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More "Helter-skelter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... apprehension. How soon the nerves are disturbed by the smell of anything burning in the house. Raise the cry of "Fire!" in a crowded building, and at once the old savage bursts through the veneer of civilisation. It is helter-skelter, the Devil take the hindmost. The strong trample upon the weak. Men and women turn to devils. Even if the cry of "Fire!" be raised in a church—where a believer might wish to die, and where he might feel himself booked through ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... walrus, ribs and shoulder-blades of bears, brought possibly by the ice in winter. Turning again from the sea, we resumed our search for deer; but two or three hours' more very stiff walking produced no better luck. Suddenly a cry from Fitz, who had wandered a little to the right, brought us helter-skelter to the spot where was standing. But it was not a stag he had called us to come and look upon. Half imbedded in the black moss at his feet, there lay a grey deal coffin falling almost to pieces ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... of each month with every reason to confess that they have bought those things which they ought not to have bought and have left unbought those things which they ought to have bought. But it is not only a matter of reaching a systematic instead of a helter-skelter enjoyment of the offerings of the world. It is also a matter of reaching, by study of money values, a mental habit of economy. And it comes at a time ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... constructed by driving long timbers into the mud at the water's edge, below a steep piece of bank. Along the inner side of these are laid horizontally a certain number of logs, to form a water front; and into the space behind are tumbled helter-skelter from the tops of the bank the logs of the winter's chopping. It is a very simple and expeditious way of storing the logs. But when the ice has run out, and it is time to start the lumber down-stream, then comes trouble. The piles sustaining the whole ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Anatole France has introduced into the Dumas theatre some preeminently un-Dumas-like stage-business: the characters, between assignations and combats, toy amorously with ideas. That is the difference which at a stroke dissevers them from any helter-skelter character in Dumas as utterly as from any of our ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... the guns; whack! went the broadswords; thump! went the cudgels; crash! went the musket-stocks; blows, kicks, cuffs, scratches, black eyes and bloody noses swelling the horrors of the scene! Thick, thwack, cut and hack, helter-skelter, higgledy-piggledy, hurly-burly, heads-over-heels, rough-and-tumble! Dunder and blixum! swore the Dutchmen; splitter and splutter! cried the Swedes. Storm the works! shouted Hardkoppig Peter. Fire the mine! roared stout Rising—Tantarar-ra-ra! ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher
... sorry for herself that her lip began to quiver over a sobbing breath, when steps came hurrying helter-skelter, the door banged open, ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... very much about how they are going to express themselves. They use the first words that come to them. They do not think of forming a sentence so that it will have beauty, brevity, transparency, power. The words flow from their lips helter-skelter, with little thought of arrangement ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... parting his sweet little mouth, showing the pearly teeth within. He gave the bag a sounding thump, and instantly it burst asunder, and a perfect cataract of candies and sugar-plums poured down upon the carpet. Quick as a flash every child in the room was clustered together upon the sheet helter-skelter, head-over-heels, laughing, screaming, dashing after the candies; and then—the bubble burst, and ...
— The Fairy Nightcaps • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... and were back some twenty yards, making their evening coffee, when suddenly the rebel skirmishers burst through the brush upon them, followed immediately by the main line, and before they realized it were between these troops and their guns. Consternation reigned supreme in an instant and a helter-skelter flight followed. Jackson followed up this advantage with his usual impetuosity, and although the other divisions of the Eleventh made an effort to hold their ground, this big hole in the line was fatal to them and all were quickly swept away. Of course, the division ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... eleven, there being not more than three or four hundred people in Palace Yard, a number of Press messengers, rushing helter-skelter out of the court and into waiting cabs, indicated the arrival of some critical juncture within the jealously guarded portals. Presently it was whispered that the Lord Chief Justice had finished his summing up, and that Mr. Justice Mellor was addressing the jury. A buzz of conversation ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... standing close saw one of their number crumple suddenly to the earth. When they leaned over him he was dead. They were panic-stricken, and it took all the brutal authority of the Arabs to keep the Manyuema from rushing helter-skelter into the jungle—anywhere to escape from this ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... behind to follow on foot at leisure. I never did get left the whole of this depot journey, but I was often very near it and several times had only time to seize a strap or a part of the sledge and be dragged along helter-skelter over everything that came in the way till the team got sick of galloping and one could struggle to one's feet again. One gets very wary and wide awake when one has to manage a team of eleven dogs and ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... activity and are not infected by it, who watch others achieving prizes of riches and pleasure and are not disturbed, who look on the world and the universe they are born in with quite other eyes. To them it appears not as a bazaar to buy and to sell in; not as a ladder to scramble up (or down) helter-skelter without knowing whither or why; but as a fact—a great and mysterious fact—to be pondered over, studied, and perchance in some small measure understood. By the multitude these men were sneered at as eccentric or feared as supernatural. Their ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... they descended on the foe. That foe did not await the onset. Panic-stricken they turned and went helter-skelter down the pass—all except two, who seemed made of sterner stuff than their ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... of screams greeted Miss Elting's cry. Four girls and their guardian, regardless of the wetting they were receiving, rushed helter-skelter into the river, throwing themselves upon the staggering Harriet. They snatched her up, carrying her ashore despite her struggles and protests. They laid her down on the packs, each trying to do something for their companion whom they had ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... Helter-skelter the kittens appear; "Oh mother dear, we very much fear That we have lost our mittens!" they cry. "You have? Then you shall have no pie! Lost your mittens? ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... it creeps For a while, till it sleeps In its own little lake; And thence at departing, Awakening and starting, It runs through the reeds, And away it proceeds Through meadow and glade, In sun and in shade, And through the wood-shelter, Among crags in its flurry, Helter-skelter, Hurry-scurry. Here it comes sparkling, And there it lies darkling; Now smoking and frothing Its tumult and wrath in, Till in this rapid race On which it is bent, It reaches the place Of ...
— The Nursery, Volume 17, No. 100, April, 1875 • Various
... road, Morrison and Cary shrank down beside the wall to let the Union riders pass; on the other, all that was left of the Rebel force ran helter-skelter for a screen of protecting trees. But before the last one disappeared he threw up his gun and fired, haphazard, in the direction whence he ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... and faced the six or seven grotesque creatures, who stood there in the sunlight, solid, casting shadows, moving, and yet so incredibly unreal. Montgomery cracked his whip at them, and forthwith they all turned and fled helter-skelter into the trees; and when Montgomery and Moreau were at a distance I judged sufficient, I waded ashore, and picked up and examined the revolvers. To satisfy myself against the subtlest trickery, I discharged one at a round lump ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... needna say muckle to ane whose heart is e'en the sairer that she has been a thought to blame. But there has been mony a challenge, as they ca' it, passed in my house, when thae daft lads of the Wildfire Club and the Helter-skelter were upon their rambles; and they had aye sense eneugh to make it up without fighting, sae that I really did not apprehend ony thing like mischief.—And ye maun think, moreover, Mr. Bindloose, that it would have been an unco thing if a guest, in a decent and creditable public like mine, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... went back to their pans, and the chambermaids to their dusters, and the stablemen and grooms trooped out of doors to look after the horses; but presently they all came rushing back again, helter-skelter, with pale faces, for the stable door had been left open, and the King's favourite brown horse had been stolen, as well as the Harper's old gray mare. For a long time no one dare tell the King, but at last the head ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... fellows! There's the tramp of their feet—the clash of the cutlasses! Nearer they come! They're overhead! They've gained the main deck! Hark! Shut to the door and hold it tight, boy. Down come the Frenchmen, helter-skelter! They're flying for their lives! They're coming down by dozens, twenties, fifties! They've given way fore and aft! All hands are shouting for quarter! Hurrah, boy! Hurrah, True Blue! That cheer, I know it. The Frenchman's flag is down! Once more we've the glorious British ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... had the minister and the elder guests turned their backs, than the young folk who remained made a joyous rush for the furniture. Chairs and benches were piled helter-skelter in the corners and a unanimous demand arose for Fiddlin' Archie's Sandy to bestir his lazy ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... luminous ceiling, decorated with delicate arabesques, distributed a soft, clear daylight over all the wonders gathered in this museum. For a museum it truly was, in which clever hands had spared no expense to amass every natural and artistic treasure, displaying them with the helter-skelter picturesqueness that ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... to see the plain thus suddenly fill'd with rabble, all running from the south, and the silly startled sheep rushing helter-skelter, and huddling together on the tors above, that I forgot my own likely danger if any of this revengeful crew should come upon me lying there: and was satisfied to watch them as they straggled over the moors toward the road. Some pass'd close to the cottage; but none ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... white, tied across many brows. Helmets swung clanking like iron pipkins from saddle-bows, and men rode wearily with their arms in slings, drooping haggard faces upon their chests. But all passed rapidly enough up the steep street, and tumbled with noise and shouting, helter-skelter into the great court-yard beneath me as I watched, secure as God in heaven, from my perch ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... the full force of the storm was felt. The Commodore gave the signal to draw in all sails except one and to remove the uppermost parts of the masts. The ships were being scattered far apart. In the cabins all articles, though tied fast, were broken loose and were thrown helter-skelter, the occupants likewise, many with bruised limbs, and there was no end to the spells of seasickness and of misery made ridiculous. The storm was ever growing worse. On the second day the last sail was drawn in, and the rudder bound fast, so that ...
— The Voyage of The First Hessian Army from Portsmouth to New York, 1776 • Albert Pfister
... spot where the bear had been seen the previous night. The two large hounds, Ringwood and Jowler, kept at their master's heels, being trained to understand and perform all the duties required of them, while the curs and terriers were running helter-skelter far ahead, or striking out into the woods without aim, and always returning without effecting any thing. At length the two hounds paused, and scented the earth, giving certain information that they had arrived ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... fellow," he said, after a pause; "a most remarkable young fellow. As I said before, he somehow fascinates me. I'd immensely like to put that young fellow into a smart hussar uniform, mount him on a good charger of the Punjaub breed, and send him helter-skelter, pull-devil, pull-baker, among my old friends the ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... host Down sinking on the plain. Their efforts were in vain; Fate ruled that final hour, (Inexorable power!) And so the captains fled As well as those they led; The princes perish'd all. The undistinguish'd small In certain holes found shelter, In crowding, helter-skelter; But the nobility Could not go in so free, Who proudly had assumed Each one a helmet plumed; We know not, truly, whether For honour's sake the feather, Or foes to strike with terror; But, truly, 'twas their error. Nor hole, nor crack, nor crevice Will let ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... the kitchen, a hot, steaming place, where men, mostly cooks, in dirty white jackets, rushed helter-skelter into each other ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels
... Skink along the streets, To whom each bonnet vails, and all knees bend; And yet my noble humour is too light By the six shillings. Here are two crack'd groats To helter-skelter at some vaulting-house[496]. But who comes yonder? ha! old Fauconbridge? Hath a brave chain; were John and he good friends, That chain were mine, and should unto Blackheath. I'll venture; it's but trial: luck may fall. Good morrow, good Sir ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... you conveniently can; though there's no need for helter-skelter haste, since there wouldn't be time for an answer, anyhow. In twenty minutes we'll weigh anchor, and be off. I've hurried ashore to see you, hoping to find you at the ship-agent's office. How fortunate my stumbling on you ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... in this wild, Smooth-resting on its mosses sleek, Like loving lips upon a cheek Soft as the face of maid or child— Just boulders, helter-skelter piled. ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... out on the green sward, planks raised a foot or so, for every one would sit on the grass. Some of the Indian women had booths, and were already selling birch and sassafras beer, pipes and tobacco, and maple sugar. Little ones were running helter-skelter, tumbling down and getting up without a whimper. Here a knot of men were playing cards or dominoes. It was a pretty scene, and needed only cavaliers and the glittering, stately stepping dames to make it a picture of ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... fort yelling as if Detroit, like Jericho, might be taken with shouting. Their spent bullets pelted the old fort like harmless hail. They tried to rush upon the gate, but the fusilade from the block house and the fire-belching cannon of the British drove them back helter-skelter. ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... a pair of fools! Oh! To be young and throw our opportunities helter-skelter like flowers of which we're tired," and he looked at the upset lapful. "Children! children! Carpe Diem! Carpe Diem! Pluck the flowers; for the days are swifter than arrows," and he walked away from us engrossed in his own thoughts, muttering over and over the advice ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... Lalain, Hoogstraaten; and Vilain, at the same time made a furious attack upon the front. The French cavalry wavered with the shock so vigorously given. The camp followers, sutlers, and pedlers, panic-struck, at once fled helter-skelter, and in their precipitate retreat, carried confusion and dismay throughout all the ranks of the army. The rout was sudden and total. The onset and the victory were simultaneous, Nevers riding through a hollow with some companies of cavalry, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... come out. It was really wonderful to see these fifteen baby ducks, yellow as canaries, beaks and webbed feet pink, swarming around the big patient sitting mother, ducking under her wings, to come out presently and clamber helter-skelter onto her broad back. As often happens with nurses, Yollande loved the ducklings as her own children, and without worrying about their shape or plumage, so different from her own, she showered upon them proofs of ...
— The Curly-Haired Hen • Auguste Vimar
... the day, and keep an eye over Martha; for the idea of a dinner party has quite frightened her; and there are so many little things to be done, which I know nothing about, and which you understand, and without which we should have every thing helter-skelter, that you must come, or I'll never forgive you.' Harry made this last menace with so fierce an air, and his mouth pursed up in so ferocious a manner, although his eyes were dancing with fun, that the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... cheeks radiant with color, her eyes shining. "Oh, washing your dishes? Wait a minute, I'll help." She flung off her coat in a helter-skelter way, and rolled up ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... annoyance at not being able to follow. Angela put the orphan chick down amongst the others; for a second it cheeped pitifully; then it, too, began to eat. As soon as the last grain had gone some more was thrown into the coop for the old hen. All the chicks poured back helter-skelter into the coop, the orphan amongst them, and the hen took it into her family circle without demur, and the baby Plymouth Rock's ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... cleared it, right or wrong, and beat him down on his knees, and then started for her spell of the merry canter over turf: an example to the English of the punishment they get for their stupid Puritanic tyranny—sure to be followed by a national helter-skelter down-hill headlong. And Mrs. Lawrence was not one of the corrupt, he argued; she concealed what it was decent to conceal, without pouting hypocritical pretences; she had merely dispensed with idle legal formalities, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... other specimen (for I must hurry on helter-skelter and harum-scarum) from words beginning with H—to be, or cause others to be, on the hig, that is, to go about, or cause others to go about, in a fume, angrily excited, menacing revenge. "Betty," I asked one of my parishioners, "why do you make ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... on Christmas morning, when the young Van Johnsons rushed pell-mell, helter-skelter, into the room prepared for his call, a new jacket hung on one chair, a new pair of trousers on the other; a doll's head peeped out of Queen Victoria's stocking; a new sled, gayly painted, announced itself in big letters "The Go Ahead"; lots of toys were ...
— Harper's Young People, December 30, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the hole to hide it. His friends walked across the floor without suspicion of what was beneath. No doubt, he held his place in his tribe as an honourable man, and his conscience traced no connection between that recently disturbed patch on the floor and the helter-skelter flight from Ai; but when the lot began to be cast, he would have his own thought, and when the tribe of Judah was taken, some creeping fear would begin to coil round his heart, which tightened its folds, and hissed more loudly, as ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... given the horses set off in a wild helter-skelter along the edge of the sea, with crowds cheering them on from the sandhills. As they got small in the distance it was not easy to see which horse was leading, but after a sort of check, as they turned the post, they ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... merchants, agents, are all busy breaking bulk. The India opium is covered with petals of the plant and stowed in chests lined with hides and covered with gunny; and these cases are locked in by stays, spars and bulkheads to prevent jamming. Helter-skelter and confusion alow and aloft, on the yards, rigging, deck, between decks and under hatches. The captain and purser are gloating over the sycee silver, for the Chinese government is as jealous of its exportation as of the importation of opium; and the sky and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... them, and then lost myself in Gordon, and sat on my dressing-table in my nightgown, regardless of cold, until brought to my senses by the breakfast-bell. I made great pace, scrambled into my clothes helter-skelter, and appeared at table when the others had been seated and ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... other conclusion," said Father Waite. "But, that granted, a flood of deductions pours in that sends human beliefs and reasoning helter-skelter. For an infinite mind would eventually disintegrate if it were not perfect ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... tools are under shelter; But Pete Tumbledown's lie helter-skelter; And when he wants his tools again He finds them ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... trot off the lake and enter the distant forest. By the time we reached the end of the lake, and had taken to the shelter of the trees, dusk was creeping through the eastern woods and the rabbits had come out to play. They were as white as the snow upon which they ran helter-skelter after one another. Forward and backward they bounded across the trail without apparently noticing the dogs. Sometimes they passed within ten feet of us. The woodland seemed to swarm with them, and no wonder, for it was the seventh year, the year of Northland game abundance, ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... to the "ell" kitchen, the two older Peckham boys set to work up-stairs, under Jean's direction. Kit had made for her father's room the first thing. When Jean opened the door she found her piling the contents of the desk and chiffonier drawers helter-skelter ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... Nell was unreliable. You could n't reckon with certainty on getting her to start. All depended on the humour she was in and the direction you wished to take—mostly the direction. If towards the grass-paddock or the dam, she was off helter-skelter. If it was n't, she'd go on strike—put her head down and chew the bit. Then, when you'd get to work on her with a waddy—which we always did—she'd walk backwards into the house and frighten Mother, ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... value. Only after repeated volleys from the soldiery were they driven off, and not till they had completed the work of destruction they had commenced. This did not take them long, and at last, several of their number having fallen, a panic seized them, and away they went helter-skelter in every direction out of the square. I could not resist the temptation of sallying out to see what they would next do, in spite of the warnings of my relative, who advised me to keep in the house. I laughed at the idea of ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... brings to her guidance she has picked up helter-skelter. They are the crumbs gathered from the table of the Uneasy Woman, or worse, of the pharisaical and satisfied woman, from good and bad books, from newspaper exploitations of divorce and scandal, from sly gossip with girls whose budget ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... the day produced perfect consternation among the already excited negroes. They no doubt supposed it the musical exercise set apart for the performance of the angel Gabriel on the day of judgment, and in less than ten minutes all without exception had come pell-mell, helter-skelter, running to "the house." The dairymaid left her churn, and the housemaid put down her broom; the ploughs stood still, and when the horses turned their heads to see what was the matter they found they had no driver; she also who was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... better; now, these curtains must come down, and I may as well shut the shutters too and now this tablecloth must be content to hang straight, and Mamma's box and the books must lie in their places, and not all helter-skelter. Now, I wish Mamma would wake up; I should think she might. I don't believe she is asleep either she don't look as ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the world!" said the voice in emphatic accents of supreme contempt—"What braying asses!—What earth- snouting swine! Saw you not yon crowd of whimpering idiots flying helter-skelter like chaff before the wind, weeping, wailing, and bemoaning their miserable little sins, scattering dust on their addled pates, and howling on their gods for mercy,—all forsooth! because for once in their unobserving lives they behold the river red instead of green! Ay ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... of the study would be to learn whether the motion of the reported UFO's was random or ordered. Random motion is an unordered, helter-skelter motion very similar to a swarm of gnats or flies milling around. There is no apparent pattern or purpose to their flight paths. But take, for example, swallows flying around a chimney—they wheel, ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... in thy teeth, most recreant coward base! Sir John, I am thy Pistol and thy friend, And helter-skelter have I rode to thee, And tidings do I bring and lucky joys And golden times ...
— King Henry IV, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Chiswick edition]
... on their feet, and rushed helter-skelter across the garden through the darkness. They plunged anyhow through bushes and over flower-beds, scratching their faces on overhanging boughs, and tearing their dresses on thorns, their one fear lest Scott should be pursuing them, and their ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... to pass the straits next day. There Castruccio fell upon them about midnight, putting all to confusion. Horse and foot fell foul upon one another, and both upon the baggage. There was no way left for them but to run, which they did helter-skelter in the plain of Pistoja, where each man shifted for himself. But Castruccio followed them even to Peretola at the gates of Florence, carrying Pistoja and Prato on the way; there he coined money under their walls,[145] ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... visiting his friend, whom he usually found in bed. It was William Clerk who sat for the picture of Darsie Latimer, the hero of Redgauntlet,—whence we should suppose him to have been a lively, generous, susceptible, contentious, and rather helter-skelter young man, much alive to the ludicrous in all situations, very eager to see life in all its phases, and somewhat vain of his power of adapting himself equally to all these phases. Scott tells a story ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... top of it, all crowded together, waiting for a big wave to come and surround them; and when at last it came, it carried half their fortress away with it, and they all hopped off into the water, and splashed up through it helter-skelter, with shouts of laughter, to the ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... ruddy glare, that smoky skurry? O is it something in a blaze? Quick, quick, my comrades, hurry! Nicodice, helter-skelter! Or poor Calyce's in flames And Cratylla's stifled in the welter. O these dreadful old men And their dark laws of hate! There, I'm all of a tremble lest I turn out to be too late. I could scarcely get near to the spring though I rose before dawn, What with tattling of tongues and ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... the lady of the caravan, scooping the crumbs out of her lap and swallowing the same before wiping her lips. 'Yes, to be sure—Who won the Helter-Skelter ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... a rough, honest, helter-skelter terrier, that none like to see brought into their drawing-rooms, throwing over all their dainty little ornaments, upsetting their choicest Dresden, that nobody guessed was cracked till it fell with the mended side uppermost, and keeping every ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... refreshment, and with renewed vigor led their keeper in twenty different directions, instead of going home. Back, up the road, where he could hardly drive them at the point of the switch a few hours before; by sharp turns into Squire Ammaby's grounds, or the churchyard; and helter-skelter through the ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... blow for forty-eight hours, accompanied by torrents of pelting, pitiless rain, and is sometimes so violent, that there is hardly any possibility of making headway against it. Sheep race before it as hard as they can go helter-skelter, leaving their lambs behind them to shift for themselves. There is no shelter on the plains, and, unless stopped by the shepherds, they will drive from one river to the next. The shepherds, therefore, have a hard time of it, for they must be out till the wind goes down; and ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... the scarcely civil critic, "has learned a bead-roll of historic names, whom he lugs into his pictorial puppet-show, as he calls it, helter-skelter, without caring whether they were contemporaries or not,—and sets them all by the ears together. But was there ever such a fund of impudence? To hear his running commentary, you would suppose that ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... shadows of the table and chairs slowly and noiselessly through the room. Little mice darted out of the crevices and around in the light and the shadow under the table, looking for crumbs; their coats glistened often like soft silk, and their little eyes gleamed like black diamonds. They scampered helter-skelter, they squeaked, they sat upon their hind legs, and feasted merrily. Suddenly they scattered and disappeared. In from the courtyard came rushing a great rat with a great pattering of his claws on the floor; he dragged his tail behind him as though it were some ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... by a severe thunderstorm which literally broke right over the camp. I heard the order ring out "To the horse-lines!" and watched (through a convenient hole in the canvas) several "troopers" flying helter-skelter down the field. ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... when he came to think over it afterwards, Dennis could recall nothing of that mad minute but the crack of his own revolver as he emptied it into the closely packed mass before him, and then a sea of terrified faces, growing grey like the uniforms they wore, as the Bavarians broke and went back helter-skelter up the slope. ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... Frantic now, the animals wheeled back. But few of them ran up out of the winding shallow ground along which the fence had been cunningly built. He drove them back, up over the slow ascent, toward the great dusty swarm of horses that ran helter-skelter under the ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... and were assured in case of accident of absolution given by one of their priests, who marched in the rear file of the first company, with his cassock tucked up and his Roman hat over his eyes. These country fellows walked briskly, a little helter-skelter, like their ancestors in the time of Stofflet and M. de la Rochejaquelin, but with a firm step and their muskets well placed upon their shoulders, by Ste. Anne! They looked ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... artillery, having taken up a position on a height which overlooked the town, by means of its gunfire soon produced disorder among the enemy columns, which broke ranks and rushed to the bridge. Once they had crossed the stream, instead of regrouping they fled helter-skelter over the open ground of the opposite bank, where the retreat soon became a rout! Only one regiment, that of Toula, stood its ground on the town side of the bridge. Marshal Oudinot very much wanted to force a passage across the bridge to complete his victory by pursuing ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... strange soothing in the sound, found tears in her eyes, not all of pain but of sad pleasure, and assumed thenceforth something of the port of a connoisseur. She said she "couldn't abide a fiddle jes sawed helter-skelter by them ez hedn't larned, but ter play saaft an' slow an' solemn, and no dancin' chune, no frolic song—she warn't set agin that at all." And she desired of Leander a repetition of this sunset motive that evening when he had come home late, and she discovered ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... traveler read the bill his expression became clouded, cheerless. Around him the fallen leaves gave forth a pleasant fragrance; caught in the currents of the air, they danced in a circle and then broke away, hurrying helter-skelter ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... at the first moment, the two poor babes in the wood turned and ran helter-skelter from ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... assistants were running away, yelling with terror. The space around the guillotine was cleared. And the prefect of police, rallying his men, drove everybody back to the prison, helter-skelter, like a disordered rabble: the magistrates, the officials, the condemned man, the chaplain, all who had passed through the archway two or ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... twenty or five-and-twenty youths, however, attended them, glad of the warmth and light, though bored by the instruction. They were mischievous and inattentive; they kept close watch on the clock, and as soon as half-past nine came they were up and off helter-skelter, as if the gloomy precincts of the shop or the public-house were, after all, less irksome ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... believe, was temporarily crazy. Men and women ran helter-skelter in nothing but their night gowns, and many of them did not have on ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... gorgeous furnishings of the forty rooms thrown helter-skelter. Costly cabinets that refuse to yield to first pressure, are wrenched open. The frightened butler and the corps of other servants are impressed into the search. They are compelled to give up the keys to all closets and rooms. As case after case of silver and gold service are disclosed, the vulture ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... early Roman settlements and the reign of their Emperor Augustus were profound and far-reaching. Many communities of diverse and often incompatible backgrounds and interests were herded together, helter-skelter, into the City of Rome, Latium, the Italian nucleus and the subsequent alliances, federations, conquests, consolidations into colonies, occupied areas, provinces and spheres of influence. The greater the number and diversity of these interests and relationships, the greater the probability ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... soldiers afterward. "It was inky dark—darker than I have ever known it to be anywhere on the plains. The water made a muddy pond of the whole camp, and the trenches were half filled in no time. Everything was blown helter-skelter by the furious wind, and some of our outfits we never recovered. In the midst of the confusion some fellows reported that the Spaniards were trying to break through our lines, but the report was false,—the outsiders were starving Cubans who had come in looking for shelter ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... and while the rabble before the window, cowed by the fall of two of their number, were still pushing backward instead of forward, there rose behind them strange sounds—yells, and the clatter of hoofs, mingled with screams of alarm. A second, and into the loose skirts of the crowd came charging helter-skelter, pell-mell, a score of galloping, shrieking, cursing horsemen, attended by twice as many footmen, who clung to their stirrups or to the tails of the horses, and yelled and whooped, and struck in unison ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... barges of his own party were moored at the steps; the rest were half a mile off, contending hopelessly against the swollen and rapid Waal. Schenk, desperately wounded, was left almost alone upon the wharf, for his routed followers had plunged helter-skelter into the boats, several of which, overladen in the panic, sank at once, leaving the soldiers to drown or struggle with ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... double knock at the front door, followed by the sound of someone entering. Prudence set Baby on her feet and bolted helter-skelter across the square hall, flinging herself into the arms of a stout man with a brown beard, who returned her embrace so warmly that Mollie wondered if he had been away from home for some time. He removed his tall silk hat, ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... flukes with every spurt of wind, or get wrecked if there is a gale that rages round you. There is something strong to hold on to. There are good buoys, known landmarks, and fixed light-houses, so that you know how to steer, and not helter-skelter lights movin' on the shore like will-o'-the whisps, or wreckers' false fires, that just lead you to destruction. The medium between the two churches, for the clergy, would be the right thing. In yours they are too independent of the people, ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... replaced the old. Pipe-clay and method gave way to Sans-culottism and dash. The greatest of the generals of the Revolution said: "I had sooner see a soldier without his breeches than without his bayonet." Rapidity, surprise, the charging column, the helter-skelter pursuit, were the innovations of {201} the new French generals. They translated into terms of tactics and strategy, Danton's famous apostrophe, "Audacity, more audacity, yet ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... his days in the pasture—or in and out of it. In fact he enjoyed them more than anybody else in the flock. For the others began to grow tired of being led helter-skelter in a headlong flight. And the old folks especially became annoyed because Snowball took them so often ...
— The Tale of Snowball Lamb • Arthur Bailey
... become the fashion among tourists, because of the absence from its precincts of all that was fashionable and new, stood near the middle of the town, and formed a corner where in winter the winds whistled and assembled their forces previous to plunging helter-skelter along the streets. In summer it was a fresh and pleasant spot, convenient for such quiet characters as sojourned there to study the geology and beautiful natural features of ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... double quick march, in spite of a shower of musket balls which came whizzing about our ears. The Frenchmen endeavoured to slew round some of their guns to fire down on us, but before the muzzles were run through the embrasures, we were climbing over the parapet in a somewhat helter-skelter fashion, and, headed by the gallant captain of the Buckingham, leaping down into the fort. So rapid had been our advance that the soldiers had no time to reload their pieces, and as our cutlasses flashed in their faces, they hurled them at us and took to flight, endeavouring to make their ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... which ever struck me was that the fish did not fall helter-skelter, or here and there, but they fell in a straight line, not more than a cubit in breadth." See ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... the lion sailed forth; and if ever there was a helter-skelter among a troop of monkeys worth witnessing, my companion and I saw it at that moment. There was screaming and yelling, and jabbering and gibbering, and a rushing in every direction—except that which would have conducted ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... At the first cry, all dropped down helter-skelter beneath the boughs and leaves, seeking shelter; and as the falcon gave a harsh scream it was over groves that had suddenly become deserted, not a tenant being visible, except some half-dozen humming-birds, whose safety lay in their tiny size and wonderful powers of flight. Three of these, instead ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... violent wind which swept up the canyon, followed by a downpour of rain interrupted our work; and if anything missed a soaking before, it certainly received it then. The sand was beaten into our cameras and everything was scattered helter-skelter over the shore. We were fortunate in only one respect. The wind was away from the river instead of toward it. We finally got the tent up, then threw everything into it in an indiscriminate pile, and ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... Majesty jumped so high that his crown tumbled off, and the Queen was in such a delightful agitation that she could not confine her steps to a walk, and so the King, and the Queen, and the Duchess, and all the maids of honor and pages, ran helter-skelter, as fast as they could, and ...
— Aunt Fanny's Story-Book for Little Boys and Girls • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... and route. It is very interesting to watch a marked ant during her journey back to her nest, after she has been carried away and placed among unfamiliar scenes and surroundings. At first, owing to her fright, she will dash away helter-skelter; but soon recovering, she will head in the direction of home, and moderate her pace until she creeps along at a very cautious and circumspect gait, indeed. Every now and then she will climb a tall grass-blade or weed and take observations. After a while she sees certain landmarks, and her speed ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... the truth remains unchanged: that simplification was their method, and that simplicity is their excellence." Indeed, as we have already noted in passing, simplification is the method of every art. Every artist, in his own way, simplifies life: first by selecting essentials from the helter-skelter of details that life presents to him, and then by arranging these essentials in accordance with a pattern. And we have noted also that the method of the artist in narrative is to select events which bear an essential logical relation to each other and then to arrange them along ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... group of children his own age trying to play baseball with a ragged tennis ball and the handle from a broom. It was a helter-skelter game that made no pattern but provided a lot of fun and screaming. He was quite bothered by a quarrel that came up; two of his own age went at one another with tiny fists flying, using words that Jimmy hadn't ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... moonlight. In the cart in front of us were—half-lying, half-sitting—six men in shirts, and in unbuttoned rough overcoats; two of them had no caps on; huge feet in boots were swinging and hanging over the cart-rail, arms were rising and falling helter-skelter... bodies were jolting backwards and forwards.... It was quite clear—a drunken party. Some were bawling at random; one was whistling very correctly and shrilly, another was swearing; on the driver's seat sat a sort of giant in a cape, driving. They went at a walking pace, as' though paying ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... this, rather than thought it out. It was in the air, so to speak. At the moment, I was too much concerned for the little parson to reason coolly. Oh, I reasoned about it a little while later, not coolly perhaps, but certainly quickly, and leaped helter-skelter to a momentous decision. But just then I ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... to be wondered at that the scholars were glad when playtime arrived, and that they rushed home helter-skelter, with shouts of joy, the moment the School-house door was ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... child and the mentally defective child at the same time. They are beginning to test the possibilities of a "vertical" classification as well as a "horizontal" one. That is, each class must be divided into what are termed Gifted, Bright, Average, Dull, Normal, and Defective. In the past the helter-skelter crowding and over-crowding together of all classes of children of approximately the same age, produced only a ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... shore and manned it with his Indians and his painted and be-feathered Acadians. Nevertheless the English landed, and, with some loss, drove out the defenders. Le Loutre himself seems not to have been among them; but they kept up for a time a helter-skelter fight, encouraged by two other missionaries, Germain and Lalerne, who were near being caught by the English.[111] Lawrence quickly routed them, took possession of the cemetery, and prepared to fortify himself. The village of Beaubassin, consisting, it is said, ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... universe. She got only the most lightninglike glimpse of any one spot; flash after flash of unfamiliar, indescribable situations succeeded each other like the speeded-up scenes of a photoplay farce. For an unguessable length of time this helter-skelter process occupied ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... hours, worked with a kind of frenzied delight in action and pricked on by a ravenous hunger. In and out of the combers they dashed, playing a desperate game of chance with Death. Helter-skelter, hit-or-miss, in a blind orgy of rescue, at first they pulled out everything they could reach. Repeatedly, Frank Merrill stopped to lecture them on the foolish risks they were taking, on the stupidity of such a waste of energy. "Save what we need!" he iterated and reiterated, bellowing to make ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... from all sides at once, coming through the thickest part of the underbrush, since they were acquainted with the paths. At first they hurled from a distance; then as no one defended himself but many were wounded, they approached closer to them. The Romans were in no order but going along helter-skelter among the wagons and the unarmed, and so, not being able to form readily in a body, and being fewer at every point than their assailants, they suffered greatly and offered no resistance at all. [-21-] Accordingly, they encamped on the ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... errands for the pilgrims whom he lodged, a whole family, who were taking a case of chaplets, plaster Virgins, and framed engravings away with them. You heard a confused tramping of feet and violent bursts of conversation coming from the first floor, all the helter-skelter of people whom the approaching departure and the packing of purchases lying hither and thither drove almost crazy. In the adjoining dining-room, the door of which had remained open, two children were draining the dregs of some ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... business! Jack trembled with fear, and in his terror clutched the wolf's tail with both hands and held on with all his might. The wolf was frightened, too, and took to flight, dragging the cask after it. You ought to have seen the wonder; helter-skelter went the brute, banging the cask against the trees, up hill and down dale. The wolf running, the cask following, Jack holding tight to the tail—that was worth seeing! Suddenly, helter-skelter the cask struck against a wall and burst open. The wolf ran on, but ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... starvation than all his hopes were dashed to the ground, as he realised the fact that, as soon as he descended from the giddy height at which he stood, he would lose sight of the mountain and have no guide; while to go straight on among the mighty moss-covered rocks, which were pitched helter-skelter all over the place, was as impossible as to go through the jungle without a gang of men with bill-hooks to hack a way ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... the lady who still sat near the bank, smiling more bewitchingly than ever. On reaching the top of the hill, he perceived that the sheep had already strayed down into the valley, when he hastened after them, but only to see them enter a narrow glen helter-skelter, as if they were running for dear life. He now recollected the fiddle would save him all further trouble, and drew the bow across the strings as the lady had told him, but instead of the exquisite music ...
— Up! Horsie! - An Original Fairy Tale • Clara de Chatelaine
... running away, yelling with terror. The space around the guillotine was cleared. And the prefect of police, rallying his men, drove everybody back to the prison, helter-skelter, like a disordered rabble: the magistrates, the officials, the condemned man, the chaplain, all who had passed through the archway two ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... the Baptist Church to race with Dr. McGarry. And the Piper was so shaken up he couldn't play at all. And young Mr. Martin's horse took fright at the noise and confusion, and nearly ran away, and just escaped throwing all the children into the ditch. And so they all scampered gaily, helter-skelter, back to the village, the hero far in the rear, hidden in clouds of dust, with his friends gambolling ahead. And indeed Gavin's homecoming was no more like a triumphal procession than any of the foot-ball games in which he used to take part in ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... still huddled in the doorway, they rushed away helter-skelter into the street, there to proclaim the judge's condition and its probable cause;—an event which to many quite eclipsed in interest the more ordinary one which had just released to ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... chief sins of our time is hurry: it is helter-skelter, and devil take the hind-most. Off we go all too swift at starting, and we neither run so fast nor so far as we would have done, had we taken it cannily at first. This is true of a boy as well as of a blood ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... record of it all, and it is not the purpose of this true chronicle to do more than recall with utmost brevity the chief incident of that memorable encounter, the Polish Lancers galloping back with the report that the narrow pass was held against them in strong force: the Old Guard climbing helter-skelter out of carts and wagons, examining their arms, making ready: Napoleon stepping quickly out of his coach and ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... nothing, and was therefore quite fresh, was brought into action, and made a resolute attack on the plateau of Auvours. There was a fairly long fight, which could be seen from Yvre. But the Germans were too strong for Paris's men, who at last disbanded, and came, helter-skelter, towards the bridge of Yvre in terrible confusion. Flight is often contagious, and Gougeard, who had fallen back from Champagne in fairly good order, feared lest his men should imitate their comrades. He therefore pointed two field-pieces ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... Why—Imagination, thou art an ass, and thy long ears at all times greedy of deception! 'Tis but a country Schoolhouse pouring forth its long-imprisoned stream of life as in a sudden sunny thaw, the Mad Master flying in the van of his helter-skelter scholars, and the whole yelling mass precipitated, many of them headlong, among the snow. Well do we know the fire-eyed Poet pedagogue, who, more outrageous than Apollo, has "ravished all the Nine." Ode, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... demesne of passing richness, fair with orchard lawns and corn lands, if you should slay me? This you shall hardly do. I have discomfited you once already. Have you forgotten how when you were alone I chased you from your herds helter-skelter down the slopes of Ida? You did not turn round to look behind you; you took refuge in Lyrnessus, but I attacked the city, and with the help of Minerva and father Jove I sacked it and carried its women into captivity, though Jove and the other gods rescued you. You think they will protect ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... it is!" he reflected, as he looked about. "All sorts of odds and ends stuck about helter-skelter, and the house-keeping things trying to ...
— Different Girls • Various
... no brooklet in this wild, Smooth-resting on its mosses sleek, Like loving lips upon a cheek Soft as the face of maid or child— Just boulders, helter-skelter piled. ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... continuous narrative I have never read. But it supplied facts, hit off odds and ends of character, and—what the autobiography seldom does—it gave the ipsissima verba of conversations written in helter-skelter fashion with flowing pen, sometimes in excellent French, sometimes in English, which beginning in the elaborate style of his letter broke down into queer vernacular; it was charmingly devoid of self-consciousness, so that the man as he was, and not as he imagined himself to be or ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... of the sea. On the plains, it will often blow for forty-eight hours, accompanied by torrents of pelting, pitiless rain, and is sometimes so violent, that there is hardly any possibility of making headway against it. Sheep race before it as hard as they can go helter-skelter, leaving their lambs behind them to shift for themselves. There is no shelter on the plains, and, unless stopped by the shepherds, they will drive from one river to the next. The shepherds, therefore, have a hard time of it, for they must be out till the wind ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... have half a dozen married couples all separating, getting rid of their ribs and buckling again, helter-skelter, every man to somebody else's wife; and the parish parson refusing to do the work; just to show the ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... is their excellence." Indeed, as we have already noted in passing, simplification is the method of every art. Every artist, in his own way, simplifies life: first by selecting essentials from the helter-skelter of details that life presents to him, and then by arranging these essentials in accordance with a pattern. And we have noted also that the method of the artist in narrative is to select events which bear an essential logical relation ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... the street, helter-skelter on a sweating thoroughbred, came Maharajah Gungadhura Singh just in time to see the back of the carriage as it rumbled in through the gateway and the iron doors clanged behind it. Scowling—altogether too round-shouldered for the martial stock he sprang from—puffy-eyed, and not so ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... from side to side, gave a couple of leaps and with a swish of its tail disappeared into the skirt of the wood. At the same instant, with a cry like a wail, first one hound, then another, and then another, sprang helter-skelter from the wood opposite and the whole pack rushed across the field toward the very spot where the wolf had disappeared. The hazel bushes parted behind the hounds and Daniel's chestnut horse appeared, dark with sweat. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... guards who had remained at the ramparts had also heard the shots, and thinking that the insurgents had entered by means of some subterranean passage, they ran up helter-skelter, in groups of five or six, disturbing the silence of the streets with the tumult of their excited rush. Roudier was one of the first to arrive. However, Rougon sent them all back to their posts, after reprimanding them severely for abandoning the gates of the town. ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... perfect consternation among the already excited negroes. They no doubt supposed it the musical exercise set apart for the performance of the angel Gabriel on the day of judgment, and in less than ten minutes all without exception had come pell-mell, helter-skelter, running to "the house." The dairymaid left her churn, and the housemaid put down her broom; the ploughs stood still, and when the horses turned their heads to see what was the matter they found they had no driver; she also who ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... then, what a scene ensued! Away went the mules, the horses and the donkeys; away ran men and women and children, carrying chairs and trunks, and boxes and bedding. The wind was blowing, and the dust whirled up as they dashed helter-skelter through the gate and started off on a hot race, down the dock to the depot. Two wagons came together, one of which was overturned, scattering the broken boxes of a Scotch family over the pavement; but while the poor woman ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... is! One wild race for the crest, one headland charge down the slope beyond, and they are rolling over a band of yelling, scurrying, savage horsemen, whirling them away over the opposite ridge, driving them helter-skelter over the westward prairie, until all who escape the shock of the onset or the swift bullet in the raging chase finally vanish from their sight; and then, obedient to the ringing "recall" of the trumpet, slowly they return, gathering again in the ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... just when he was goin' to pull 'em down the van started as they had heard and seen it. After a while he got on to his knees and managed to wrench a corner; of the front curtain clear of the button and get his head out. And there was the van going helter-skelter, and feeling like Tam o'Shanter's mare (the old man said), and he on her barebacked. And there was no horses, but a cloud of dust—or a spook—on ahead, and the bare pole steering straight for it, just as the professor had said it would be. ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... did for three hours, worked with a kind of frenzied delight in action and pricked on by a ravenous hunger. In and out of the combers they dashed, playing a desperate game of chance with Death. Helter-skelter, hit-or-miss, in a blind orgy of rescue, at first they pulled out everything they could reach. Repeatedly, Frank Merrill stopped to lecture them on the foolish risks they were taking, on the stupidity of such a waste of energy. "Save what we need!" he iterated and reiterated, bellowing ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... that it made you long to stroke it. She was perfection, and nothing less! I was the first to discover this curious arrangement. I was walking up and down outside one evening, smoking my pipe, after they thought I had gone to bed. The children came in helter-skelter, tumbling over one another like so many puppies. It was fun to watch them. Then they had supper with their father and mother. I strained my eyes to see the young Jewess through the clouds of smoke that her father blew from his pipe; ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... saloon was the kitchen, a hot, steaming place, where men, mostly cooks, in dirty white jackets, rushed helter-skelter into each ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels
... novels which I had often longed to read. I read the first chapters of four of them, and then lost myself in Gordon, and sat on my dressing-table in my nightgown, regardless of cold, until brought to my senses by the breakfast-bell. I made great pace, scrambled into my clothes helter-skelter, and appeared at table when the others had been seated and ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... made a castle, and were standing on the top of it, all crowded together, waiting for a big wave to come and surround them; and when at last it came, it carried half their fortress away with it, and they all hopped off into the water, and splashed up through it helter-skelter, with shouts of laughter, to ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... gentleman referred to is of large mould, and until we saw his tumbling feat yesterday, we had no idea that he was such a sprightly gymnast. His down-going and up-rising were greeted with shouts of laughter, in which he good-naturedly joined. The erring camel went helter-skelter through the crowd, and was not secured until he showed to admiration how speedily can go ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... branches and twigs that the trees had been too lazy to shed; short shrift for them on the first spring-cleaning night. Down they came, helter-skelter, and no notice taken of the tree's groaning, or its ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... achieving prizes of riches and pleasure and are not disturbed, who look on the world and the universe they are born in with quite other eyes. To them it appears not as a bazaar to buy and to sell in; not as a ladder to scramble up (or down) helter-skelter without knowing whither or why; but as a fact—a great and mysterious fact—to be pondered over, studied, and perchance in some small measure understood. By the multitude these men were sneered at as eccentric or feared as supernatural. Their calm, clear, contemplative ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... suits and there are wild animals, than to practise horsemanship in combination with the chase. But when these resources fail, a good exercise may be supplied in the combined efforts of two horsemen. (9) One of them will play the part of fugitive, retreating helter-skelter over every sort of ground, with lance reversed and plying the butt end. The other pursues, with buttons on his javelins and his lance similarly handled. (10) Whenever he comes within javelin range he lets fly at the retreating foeman with his blunted missiles; or whenever ...
— On Horsemanship • Xenophon
... his Grace's path, for truly Sidonia might be amongst them. From this, it came to pass that as soon as it was rumoured in the town, "His Grace is coming," all the old mothers seized up their pattens, and scampered off, helter-skelter, to get out of reach of ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... no other conclusion," said Father Waite. "But, that granted, a flood of deductions pours in that sends human beliefs and reasoning helter-skelter. For an infinite mind would eventually disintegrate if it were not perfect ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... material it has read when some note or hint suggests all of it. This kind of mind depends upon the inestimably valuable art of note-taking, a method quite as worthy as the two just considered if its results justify its employment. Note-taking does not mean a helter-skelter series of exclamatory jottings. It means a well-planned, regularly organized series of entries so arranged that reference to any portion recalls vividly and exactly the full material of the original. Books and speeches are ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... sanctioned newspaper article specified its exact position. A few days after the article appeared, in fact, as soon as a copy of the paper reached Germany, a thunderstorm of shells broke on the brewery. Out of it poured a helter-skelter stream of stark-naked men, who ran wherever they could for cover. From one point of view it was vastly comic. In the meanwhile the building containing all their clothes, and all the spare clothing for a brigade, was being scientifically destroyed. That was more comic still. The bather cut off ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... the fashion among tourists, because of the absence from its precincts of all that was fashionable and new, stood near the middle of the town, and formed a corner where in winter the winds whistled and assembled their forces previous to plunging helter-skelter along the streets. In summer it was a fresh and pleasant spot, convenient for such quiet characters as sojourned there to study the geology and beautiful natural ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... bear had been seen the previous night. The two large hounds, Ringwood and Jowler, kept at their master's heels, being trained to understand and perform all the duties required of them, while the curs and terriers were running helter-skelter far ahead, or striking out into the woods without aim, and always returning without effecting any thing. At length the two hounds paused, and scented the earth, giving certain information that they had arrived at the desired point. The curs and terriers ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... helter-skelter haste I found time to remember that the gorge as we had last seen it had been well besprinkled with armed Cherokees lying in wait for us. If they were still there we should be like to have a hot welcome; and some reminder of this I gasped out ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... France has introduced into the Dumas theatre some preeminently un-Dumas-like stage-business: the characters, between assignations and combats, toy amorously with ideas. That is the difference which at a stroke dissevers them from any helter-skelter character in Dumas as utterly as from any of our clearest ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... be rushing higgledy-piggledy, helter-skelter, into each other's arms," interrupts my companion, looking at me ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... Ch'un and Hsi Ch'un interposed with an ironic laugh, "what's the use of the hurry-scurry you're in the whole day long! Even when you're having your meals, or your tea, you're in this sort of fussy helter-skelter!" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... at the windows, and in at the door, And through the walls, helter-skelter they pour, And down from the ceiling, and up through the floor, From the right and the left, from behind and before, From within and without, from above and below, And all at once to the Bishop they go. They have whetted their teeth against the stones; And now ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... admiration of the scene before him with the utmost freshness and enthusiasm. "I'm just a plain Scotchman, an' no such a fule at climbin' either! Why, man, I've been up Goatfell in Arran, an' Ben Lomond an' Ben Nevis—there's a mountain for ye, if ye like! But a brae like this, wi' a' the stanes lyin' helter-skelter, an' crags that ye can barely hold on to—and a mad chap guidin' ye on at the speed o' a leapin' goat—I tell ye, I havena been used to't." Here he drew out his flask and took another extensive pull at it. Then he added suddenly, "Just look at Errington! ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... demurred stoutly but without avail. She eagerly questioned her sister as to Laura's plans for the wedding, but plainly she considered that Deborah was no woman to give her the full information she wanted. She must see Laura herself at once. For though she had thoroughly disapproved of the gay helter-skelter existence of her youngest sister, still Laura was now to be married, and ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... hive no longer ago than yesterday was this morning still, deserted, empty and dead. Those who had rushed hitherward seeking gold were gone; be the explanation where it might, shacks stood with doors flung wide; tents had been torn down, outworn articles discarded, dumped helter-skelter into the road. The atmosphere was like that of a circus grounds when the circus was moving on, only a few things left for the last crew to ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... the room with the briskness of a March flurry of snow. Her cheeks were poppy-red, her eyes sparkled with the mere joy of living. And she chuckled happily as she tucked back the curly scolding locks that were flying about, all helter-skelter, like feathers unloosed or fluffy chicks blowing ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... had displayed in its trim beds and borders a wondrous wealth of choice blossoms. And the same plants could still be found; but perpetuated, grown into such numberless families, and scampering in such mad fashion throughout the whole garden, that the place was now all helter-skelter riot to its very walls, a very den of debauchery, where intoxicated nature had hiccups ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... 60)[obs3]; confused; deranged &c. 61; topsy-turvy &c. (inverted) 218; shapeless &c. 241; disjointed, out of joint. troublous[obs3]; riotous &c. (violent) 173. complex &c. 59a. Adv. irregularly &c. adj.; by fits, by fits and snatches, by fits and starts; pellmell; higgledy-piggledy; helter-skelter, harum-scarum; in a ferment; at sixes and sevens, at cross-purposes; upside down &c. 218. Phr. the cart before the horse; <gr/hysteron proteron/gr>[Grk][Grk]; chaos is come again; "the wreck of matter and the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... then, plunging helter-skelter into the silent, heartless wood. The trees miraculously opened up a way for them as they dived and stooped and wriggled forward. In which direction they were going neither of them had the least idea, but as neither one nor the other disappeared, it was clear they had ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... of his own party were moored at the steps; the rest were half a mile off, contending hopelessly against the swollen and rapid Waal. Schenk, desperately wounded, was left almost alone upon the wharf, for his routed followers had plunged helter-skelter into the boats, several of which, overladen in the panic, sank at once, leaving the soldiers to drown or ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... to valorous deeds. Some of the veterans took arms themselves, and sallied forth with tottering steps. In this way, the savage chivalry of the village to the number of five hundred, poured forth, helter-skelter, riding and running, with hideous yells and war-whoops, like so many bedlamites or demoniacs ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... proceeded slowly in the usual order. The discussion grew hotter, and went helter-skelter from subject to subject. Such is said to be the Russian manner in argument. Perhaps it is the universal manner of people when discussing something that touches ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... so high that his crown tumbled off, and the Queen was in such a delightful agitation that she could not confine her steps to a walk, and so the King and the Queen, and the Duchess, and all the maids of honour and pages, ran helter-skelter, as fast as they could, ...
— The Apple Dumpling and Other Stories for Young Boys and Girls • Unknown
... officers, whom they knew personally, and were assured in case of accident of absolution given by one of their priests, who marched in the rear file of the first company, with his cassock tucked up and his Roman hat over his eyes. These country fellows walked briskly, a little helter-skelter, like their ancestors in the time of Stofflet and M. de la Rochejaquelin, but with a firm step and their muskets well placed upon their shoulders, by Ste. Anne! They looked like ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... team in the pathway below uttered wild cries of terror, as they saw their danger, and began to scramble helter-skelter up the ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... Hum, hum, hum—m—m! Kettle slow and steady. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket going in to finish him. Hum, hum, hum—m—m! Kettle not to be finished. Until at last they got so jumbled together, in the hurry-skurry, helter-skelter, of the match, that whether the kettle chirped and the Cricket hummed, or the Cricket chirped and the kettle hummed, or they both chirped and both hummed, it would have taken a clearer head than yours or mine to have decided with anything like certainty. But of this there ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... those of Victor Emmanuel. Riding over the vast plains of Capitanata, we would discern against the sky outline the figure of a solitary horseman. This we knew to be a picket. Then there was no time to be lost, and away we would go for him helter-skelter across the plain; he would instantly gallop in on the main body, probably occupying a masseria. If they thought they were strong enough they would show fight. If not they would take to their heels ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... and clatter of pebbles near me, and discovered Fred Maxim at my side. "Look!" he said, hoarse with excitement. "Already!" He pointed to a string of dim little figures galloping helter-skelter over the neck and down the gap in the ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... It was really wonderful to see these fifteen baby ducks, yellow as canaries, beaks and webbed feet pink, swarming around the big patient sitting mother, ducking under her wings, to come out presently and clamber helter-skelter onto her broad back. As often happens with nurses, Yollande loved the ducklings as her own children, and without worrying about their shape or plumage, so different from her own, she showered upon them proofs of the tenderest affection. ...
— The Curly-Haired Hen • Auguste Vimar
... sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two, Did the English fight the French,—woe to France! And the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter through the blue, Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue, Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo on the Rance, 5 With the ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... three hundred men to spend a couple of days exploring the country, and finding out where the Indians were. After marching a few miles, they came across two Indians. Both were killed by the advanced horsemen. All four of the field officers of the militia—two colonels and two majors—joined helter-skelter in the chase, leaving their troops for half an hour without a leader. Apparently satisfied with this feat, Trotter marched ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... yells and shouts. Frantic now, the animals wheeled back. But few of them ran up out of the winding shallow ground along which the fence had been cunningly built. He drove them back, up over the slow ascent, toward the great dusty swarm of horses that ran helter-skelter under the ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... very interesting to watch a marked ant during her journey back to her nest, after she has been carried away and placed among unfamiliar scenes and surroundings. At first, owing to her fright, she will dash away helter-skelter; but soon recovering, she will head in the direction of home, and moderate her pace until she creeps along at a very cautious and circumspect gait, indeed. Every now and then she will climb a tall ...
— The Dawn of Reason - or, Mental Traits in the Lower Animals • James Weir
... roots of a large evergreen bush, glaring at them from under the foliage. They fired and struck, not the lion, but a great block of sand-stone, which they bad mistaken for him; but beyond which he was actually lying. With a furious growl he bolted from the bush; the Mulattoes fled helter-skelter, leaving the Scots with empty guns, tumbling over each other in their haste to escape. In a twinkling he was upon them, with one stroke of his paw dashed John Rennie to the ground, and with one foot upon ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... the point of asking eager questions regarding this new mystery, but before she could begin to utter them a long and piteous howl—the howl of a lost dog—sent them helter-skelter ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... clear daylight over all the wonders gathered in this museum. For a museum it truly was, in which clever hands had spared no expense to amass every natural and artistic treasure, displaying them with the helter-skelter picturesqueness that distinguishes a ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... halfway between ward and servant. Across the fields and along shaded wood paths they ran joyously to a sheltered bay with a sandy beach from which the open fjord could be seen in the distance. The children stripped helter-skelter and went into the shallow water as nature had made them, but Mina, who was to assist them, had for want of bathing suit put on a starched white petticoat. The upper part of her body was bare, showing two beautifully ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... then. That's disposed of. Everything in its turn. We old operators, go by order and system—no helter-skelter business with us. What's the next thing on the docket? The carrying on of the materialization—the bringing it down to date. I will begin on that at once. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... man flying through the phantasmagoric happenings of a dream, knowing neither how nor whither. I tore along what I suppose was a broad passage, through a door at the end into what, I fancy, was a drawing-room. Across this room I dashed, helter-skelter, bringing down, in the gloom, unseen articles of furniture, with myself sometimes on top, and sometimes under them. In a trice, each time I fell, I was on my feet again,—until I went crashing against a window which was concealed by curtains. It would not have been strange had I crashed through ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... is somewhere here. You can't fool me," he yelled. "I saw the spot your eyes lit on when I first came into the room. Is it behind these books?" he growled, pulling them out and throwing them helter-skelter over the floor. "Women is smart in the hiding business. Is it behind these ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... thunder is continuous, a dismal pulverization of 90,000 men! Never before has anything equal to this been seen; never before has an army been overwhelmed beneath such a downpour of lead and iron! At one o'clock all is lost! The regiments fly helter-skelter into Sedan! But Sedan begins to burn, Dijonval burns, the ambulances burn, there is nothing now possible but to cut their way out. Wimpfen, brave and resolute, proposes this to the Emperor. The Third Zouaves, desperate, have set the example. Cut off ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... no doubt, far from the respectable society of the neighbouring planets, and blundering about right and left, pell-mell, helter-skelter among the fixed stars— itself, "and all which it inherit" in that glorious state of confusion so admirably described by ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... and all the king's men could never make it stir an inch. Twice the effort was made, and twice it failed. First, the hooks slipped off the end, and as the horses were pulling and tugging with all their might, directly the weight was removed away they went helter-skelter down the steep hill, up which they had just climbed with so much difficulty, being utterly unable to stop themselves on the steep slippery ground. Next time the chain broke as the horses were straining every muscle, and the same tantalising process was repeated with even more striking effect. ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... had made on the purchase price was eaten up by the extra weight owing to the excessive freight rates from the coast and on the branch line to Meadows. More than that, Jennings had disobeyed his explicit orders to box the smaller parts of each machine together. All had been thrown in the car helter-skelter. ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety-two, Did the English fight the French,—woe to France! And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter thro' the blue, Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks pursue, Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo on the Rance, With the ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... those I met coming back helter-skelter over the Wilderness Trace had been of that stripe, they'd have more men ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... a' the rest, and ye needna say muckle to ane whose heart is e'en the sairer that she has been a thought to blame. But there has been mony a challenge, as they ca' it, passed in my house, when thae daft lads of the Wildfire Club and the Helter-skelter were upon their rambles; and they had aye sense eneugh to make it up without fighting, sae that I really did not apprehend ony thing like mischief.—And ye maun think, moreover, Mr. Bindloose, that it would have been an unco thing if a guest, in a decent and creditable public ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... in at the windows, and in at the door, And through the walls helter-skelter they pour, And down from the ceiling, and up from the floor, From the right and the left, from behind and before, From within and without, from above and below; And all at once to ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... The men fled helter-skelter in the wildest panic that had come upon them since the outbreak of the war. In vain their officers shouted and cursed at them. The iron bonds of discipline snapped like threads. Soldiers rushed hither ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... that crossed her will or temper would set Jemima's tongue-machine a-going; and when once started, it rattled away like a medley of tin, glass, and stones turned in a churn. It threw out words like razors, darts, fire-brands, scorpions, wasps, mosquitos, flying helter-skelter in all directions about the head of poor Job, and he seldom escaped without wounds which lasted for days together. He has been known to receive cuts and bruises that have prevented his speaking to his "darling" for ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... his own hand to the guillotine, with the same joy and lust which he had felt when he ordered one hundred and thirty-eight women of Nantes to be stripped naked by the soldiery before they were flung helter-skelter into the river. ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... whole family, who were taking a case of chaplets, plaster Virgins, and framed engravings away with them. You heard a confused tramping of feet and violent bursts of conversation coming from the first floor, all the helter-skelter of people whom the approaching departure and the packing of purchases lying hither and thither drove almost crazy. In the adjoining dining-room, the door of which had remained open, two children were draining ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... did not help us much, 'tis true; they could only approach with their smallest vessels, and that not near enough;—besides, their shot fell sometimes among our troops. It did some good, however! It broke the French lines, and raised our courage. Away it went. Helter-skelter! topsy-turvy! all struck dead, or forced into the water; the fellows were drowned the moment they tasted the water, while we Hollanders dashed in after them. Being amphibious, we were as much in our element as frogs, and hacked away at the enemy, ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... down the sides of the table. The mob wavered, turned, and were lost! Helter-skelter they fled, tumbling over one another in their haste to escape. The lamp was smashed. The benches were upset. In the smoky hall a furious din arose,—as if Sir Galahad and Sir Percivale were once more hewing their way through the castle of Carteloise. Fear fell upon the multitude, ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... ship that is to sail to France during the remainder of the autumn. These things are provoking enough, but they drive me for consolation to you. But for you I should shut myself up in Beaumanoir, and let every thing go helter-skelter to the devil." ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... wrong, and beat him down on his knees, and then started for her spell of the merry canter over turf: an example to the English of the punishment they get for their stupid Puritanic tyranny—sure to be followed by a national helter-skelter down-hill headlong. And Mrs. Lawrence was not one of the corrupt, he argued; she concealed what it was decent to conceal, without pouting hypocritical pretences; she had merely dispensed with idle legal ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his side. Hardly had he uttered these words of caution when the bull gave a vicious jerk with its head, and with a shrill scream charged down upon us with the greatest fury. Away we all went, helter-skelter, through the dry grass, which whistled in my ears, over the hidden rocks, at full gallop, with the elephant tearing after us for about a hundred and eighty yards at a tremendous pace. Tetel was a sure-footed horse, and ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... the horses set off in a wild helter-skelter along the edge of the sea, with crowds cheering them on from the sandhills. As they got small in the distance it was not easy to see which horse was leading, but after a sort of check, as they turned the post, they began nearing again a few yards from the waves, with the ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... which, by the way, Van Dorn ascribed[75] much of his recent ill-success, all helped to make the retirement of the Confederates from the Pea Ridge battle-ground pretty much of a helter-skelter affair. From all accounts, the Indians conducted themselves as well as the best. The desire of everybody was to get to a place of safety and that right speedily. Colonel Watie and his regiment made their way to Camp Stephens,[76] ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... personal comfort. I rather think he looked on me as dangerous. He put me off and put me off, until I was glad to snatch at a position in a next-of-kin agency. But in a fortnight or two I was even more glad to leave it. Then I went back to Lord Boxspur, who this time sent me helter-skelter back to Paris, to bribe a blackmailing newspaper woman from giving the details of his wife's misfortunes to the Continental correspondent of a London weekly. But even when that was done, and I had ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... about our ears. The Frenchmen endeavoured to slew round some of their guns to fire down on us, but before the muzzles were run through the embrasures, we were climbing over the parapet in a somewhat helter-skelter fashion, and, headed by the gallant captain of the Buckingham, leaping down into the fort. So rapid had been our advance that the soldiers had no time to reload their pieces, and as our cutlasses flashed in their faces, they hurled ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... whole being was fixed and concentrated in an astonishing command of words. It is in the multitude of his words that the fertility of Rabelais' spirit most obviously shows itself. His book is an orgy of words; they pour out helter-skelter, wildly, into swirling sentences and huge catalogues that, in serried columns, overflow the page. Not quite wildly, though; for, amid all the rush and bluster, there is a powerful underlying art. The rhythms of this extraordinary prose ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... Nicholas; albeit, the cookery, as an abstract fact, might have been of the simplest. We had venison-steak, pork, ham, jerked venison stew, fresh trout, broiled partridge, cold roast duck, a fricassee of wood rabbits, and broiled pigeon upon our table, coming in courses, or piled up helter-skelter on great platters of birch bark, some on tin plates, and now and then a choice bit on a chip! We had coffee, and tea, and the purest of spring water, by way of beverage, and truth compels me to admit, that under the advice of the Doctor, a drop or two ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... suburban estate near Philadelphia, a generation ago; we have met the then young mistress of the mansion, at the Grand Central Station. It was a home of richness, a home of discriminating wealth, a home of artistic beauty; it was a home of nervous tension. This neurotic intensity was not of the cheap helter-skelter, melodramatic sort; there was a splendid veneer of control. But all the mother's plans and activities depended on the moods, whims and impulses of little Lawrence, the only child, then glorying in the hey-day of his three-year-old babyhood. ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... the study would be to learn whether the motion of the reported UFO's was random or ordered. Random motion is an unordered, helter-skelter motion very similar to a swarm of gnats or flies milling around. There is no apparent pattern or purpose to their flight paths. But take, for example, swallows flying around a chimney—they wheel, dart, and dip, but if you watch them closely, they have a definite ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... possibilities of a "vertical" classification as well as a "horizontal" one. That is, each class must be divided into what are termed Gifted, Bright, Average, Dull, Normal, and Defective. In the past the helter-skelter crowding and over-crowding together of all classes of children of approximately the same age, produced only a dull leveling ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... her cheeks radiant with color, her eyes shining. "Oh, washing your dishes? Wait a minute, I'll help." She flung off her coat in a helter-skelter way, and ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... one man. A French squad was already fixing bayonets noisily and excusing their rattle and cursing on account of the dark; the Austrians had deployed and were already advancing. "Pas de charge," called a French middy. Somebody started tootling a bugle, and helter-skelter we were off down the street, with fixed bayonets and loaded magazines, a veritable massacre for ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... the fugitives there appeared, between the trunks of the poplars, amongst the large tufts of grass, what looked like a pack of gray beasts speckled with yellow. They sprang up from all directions, waves crowding waves, a helter-skelter of masses of foaming water, shaking the sod with the rumbling gallop ...
— The Flood • Emile Zola
... Eversleigh," said the surgeon, calmly. "You must remember, that on such an occasion as this, there is nothing so important as presence of mind—self-command. If I alarm your servants, all the guests assembled here will take the alarm; and they will rush helter-skelter to Yarborough Tower, to testify their devotion to Sir Oswald, and to do him all the harm they possibly can. What would be the effect of a crowd of half-drunken men, clustering round him, with their noisy expressions of sympathy? ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... spread out on the green sward, planks raised a foot or so, for every one would sit on the grass. Some of the Indian women had booths, and were already selling birch and sassafras beer, pipes and tobacco, and maple sugar. Little ones were running helter-skelter, tumbling down and getting up without a whimper. Here a knot of men were playing cards or dominoes. It was a pretty scene, and needed only cavaliers and the glittering, stately stepping dames to make it a ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... noise of the big bells and the vibration of the shaky old walls! Once I had begun I couldn't leave off for my life, but went on tugging and tugging and quaking and quaking until—have you forgotten it?—all the people came running helter-skelter under the impression that the town was afire. And then, behold, it was only little me, trembling like a leaf and crying like a ninny! I remember I was scolded and smacked and dismissed into outer darkness (it was the chip vault, ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... looked at separately, they shared the same huge, lovable nature in the bulk, which murmured and swayed and quivered all the time the dancing and juggling and love-making went on in front of it, slowly laughed and reluctantly left off laughing, and applauded with a helter-skelter generosity which sometimes became unanimous and overwhelming. Once William saw Katharine leaning forward and clapping her hands with an abandonment that startled him. Her laugh rang out with the laughter ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... the tops of the tallest trees a whole clan of large bushy-tailed monkeys; there must have been a hundred or more, some old, and some young, gambolling about and playing all sorts of pranks. No sooner did they catch sight of us than they stopped, and scampered off helter-skelter, the old ones catching hold of the young ones in their arms, all equally anxious to make their escape. Some took prodigious leaps, catching the branches with their long tails, and, after a swing or two, ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... as modern man makes! Nor a roof such as is made by the lowest aborigines of to-day. It was infinitely more clumsy than the clumsiest handiwork of man—of man as we know him. It was put together in a casual, helter-skelter sort of way. Above the fork of the tree whereon we rested was a pile of dead branches and brush. Four or five adjacent forks held what I may term the various ridge-poles. These were merely stout sticks an inch or so in diameter. On them rested the ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... then proceeded into the Secretary's office in search of it. The Secretary's habit was to take the papers from his table, and after marking on them with his pencil the disposition he wished made of them, he threw them helter-skelter into a large arm-chair. This chair now contained half a bushel; and the President and I set to work in quest of the letter. We removed them one by one; and as we progressed, he said with an impatient smile, "it is always sure to be ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... three persons are comfortably seated at the tea-table, enjoying their waffles, cold tongue, and canned peaches, and asking and answering questions helter-skelter in the delightful confusion of reunion after long separation, let us briefly inform the reader who ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... are in the world!" said the voice in emphatic accents of supreme contempt—"What braying asses!—What earth- snouting swine! Saw you not yon crowd of whimpering idiots flying helter-skelter like chaff before the wind, weeping, wailing, and bemoaning their miserable little sins, scattering dust on their addled pates, and howling on their gods for mercy,—all forsooth! because for once in their unobserving lives they behold the river red instead of green! Ay me! 'tis a ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... made, it seemed to me that I was touching her hands. When the evening had fallen, a passing officer noticed us, made inquiries, and we were mustered. We plunged into the night of the building. Our feet stumbled and climbed helter-skelter, between pitched walls up the steps of a damp staircase, which smelt of stale tobacco and gas-tar, like all barracks. They led us into a dark corridor, pierced by little pale blue windows, where draughts came and went violently, a corridor spotted at each end by naked gas-jets, their ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... found it necessary to modify the arrangement by always visiting his friend, whom he usually found in bed. It was William Clerk who sat for the picture of Darsie Latimer, the hero of Redgauntlet,—whence we should suppose him to have been a lively, generous, susceptible, contentious, and rather helter-skelter young man, much alive to the ludicrous in all situations, very eager to see life in all its phases, and somewhat vain of his power of adapting himself equally to all these phases. Scott tells a story of Clerk's being once baffled—almost for the first time—by a ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... grunted and staggered to her feet to go with them, but she was fat and slow of motion, so that by the time she was fairly standing, they were far down the field and running helter-skelter by the side of the fence. As she stared dully after them she could see the twenty-two curly tails bobbing along, and she heard the soft patter of eighty-eight sharp little ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... came in haste, and encamped above it, hoping to pass the straits next day. There Castruccio fell upon them about midnight, putting all to confusion. Horse and foot fell foul upon one another, and both upon the baggage. There was no way left for them but to run, which they did helter-skelter in the plain of Pistoja, where each man shifted for himself. But Castruccio followed them even to Peretola at the gates of Florence, carrying Pistoja and Prato on the way; there he coined money under their walls,[145] ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... Caught same Daily paper. Up it sailed In the air; Courage failed Then and there. Scared well Out of wits; Nearly fell Into fits. Off they sped, Helter-skelter, 'Till they'd ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle
... interest, save for its constant change and the primitive manner in which the majority attacked their food supply, which was piled helter-skelter upon the long tables, yet he ran his eyes searchingly over the numerous faces, seeking impartially for either friend or enemy. No countenance present, as revealed in the dim light of the few swinging lamps, appeared familiar, and satisfied that he remained unknown, Keith began devoting his ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... "rough-and-tumble landing." Such a landing is constructed by driving long timbers into the mud at the water's edge, below a steep piece of bank. Along the inner side of these are laid horizontally a certain number of logs, to form a water front; and into the space behind are tumbled helter-skelter from the tops of the bank the logs of the winter's chopping. It is a very simple and expeditious way of storing the logs. But when the ice has run out, and it is time to start the lumber down-stream, then comes trouble. The piles sustaining the whole ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... forester's—the young lady and the odd man came across to the barn to unpack the case. The man rolled it across the threshing-floor; and, as soon as it was outside, they saw what had happened. Everything rolled out helter-skelter and higgledy-piggledy: coffee, tea, cinnamon, spices, sugar-candy, all without end and all mixed up together and spoilt. There was not a bag but had ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... were—half-lying, half-sitting—six men in shirts, and in unbuttoned rough overcoats; two of them had no caps on; huge feet in boots were swinging and hanging over the cart-rail, arms were rising and falling helter-skelter... bodies were jolting backwards and forwards.... It was quite clear—a drunken party. Some were bawling at random; one was whistling very correctly and shrilly, another was swearing; on the driver's seat sat a sort of giant in a cape, driving. They went at a ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... a la baionnette!" ("At them with bayonet.") A fierce roar from our chests, and the only bugler left alive in our company sounds the charge. Away we go with our bayonets. We scarcely reach them when the bouches are put to rout. Some of them escape helter-skelter, throwing down rifles and knapsacks. "Halt!" commands our Captain. We lie down and keep up the firing on the retreating remnants of the enemy. "Back to the trenches!" is the next command. A few more volleys in the direction of the Germans, then comes the command, "Cease firing. Take ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... simplification was their method, and that simplicity is their excellence." Indeed, as we have already noted in passing, simplification is the method of every art. Every artist, in his own way, simplifies life: first by selecting essentials from the helter-skelter of details that life presents to him, and then by arranging these essentials in accordance with a pattern. And we have noted also that the method of the artist in narrative is to select events which bear an essential logical relation to each other ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... by so many pieces of artillery, arrive we did. On the platforms, too, our work was not quite so difficult as might be imagined—killing these fellows was sheer butchery. As soon as we appeared, they all turned and fled helter-skelter, and the reader may judge of their courage by the fact that out of about seven hundred men killed by us, only forty had wounds in front, the rest ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... musketry in the street, but some who were standing close saw one of their number crumple suddenly to the earth. When they leaned over him he was dead. They were panic-stricken, and it took all the brutal authority of the Arabs to keep the Manyuema from rushing helter-skelter into the jungle—anywhere to escape from this ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... scattered an extraordinary collection of rubbish—boilers, car wheels, fragments of locomotives, household furniture, dead animals, clothing, sewing machines, goods from stores, safes, passenger and street cars, some half buried in the sand, some all exposed, helter-skelter. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... side. I turned my head and saw Blenkiron behind me, evidently mortally unhappy about the pace we set and the mount he sat. He used to say that horse-exercise was good for his liver, but it was a gentle amble and a short gallop that he liked, and not this mad helter-skelter. His thighs were too round to fit a saddle leather. We passed a fire in a hollow, the bivouac of some Turkish unit, and all the horses shied violently. I knew by Blenkiron's oaths that he had lost his stirrups and was sitting ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... up a white handkerchief in his hand, and Breytenbach fired, and down went the general of a heap, and then they all ran helter-skelter down the hill. Yes, it was a wonderful thing! They could have beat us back with their left hand. That is what comes of having ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... his Majesty jumped so high that his crown tumbled off, and the Queen was in such a delightful agitation that she could not confine her steps to a walk, and so the King and the Queen, and the Duchess, and all the maids of honour and pages, ran helter-skelter, as fast as they could, ...
— The Apple Dumpling and Other Stories for Young Boys and Girls • Unknown
... brooklet in this wild, Smooth-resting on its mosses sleek, Like loving lips upon a cheek Soft as the face of maid or child— Just boulders, helter-skelter piled. ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... was upset into a ditch not far from Schlobitten, the kaiser and the count being severely bruised and shaken up; while at another time a splendid team got beyond the control of the count, smashed harnesses and pole, and dashed helter-skelter into the little town of Proeckelwitz, where they were ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... wished. Taking a pick and an axe he went to the graveyard, but when he struck the grave with his tools and the earth rolled back, disclosing the body of La Rose, the old fellow was so terrified that he ran helter-skelter from the spot. A draught of good wine brought back his failing courage, however, and he returned and passed the rose three times under the nostrils of his late acquaintance. Instantly ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... Then helter-skelter off they went, As ower t'fence I lape; I thowt—well, if it matters owt, I've made ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... wildly then, plunging helter-skelter into the silent, heartless wood. The trees miraculously opened up a way for them as they dived and stooped and wriggled forward. In which direction they were going neither of them had the least idea, but as neither ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... When our feet were firmly placed and all was ready, we lifted the blinds from the horses' eyes and then braced ourselves. Digging our heels into the ponies' sides, off we started, at a jerking, bounding, half-bucking pace. Shouting directions to each other, helter-skelter, over and around boulders, we dashed along as if we were after the hounds on a genuine old-fashioned fox-hunt. I suppose we kept it up a full hour, at topmost speed. The horses didn't want to stop, and Sinyela knew that the best way to break them was to let them have their own way. ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... happened. She thought the fish was alive and ran for her life, and the mouse hustled about helter-skelter trying to find the hole in the wall, for his wits were just scared out of ...
— Sandman's Goodnight Stories • Abbie Phillips Walker
... it is to think knows that he must for part of the day create about himself a pool of silence. But in that helter-skelter which we flatter by the name of civilization, the citizen performs the perilous business of government under the worst possible conditions. A faint recognition of this truth inspires the movement for a shorter work day, for ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... furnishings of the forty rooms thrown helter-skelter. Costly cabinets that refuse to yield to first pressure, are wrenched open. The frightened butler and the corps of other servants are impressed into the search. They are compelled to give up the keys to all closets and rooms. As case after case of silver and gold service are disclosed, the vulture ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... cockroaches, which are in a state of intense excitement and happiness. They manifest these feelings in a very remarkable manner—a sudden unanimous impulse seems to seize the obscene thousands which usually lurk hidden in the corners of my cabin. Out they rush, helter-skelter, and run over me, my table, and my desk; others, more vigorous, fly, quite regardless of consequences, until they hit against something, upon which, half spreading their wings, they make their heads a pivot and spin round ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... the narrow road; we could just hear faintly the harmony of the tune they were humming in concert, as one hears the murmur of an AEolian harp. As a guard, they were of course ridiculous: the veriest suspicion of peril would have sent them all galloping helter-skelter, with frantic shrieks of fright. But the road was perfectly safe, and these merry fellows were to defend us from loneliness, ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... could have half a dozen married couples all separating, getting rid of their ribs and buckling again, helter-skelter, every man to somebody else's wife; and the parish parson refusing to do the work; just to show the immorality of ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... and bearing their share of the baggage in the shape either of bolster-shaped loads of cloth and beads covered with matting, each tied into the fork of a three-pronged stick, or else coils of brass or copper wire tied in even weights to each end of sticks which they laid on the shoulder; then helter-skelter came the Wanguana, carrying carbines in their hands, and boxes, bundles, tents, cooking-pots—all the miscellaneous property—on their heads; next the Hottentots, dragging the refractory mules laden with ammunition-boxes, ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... there are in the world!" said the voice in emphatic accents of supreme contempt—"What braying asses!—What earth- snouting swine! Saw you not yon crowd of whimpering idiots flying helter-skelter like chaff before the wind, weeping, wailing, and bemoaning their miserable little sins, scattering dust on their addled pates, and howling on their gods for mercy,—all forsooth! because for once in their unobserving lives they behold the river red instead ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... one end, and Jessica, Joyce and Joan sat on the other, and screaming and laughing they tossed like a boat on a choppy sea: until Jessica without any warning jumped off her perch in mid-air and destroyed the balance, and down they all came helter-skelter, laughing and screaming more than ever. But Jane reproved Jessica for her trick and said nobody would believe her another time, and that it was a bad thing to destroy people's confidence in you; and Jessica wiped her hot face on her sleeve and ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... trampled upon each other. The yellow metal acted upon them like strong drink. In the midst of the pandemonium came a deafening explosion, a vivid flash of red, a volume of acrid suffocating vapour. Another explosion and men came rushing from Mountchance's laboratory—terror written in their faces. Helter-skelter the crowd darted from the house forcing Sally Salisbury with them whether she would or not. In the mad fight for gold large glass bottles filled with acids, alcohol and other inflammable liquids had been upset and smashed, and the smouldering fire in ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... among the already excited negroes. They no doubt supposed it the musical exercise set apart for the performance of the angel Gabriel on the day of judgment, and in less than ten minutes all without exception had come pell-mell, helter-skelter, running to "the house." The dairymaid left her churn, and the housemaid put down her broom; the ploughs stood still, and when the horses turned their heads to see what was the matter they found they had no ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... abundance. Apparently he was like the woodcutter entering the thick forest and saying, "Where shall I begin?" The same obstacle appeared in a minor degree to cling about his verbal exposition, and accounted perhaps for his rather helter-skelter choice of remarks bearing on the number of unaddressed letters sent to the post-office; on what logic really is, as tending to support the buoyancy of human mediums and mahogany tables; on the probability of all miracles under all religions when explained by hidden laws, and my unreasonableness ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... yachts in the harbor at Green's Landing, more of them than any of the party had expected to see there. In fact, there was an air of prosperity about the town built on the slope facing the harbor, although there were no large and attractive buildings, and the houses seemed scattered about in a helter-skelter manner. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... are comfortably seated at the tea-table, enjoying their waffles, cold tongue, and canned peaches, and asking and answering questions helter-skelter in the delightful confusion of reunion after long separation, let us briefly inform the reader ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... Noreen's entreaties and angry demands from the Englishmen who bade him order the mahouts to take the visitors away from the horrible spectacle. As they left they saw the Rajah's golden chariot and the carriages of the officials being driven helter-skelter across the grass with their blood-stained and terrified occupants. And the madly fanatical crowds surged wildly around the altar, while their cries to ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... through the thickest part of the underbrush, since they were acquainted with the paths. At first they hurled from a distance; then as no one defended himself but many were wounded, they approached closer to them. The Romans were in no order but going along helter-skelter among the wagons and the unarmed, and so, not being able to form readily in a body, and being fewer at every point than their assailants, they suffered greatly and offered no resistance at all. [-21-] Accordingly, they encamped on ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... now risen so high that Miss Grey felt this would really be the best plan, for attention to lessons seemed impossible, and soon the four children were rushing helter-skelter across the garden in pursuit of Antony. With a frisk of his tail and a squeak of defiance he led the chase in fine style, choosing Andrew's most cherished borders. What a refreshment it was, after the tedium of French verbs and English history, and what a pity when Antony, after a brave ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... cat was very pronounced; and that, without the big fresh tracks, made the skin on my face tighten and chill. As we turned a jutting point in the wall, a number of animals, which I did not recognize, plunged helter-skelter ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... rooms within, while on the graveled terrace lay various articles of furniture that had been hurled from the stoop. Particularly noticeable was a drawing-room suite in sky-blue satin, its sofa and twelve fauteuils piled in dire confusion, helter-skelter, on and around a great center table, the marble top of which was broken in twain. And there were zouaves, chasseurs, liners, and men of the infanterie de marine running to and fro excitedly behind the buildings and ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... the table and chairs slowly and noiselessly through the room. Little mice darted out of the crevices and around in the light and the shadow under the table, looking for crumbs; their coats glistened often like soft silk, and their little eyes gleamed like black diamonds. They scampered helter-skelter, they squeaked, they sat upon their hind legs, and feasted merrily. Suddenly they scattered and disappeared. In from the courtyard came rushing a great rat with a great pattering of his claws on the floor; he dragged his ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... of the age, the helter-skelter way in which dramas were got up, sometimes by half-a-dozen authors at once, of whom one occasionally monopolised the fame; and the unscrupulous manner in which booksellers appropriated any popular name of the day, and affixed ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... done, and our friend again Was out in the raging wind and rain. Swift through the twisting street he passed And came to the Market Square at last, And climbed and stood On a block of wood Where a pent-house, leant to a wall, gave shelter From the brunt of the blizzard's helter-skelter, And, waving his bow, he cried, "Ahoy! Now steady your hearts for an hour of joy!" And so to his cheek and jutting chin Straight he fitted the violin, And, rounding his arm in a movement gay, Touched the strings ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... he looked on me as dangerous. He put me off and put me off, until I was glad to snatch at a position in a next-of-kin agency. But in a fortnight or two I was even more glad to leave it. Then I went back to Lord Boxspur, who this time sent me helter-skelter back to Paris, to bribe a blackmailing newspaper woman from giving the details of his wife's misfortunes to the Continental correspondent of a London weekly. But even when that was done, and I had been duly paid for my work, I was only secure for a few weeks, at the outside. All along I ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... dear! My frantic terror at the noise of the big bells and the vibration of the shaky old walls! Once I had begun I couldn't leave off for my life, but went on tugging and tugging and quaking and quaking until—have you forgotten it?—all the people came running helter-skelter under the impression that the town was afire. And then, behold, it was only little me, trembling like a leaf and crying like a ninny! I remember I was scolded and smacked and dismissed into outer darkness (it was the chip vault, I think), for that first outbreak of fame, and now, lest you should ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... have bought those things which they ought not to have bought and have left unbought those things which they ought to have bought. But it is not only a matter of reaching a systematic instead of a helter-skelter enjoyment of the offerings of the world. It is also a matter of reaching, by study of money values, a mental habit of economy. And it comes at a time when that ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... as, with steady tramp, the line of redcoats and bluejackets advanced at the charge. The Arabs fired a round, the scimitars of their leaders flashing for a few seconds, and then, unable to face the bristling wall of bayonets, their courage gave way, and they fled helter-skelter for safety towards the neighbouring woods. The English pursued them for some distance, firing as they advanced, and halting only to give sufficient time to reload. If they advanced too far, as the fort was yet unsubdued, there was a risk of a sally being ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... an odd chap. When he was still he liked to hang by his feet, upside down. And when he was flying he sailed about in a zigzag, helter-skelter fashion. He went in so many different directions, turning this way and that, one could never tell where he was going. One might say that his life was just one continual dodge—when he wasn't resting with his heels where his head ought ...
— The Tale of Solomon Owl • Arthur Scott Bailey
... being not more than three or four hundred people in Palace Yard, a number of Press messengers, rushing helter-skelter out of the court and into waiting cabs, indicated the arrival of some critical juncture within the jealously guarded portals. Presently it was whispered that the Lord Chief Justice had finished his summing up, and that Mr. Justice Mellor was addressing ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... living thing, now on these dreary trudging days fell apart into remote bays and slips and rivers, hours of weary travel apart and each without any connection with any other that I could see. Railroad tracks wound in and out with no apparent purpose, dirty freight boats crawled helter-skelter this way and that. All seemed a ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... musty or almost forgotten. Now, however, that I see myself so unexpectedly enriched with this divine gift of speech, I intend to enjoy it and avail myself of it as much as I can, taking pains to say everything I can recollect, though it be confusedly and helter-skelter, not knowing when this blessing, which I regard as a loan, shall be ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... office in the railway station was a dingy place of cobwebbed murk. It was also the express office, and in helter-skelter disarray lay a litter of uncalled-for plow-shares and such articles as go from the end of the rails into that hinterland where lies an isolated ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... On the plains, it will often blow for forty-eight hours, accompanied by torrents of pelting, pitiless rain, and is sometimes so violent, that there is hardly any possibility of making headway against it. Sheep race before it as hard as they can go helter-skelter, leaving their lambs behind them to shift for themselves. There is no shelter on the plains, and, unless stopped by the shepherds, they will drive from one river to the next. The shepherds, therefore, have a hard time of it, for they must be out till the wind goes down; ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... of a blow, a howl, and then a rushing noise explained by the appearance of Panama Strake, who was dashing helter-skelter across the garden, as regardless of flower-bed and tree as a young colt that had ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... idea of a dinner party has quite frightened her; and there are so many little things to be done, which I know nothing about, and which you understand, and without which we should have every thing helter-skelter, that you must come, or I'll never forgive you.' Harry made this last menace with so fierce an air, and his mouth pursed up in so ferocious a manner, although his eyes were dancing with fun, that the lady consented ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... this shrewd smiter. Your "moral breath of temperament" Found scope in scholarly urbanity; And wheresoever LOWELL went Sounded the voice of Sense and Sanity. We loved you, and we loved your wit. Thinking of you, uncramped, uncranky; Our hearts, ere we're aware of it, "Run helter-skelter into Yankee." "For puttin' in a downright lick 'Twixt Humbug's eyes, there's few to metch it." Faith, how you used it; ever quick Where'er Truth dwelt, to dive and fetch it. Vernacular or cultured verse, The scholar's speech, the ploughman's patter You'd ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 22, 1891 • Various
... many brows. Helmets swung clanking like iron pipkins from saddle-bows, and men rode wearily with their arms in slings, drooping haggard faces upon their chests. But all passed rapidly enough up the steep street, and tumbled with noise and shouting, helter-skelter into the great court-yard beneath me as I watched, secure as God in heaven, from my perch on ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... away, yelling with terror. The space around the guillotine was cleared. And the prefect of police, rallying his men, drove everybody back to the prison, helter-skelter, like a disordered rabble: the magistrates, the officials, the condemned man, the chaplain, all who had passed through the archway two or three ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... the rage, Helter-skelter runs the age; Minds on this round earth of ours Vary like the leaves and flowers, Fashion'd after certain laws; Sing thou low or loud or sweet, All at all points thou canst not meet, Some will ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... daylight over all the wonders gathered in this museum. For a museum it truly was, in which clever hands had spared no expense to amass every natural and artistic treasure, displaying them with the helter-skelter picturesqueness that ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... signal to draw in all sails except one and to remove the uppermost parts of the masts. The ships were being scattered far apart. In the cabins all articles, though tied fast, were broken loose and were thrown helter-skelter, the occupants likewise, many with bruised limbs, and there was no end to the spells of seasickness and of misery made ridiculous. The storm was ever growing worse. On the second day the last sail was drawn in, and the rudder bound fast, so that now the ship ...
— The Voyage of The First Hessian Army from Portsmouth to New York, 1776 • Albert Pfister
... the fort yelling as if Detroit, like Jericho, might be taken with shouting. Their spent bullets pelted the old fort like harmless hail. They tried to rush upon the gate, but the fusilade from the block house and the fire-belching cannon of the British drove them back helter-skelter. ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... with the decision of mon chef. Let Luc remain; he has courage enough to have the thing done with the soldiers at the very stockades." And the two rode away helter-skelter, till a dozen miles lay between them and their ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... which was esteemed one of the most sacred objects in Rome. Whenever the tree appeared to a passer-by to be drooping, he set up a hue and cry which was echoed by the people in the street, and soon a crowd might be seen running helter-skelter from all sides with buckets of water, as if (says Plutarch) they were hastening to ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... some white duck's eggs to sit on. The batch of fifteen eggs had all come out. It was really wonderful to see these fifteen baby ducks, yellow as canaries, beaks and webbed feet pink, swarming around the big patient sitting mother, ducking under her wings, to come out presently and clamber helter-skelter onto her broad back. As often happens with nurses, Yollande loved the ducklings as her own children, and without worrying about their shape or plumage, so different from her own, she showered upon them proofs of the tenderest affection. Did a fly pass within ...
— The Curly-Haired Hen • Auguste Vimar
... The little pink pansy, it seems, went to look after our friends, the enemy," Rex went on. "The hail nearly busted that old rock open. I thought once it had. The ponies are scattered and likewise the Kiowas. Gone helter-skelter, like the—tornado. The thing hit hard up there. Some ponies dead, and mebby an Indian or two. I didn't hunt 'em up. I can't use 'em that way," he added. "So I just said, 'Pax vobiscum!' and a lot of it, and ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... Mistress' mamma decided that she would have the nursery repainted and new paper put upon the walls. That was why all the dolls happened to be laid helter-skelter upon ...
— Raggedy Ann Stories • Johnny Gruelle
... same huge, lovable nature in the bulk, which murmured and swayed and quivered all the time the dancing and juggling and love-making went on in front of it, slowly laughed and reluctantly left off laughing, and applauded with a helter-skelter generosity which sometimes became unanimous and overwhelming. Once William saw Katharine leaning forward and clapping her hands with an abandonment that startled him. Her laugh rang out with the ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... to herself at the prospect. "Ey, ey," she mumbled, "it'll stop their match-makin'. Ey, ey, and what's mair, what's mair, it'll bring yon Ralph back helter-skelter." ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... places,—that looks a little better; now these curtains must come down, and I may as well shut the shutters too—and now this tablecloth must be content to hang straight, and mamma's box and the books must lie in their places and not all helter-skelter. Now, I wish mamma would wake up; I should think she might. I don't believe she is asleep, she don't ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... charged down the sides of the table. The mob wavered, turned, and were lost! Helter-skelter they fled, tumbling over one another in their haste to escape. The lamp was smashed. The benches were upset. In the smoky hall a furious din arose,—as if Sir Galahad and Sir Percivale were once more ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... into Brawling River and took to the water, but I swam after him; the river is only half a mile broad there, but it runs strong. He went spinning down the rapids, down I went in pursuit; he clambered ashore, I clambered ashore; away we tore helter-skelter up the hill and down again. I lost him in the marshes, got on his track again near Bread Fruit Wood, and brought him down with an ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... knotted corner, and out came the handkerchief with a whisk and a flourish, and scatter, rattle, helter-skelter, out flew a half-dozen pink thimble cakes, down upon the floor, back into Mrs. Smiley's pew, and to Johnnie's horror one pat ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... early one morning they observed one of the scouts far in advance flashing a looking-glass from a hilltop. Lashing their horses they bore on toward him, dashing down the cut banks at reckless speed or clambering up them helter-skelter. No inequalities of ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... kitchen, a hot, steaming place, where men, mostly cooks, in dirty white jackets, rushed helter-skelter into each other and around ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels
... regular Indian war-whoop, and threw himself right across the middle of the board, and shook it with all his might, so that it jiggled awfully right up and down. Before we had time to scream or to paralize our danger, over we all went, pell-mell, helter-skelter, higgledy-piggledy, down, down, down into the foaming water! What do you think of that, Clytie? Every single one of us—dogs, Jane, carriage, and all! 'Twas worse, a thousand-fole, than when we lost Lucille. Fan sat right down on the pebbles at the bottom of the sea, and gave herself ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... down stairs and out of the hall door, and gazed and listened for the coming of the gig, in vain. He was just about to re-enter the hall and close the door when the sound of wheels, dashing violently, helter-skelter, and with break-neck speed into ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the bank, smiling more bewitchingly than ever. On reaching the top of the hill, he perceived that the sheep had already strayed down into the valley, when he hastened after them, but only to see them enter a narrow glen helter-skelter, as if they were running for dear life. He now recollected the fiddle would save him all further trouble, and drew the bow across the strings as the lady had told him, but instead of the exquisite music she drew from them, he only obtained a sort of screeching noise, that seemed to spread ...
— Up! Horsie! - An Original Fairy Tale • Clara de Chatelaine
... we all fired one shot at him and then turned and fled, helter-skelter, for the kitchen, all tumbling in together, treading on each others' heels; my father slamming behind us the door, which ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... exhorting them to valorous deeds. Some of the veterans took arms themselves, and sallied forth with tottering steps. In this way, the savage chivalry of the village to the number of five hundred, poured forth, helter-skelter, riding and running, with hideous yells and war-whoops, like so many bedlamites or demoniacs ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... ever. Hum, hum, hum—m—m! Kettle slow and steady. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket going in to finish him. Hum, hum, hum—m—m! Kettle not to be finished. Until at last they got so jumbled together, in the hurry-skurry, helter-skelter, of the match, that whether the kettle chirped and the Cricket hummed, or the Cricket chirped and the kettle hummed, or they both chirped and both hummed, it would have taken a clearer head than yours or mine to have decided with anything ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... Jack trembled with fear, and in his terror clutched the wolf's tail with both hands and held on with all his might. The wolf was frightened, too, and took to flight, dragging the cask after it. You ought to have seen the wonder; helter-skelter went the brute, banging the cask against the trees, up hill and down dale. The wolf running, the cask following, Jack holding tight to the tail—that was worth seeing! Suddenly, helter-skelter the cask struck ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... British! murder! murder! Oh!" Then off we went, all at once, in solid column. The enemy took to their heels, and we pursued. Over the fence we bounded like stags. Down the hill went the British. Down the hill went we; helter-skelter, man and horse, we flew; roaring through the woods like the ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... spite of homely faces and ungraceful figures. Riding into Lambach this morning, I am about wheeling past a horse and drag that, careless and Austrian-like, has been left untied and unwatched in the middle of the street, when the horse suddenly scares, swerves around just in front of me, and dashes, helter-skelter, down the street. The horse circles around the market square and finally stops of his own accord without doing any damage. Runaways, other misfortunes, it seems, never come singly, and ere I have left Lambach an hour I am the innocent ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... lanes and fields new-plough'd, 85 Through his hedge, and through her hedge, He plung'd and toss'd and bellow'd loud— Till in his madness he grew proud To see this helter-skelter crowd That had more wrath than ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of Jane Map rushing towards him and of Jane Map kissing him rapturously on the mouth. 'Come on,' cried Jane Map, and pulled him by the hand, helter-skelter, until they came in front of a blaze of light and the ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... again he sent out his piercing coo-ee, and this time the answer was distinct enough for him to decide its exact position. Without another moment for reflection, he urged Bolter on, waded through the river, and dashed helter-skelter towards the wood. He thought nothing of the possibility of himself being lost, nothing of the danger of meeting black-fellows. He was going to Bob—that was the central idea. Bob was in danger and called for help. It was ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... served others for shelter, but were all so disposed within the cuts and among the ridges of the railroad grade as to be safe from Indian forays. And along the completed railroad, all the way from the Missouri River, material and supply trains were moving to supply this noisy, helter-skelter camp, which seemed to Bucks all confusion, yet was in ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... once hurled themselves helter-skelter through the sun again, in search of milk for their new Queen's supper. But Queer ran faster than any of them, and he took the very milk that Molly's own mother had just milked into the pail for herself; and the strangest thing of all was that, although the ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... called for punishment, of course; and the police proceeded to administer it by leaping from the truck and cracking at every head they saw. There were yells of rage and pain, and the terrified people fled into houses and stores, or scattered helter-skelter down the street. Jurgis and his gang joined in the sport, every man singling out his victim, and striving to bring him to bay and punch him. If he fled into a house his pursuer would smash in the flimsy door and follow him up the stairs, hitting every ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... red with rust, mixed up with and in parts covered by stone and brickwork, beams and iron girders, the whole sprinkled over with gleaming fragments of window-glass The outside walls were almost completely knocked flat, tossed helter-skelter outwards or on top of the machinery. The tall chimney—another suspected 'observing post' probably—lay in a heap of broken brickwork with the last yard or two of the base standing up out of the heap, and even in its remaining stump were other ragged shell-holes. ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... was always plenty to look at, especially with a good pair of glasses. This morning, coming out on to the little flat top behind his position, he discovered all the shipping in a turmoil. The whole fleet of twenty or more transports was going helter-skelter for Imbros harbour, the winches of a few laggards still rattled as they laboured with their anchors, cruisers patrolled uneasily up and down, fleet-sweepers moved about nowhere in particular, while destroyers dashed round in wide circles, leaving behind them trails of heavy black smoke and foaming ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... "I met no one, saw no one, while I was out. Here comes your shadow," she added, as Tiny, having heard his beloved master's voice, came helter-skelter, head over heels, and leapt on Stafford's lap. "How fond he ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... little place it is!" he reflected, as he looked about. "All sorts of odds and ends stuck about helter-skelter, and the house-keeping things trying to ...
— Different Girls • Various
... and twigs that the trees had been too lazy to shed; short shrift for them on the first spring-cleaning night. Down they came, helter-skelter, and no notice taken of the tree's groaning, or its ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... of the campaign, which was equivalent to a stampede: helter-skelter they were to run away, or get into hiding somehow; but fortune proved a better general. For as soon as it was day they recommenced the journey, keeping the sun on their right, and calculating that with the westering ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... of the other team in the pathway below uttered wild cries of terror, as they saw their danger, and began to scramble helter-skelter up the mountain side. ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... tables, and as I undid the little parcels that Marie had made, it seemed to me that I was touching her hands. When the evening had fallen, a passing officer noticed us, made inquiries, and we were mustered. We plunged into the night of the building. Our feet stumbled and climbed helter-skelter, between pitched walls up the steps of a damp staircase, which smelt of stale tobacco and gas-tar, like all barracks. They led us into a dark corridor, pierced by little pale blue windows, where draughts came and went violently, a ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... he whizzed by, arms and legs going like mad, and the general appearance of a runaway engine. It would have been a triumphant descent, if a big dog had not bounced suddenly through one of the openings, and sent the whole concern helter-skelter into the gutter. Polly laughed as she ran to view the ruin, for Tom lay flat on his back with the velocipede atop of him, while the big dog barked wildly, and his master scolded him for his awkwardness. But when she saw Tom's face, Polly was frightened, ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... challenge to defend her good name, and cleared it, right or wrong, and beat him down on his knees, and then started for her spell of the merry canter over turf: an example to the English of the punishment they get for their stupid Puritanic tyranny—sure to be followed by a national helter-skelter down-hill headlong. And Mrs. Lawrence was not one of the corrupt, he argued; she concealed what it was decent to conceal, without pouting hypocritical pretences; she had merely dispensed with idle legal formalities, in the prettiest curvetting airy wanton way, to divorce the man who tried to divorce ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... our case the line was doubled, making it very strong, as strong, in fact, as some of the lines of General Lee's at that time holding Petersburg. When the enemy's skirmishers struck the opening our line opened upon them, driving them helter-skelter back into the woods. I ordered an advance, as the orders were to hold the enemy in check as long as possible to give our main line and wagon train time to get out of the way. We kept up the fire as we advanced, until we came upon the enemy posted behind trees; then, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... first road which presented: close upon the rear of the kitten pressed Juno and her chain; close upon the rear of Juno pressed the young woman in anguish for her kitten's life, and armed with a fly-flapper; and, the road happening to lead into the ball-room, the whole train—pursuers and pursued—helter-skelter fell into the quarters of the waltzers. The kitten attempted to take up a position behind a plateau on one of the side-boards: but from this she was immediately dislodged by Juno; and the retreat commencing afresh right across the side-boards which were ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... all been driven helter-skelter in every direction, some as far north as Cossipore, and one vessel, the Earl of Clare, was landed high and dry on the present site of the assistants' bungalow of the north mill of the Barnagore Jute Company. One of the P. & O. boats lying at Garden Reach was deposited for some distance inland ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... from his hotel to the Capitol and on the east portico took the oath of office. A wild rush was then made by the people to shake his hand. With difficulty the President reached a horse and started for the White House, "pursued by a motley concourse of people, riding, running helter-skelter, striving who should first gain admittance." So great was the crowd at the White House that Jackson was pushed through the drawing room and would have been crushed against the wall had not his friends linked arms and made a barrier about ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... 61; topsy-turvy &c (inverted) 218; shapeless &c 241; disjointed, out of joint. troublous^; riotous &c (violent) 173. complex &c 59.1. Adv. irregularly &c adj.; by fits, by fits and snatches, by fits and starts; pellmell; higgledy-piggledy; helter-skelter, harum-scarum; in a ferment; at sixes and sevens, at cross-purposes; upside down &c 218. Phr. the cart before the horse; hysteron proteron [Gr.]; chaos is come again; the wreck of matter and ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... hundred men to spend a couple of days exploring the country, and finding out where the Indians were. After marching a few miles, they came across two Indians. Both were killed by the advanced horsemen. All four of the field officers of the militia—two colonels and two majors—joined helter-skelter in the chase, leaving their troops for half an hour without a leader. Apparently satisfied with this feat, Trotter ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... and it creeps For a while, till it sleeps In its own little lake; And thence at departing, Awakening and starting, It runs through the reeds, And away it proceeds Through meadow and glade, In sun and in shade, And through the wood-shelter, Among crags in its flurry, Helter-skelter, Hurry-scurry. Here it comes sparkling, And there it lies darkling; Now smoking and frothing Its tumult and wrath in, Till in this rapid race On which it is bent, It reaches the place Of ...
— The Nursery, Volume 17, No. 100, April, 1875 • Various
... drove the fog helter-skelter across to Green Bay, where the gray ranks curled themselves down and lay hidden until morning. 'I'll go with the wind,' thought Waring, 'it must take me somewhere in time.' So he changed his course and paddled on. The wind grew strong, then stronger. He could ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... the straits next day. There Castruccio fell upon them about midnight, putting all to confusion. Horse and foot fell foul upon one another, and both upon the baggage. There was no way left for them but to run, which they did helter-skelter in the plain of Pistoja, where each man shifted for himself. But Castruccio followed them even to Peretola at the gates of Florence, carrying Pistoja and Prato on the way; there he coined money under their walls,[145] while ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
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