after a few hiccups died

Hi,
It means that he hiccupped a few times and then he died . (your dictionary should know "hiccups". It is those unpleasant (and generally considered impolite) short and repeated sounds that you might make in your throat when you´ve drank too much alcohol or something.)

If your dictionary is quite small, it may not list hiccup (variant of, and much more common than, hiccough).

Hiccups are not from drinking too much, though the movies make it seem that way. It's an involunatary contraction of your diaphram, and since people have no control over it, it's impolite to mention it, not impolite to do it.
That type of hiccup does not seem to refer to this type of hiccup, which seems more like a general spasm of the body - and that is not a use I've seen elsewhere.

Thanks a lot for clarification, Grammar Geek. I´m sorry for any possible confusion (or offence) my post might have caused.

I´ve tried to explain what hiccups mean in general. For the purpose of clarity only, I compared it to a state some people may experience when being a little drunk.