"Desperate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... such dexterity, that the old files{2} were fearful of losing their prey; but the odds were fearfully against her, and never did I feel my indignation more aroused, than when I beheld a sturdy ruffian aim a desperate blow at her head with his rattle, which in all probability, had it taken the intended effect, would have sent her in search of that peace in the other world, of which she was experiencing so little in this. It was not possible for me to stand ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... made the other guy desperate, because he made a dive and let his needle ray burn out a slashing beam that zipped across over my head. My forty-five blazed twice. He missed but I didn't, just as the throb of the stun-gun rang the air again. I whirled to face my stun-gun coming out ...
— Stop Look and Dig • George O. Smith
... of my edition of the Rig-Veda, and if anybody wishes to see what can be done by misrepresentation, let him read what is written there, and what Professor Whitney made of it in his articles in the "Journal of the American Oriental Society." His misunderstandings are so desperate, that he himself at times feels uneasy, and admits that a more charitable interpretation of what I wanted to say would be possible. When I saw this style of arguing, the utter absence of any regard for what was, or what ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... one of the world's most centrally planned and isolated economies, faces desperate economic conditions. Industrial capital stock is nearly beyond repair as a result of years of underinvestment and spare parts shortages. Industrial and power output have declined in parallel. The nation has suffered its eleventh year of food shortages because ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... inside because of the mosquitoes, and when she had insisted that he must stop coming to see her, that his attentions were noticeable to others, and that she would be disgraced, he caught her, under desperate ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... She made a desperate gesture, and stood staring at the blue Mayfield hills where, perhaps at that moment, painted Mohawk scouts ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... more solitary than herself. He had not her robust body. Disease and anxiety had worn him away while he was hopelessly besieging Quebec. In that last hour before the 13th of September dawned, General Wolfe was groping down river toward one of the most desperate military attempts in the ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... take this resolution so suddenly? There was time, all the time in the world, and having once neglected the thing at the very start, it was curious that she should now, at this late date, make her desperate resolve. Preston had not been worse, more difficult to handle. In fact, when the two women had grown used to his case, the management had been simple enough. He had thought she was inured to the disgust and the horror—placid ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... as he had wiped out the little garrison at Navidad. A friendly cacique, Guacanagari, who had been the ally of the Admiral from the first, gave him information of this plot, and the danger was seen by Colon's acute mind to be desperate indeed. He had only a small force, torn by jealousy and private quarrels, and a defensive fight at this stage of his enterprise would almost surely be a losing one. The territory of Caonaba included the most mountainous and inaccessible part of the island, where ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... to its culmination by the English centered on the west coast near the seat of perhaps the oldest and most interesting culture of Africa. It came at a critical time. The culture of Yoruba, Benin, Mossiland, and Nupe had exhausted itself in a desperate attempt to stem the on-coming flood of Mohammedan culture. It has succeeded in maintaining its small, loosely federated city-states suited to trade, industry, and art. It had developed strong resistance toward the Sudan state builders toward the north, as in the case of the fighting Mossi; but ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... young Kentuckian at once on his mettle. Inasmuch as he was putting forth every effort to rejoin his companion, there was good reason for fearing a collision with the red men. He had been in several desperate affrays with them, and, like a sensible person, he spared no exertion to escape all ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... anybody been observing him closely at the moment, to turn visibly paler as her carriage approached his. As far as any clear thought had been in his mind, or any power of thinking possible to him, his latest idea in reference to her had been a desperate resolve that he would never speak to her again. And now, again, as he saw her, in a new avatar of loveliness, he once again knew that to keep such a ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... made a snatch at the pony's bridle. And he caught him a good one too, right over the face, he said, that made him drop down in the mud a jolly sight quicker than he had jumped up; but it was a good half-a-mile before he could stop the pony. Maybe that in his desperate endeavours to get help, and in his need to get in touch with some one, the poor devil had tried to stop the cart. Also three boys confessed afterwards to throwing stones at a funny tramp, knocking about all wet and muddy, and, it seemed, very drunk, ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad
... wheels; Thus oft the Grecians turn'd, but still they flew; Thus following, Hector still the hindmost slew. When flying they had pass'd the trench profound, And many a chief lay gasping on the ground; Before the ships a desperate stand they made, And fired the troops, and called the gods to aid. Fierce on his rattling chariot Hector came: His eyes like Gorgon shot a sanguine flame That wither'd all their host: like Mars he ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... completely astray. Learning from these sources that, not much more than thirty years ago—in 1840,—the first ship-load of British emigrants landed in New Zealand; that since then the colony had struggled for bare life against many and great difficulties; that it had had to wage several desperate wars with the aborigines; had had its financial and legislative troubles; and was still so very very young, we were naturally prepared to find Auckland a rude, rough, and inchoate settlement, pitched down in the midst of a ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... did so he would leave the country and sail for America. She probably disbelieved him; she knew him to be weak, but she overrated his weakness. At all events the rejected one arrived and Clement Searle departed. On a dark December day he took ship at Southampton. The two women, desperate with rage and sorrow, sat alone in this big house, mingling their tears and imprecations. A fortnight later, on Christmas Eve, in the midst of a great snowstorm long famous in the country, something happened that quickened their bitterness. A young woman, battered and chilled by the ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... out-station, became a station by the removal thither from Aleppo of Mr. and Mrs. Eddy. No objection to their residence was made by the people, though it was not four years since they had combined in a desperate attempt to drive all Protestants from the village. The missionaries were visited ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... became known an attempt would be made to rob them. Gold will incite many men to commit any crime, and with the vast recesses of the Rocky Mountain spur behind them, the criminals might be ready to take desperate chances. ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... Guilford Campaign, 1781.—Cornwallis now made a desperate attempt to capture the Americans, but Greene and Morgan joined forces and marched diagonally across North Carolina. Cornwallis followed so closely that frequently the two armies seemed to be one. When, however, the river Dan was reached, ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing
... is our disease, the Abolition of Slavery is our remedy. Our bayonets only cupped and scored the patient, our war-measures in and out of Congress only worked dynamically against other war-measures far more dogged and desperate than our own. The sentence of Emancipation is the specific whose operation will be vital, by effecting an alteration in the system, and soon annihilating that condition of the blood which feeds our fevers and rushes in disgusting blotches to the face. "No,"—a Northern minority still says,—"every ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... made by the accident grew into a lurking fear which often haunted her as time wore on. She never knew at what moment she might fly apart herself. That it was a distressing experience she knew from the look on old Jeremy's face and the desperate pace at which he set off to have ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... fire preparatory to an attack, he knows that he runs a very great risk of being killed while he is deploying, and suspects that he is being thrown away to gain ten minutes' time. He may either deploy with desperate swiftness, or he may shuffle, or bunch, or break, according to the discipline under which he has ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... away in haste, and indeed all the rest left Jonathan; but a few there were, in number about fifty, who staid with him, and with them Mattathias, the son of Absalom, and Judas, the son of Chapseus, who were commanders of the whole army. These marched boldly, and like men desperate, against the enemy, and so pushed them, that by their courage they daunted them, and with their weapons in their hands they put them to flight. And when those soldiers of Jonathan that had retired saw the enemy giving way, they got ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... men to follow him Jethro galloped at full speed toward the Arabs, and with a shout flung himself upon them, clearing his way through them with his ax. He was but just in time. A desperate conflict was raging across the camels. At one point several of the Arabs had broken into the square, and these were opposed by Amuba, Chebron, and one of the men, while the others still held back the Arabs on the ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... The fingers seized me with a death-grip, and as I was thrown off my balance, I struggled to free myself, went under, made a desperate effort which brought me up again, and recovering myself a little, I tried hard to swim ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... when Tom in his airship loaded with fire-extinguishing chemicals headed for the blaze. And this, also, was the desperate situation that confronted Mary Nestor and her uncle, Barton Keith, as well as Amos Field and Jason Melling. Those unscrupulous and cowardly men were in a veritable panic of fear, which contrasted strangely with the calm, resigned attitude ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... you bade us! Phil. Ay—meet cause for chiding, That a poor desperate wretch, maddened with pain, Should talk as madmen do! Chor. Come, then, with us. Phil. Never! oh—never! Hear me—not if all The lightnings of the thunder-god were made Allies with you, to blast ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... unhappy, and the thought made the elder girl desperate. This led her to a plan: Lounsbury must be asked to forgive their father and come again—must be told of ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... inspiring weeks, the man lived, so far as a man can live, in his Yesterdays. In the cool shade of the orchard that once was an enchanted wood; under the old apple tree ship beside the meadow sea; on the hill where, astride his rail fence war horse, the boy had directed the battle and led the desperate charge and where the man had dreamed the first of his manhood dreams; in the garden where the castaway had lived on his desert island; in the yard near mother's window where the boy had builded the brave play house for the little girl next door; ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... dreadful stage of Christ's mission, to make Him doubt His divine Sonship, or, failing such, to taunt or anger the dying Savior into the use of His superhuman powers for personal relief or as an act of vengeance upon His tormentors? To achieve such a victory was Satan's desperate purpose. The shaft failed. Through taunts and derision, through blasphemous challenge and diabolical goading, the ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... chair, smoking quickly. She held one of the dogs on her knee and talked rubbish to it. Hamel watched her, leaning back in his carved oak chair, and he found it hard to keep the pity from his eyes. The woman was playing a part, playing it with desperate and pitiful earnestness, a part which seemed the more tragical because of the soft splendour of their surroundings. From the shadowy walls, huge, dimly-seen pictures hung about them, a strange and yet impressive background. Their small round ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Prison was enveloped in flames; the Mansion House and the Bank were attacked. But the troops were killing and dispersing the rioters on Blackfriars Bridge; a desperate conflict between the horse and the mob was going on near the Bank. What a night! The whole city seemed to be abandoned to pillage—to destruction. Shouts, yells, the shrieks of women, the crackling of the burning houses, the firing of platoons toward St. ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... from Stettin was a miserable one. It was desperate work packing the thousand things which had gathered together during the quarter of a century in careless profusion. It was heart-breaking to be obliged to leave behind the stores of wood, coal, and potatoes in the cellar, the cranberry jam in the storeroom, which the Markers, in their grandeur ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... 2,000 men each, with sixteen pieces of artillery and fifty-two rockets, advanced to the attack across the sacred burial grounds. Three of the hill forts were carried with slight loss. At the fourth fort desperate resistance was encountered. After this fort had succumbed to a bayonet attack the Chinese rallied in an open camp one mile to the rear. Intrenchments were thrown up with remarkable rapidity. The British troops, led by the Royal Irish Fusiliers, ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... was backing the Montgomery street venture, regarded Harpending a trifle quizzically. "Once," he said, "you tried to be a pirate, Asbury.... Oh, no offense," he laid a soothing hand upon the other's knee. "But tonight I need a desperate man such as you. Another like Benito. We're going to raid ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... voice of desperate self-repression that she spoke these last words, while she looked away from Deronda toward something at a distance from her on the floor. She was seeing the whole event—her own acts included—through an exaggerating medium ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... was really desperate, but Tish's face forbade questions. Aggie ventured to observe that perhaps it would be better to unlock the door and release the girl, but Tish only gave ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... hanged!" growled Robert. "What business can you have with me that wouldn't wait till morning? Look here, I'm desperate!" ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... stood tall and imperious in the waning afternoon light. She was bereaved mother, anguished wife; she was a dreamer driven out of the temple of the dream, and what she had to do was desperate. Her voice came hard ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... scientifically demonstrated fact of the physical and moral degeneration of a considerable part of the British working people doubtless suggests to many persons such pessimistic conclusions. "It is hopeless in our view," the New Age concludes, "to expect that the poor and ignorant, however desperate and however numerous, will ever succeed in displacing their wealthy rulers. No slave revolt in the history of the world has ever succeeded by its own power. In these days, moreover, the chances of success are even smaller. One machine gun is equal ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... on the day (it would seem) of the arrival of the sentence. Convocation, which was still sitting, hurried through a declaration that the pope had no more power in England than any other bishop.[263] Five years before, if a heretic had ventured so desperate an opinion, the clergy would have shut their ears and run upon him: now they only contended with each other in precipitate obsequiousness. The houses of the Observants at Canterbury and Greenwich, which had been implicated with the Nun of Kent, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... we came to Aldebaran," Hagen went on, "I was in contact with a dying world out there at the edge of space. Those people are desperate. And they are weary of life, having seen too much of it. They have agreed to go with me. Why, this sun and these worlds are piddling trifles. With that invention we could go from sun to sun. Space would ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... of man finds higher and higher powers. Once he throttled his game, and often perished in the desperate struggle; then he trapped it; then pierced it with the javelin; then shot it with an arrow, or set the springy gases to hurl a rifle-ball at it. Sometime he may point at it an electric spark, and it shall be his. Once he wearily trudged his twenty miles a ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... cadets of the Polaris unit raced down the Academy field toward the mercuryball, a plastic sphere with a vial of mercury inside. At the opposite end of the field, three members of the Arcturus unit ran headlong in a desperate effort to reach ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... Conant's sent a telegram, in a desperate hurry. I suspected it meant something important. Who is she, O'Gorman, and why did the Chief cut under us by planting Sarah Judd ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... last point that I mused especially. The housing problem is hard, doubtless; but nobody, my mind protested as I surveyed the crescent, nobody is driven to so desperate a solution of it as this! There are tents, there are caves, there are hollow trees...and there are people who prefer—this! Yes, 'this' is a positive taste, not a necessity at all. I swept the bay with a searching eye; but heads on the surface of water tell nothing ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... Blacks, were we ever to become constitutionally dominant in our native islands, would emulate in savagery our Haytian fellow-Blacks who, at the time of retaliating upon their actual masters, were tortured slaves, bleeding and rendered desperate under the oppressors' lash—and all this simply and merely because of the sameness of our ancestry and the colour of our skin! One would have thought that Liberia would have been a fitter standard of comparison in respect of a coloured ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... Saturday—yes, DOLLY, yes— From that evening I date the first dawn of my bliss; When we both rattled off in that dear little carriage, Whose journey, BOB says, is so like Love and Marriage, "Beginning gay, desperate, dashing, down-hilly, "And ending as dull as a six-inside Dilly!"[1] Well, scarcely a wink did I sleep the night thro'; And, next day, having scribbled my letter to you, With a heart full of hope this sweet fellow to meet, I set out ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... escaped the contagious habit of speaking in a hushed whisper, suddenly began, in a loud and cheery manner, to tell us something of the history of Graywater Park, which in his methodical way he had looked up. It was a desperate revolt, on the part of his strenuous spirit, against the phantom of gloom which threatened to obsess ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... serving the new khedive, Gordon longed for rest. The first year of his rule, during which he had done his own and other men's work, the long marches, the terrible climate, the perpetual anxieties, had all told upon him. Since then he had had three years of desperate labor, and had ridden some 8,500 miles. Who can wonder that he resented the impertinences of the pashas, whose interference was not for the good of his government or of his people, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... strength enough in the child and her vehement struggles to free herself to hinder Michel in his desperate haste. He was obliged to stand still for a minute or two to pacify her, speaking in his quiet, patient voice, ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... As men who were with mankind foes, And with despite and envy fired, Into the cloister had retired; Or who, in desperate doubt of grace, Strove, by deep penance, to efface 455 Of some foul crime the stain; For, as the vassals of her will, Such men the Church selected still, As either joy'd in doing ill, Or thought more grace ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... and his foot on the stair. Would he come in as he always did? or would he remember her complaint of being tired, a complaint she so seldom made? It was as a blow to Elinor when she heard his step go on past her door: and yet she was glad. Had he come in there was a desperate thought in her mind that she would call him to her bedside and in the dark, with his hand in hers, tell him—all that there was to tell. But it was again a relief when he passed on, and she felt that she was spared ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... was lost for a couple of hours: the negligence of General Melas, who trusted too much to the advantages he had gained, and the audacity of General Desaix, restored the victory to the French arms. While the fate of the battle was almost desperate, Bonaparte rode about slowly on horseback, pensive, and looking downward, more courageous against danger than misfortune, attempting nothing, but waiting the turn of the wheel. He has behaved several times in ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... and he rode forth to the dark lake. Down and down he dived till he came to the cave of the water-witch whom he killed after a desperate struggle. Hard by on a couch lay the body of Grendel. Drawing his sword he smote off the ogre's head. Swimming up with it he reached the surface and sprang to land, and was greeted by his faithful thanes. Four of them were needed to carry ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... Crimean conflict followed, with an escort of Tartars and with carriage horses which at times seemed to fly over the ground. General de Kotzebue knew every foot of the soil and was, of course, a splendid host on such an occasion. On this first day the field of the desperate Alma fight was gone over carefully and on the succeeding morning the ruined ramparts and redoubts of the once great Fortress of Sebastopol—not as yet restored—were visited and studied. The Cemetery of Cathcart's Hill was visited and here there were ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... least three persons of our little party—upon Laura, who had any thing but respect for him; upon Warrington, whose manner toward him showed an involuntary haughtiness and contempt; and upon the timid and alarmed widow, who dreaded lest he should interfere with her darling, though almost desperate projects for her boy. And, indeed, the major, unknown to himself, was the bearer of tidings which were to bring about a catastrophe in the affairs of all ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Squadron, was off the entrance to the harbor. Six days later, when Schley's squadron was reinforced by the powerful fleet of Admiral Sampson, Cervera's last chance of escape vanished, and there was nothing left for him to do but assist the forts and the garrison to defend the city to the last, or make a desperate and almost hopeless attempt to break through the line of ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... any Forerunner, or other manifest Hurt, than only a decay in Strength; and who being asked concerning their Condition, answered, that they were not sensible of any Disorder, which for the most part denoted a desperate Case, and an approaching Death; but the Number of these were very small in Comparison of such as ...
— A Succinct Account of the Plague at Marseilles - Its Symptoms and the Methods and Medicines Used for Curing It • Francois Chicoyneau
... poor enough while his father lived, when he died the returns from his irregular odd jobs no longer came in to supplement his wife's sewing, and add an occasional day or two of fuller meals, in consequence of which they were oftener than ever hungry and cold, and in desperate trouble about the rent of their room. Tembarom, who was a wiry, enterprising little fellow, sometimes found an odd job himself. He carried notes and parcels when any one would trust him with them, he split old boxes into ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... name of your country, ... of any intentions of this nature. But were it otherwise, ... They would prepare themselves with apprehension, indeed, but without dismay—with regret, but with firmness—for one of those desperate struggles which have sometimes occurred in the history ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... secret, and soon several of mother's most intimate friends had heard of my expedition, and in their minds, as in hers, my early marriage was assured. Did not the proof of it lie in the fact that I was pushing my building with desperate haste? Was this not done in order to make room for my bride?—No other reason was sufficient to account for the astounding improvements which I had planned, and which were going forward with ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... not show the least excitement after his desperate contest. He had attended to it as a matter of business, and when over he suffered it to pass out of his mind. He took out his watch and noted ...
— Driven From Home - Carl Crawford's Experience • Horatio Alger
... our approach, but only increased their noise, so we were obliged to displace them forcibly from their nests; and this ejectment was not produced without a considerable struggle on their parts; and, being armed with a formidable beak, it soon became a scene of desperate warfare. We had to take particular care to protect our hands and legs from their attacks: and for this purpose each one had provided himself with a short stout club. The noise they continued to make during our ramble through their territories the sailors said was, ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... safely in the fourth inning, but did not score. In the fifth, with two out, Doyle batted safely, but failed to score. In the sixth the Bostons made their first runs on Speaker's triple to left field and Lewis' out. If Snodgrass, in making a desperate effort to catch the fly, had permitted the ball to go to Devore the chances are that Speaker's hit would have resulted in an out, so that New York ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... driven up close enough, and the Tyrolese, who were nearly one hundred strong, burst with cheers from behind them, and rushing forward in loose array, but with desperate resolution, using the butt-ends of their rifles, fell with savage impetuosity upon the Bavarians, who were thunderstruck at this ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... hope on the chance of saving my foot. The great surgeon received me, as he did and does everybody, with the greatest kindness, and for twenty months I lay in one or other ward of the old place under his care. It was a desperate business, but he saved my foot, and here I am.' There he was, ladies and gentlemen, and what he was doing during that 'desperate business' was singing that he was ...
— Courage • J. M. Barrie
... a distant location, yet the person to whom the letter was addressed might be miles from a government post-office, and it might not be safe for him to present himself for a letter, lest he should be recognised as a desperate man, and letters were liable to be opened and their desperate projects exposed. To avoid this danger, they established a line of communication, extending from Toronto, Canada, to New Orleans. Not precisely direct, but ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... clump of this timber, flat on his belly, lay Peter. The love of adventure was in him, and today he had sallied forth on his most desperate enterprise. For the first time he had gone alone to the edge of Clearwater Lake, half a mile away; boldly he had trotted up and down the white strip of beach where the girl's footprints still remained in the sand, and defiantly he had ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... scout crept, quarter-way now along from the stern of the massive bulk that loomed above it, and within fifty feet of the third clamp in the rack. Touchy work, maneuvering into it, with the ZX-1 yawing as she was, and the need for haste desperate. Chris's hands were glued to the stick: his nerves were as tight as violin strings. Then, when only ten feet from the rack clamp, he gave a startled jump ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... not require these desperate measures. The British general would be compelled to risk a battle on equal terms, or to manifest a conscious inferiority to the American army. The depreciation of paper money was the inevitable consequence of immense emissions without corresponding taxes. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... they had raised the devil from attic to cellar; Mrs. Farren was in tears, Howker desperate. Not one out of the fifteen servants considered necessary to embellish the Seagrave establishment could do anything with them after Kathleen Severn's ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... Denis had just become a midshipman on board the Serapis, and we learn from these 'Notes' that he was to take part in the great fight which ended in the capture of that ship by Paul Jones, after the most bloody and desperate duel in the long and glorious record of the British Navy. Captain Pearson, who commanded the Serapis, reported his defeat to the Admiralty in a letter of which 'Mr. Thackeray seems to have thought much,' and, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... Fifth Edition. 'It is a perfectly enchanting story of love and chivalry, and pure romance. The Count is the most constant, desperate, and modest and tender of lovers, a peerless gentleman, an intrepid fighter, a faithful friend, ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... of Tristram grew more desperate day by day. His strength, quite prostrated, no longer permitted him to be carried to the seaside daily, as had been his custom from the first moment when it was possible for the bark to be on the way homeward. ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... For three months desperate attempts were made by the Consolidated to make the new bonds attractive to the public, but less than one hundred thousand dollars was subscribed. Bobby was tabulating the known results of this subscription with much satisfaction one morning when ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... to her about it," he continued, in a low tone, "till the night we parted. She is very modest, you must know, and I never dared to speak to her before, but I became desperate that night, and told her all, and she confessed her love for me. Oh, Petroff, if I could only have had one day more of—of—but the sergeant would not wait. I had to go to the wars. One evening in paradise is but a ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... when, after being dragged a hundred yards or so, and half choked by the thick dust, he managed to scramble to his feet, he pulled with frenzied, convulsive strength on the off-side rein. The horses swerved to the fearful saw on their jaws, and pulled nearly into the left-hand hedge. Acton's desperate idea was to overturn the carriage into the hedge before the horses could reach the bridge, for he felt he could no more pull them up than he dare let them go. There was just a chance for the lady if she were overturned into the bank or hedge, but none whatever if she were ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... I'm not dull; I've a task that's exciting: Ten years have I fought 210 With a foe: Sleep his name is. And I can assure you That when I have taken An odd cup of vodka, The stove is red hot, And the smuts from the candle Have blackened the air, It's a desperate struggle!' ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... Knockfergus an account of the cattle that he had driven, and the wives and bairns that he had slain. Like swarms of angry hornets, these avenging savages drove their stings in the now maddened and desperate Shane on every point where they could fasten; while in December the old O'Donel came out over the mountains from Donegal, and paid back O'Neill with interest for his stolen wife, his pillaged country, and his own long imprisonment and exile. The ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... confidence. The physicians attend; the case of the patient is carefully examined; a consultation is held; they are unanimously agreed that the symptoms are critical, but that the case, with proper and timely relief, is so far from being desperate, that it may be made to issue in an improvement of his constitution. They are equally unanimous in prescribing the remedy, by which this happy effect is to be produced. The prescription is no sooner made known, however, than ...
— The Federalist Papers
... Nabopolassar, the viceroy in Babylon, who had revolted, and gained his independence. The Median ruler had subdued Armenia, and established his control as far as the Halys, making a treaty with Lydia. Now ensued the desperate conflict on which hung the fate of the Assyrian Empire. Nineveh was taken (606 B.C.) by the Medes under Cyaxares, and the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar, the son of Nabopolassar. The Grecian story of Sardanapalus burning himself on a lofty bier, is a myth. Assyria was divided ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... ceased to horrify the quiet room, she had flung herself at Reddin, a pattern of womanly obedience no longer, but a desperate creature fighting in that most intoxicating of all crusades, the succouring ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... And to the guard he cries, Who straight march up, and forth the two friends go To find the chief. All creatures else below Lay wrapt in sleep, forgetting toil and care; But sleepless still, in presence of the foe, Troy's chosen chiefs urge council, what to dare, Whom to AEneas send, the desperate ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... at all times a desperate antagonist, where the hunting-knife and dogs are the only available weapons. The largest that I ever killed, weighed four hundredweight. I was out hunting, accompanied by my youngest brother. We had walked through several jungles without success, but ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... we say in the face of the desperate Battle the People are making for their Hearths and Homes that the time has come for every HONEST MAN, trader and otherwise, to extend a helping hand to the MEN in the GAP. You may ask, How will that be done? The ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... I have described them you may find it in your heart to feel sorry for me. The book is finished. That of itself has left me with a sense of loss, as if I had put away from me something that had been a part of me. Then—I am going blind. Do you know what that means, the desperate meaning? To lose the light out of your life—never to see the river as I saw it this morning? Never to see the moonlight or the ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... And look not after credit, we shall cure that, Your bended honesty we shall set right, Sir, We Surgeons of the Law do desperate Cures, Sir, And you shall see how heartily I'le handle it: Mark how I'le knock it home: be of good chear, Sir, You give good Fees, and those beget good Causes, The Prerogative of your Crowns will carry the matter, (Carry it sheer) ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... Gundry stood, like a bull, on the banks of his own river, and defied the worst and most desperate men of all nations to pollute it. He had scarcely any followers or steadfast friends to back him; but his fame for stern courage was clear and strong, and his bodily presence most manifest. Not a shovel was thrust nor a cradle rocked in the ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... panted from the long desperate climb, his plump sides filling and caving as he drank ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... worse. One wonders why card-rooms are not provided at large balls (as is the custom abroad), where the bored husbands might find a little solace over “bridge,” instead of yawning in the coat-room or making desperate signs to their wives from the doorway,—signals of distress, by the bye, that rarely ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... witnessed the ruin of his antagonist. From the fatal field, unharmed in body, he turned away, henceforth to the followed by the execrations of his countrymen. Past services were forgotten, brilliant talents availed nothing. His desperate attempt to found a rival government by the partial dismemberment of the one he had helped to establish was thwarted, and after years of poverty and misfortune abroad, he returned to die in neglect and obscurity in his own country. As was truly said: "He was the last of ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... which absolutely and point-blank refused to go into other people's pockets. During this short period of his life he was the most successful and famous lobbyist in Washington, and the most sought after by the most rascally and desperate ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... fight with. Charlemagne had no such disciplined troops. Yet he had as many difficulties to surmount as Caesar,—rugged forests to penetrate, rapid rivers to cross, morasses to avoid, and mountains to climb. It is a very difficult thing to subdue even savages who are desperate, determined, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... he knew the hiding-place. And I presume that he became aware of the desperate condition of his chief, because, under the impulse of his alarm, he committed the imprudence to write that threat: 'Woe betide the young lady, if she ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... his madness though, he is a desperate fine soldier; and he cares no more for a troop of blues than I would for a flock of geese," ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... Herbert's superior strength compelled him to yield the flag after a desperate struggle to retain his hold ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... rulers that was to arrest, if possible, before it was too late, the debacle of civilisation. Here, brought together by the indefatigable energy of that impassioned humanitarian, Leblanc, the French ambassador at Washington, the chief Powers of the world were to meet in a last desperate conference to ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... Lady Annabel, was devotedly attached to Venetia, though he had seldom an opportunity of intimating feelings, which the cordial manner in which she ever conducted herself to him gave him no reason to conclude desperate; at the same time that he had contrived that a day should seldom elapse, which did not under some circumstances, however unfavourable, bring them together, while her intimate friends and the circles in which she passed most of her life always witnessed ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... seems to record the last desperate effort of a "Lord of Misrule," in a manuscript letter of the learned Mede to Sir Martin Stuteville; and some particulars are collected from Hammond L'Estrange's Life ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... satire libellous.' Memoirs of the Reign of George III, iv. 167. Smollett in Humphrey Clinker (published in 1771) makes Mr. Bramble write, in his letter of June 2: 'The public papers are become the infamous vehicles of the most cruel and perfidious defamation; every rancorous knave—every desperate incendiary, that can afford to spend half-a-crown or three shillings, may skulk behind the press of a newsmonger, and have a stab at the first character in the kingdom, without running the least hazard of detection or punishment.' The scribblers who had of late shewn ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... have not yet realised decay, not to speak of death. The immortality of the soul is a question wide of you, who have as yet practically no doubt of the immortality of the body. But I—well, it would be melodramatic to say that I face death every day. The metaphor applies but to desperate callings and romantic complaints. To some Death comes like a footpad, suddenly, and presents his pistol—and the smoke that curls upward from his empty ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... the young man continued, with a desperate courage, "but I am. After all happiness is spelt with different letters for all of us. You have denied yourself—worked hard, carried many burdens and run great risks to become a millionaire. I too have denied myself, have worked ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... year by her beauty. She is an honest girl still. Since her mother sold her three years ago for sixty thousand francs, she has tried to find happiness, and found nothing but annoyance. She took to the stage in a desperate mood; she has a horror of her first purchaser, de Marsay; and when she came out of the galleys, for the king of dandies soon dropped her, she picked up old Camusot. She does not care much about him, but he is like a father to her, and ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... its shade I sat me down to moan; Resign'd to dumb despair, without a tear, } Prostrate I lay, or slowly wander'd, here, } And, wandering, thought upon the things that were: } 'Till crowding thoughts a sudden lustre flung, And my wild heart with desperate ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... and others like them, cost him would more than have recompensed Dick, had he been hard-hearted enough to desire a vengeance. 'For a quarter of an hour, or maybe twenty minutes,' said he, 'I can be as angry as any man in Europe, and, if it was required of me during that time to do anything desperate—downright wicked—I could be bound to do it; and what's more, I'd stand to it afterwards if it cost me the gallows. But as for keeping up the same mind, as for being able to say to myself my heart is as hard as ever, I'm just as much bent ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... The desperate Colonel who had snatched up his cap when he heard Walters coming, grinned painfully, pulling his straggly red and white beard nervously. The strain was beginning to tell on his iron nerves. He removed the cap, and with a few muttered words went back to the game, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... again, who employ these Mercurii from their own inability to attend in person, owing to distance, want of time, and other similar causes. Hence, many a desperate bibliomaniac keeps in the back-ground; while the public are wholly unacquainted with his curious and rapidly-increasing treasures. Hence SIR TRISTRAM, embosomed in ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Corinth! To wreck his career! To deprive him of a companion so fitly qualified to help him realize to the full his splendid ambition! Small wonder that the daughter of the church had determined upon a desperate measure. ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... of the hacienda. Their entrance within the sala of course created some slight disarrangement in the tableaux of the dramatis personal already there. This confusion gave Tiburcio an opportunity to carry out a desperate resolution he had formed, and profiting by it, he advanced ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... soda when once he has got the habit. Everything was against me. The old convivial circle began to shun me. I could not join in their revels and they began to look on me as a grouch. In the end, I fell, and in one wild orgy undid all the good of a month's abstinence. I was desperate then. I felt that nothing could save me, and I might as well give up the struggle. I drank two pin-ap-o-lades, three grapefruit-olas and an egg-zoolak, before pausing ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... of Brittany opens with the account of Julius Caesar. At that period (57 B.C.) Armorica was inhabited by five principal tribes: the Namnetes, the Veneti, the Osismii, the Curiosolitae, and the Redones. These offered a desperate resistance to Roman encroachment, but were subdued, and in some cases their people were sold wholesale into slavery. In 56 B.C. the Veneti threw off the yoke and retained two of Caesar's officers as hostages. Caesar advanced upon Brittany ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... he retorted, growing desperate lest his mother, hearing their voices, should suddenly come out on to the verandah and learn what they were talking about before he had time to put his side of the story to her. "If you had you would have known I tried and tried to get Nellie to come in so that I could tell the old woman ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... Elizabeth; 'he will be there all day, and I shall not see Papa I do not know when. It really was a very convenient thing when the architects of the old German cathedrals used to take a desperate leap from the top of the tower as soon as it was finished. Well, I ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... support was most encouraging to the people of Ulster, and the Dublin correspondent of The Times reported that it gave no less satisfaction to loyalists in other parts of Ireland, among whom, as the position became more desperate every day, there was "not the least sign of giving ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... a dagger, stabbing through every nerve, came fear, a horror unspeakable of the depth she could not see, into which she was being so furiously hurled. She was clinging to the saddle, but she made a desperate effort to drag the animal round. It was quite fruitless. No woman's strength could have availed to check that headlong gallop. He swerved a little, a very little, in answer, that was ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... compact and strong, well commanded, admirable on the defensive but slow to move or to act on the offensive. His corps had sustained up to the time fewer hard knocks than any other corps in the whole army, and I was anxious to give it a chance. I always expected to have a desperate fight to get possession of the Macon Road, which was then the vital objective of the campaign. Its possession by us would in my judgment result in the capture of Atlanta and give us the fruits of victory. ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... marines. At eleven at night our party returned on board, bringing on a sledge Okotook, Iligliuk, and their son. That Iligliuk would accompany her husband, I, of course, took for granted and wished; but as the boy could do us no good, and was, moreover, a desperate eater, I had desired Mr. Bushnan to try whether a slight objection to his being of the party would induce Okotook to leave him with his other relations. This he had cautiously done; but, the instant the ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... which a red ribbon is passed. The small canes are not carried in the hand, but stuck in the girdle on the left side. Nobody summoned before the judges by a messenger carrying a staff of red Brazil wood dares to disobey the command. The most desperate criminal meekly goes to his doom, following often a mere boy, if the latter has only a toy vara stuck in his belt with the red ribbons hanging down. It is the vara the Indians respect, not ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... was in the desperate position of a person who, having staked more than he has in his pocket, and feeling that he can never make up his account, continues to plunge on unlucky cards—not because he hopes to regain his losses, but because it will not do for him to stop and ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... Mrs Chick, looking round the room with a prophetic smile, 'that's what she's going to say. I knew it. You had better say it. Say it openly! Be open, Lucretia Tox,' said Mrs Chick, with desperate sternness, 'whatever ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... a matter as the destruction of our national fabric, with all its benefits, its memories, and its hopes, would it not be wise to ascertain precisely why we do it? Will you hazard so desperate a step while there is any possibility that any portion of the ills you fly from have no real existence? Will you, while the certain ills you fly to are greater than all the real ones you fly from, will you risk the commission of so fearful ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... The verandah was paved with marble, there was some fine mahogany carving in the central hall, the dessert-service was of George II. silver-gilt, and the china beautiful old Spode. Everything else about the place told its own story of desperate financial conditions. Our hostess declared that it was impossible for a woman to manage a sugar estate, as she could not always be about amongst the canes and in the boiler-house, and her sons were not yet ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... the situation was almost in statu quo. Though the Welshmen had, as stated, carried Samson's Ridge and had even advanced some miles along the coast, Ali Muntar still remained untaken. All day the Lowland Division had made the most desperate attempts to storm the position, going forward again and again with sublime disregard of their losses. But to no purpose. They were hemmed in by an inferno of fire which came from all directions: an attacking wave was swept away almost before it ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... a stage education, he had arranged the candles, the cards, the counters; he had poked the fire, settled the stool for Miss Riley's august feet, and was busily engaged in changing five shillings into small silver for a desperate victim of loo—when Mrs. Clanfrizzle's third, and, as it appeared, last time, of asking for the kettle smote upon his ear. His loyalty would have induced him at once to desert every thing on such an occasion; but the other party ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... conditions, time must have been rapidly bringing them civilization. But we must now turn to a sorrowful chapter in their history, and trace the dispersion of these tribes, their unavailing attempts to hold their own against a savage foe, and the desperate chances they took before leaving the land of ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... her roles seems to have crept. It was to her powers of impersonation and disguise that Jokai owed his life many years later, when, imprisoned and suffering in a dungeon, he was enabled to escape in her clothes to join Kossuth in the desperate fight against the allied armies of Austria and Russia. Since her death he has lived ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... accepted his orders with alacrity, and started forth on what seemed, as I watched from a grassy ridge, a most desperate enterprise. The dark brown mass of Bastion Hill appeared to dominate the plain. On its crest the figures of the Boers could be seen frequently moving about. Other spurs to either flanks looked as if they afforded facilities ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... were against him, and the outlook was indeed dark. But, even in these desperate straits, there was a buoyancy in his spirits that he had seldom enjoyed. Life seemed good while he was yet alive to fight for it; he had youth, strength, hope, and the spur of deeds to be done, all of which roweled his faith whenever it ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... eighty miles from Philadelphia. Whatever difficulties they, or their ancestors, struggled formerly with, are now over; their lands are cleared, and in the bosom of a fine country, with a sure market for every article of produce they can possibly raise, and entirely out of the reach of the most desperate predatory excursions of ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... more than St. Vitus's dance set to ragtime. Our hero climbed up eaves-pipes, plunged through trap-doors down into dungeons, jumped from the roof of a house into a tree, kicked his way in and out of secret closets, and engaged in hair-raising combats with desperate ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... motives of personal infallibility, to defeat the success of what has been resolved upon contrary to their sentiments. Men of upright, benevolent tempers have too many opportunities of remarking, with horror, to what desperate lengths this disposition is sometimes carried, and how often the great interests of society are sacrificed to the vanity, to the conceit, and to the obstinacy of individuals, who have credit enough to make their passions and their caprices interesting ...
— The Federalist Papers
... occasion, the Atheniens shall receiue great hurt and trouble." Which wordes many times he told to Alcibiades himselfe. He had a garden adioyning to his house in the fields, wherin was a Figge tree, wheruppon many desperate men ordinarily did hange themselues: in place whereof, he purposed to set vp a house, and therefore was forced to cutte it downe, for which cause hee went to Athenes, and in the markette place, hee called ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... them privately much encouragement. But month after month had passed by while they were waiting in vain for comfort. At last the "best"—that is to say, the unhappy Leicestrians—came to Willoughby, asking his advice in their "declining and desperate cause." ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... at her in astonishment. These were the words of a desperate woman, capable of anything. He, however, cherished a vague project and replied: "My dear, love is not eternal. One loves and one ceases to love. When it lasts it becomes a drawback. I want none of it! However, if you will be reasonable, and will receive and treat me as a friend, ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... crept upon me and mastered me, during all the weeks that I had let myself be so upset and delayed. I cannot picture what I go through when I lose my self-command in that way, but it is like one who is tied down upon a railroad track and hears a train coming. He gets just as desperate as he pleases, and suffers anything you can imagine—but he does not get free. And always the book would be hanging before me, a kind of external conscience, to show me what ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... just taking a desperate chance. No, I never expected to see you again, unless by accident," he said honestly. "And I've been crying the hurt of it to the stars all the way back from the coast. I only got here yesterday. I pretty near passed up coming back at all. I didn't see ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... these men—of either the restless and ambitious, or of the better class—were literally sent away. But such has been the politic practice of this church for many ages; and we may safely believe, that when she was engaged in an unscrupulous and desperate contest for the recovery, by fair means or foul, of her immense losses, there might be many in the ranks of her pious priesthood whom it would be inconvenient to retain at home. And during that conflict especially, with the most formidable enemies ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... this, at the sack of Troy, he had shown a want of self-control, and yielded to a mad passion of desperate fighting that is not to be found in the Aeneas of the last ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... told him; as far as that goes I've encouraged him. I've preached patience, have said that his case isn't desperate if he'll only hold his tongue and be quiet. Unfortunately he has taken it into ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... had actually effected her desperate purpose of waylaying the two surgeons in the interests of "baby's eyes." There she was, in a skirt and a shawl—with her novel dropped in one part of the lawn, and her handkerchief in the other—pursuing the oculists on their way to the chaise. Reckless of appearances, Herr ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... and, in order to secure the retreat of the main part of his command, Lord Stirling took four hundred men, and made a bold attack upon a house that was occupied by the British general, Cornwallis. During the desperate fight which followed, in which his little force was far outnumbered by the enemy, his command made a successful retreat, but he himself was captured, and afterwards ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... to bury the bones of those who fell, and with them /yours/, O Pharaoh. I do not think that you will listen to me to-night, and I am sure that yonder lady, full of the new-fanned flame of the jealous goddess, will not listen. Still let her take counsel and remember my words: In the hour of desperate danger let her send to Shabaka and demand his help, promising in return what he has asked and remembering that if Isis loves her, that goddess was born upon the ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... the cry was not repeated, and at last spurred to desperate means, he gathered himself for the leap across the chasm. Going back twenty paces, he took a running start, and at the edge of the well, leaped upward and outward in an attempt to gain the ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... occupations and business; that exertion to the remotest limits of the possible, directed toward one object of thought and energy, seemed to penetrating eyes, not merely a thirst for acquisition and profit, but a desperate conflict with something undiscovered and invisible. At that moment of his life it seemed to some that Darvid was like a man running straight forward and with all his might, because he felt that were he to halt, something ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... the village of Zillebeck, a mile and a half further in, the R. A. P. was established and there carried on during the desperate fighting of the next three days. Through this post a continuous stream of wounded passed, the stretcher cases all night, the walking cases all day and all night. In spite of its scenes of horror and ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... brave boy seized the struggling, frightened youth he felt himself gripped by the panic-stricken Sam in a frenzied hold of desperate intensity. His arms were pinioned by the drowning wretch, and they both ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... Something; and that right quickly if— As the thought was flashing through Dick's brain he saw his friend's horse stumble heavily, make a desperate effort to recover himself, and finally roll over and disappear completely with his rider in the dense ocean of greenish-grey vegetation, while the elephant, a bare fifty yards in the rear, threw up his outstretched trunk and trumpeted a loud blast of savage exultation. There was now but one thing ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... Waterloo who would not surrender. "The Old Guard dies, but never surrenders." "Among those giants then," says Hugo, "there was one Titan—Cambronne. The man who won the battle of Waterloo was not Napoleon, put to rout; not Wellington, giving way at four o'clock, desperate at five; not Bluecher, who did not fight. The man who won the battle of Waterloo was Cambronne. To fulminate at the thunderbolt ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... anything but the repose it came in quest of. The book which is written in bold graphic English, flings considerable light on the state of society in Wales, in the time of the Tudors, a truly deplorable state, as the book is full of accounts of feuds, petty but desperate skirmishes, and revengeful murders. To many of the domestic sagas, or histories of ancient Icelandic families, from the character of the events which it describes and also from the manner in which it describes them, the "History of the Gwedir ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... it. Some may think that because the Law-French is no better than the old Norman corrupted, and now a deformed hotch-potch of the English and Latin mixed together, it is not fit for a polite spark to foul himself with; but this nicety is so desperate a mistake, that lawyer and Law-French are coincident; one will not stand without the other." So enamored was he of the grace and excellence of law-reporters' French, that he regarded it as a delightful study for a man of fashion, and maintained that ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... land, for those who have lingered in its byways: but, alas, a troubled tide of strange metres, of desperate rhythms, of wild conjunctions, of panic-stricken collocations, oftentimes overwhelms it. "Sordello" grew under the poet's fashioning till, like the magic vapour of the Arabian wizard, it passed beyond ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... made an awful emergency, and this emergency has affected the life and character of all the race, in a bad way, terribly, awfully, beyond words to tell, or imagination to depict. The whole earth is in the grip of a desperate moral emergency. ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... for to their fleets the Mission's vessels now take medical and surgical aid, books and magazines, woollen garments and tobacco, which, as adjuncts to higher religious aid, are turning the once wild and desperate ocean roughs into clean-living sailors and good husbands and fathers—therefore are these days on the North Sea better far than those that are gone. Thousands of these brave men turn at Christmas to the M.D.S.F. flag as to the one bright link which binds them to friendly hearts ashore, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... dragged into the moral chaos in which, it seemed to him now, Miss Goold lived. He was unconscious of any Divine leading, or even of any direct reliance on the obligations of honour. He could not himself have told why he clung with such desperate terror to his plan of escaping from his surroundings. Simply he could not do certain things or associate as a friend with people who did them. To get away from Dublin was the first necessity. For a moment it occurred to him that he might ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... historical articles a quarter of a century afterward. The handling, tearing, and charging of his cartridge, ramming it home (we used muzzle loaders during the Civil War), the capping of his gun, the aiming and firing, with furious haste and desperate energy,—for every shot may be his last,—these things require the soldier's close personal attention and make him oblivious to matters transpiring beyond his immediate neighborhood. Moreover, his sense of hearing is ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... that so formidable an enemy, during whose life they had not dared to flatter themselves with the hopes of being able to put an end to this war; so well was his courage sustained by stratagem and artifice, and his genius so fruitful in finding new expedients, even when his affairs were most desperate. We are told, that Jugurtha ran distracted, as he was walking in the triumph; that after the ceremony was ended, he was thrown into prison; and that the lictors were so eager to seize his robe, that they rent it in several pieces, and tore away the tips of his ears, to get the rich ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... "it is not that. So far as luck goes, you are lucky you are alive. Little do you know our desperate band. Little do you know you have escaped the wrath of Lafitte, of L'Olonnois, of Black Bart. Luck! No, that ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... young person's first dream of freedom and a fascinating career had come to grief. As she reviewed her disappointment and the dreary days that followed, a flood of self-pity welled up in the girl's heart, and she felt as if she must do something desperate ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... show you all Billabong before dark, she'll have to hurry," said Jim lazily. "Don't you let yourself be persuaded into anything so desperate, Tommy." ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... the heavy goblet, raised it high above his head, and with a drunken and desperate gesture he flung it in the direction of the praefect, but his hand had trembled and his arm was unsteady. The goblet missed the head of Taurus Antinor and fell crashing along the marble-topped table, bringing a quantity of crystal down with it ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... I can not help reflecting that his fellows here are put to death in thousands. Yes, the reapers, famed in poems and lithographs, are desperate bird-catchers. At the season of migration they capture thousands of these weary travellers with snares or limed twigs; on Maggiore alone sixty thousand meet their end. We have but those they choose to leave us to ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... head. "So you decided to be a thief, did you, Jed?" he said, slowly. "Well, the average person never'd have guessed you was such a desperate character. . . . Humph! . . . Well, well! . . . What was you goin' to do with the four hundred, provided you had kept it? You spent the money I lost anyway; you said you did. What did you spend ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... fiercely, "I accept it." And producing a key, he threw it on the table. "My life is, in truth, set on the die," he added, with a desperate look—"for if I lose, I ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... single him out in the fray. The king ordered relief to be given to the importunate friar; but the eager glance of the intrusive applicant so disquieted him—agitated, doubtless, from the idea of his small force being about to engage at such desperate odds—that he presently caused the attendants to look for the friar, but he was nowhere to be found. This caused him to array one Gib Harper in his armour, and appoint Lord Alan Stewart general of the field. The fight commenced with a rapid charge on the Scots ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... stormy look forward, and the navigation of October was so threatening, awful, and almost desperate, as he stood alone through the dreadful watches at the helm, with hot cheek and unsteady hand, trusting stoically to luck and hoping against hope, that rocks would melt, and the sea cease from drowning, that it was almost a wonder he did not leap overboard, only ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... of the Cumberland in a comfortable position, I now began to look after the remainder of my new command. Burnside was in about as desperate a condition as the Army of the Cumberland had been, only he was not yet besieged. He was a hundred miles from the nearest possible base, Big South Fork of the Cumberland River, and much farther from any railroad we had possession of. The roads back were over mountains, and all supplies ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant |
