and kill or be killed for so low a cause. A coward will fight a duel, because he is afraid to refuse, on account of what bullies might say of him, and kill, or be killed, from so mean a motive. A man maddened by wrongs, and raging with wrath, will fight a duel to be revenged upon his adversary, to slay or to be slain, and is eager to risk his own life, in the hope of taking his enemy’s. But no man ever fought a duel from any motive of pure honor. ”

“ At [396] last the unprepared man had freed himself from the overcoat and then stood ready not only to defend himself, but to administer deserved punishment. Then the bully had said:
"Now, wait just a minute. Let's talk this thing over and see if we can't settle it before I get hurt."
The bully's pockets bulge with the loot he has taken from the man. The victim's face and head are swollen and bloody and yet the bully invites him to sit down to a table to discuss the hold-up, the assault, and the terms of which the loot and the loot only will be returned. ”

“ Tracy, who was sobbing on the stairs, ran for one moment to the general's room; there he seized a well-remembered cash-box, and instinctively possessed himself of those new, neat, double-barrelled pistols: a bully never goes unarmed. ”