headsman

And since in this famous fishery, each mate or headsman, like a Gothic Knight of old, is always accompanied by his boat-steerer or harpooneer, who in certain conjunctures provides him with a fresh lance, when the former one has been badly twisted, or elbowed in the assault; and moreover, as there generally subsists between the two, a close intimacy and friendliness; it is therefore but meet, that in this place we set down who the Pequod's harpooneers were, and to what headsman each of them belonged.

de Thou, and other slovenly executed people, that the headsman might inflict more than one stroke, that is to say, more than one martyrdom, on the poor tulip-fancier.

1830; The Bravo, 1831; The Heidenmauer, or the Benedictines, 1832; The Headsman, 1833; A Letter to his Countrymen, 1834; The Monikins, 1835; Sketches of Switzerland, 1836; Gleanings in Europe: 1837; (England)

Sometimes, nothing is injured but the man who is thus annihilated; oftener the boat's bow is knocked off, or the thigh-board, in which the headsman stands, is torn from its place and accompanies the body.

Milady dreamed that she at length had D'Artagnan in her power, that she was present at his execution; and it was the sight of his odious blood, flowing beneath the ax of the headsman, which spread that charming smile upon her lips.

His shoulders abruptly altered their shape, and he heaved the whole huge thing high over his head, like a headsman's axe about to fall.

Her white lips moved as though in prayer, and the headsman's assistant who approached to assist her to alight from the cart, heard her repeating this word in a low tone,--"Phoebus."

The usual articles were on the little table; the usual deadened fire was in the grate; the bed had its usual pall upon it; and the mistress of all sat on her black bier-like sofa, propped up by her black angular bolster that was like the headsman's block.

It could be done with a battle-axe or an old headsman's axe, or an old two-handed sword."

This thus that I shall grasp the headsman's block with no regrets and never be afraid of death ...

shed, shamed, shame, shaman, sham, shade, shad, mush, mesh, mashed, mash, hums, humane, human, hued, hems, headsman, heads, headman, head, hands, hand, hams, hades, dash, ashen, ashamed, amah, ahem, ahead, UNASHAMED Wordsquare: G.

Babo's cut of Benito Cereno replays the warning that transforms the silent, harmonious, and pleasantly intimate moment of the shaving into one that brings back Delano's perception in which "in the black [Babo] saw a headsman, and in the white [Benito Cereno] a man in the block" (Melville [1855] 1990, 74).