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Pell-mell   /pɛl-mɛl/   Listen
Pell-mell

adjective
1.
With undue hurry and confusion.  Synonym: helter-skelter.  "A pell-mell dash for the train"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Pell-mell" Quotes from Famous Books



... saucily, until Sommers felt that the place was intolerable. All this office practice got on his nerves. It was too "intensive." He could not keep his head and enter thoroughly into the complications of a dozen cases, when they were shoved at him pell-mell. He realized that he was falling into a routine, was giving conventional directions, relying upon the printed prescriptions and mechanical devices. All these devices were ingenious,—they would do no harm,—and they might do good, ought to do good,—if the cursed human system ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... army retired to their camp, when the Coonia force managed to cut off the water from the stream which supplied it, and then an alarm was raised that they were about to make an attack. On this the whole army, horse and foot, tumbled over each other pell-mell, trying who should get the ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston

... meadows and cornfields, they were again driven back into the town, where, in sheer desperation, they turned upon their foes to sell their lives as dearly as they might. They were met at the edge of the village by the party of horse and footmen that had first dislodged them, with whom, being driven pell-mell among them by the shock of the intercepting bands, they waged a fierce and bloody, but brief conflict; and still urged onwards by the assailants behind, fought their way back to the square, which, deserted almost entirely ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird

... now, everything was in the greatest disorder.... The drawers of her chest of drawers were piled one on top of the other in a corner of the room; their contents were thrown down in heaps a little way off; books had been cast pell-mell on a sofa; a great wicker trunk, wherein Elizabeth had packed numerous papers belonging to her brother, was overturned on the ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre

... the stick, pushed in the coat, and began waving the stick about in the opening, saying, 'Come out, come out!' as he did so. He was still waving the stick, when suddenly the door of the garret was flung open; all the crowd flew pell-mell down the stairs instantly, Gavrila first of all. ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev

... churches, schools, houses, stables, are all of one dark iron-blue shade; floors and roofs are alike; hearth-stones and threshold-stones and grave-stones, all of the same material. It is curious and depressing. This volcanic region of the Rhine, however, has so many unexpected beauties strewn pell-mell in the midst of stony barrenness that it also bears some likeness to Naples and Ischia, where beauty of color, and even of vegetation, alternate surprisingly with tracts of parched and rocky wilderness pierced with holes whence gas ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... head in white and black On a single fishing smack, 130 In memory of the man but for whom had gone to wrack All that France saved from the fight whence England bore the bell. Go to Paris: rank on rank. Search, the heroes flung pell-mell On the Louvre, deg. face and flank! deg.135 You shall look long enough ere you come to Herve Riel. So, for better and for worse, Herve Riel, accept my verse! In my verse, Herve Riel, do thou once more Save the squadron, honour France, love thy wife ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning

... Cipher Alley" and to Robinson as having "sore eyes" when signing bills, kept his hearers expectant and his enemies disturbed. The World followed him, reporting his speeches as "failures" and his audiences as "rushing pell-mell from the building."[1663] ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... ensued that it may be just as well not to describe too graphically. Our marines and blue-jackets boarded pell-mell and together, and amid the roar of cannon from other ships, the incessant rattle of musketry from the tops, the hand-to-hand fight raged on, with shouts and groans and shrieks of execration. Hitherto no wounded man had been borne below ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables

... to say who was first, for Henri, Adolphe, and nearly a dozen others, galloped across the bridge together, and the whole troop followed them pell-mell into the town. The two cannons were soon taken; the irresolute blues, who, with only half a heart, had attempted to defend themselves, were driven from their positions, and Henri at once found ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... through the closed curtains of his litter that several patricians passed by and smiled and nodded to the speaker while he poured forth his diatribes. Now, however, a new commotion seemed to agitate the throng, who, turning suddenly, ran pell-mell in one direction, almost overturning the litter—a catastrophe from which it was only saved by a vigorous use of the bearers' staves upon the heads of ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne

... it, and the young voices broke in pell-mell after her like a joyous crowd, seeing a vine-clad procession, and losing no time in joining for fear of losing step. Raven knew perfectly well the great old hymn was no matter for a passionately remorseful, sin-laden meeting of this sort. Nan knew it, too. He was sure ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown

... I only had written them down! Pell-mell they came down the sequestered avenues of my mind, this merry throng. With bacchanal song and shout they came, and eye hath not ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller

... yelling with all their might. The rest of his men, armed with bows and crossbows, he posted in ambuscade at the gate of the camp. He then set fire to the place from the windward side, whereupon a deafening noise of drums and shouting arose on the front and rear of the Hsiung-nu, who rushed out pell-mell in frantic disorder. Pan Ch'ao slew three of them with his own hand, while his companions cut off the heads of the envoy and thirty of his suite. The remainder, more than a hundred in all, perished in the flames. On the following ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu

... instant the conflict was doubtful, until poor Patrick fell mortally wounded upon the parapet; when the men, no longer hearing his bold cheer, nor seeing his noble figure in the advance, turned and fled, pell-mell, back upon the town. As for me, blocked up amidst the mass, I was cut down from the shoulder to the elbow by a young fellow of about sixteen, who galloped about like a schoolboy on a holiday. The wound was only dangerous from the loss ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... old thoughts that were always hovering dust outside the doors guarded by Common Sense, and watching for a chance to squeeze in, knowing perfectly well they would be ignominiously kicked out again as soon as Common Sense saw them, flocked in pell-mell,—misty, fragmentary, vague, half-ashamed of themselves, but still shouldering up against his inner consciousness till it warmed with their contact:—John Wilkes's—the ugliest man's in England—saying, that with half-an-hour's start he would cut out the ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... colonel's suspicions were verified. Two thousand of the enemy, all picked men, as we afterwards discovered, rapidly descended the heights, drove the Indians back by sheer strength of numbers, and at last sent them flying pell-mell to seek safety in some of the numerous ravines. We had barely three hundred regular soldiers, many of whom were young boys, and scarcely one had ever smelt powder in a real fight. But Miller was a host in himself, and ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens

... apprehended on account of the stream's overflowing condition. But the youngsters at Dexter were no more obedient than others of their age elsewhere. So when a scream arose from several childish voices at the lower part of the hill, everybody knew that some child had been disobeying, and, pell-mell, the picnickers rushed in the direction of ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... depositors, and confidence is stampeded like a herd of cattle. The timid and suspicious old farmer catches the wild note of alarm, and deserting his plow and sleepy steers in the field, he mounts his mule, and urging him on with pounding heels, rushes pell-mell to the bank, and with bulging eyes, demands his money. The excitement spreads like fire. The blacksmith leaves his anvil, the carpenter his bench, and the tailor his goose. The tanner deserts his hide, and the shoemaker throws down his last to save his all. The ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor

... concealed himself behind a post. More shots, more reports were heard from the direction of the convento, followed by cries and the sound of persons running. Capitan Tiago, Aunt Isabel, and Linares rushed in pell-mell, crying, "Tulisan! Tulisan!" Andeng followed, flourishing the gridiron as she ran toward ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... then! Pell-mell! To your graves! Back! back to the hills, old limpers! I do not think you ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various

... to pause to examine the scene. The party hurried along until they came down upon the road leading across the narrow strip of land running between the two inland lakes. It was crowded with fugitives: mixed up pell-mell together were Egyptian soldiers in great numbers, and the population of the town—men, women, and children. For four hours they walked along. Then the throng along the road thinned; the Egyptian drums were sounding, and the soldiers turned off and lay down in the fields, ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty

... was terrific; now came triumphant shouts in English, and Roger could picture to himself the bravo fellows rushing the Spaniards pell-mell across their own decks and into the water, or below; and again the tide of battle seemed to turn, and the English to be getting the worst ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... woods—down in a lonely dell, A peanut woman sat—her wares to sell. But brave PELLEAS, turning not aside, O'er that poor woman and her stall did ride. And as he wildly dashed along, pell-mell, To all the night-bugs thusly he ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870 • Various

... story all the furniture in one confused mass of ruin. But many other houses had been simply sacked and looted. Cupboards, chests of drawers, and wardrobes were smashed open, and their contents scattered pell-mell in the streets, courtyards, and fields. Here was the portrait of an ancestor ripped to shreds by a bayonet; there was a child's cradle. An old-fashioned grandmother's armchair, with its cushions and ear-laps, ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard

... would drive them pell-mell; For safety they'd Hazen, and think they did well To escape from the jury of women turned loose Who have drank to its dregs the ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation

... for the laborers' mess-halls, where hundreds of sun-bronzed foreigners, divided only as to color, packed pell-mell around a score of wooden tables heavily stocked with rough and tumble food—yet so different from the old French catch as catch can days when each man owned his black pot and toiled all through the noon-hour to cook himself an unsanitary lunch. We jotted them down at express speed, with ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck

... gone he awkwardly put out his hand, first to Mr. Tolman and then to Steve; and afterward, with a shy smile to the detective and the policeman and a boyish duck of his head, he shot into the hall and they heard him rushing pell-mell down the corridor. Mrs. Nolan, however, was more self-controlled. She curtsied elaborately to each of the men and called down upon their heads every blessing that the sky could rain, and it was only after her breath had become quite exhausted ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett

... to 'howlings in that day.' The defenceless, surprised crowd, huddled together in the dimly lighted shrine, were massacred to a man. The innermost sanctuary was then wrecked, corpses and statues thrown pell-mell into the outer courts or beyond the precincts, fires lit to burn the abominations, and busy hands, always more ready for pillage and destruction than for good work, pulled down the temple, the ruins of which were turned to base uses. The writer, picturing the wild scene, sums ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... hard-listed veterans held out bravely for a while, but we pushed on, fired away, and laid about us, till they made wry faces, and their lines gave way. Then Egmont's horse was shot under him; and for a long time we fought pell-mell, man to man, horse to horse, troop to troop, on the broad, flat, sea-sand. Suddenly, as if from heaven, down came the cannon shot from the mouth of the river, bang, bang, right into the midst of the French. These were English, who, under Admiral Malin, happened to ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... began to run for life, helter-skelter, pell-mell, trampling each other under foot, the soldiers actually shooting any one who barred ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 27, May 13, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... or great public work; and, no sooner do they settle down upon wages which must appear like a dream to them, than some old feud between Cork and Connaught, some ancient quarrel of the Capulets and Montagues of low life, is recollected, or a chant of the Boyne water is heard, and to it they go pell-mell, cracking one another's heads and disturbing a peaceful neighbourhood with ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... picturesque terms of the art of painting; all is discord, even the external decoration. The cabajoutis is to Parisian architecture what the capharnaum is to the apartment,—a poke-hole, where the most heterogeneous articles are flung pell-mell. ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac

... the classicism of Racine's dramatic form, nevertheless finds fault with him for his lack of a quality with which, by its very nature, the classical form is incompatible. Racine's vision, he complains, does not 'take in the whole of life'; we do not find in his plays 'the whole pell-mell of human existence'; and this is true, because the particular effects which Racine wished to produce necessarily involved this limitation of the range of his interests. His object was to depict the tragic interaction ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... and of sentiments: the crowd, the cries, the wit, and the comfits with which they inundate without distinction the carriages as they pass along, confound every mortal together and set the nation pell-mell, as if social order ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... tried to rush in pell-mell, head-over-heels," added Mickey, after they had stood thus a short time; but they are sneaking along, just as they always do when they're on the ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne

... abreast. There was a terrible collision there, and the conflict began among friends who should have been united against the enemy. Finally, the two troops, leaving behind them some corpses stifled in the press, or even killed by their companions, passed through the defile pell-mell and were lost sight of in the ravine. But during this struggle Seyton and Arbroath had lost precious time, and the detachment sent by Murray, which had taken the road by Glasgow, had reached the village beforehand; it was now necessary not to take ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... at once out of the mob amid a volley of execrations, which were replied to by angry oaths and threats of the cavaliers as they galloped across the Place d'Armes and rode pell-mell into the gateway of the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... in the centre of the room caused inconvenience by its sharp corners; and all around, on the boards, on the three chairs, on the old armchair, and in the corners, were scattered pell-mell a number of volumes of the "Roret Encyclopaedia," "The Magnetiser's Manual," a Fenelon, and other old books, with heaps of waste paper, two cocoa-nuts, various medals, a Turkish cap, and shells brought ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... pell-mell. Zadkiel is hemmed up in a corner of the cart-shed, and his brother and sister make pretence, to tear him limb from limb. Zadkiel defends himself gallantly, but has to succumb at last, for he is fairly rolled on his back, and ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... say? I wish it were. I wish with my heart it were. Look at the crowds for yourself. There they go down the street, pell-mell, bewildered, blinded, some of them by will-o'-the-wisp lights, ditched and mired many of them. The thing is only too ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon

... hat, stick—everything except the violin case—were thrown pell-mell on to a piece of furniture in the entrance-hall. Monsieur Foa, instead of being in evening dress, was in exactly the same clothes as he had worn at ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett

... his companions, but they were already awake, and tumbling pell-mell over each other. They were being rapidly dragged down a steep declivity. Day dawned and revealed a terrible scene. The form of the mountains changed in an instant. Cones were cut off. Tottering peaks disappeared as if some trap had opened at their base. Owing ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... him came out pell-mell, Then slew he Carl Ege, the fierce and fell:— He slew the great, he slew the small; He slew till his foes were slaughter'd all. Look out, look out, ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow

... troops, mad with long waiting and fretted by the galling fire of the foe, would not wait, and, pushing them aside, clambering, boosting, and tumbling went over the obstruction. Not pausing to form in the ditch, they scrambled up the parapet and went surging over the crest, pell-mell, ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... a time; then there arose a tumult of cries, oaths, and yells. The captain gave the order, and pell-mell down the rift we clambered, some dropping their muskets in their hurried descent, one of which exploded in its fall. The bo's'n had found the beach and our boat guarded by six pirates, who were asleep. ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman

... it is easy to arrive at an understanding of the state of humanity at the present time. Imagine very imperfect, very undeveloped beings, possessing, however, an infinity of latent potentialities; imagine them born in a dark cavern where they swarm pell-mell, passing their time chiefly in devouring one another. Every moment this cavern is entered, and a certain number of these poor beings are taken out of it and carried into the light of day, that they may enjoy a higher life, and admire the beauties of nature. Those remaining in the cavern weep ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage

... out in these hunts, which you must notice whether you watch wolves or coyotes or a den of fox cubs. Though no sound came from the watchful old mother, the cubs seemed at every instant under absolute control. One would rush away pell-mell after a hopper, miss him and tumble away again, till he was some distance from the busy group on the edge of the big lonely barren. In the midst of his chase the mother would raise her head and watch the cub intently. No sound was uttered that human ears could hear; but ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long

... stood dumfounded. And then we dashed after, pell-mell, tumbling over one another in our stampede. In the alley we ran against three or four of the guard answering Lucas's cry. We lost precious seconds disentangling ourselves and shouting that it was ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle

... of battle; and saw horsemen and footmen pell-mell, tangled in an abattis, from behind which archers and cross-bowmen ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... the human contents of the tap rushed out at once pell-mell into the street. They saw someone whisk round the corner towards the road, and Mr. Huxter executing a complicated leap in the air that ended on his face and shoulder. Down the street people were standing astonished or running ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells

... pioneer. At the date of the President's message she had already provided by law for the machinery of a convention, though no delegates had been elected. Nevertheless, her Legislature at once plunged pell-mell into the task of making laws for the new condition of independent sovereignty which by common consent the convention was in a few days to declare. Questions of army and navy, postal communication, and foreign diplomacy, for the moment eclipsed the baser topics of estray ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay

... with my paper, my pen and my ink, First of this thing, and that thing, and t'other thing think; Then my thoughts come so pell-mell all into my mind, That the sense or the subject I never can find: This word is wrong placed,—no regard to the sense, The present and future, instead of past tense, Then my grammar I want; O dear! what a bore, I think I shall never attempt to write more, With ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... rainy night," relates a French historian of the Revolution. "The crowd took shelter where they could; some burst open the gates of the great stables, where the regiment of Flanders was stationed, and mixed pell-mell with the soldiers. Others, about four thousand in number, had remained in the Assembly. The men were quiet enough, but the women were impatient at that state of inaction; they talked, shouted, and ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne

... behind the stone wall and fired at us until we were nearly across. Then they could stay there no longer and fled from their strong position. We crossed and entered the town, capturing five armed men. The enemy beat a hasty retreat, rather a pell-mell flight across the open country towards the mountains, at whose bay they had entrenchments and a large reserve force. The fight lasted from daylight till about two o'clock in the evening. The battle of Maricana was as hard as any fought in the ...
— A Soldier in the Philippines • Needom N. Freeman

... general. Thus the enemy, for that time, was stopped in his pursuit. The next day Camillus, drawing out his forces and joining battle with them, overthrew them by main force, and, following close upon them, entered pell-mell with them into their camp, and took it, slaying the greatest part of them. Afterwards, having heard that the city of Satricum was taken by the Tuscans, and the inhabitants, all Romans, put to the sword, he sent home to Rome the main body of his forces and heaviest-armed, and, taking with ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... precisely that it helps us to secure those satisfactions. To surrender to every random impulse or every habitual prompting is to have neither satisfaction nor freedom. Reflection might be compared to the traffic policeman at the junction of two crowded thoroughfares. If everyone were to drive his car pell-mell through the rush, if pedestrians, street cars, and automobiles were not to abide by the rules, no one would get anywhere, and the result would be perpetual accident and collision. In thinking we simply control and direct our impulses in the light of the consequences we ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman

... fine books, and a few great plays. As for practicing what is so magisterially set forth, that is the last thing thought of. And if we pass from the world of talent to spheres which the mediocre exploit, there, in a pell-mell of confusion, we see those who think that we are in the world to talk and hear others talk—the great and hopeless rout of babblers, of everything that prates, bawls, and perorates and, after all, finds that there isn't talking enough. They all forget that those who make ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... better look skyward, but still failed to place it. Presently the humming stopped, and I thought it had departed, and seized the chance to go to the cookhouse for a cup of tea. When almost there—Kr-kr-kr-p! Kr-kr-kr-p! a slather of German guns had opened upon ours and the fellows fled pell-mell from the gun pit and made for the culvert, taking shelter underneath. They were there about a minute when a shell landed straight on the culvert, going through eight feet of cement and brick, blowing everything in all directions and killing 15 out of the 16 men who ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant

... husbandmen's labours, marriages, divorces, generations, deaths: the tumults of courts and places of judicatures; desert places; the several nations of barbarians, public festivals, mournings, fairs, markets.' How all things upon earth are pell-mell; and how miraculously things contrary one to another, concur to the beauty ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius

... struggle could be clearly picked out by reason of the heaps of corpses and dead horses, piled beneath overturned cannon and broken limbers, shattered needle- guns and chassepots, all of which were scattered around pell-mell in endless profusion. ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson

... to watch the foreigner's doings. All of a sudden there was a piercing squeak and a quick change of scene. Every one standing fell flat on his chest, the soldiers to a man hid their faces in their hands on the ground, and the clumsy eunuchs dropped down pell-mell from their perches, like over-ripe fruit coming off the branch of a tree, and disappeared behind the wall. Then, for a moment, all was silence; then there followed another shriek. It was evidently a command to stand still until further notice. When I looked for my ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor

... to his guide who points out the objects and places of interest. And thus, through the alleys and by-ways, through the nooks and labyrinths of these underground temple-ruins, we get to the rear, where the ramparts and mounds crumble to a mighty heap, rising pell-mell to the ceiling. Here, one is likely to get a glimpse into such enchanted worlds as the name of a Dickens or a Balzac might suggest. Here, too, is Shakespeare in lamentable state; there is Carlyle in rags, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... and the water ran out as it came in, without refreshing or doing him any good! How it could have happened was quite a mystery to me, till I returned with him to the town gate. There I saw that when I rushed in pell-mell with the flying enemy, they had dropped the portcullis (a heavy falling door, with sharp spikes at the bottom, let down suddenly to prevent the entrance of an enemy into a fortified town) unperceived by me, which had totally cut off his hind part, that still ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan

... sand-bank on which our camp was laid and rapidly eating it away. Large masses with a sudden splash would drop out of sight and dissolve like sugar in a cup of tea. We were obliged to be on the watch lest the moorings of the boats should be loosened, allowing them to sweep pell-mell before us down the gorge. The long ropes were carried back to their limit and made fast to stakes driven deep into the hard sand. Jack and I became dissatisfied with the position of our boat and dropped it down ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... creatures to once rush down a steep place into the sea, these four men, with a yell, flung themselves, sword in hand, upon the whole battery; and the whole battery, bewildered by the suddenness and unexpectedness of the attack, thinking the entire battalion was upon them, gave way, and rushed pell-mell down ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... striking. A light suspension-bridge spans the river-banks just where Vienne faces the village of St. Colombe, ancient as itself. On the right we see the massive old town built by Philippe de Valois; to the left, behind the houses, crowded together pell-mell, rises the massive pile of Vienne Cathedral. Here another tributary, the Gere, flows into the Rhone. Vienne was reputed a fosterer of poetry in classic times. At 'beautiful Vienne,' Martial boasted that his works were read with avidity. The scenery now shows more variety and picturesqueness. ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... led to still another and smaller chamber below. Mr. Marquand let out a yell the moment he reached the bottom. The others rushed pell-mell after him. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin

... a voice, and all eyes were turned to the gaudy swaying globe. Before anyone could speak, Elinor gave another hard tug, tearing out the bottom of the lantern, and down came the shower of gay little gauze bags with their cargoes of bonbons, pell-mell on the heads ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther

... brought in, she was served so, others rose by turns and went to the cold meat; in the outward room were four little tables for the rest of the company. Think, if King George the Second could have risen and seen his daughter supping pell-mell with men, as if it were in a booth! The tables were removed, the young people began to dance to a tabor and pipe; the Princess sat down again, but to unlimited loo; we played till three, and I won enough to help on the gallery. I ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... boats from the vessels in the harbor, gathering at Long Wharf. Drums were beating, troops marching. Abraham Duncan came with the information that four or five thousand men were to assault the works and drive the provincials pell-mell across the marshes to Roxbury. At any rate, that was the plan. He was sure it would be a bloody battle. Possibly, while General Howe was engaged at Dorchester Heights, Mr. Washington ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin

... to fling the whole pack forward, pell-mell, crowded together, blocked and confused by its eagerness to pull down the prey. Buck's marvellous quickness and agility stood him in good stead. Pivoting on his hind legs, and snapping and gashing, he was everywhere at once, presenting a front which was apparently ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London

... of the intense darkness, the hobbles and the picket ropes had been cut at the pins, so as not to disturb the horses or waken the sleeping trappers. After the ropes were cut, the Indians had ridden pell-mell past the free animals, and they, finding their fastenings gone, had joined the stampede. It was a clever game, and the trappers had lost. What were they to do—fifteen days' journey from any assistance, and not a horse ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley

... and fired into the Spaniards' faces. Then Sampson's pikemen charged through and a desperate hand-to-hand fight ensued. Finally the Spaniards broke after Carleill had killed their standard-bearer and Goring had wounded and taken their commander. The enemies ran pell-mell through the town together till the English reformed in the Plaza. Next day Drake moved in to attack the harbor fort; whereupon it was abandoned and ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood

... effective combination of the various elements of sincere opposition, he and his friends accepted the result as popular approbation of their past conduct and warrant for its continuance. Things went from bad to worse with a pell-mell rapidity ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen

... country people were working in such haste, to keep the plague from completing the work war began! I saw them, too, from the top of the hill of Kaya, and turned away my eyes, horror-stricken. Russians, French, Prussians, were there heaped pell-mell, as if God had made them to love each other before the invention of arms and uniforms, which divide them for the profit of those who rule them. There they lay, side by side; and the part of them which could not die knew no more of war, but cursed the crimes ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann

... answer this poser for along the road came the ambulance, pell-mell. Surely, the boys thought, Artie could not have spoken of Blythe's identity over the 'phone, yet following the ambulance came the touring car of Bridgeboro's police department with the chief in it, the policeman chauffeur, a couple of other men, and county detective Ferrett. A couple ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... hundred under Inspector Folk, of Brooklyn, who had been early ordered over, and been doing good service in the city, he marched down Broadway, and was just entering the Park, when the frightened crowd came rushing pell-mell across it. Immediately forming "company front," he swept the Park like a storm, clearing everything before him. Order being restored, Folk returned with his force to Brooklyn, where things began to wear a threatening aspect, and Carpenter ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley

... still surviving, even after as many or more have disappeared. I refer to those double words which either contain within themselves a strong rhyming modulation, such for example as 'willy-nilly', 'hocus-pocus', 'helter-skelter', 'tag-rag', 'namby-pamby', 'pell-mell', 'hodge-podge'; or with a slight difference from this, though belonging to the same group, those of which the characteristic feature is not this internal likeness with initial unlikeness, but initial likeness with internal unlikeness; ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... long. The two champions of the party take their stations on opposite sides of the piece, which is thrown into the air, caught on the staff of one of the others, and hurled by him in the direction of his antagonist's goal. With this send-off there ensues a wild chase and a hustle, pell-mell, higgledy-piggledy, each party striving to bowl the piece over the other's goal. These goals ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis

... that's pure simian. Just think how it would have entranced the old-time monkeys to foresee such a game! A game where they'd all prance off on captured horses, tearing pell-mell through the woods in gay red coats, attended by yelping packs of servant-dogs. It is excellent sport—but how cats would scorn to hunt in ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day

... pell-mell, scouts clambered onto the platform and surrounded him, while the scouts of his own troop edged them aside and elbowed their way to where he stood and mobbed him. And amid all this a small form, with clothing ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... their baldrics about them, and taking their lances, spurred after the fugitives. The three barons pricked swiftly across the plain. They looked this way and that; often glancing behind them to mark how nearly they were followed. The Romans pursued them pell-mell; some on the beaten road, and others upon the heavy fields. They came by two, or three, or five, or six, in little clumps of spears. Now a certain Roman rode in advance of his fellows, by reason of his good horse, which was right speedy. He followed closely after the Britons, ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace

... from one spot to another in wildest despair. He recalled the purchase price of each article, added up the figures, counted his losses, pell-mell, in confused words and unfinished phrases. He stamped with rage; he groaned with grief. He acted like a ruined man whose only ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc

... ain't no use in all this strife, An' hurryin', pell-mell, right thro' life. I don't believe in goin' too fast To see what kind o' road you 've passed. It ain't no mortal kind o' good, 'N' I would n't hurry ef I could. I like to jest go joggin' 'long, To limber up my soul with song; To stop awhile 'n' chat the men, 'N' drink some cider now ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... Messinger's. We were lightly equipped as to wagons, and marched without deployment straight for Meridian, distant one hundred and fifty miles. We struck the rebel cavalry beyond the Big Black, and pushed them pell-mell into and beyond Jackson during the 6th. The next day we reached Brandon, and on the 9th Morton, where we perceived signs of an infantry concentration, but the enemy did not give us battle, and retreated before us. The rebel cavalry were all around us, so we kept our ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... we pick up a stick on the run, hoping to escape but preparing for the reaction of fight if cornered. "What shall I do—what shall I do? finds no conscious answer if the emotion is overwhelming or the instinctive flight a pell-mell affair; but ordinarily memories of other experiences or of teaching come into the mind and some effort is made to meet the situation in an ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... of the drawers a bit of white linen untidily protruded. Her mother! The upper part was filled with sliding trays, each having a raised edge to keep the contents from falling out. These trays were heaped pell-mell with her mother's personal belongings—small garments, odd indeterminate trifles, a muff, a bundle of whalebone, veils, bags, and especially cardboard boxes. Quantities of various cardboard boxes! Her mother kept everything, could not bear that anything which had once ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... as the lines everywhere cross and intersect, they form an intricate pattern on the surface, After watching the weasel dance for some minutes, I stepped up to the mound, whereupon the animals became alarmed and rushed pell-mell into the burrows, but only to reappear in a few seconds, thrusting up their long ebony-black necks and flat grey-capped heads, snarling chattering at me, ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... the enemy.— Go, gentlemen, every man unto his charge: Let not our babbling dreams affright our souls; Conscience is but a word that cowards use, Devis'd at first to keep the strong in awe: Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law. March on, join bravely, let us to't pell-mell; If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell.— What shall I say more than I have inferr'd? Remember whom you are to cope withal;— A sort of vagabonds, rascals, and runaways, A scum of Britagnes, and base lackey peasants, Whom their o'er-cloyed country vomits forth To desperate ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... Lexington, ominous sounds of conflict smote his ears: not the rolling volleys and stately tread of victory, but the confused noise of fight and flight, betokening irretrievable disaster. The fresh troops were formed into a hollow square, and pell-mell the hunted fugitives came rushing into their place of refuge. Exhausted by their long march and hot fight, many of them fell prone upon the ground, "their tongues," says a high authority, "hanging out of ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot

... fearfully reduced in numbers, faint with famine, and exhausted by their long march. Driven to and fro by the incessant charges of the Syracusan cavalry, they could make no effective resistance, and at last they huddled pell-mell into a walled enclosure, planted with olive-trees, and skirted on either side by a road. They were now at the mercy of the Syracusans. who surrounded the enclosure, and plied them with javelins, stones, and arrows. After this butchery had continued for many hours, and ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell

... desert thus it was, 25 As I came through the desert: Lo you, there, That hillock burning with a brazen glare; Those myriad dusky flames with points a-glow Which writhed and hissed and darted to and fro; A Sabbath of the Serpents, heaped pell-mell 30 For Devil's roll-call and some fete of Hell: Yet I strode on austere; No hope could ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson

... in rapid succession and then the searchlights, being concentrated, struck the airship, revealing its presence to the troops below. Instantly a spirited fusillade broke out. The airmen, by throwing ballast and other portable articles overboard pell-mell, rose rapidly, pursued by ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot

... own, Shakespeare needed the environment of "the light people," the crowd of wits living from hand to mouth by literature, like Greene and Nash; and he needed that pell-mell of the productions of their pens: the novels, the poems, the pamphlets, and, above all, the plays, and the wine, the wild talk, the wit, the travellers' tales, the seamen's company, the vision of the Court, the gallants, the beauties; and he needed the People, of whom he does not speak in the ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang

... brotherhood worthy of a Caligula in his prime, lions in gymnastics—for a time; sheep always in the dominions of mind; and all of one pattern, all in a rut! Favour me with an outline of your ideas. Pour them out pell-mell, intelligibly or not, no matter. I undertake to catch you somewhere. I mean to know you, hark you, rather with your assistance than ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... ha, ha!' observed the doctor, laying down his knife and fork for one instant, and then going to work again, pell-mell—'that's epigrammatic; quite!' ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... were fighting, nor what they were fighting about. But he led his 400 horsemen pell-mell into the thick of the fray, to help what seemed ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 22, April 8, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... Putnam and Raymond agreed in talking over the scene afterwards, he certainly did seem to effect an instantaneous cure of the "afflicted," for they came to their sober senses at the first cut of the leather strap, and rushed pell-mell down the passage as rapidly as they could regardless ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson

... O'Hallaghan and O'Callaghan families, in consequence of John's heroism and Rose's soft persuasion, and that there was, also, every perspective of the two factions being penultimately amalgamated. For nearly a century they had been pell-mell at it, whenever and wherever they could meet. Their forefathers, who had been engaged in the lawsuit about the island which I have mentioned, wore dead and petrified in their graves; and the little peninsula in the glen was gradationally worn away by the river, till nothing remained ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... is an attempt to articulate more vividly the nature of reality than such "reality" can get itself articulated in the confused pell-mell of ordinary experience. The unfortunate thing is that in this process of articulating reality philosophy tends to create an artificial world of its own, which in the end gets so far away from reality ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... will of her own, which it seemed likely she would enforce, if necessary, with considerable vigour and imperativeness. And so the worthy old housekeeper decided that on the whole it would be well to be careful—to mind one's P's and Q's as it were,—to pause before rushing pell-mell into a flood of unpremeditated speech, and to pay the strictest possible attention to her ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... pillar nor a post In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell; Not a head in white and black On a single fishing-smack, In memory of the man but for whom had gone to wrack All that France saved from the fight whence England bore the bell. Go to Paris; rank on rank Search the heroes flung pell-mell On the Louvre, face and flank! You shall look long enough ere you come to Herve Riel. So, for better and for worse, Herve Riel, accept my verse! In my verse, Herve Riel, do thou once more Save the squadron, honor France, love thy wife, ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers

... What,—the foolish well Whose wave, low down, I did not stoop to drink, But sat and flung the pebbles from its brink In sport to send its imaged skies pell-mell, (And mine own image, had I noted well!) Was that my point of turning? I had thought The stations of my course should rise unsought, As ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... lists he led; With solemn march and stately pace, But far more grave and solemn face; Grave as the Emperor of Pegu 155 Or Spanish potentate Don Diego. This leader was of knowledge great, Either for charge or for retreat. He knew when to fall on pell-mell; To fall back and retreat as well. 160 So lawyers, lest the bear defendant, And plaintiff dog, should make an end on't, Do stave and tail with writs of error, Reverse of judgment, and demurrer, To let them breathe a while, and then 165 Cry whoop, and ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... was the signal of defeat and victory: the Swedes gave way, the Dutch pressed forward; the former took to their heels, the latter hotly pursued. Some entered with them, pell-mell, through the sally-port; others stormed the bastion, and others scrambled over the curtain. Thus in a little while the fortress of Fort Christina, which, like another Troy, had stood a siege of full ten ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... the door. Before the triple assault it fell at last, and the three tumbled pell-mell downstairs into the hall. ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett

... Rhoda Gray took it. She had scarcely reached the next block when the crowd behind her was being scattered pell-mell and without ceremony in all directions by the police, as the young man had predicted. She went on. There was nothing that she could do. The man's face and the woman's face haunted her. They had seemed stamped with such abject misery and despair. But there was nothing that she could do. It ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard

... it these frolicsome flowers, which have known no human tending, seem to chase each other in endless races over the whole expanse. I have seen them run breathlessly up the long slope, and then suddenly turn and rush pell-mell down again. If the wind had only stopped for a moment its endless gossip with the leaves, I am sure I should have heard the gleeful shouts, the sportive cries, of these vagrant flowers whose spell is rewoven over every ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... the wind, as it came howling by, which, let it cut never so sharp, was welcome. As it swept on with its cloud of frost, bearing down the dry twigs and boughs and withered leaves, and carrying them away pell-mell, it seemed as though some general sympathy had got abroad, and everything was in a hurry, like themselves. The harder the gusts, the better progress they appeared to make. It was a good thing to go struggling and fighting forward, ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... number to the invaders, and, without reflecting how little numerical superiority avails in war against experience and tactics, they required to be led against the foe. They were so, and were defeated. The conquerors and conquered entered the city pell-mell; and Edward, enraged at the citizens for shooting upon his troops from the windows, issued orders that the inhabitants should be put to the sword, and the town burned. The mandate, however, was not executed: Sir Godfrey de Harcourt, with wise remonstrances, assuaged ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner

... But pell-mell into camp they went, stampeding the oxen and horses and frightening the men, and Billy began to feel that he must keep on his ...
— Beadle's Boy's Library of Sport, Story and Adventure, Vol. I, No. 1. - Adventures of Buffalo Bill from Boyhood to Manhood • Prentiss Ingraham

... no answer came back, but presently he heard Tom's shrill whistle, and then a cry from Sam and Dick. The three Rover boys came down the path pell-mell, and their father and the captain were, ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)

... nothing would do but that he should go back and speak to him. He said the boy would be disappointed. The men were visibly uneasy at his going, but that didn't affect him. He ordered them to wait, and back he went, pell-mell, all alone into that horde of fiends. They hadn't got over their funk, luckily, and he saw Blue Arrow and made his party call and got out again all right. He didn't tell that himself, but Sergeant O'Hara made ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... window. This would have been ample time to carry the house by storm, front and back, had the invaders had the leadership and wit; but these things they lacked. They were still massed on the front porch, pell-mell, in a turbulent group, ramping, raging, thirsty for action, but as yet ineffective; though one of them had at that moment set a match to a torch of newspapers and kindling wood. Delay had loosed the hunter's instinct in the half-drunken band: it broke into flame at sight of ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... thus they reached their boat with some hundred yards to spare, and I saw their frantic struggles to launch it as I staggered after them; but ere I could reach them they had it afloat and tumbled aboard pell-mell. Then came I, panting curses, and plunged into the sea, wading after them up to my middle and so near that, aiming a blow at one of them, I cut a great chip from the gunwale, but, reeling from the blow of an oar, sank ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol

... men, under the command of Colonel Daniel E. Hungerford and Jack Hayes, the noted Texas Ranger, was raised. Hungerford was the beau-ideal of a soldier, as he was already the hero of three wars, and one of the best tacticians of his time. This command drove the Indians pell-mell for three miles to Mud Lake, killing and wounding them at every jump. Colonel Hungerford and Jack Hayes received, and were entitled, to great praise, for at the close of the war terms were made which have kept the Indians peaceable ever ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... strangers, the flash and report of the fire-arms, and the fall of their foremost chief, shot through the brain by Arlac, filled them with consternation, and they fled within their defences. Pursuers and pursued entered pell-mell together. The place was pillaged and burned, its inmates captured or killed, ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... Johannizza had caused all the people that were therein to be put to death, they fell in to such terror that they were utterly confounded and foredone. As God suffers misadventures to fall upon men, so the Venetians rushed to their ships, helter-skelter, pell-mell, and in such sort that they almost drowned one another; and the mounted sergeants, who came from France and Flanders, and other countries, went ...
— Memoirs or Chronicle of The Fourth Crusade and The Conquest of Constantinople • Geoffrey de Villehardouin

... S., and sprang to the scene. It was the younger woman, Emily, whom he rescued first. She, being on the upper side of the tilted wagon, had slid pell-mell along the seat down upon the body of her companion. Mrs. Barnes was beneath and getting her out was a harder task. However, it ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln

... left the Mission House as the last of the small crowd of copper-hued pappooses bundled pell-mell in the direction of the teepees and cabins of ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... covered with a plain-colored stuff, of which it was impossible to guess the original color; a large table, half covered with an unbleached linen table-cloth in which a loaf was wrapped, the other half being strewed pell-mell with papers and books; and, lastly, a rickety, worm-eaten four-post bedstead, with its blue serge curtains looped back to admit the rays of the sun, and the air from ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine

... this to M. de Joyeuse. Accordingly, on the 20th of July, the army put itself in movement. The march was made in the utmost confusion. Everything was in disorder; the infantry and cavalry were huddled together pell-mell; no commands could be acted upon, and indeed the whole army was so disorganised that it could have been easily beaten by a handful of men. In effect, the enemy at last tried to take advantage of our confusion, by sending a few ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... a week ago, and made our first stage to Derby, where we had to wait an hour or two at a great, bustling, pell-mell, crowded railway station. It was much thronged with second and third class passengers, coming and departing in continual trains; for these were the Whitsuntide holidays, which set all the lower orders ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... sound of the falling body, and the new-comer hurried forward. His coat sleeve caught the empty demi-tasse, as he stooped, and swept it to the floor, where it was shattered. The head waiter and another came, pell-mell, and those diners who had ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle

... and away started our train, whizz, bang, like a flash of lightning through a butter-firkin. I endeavoured to catch a glimpse of some familiar places as we passed, but the attempt was altogether useless. Harrow-on-the-Hill, as we shot by it, seemed to be driving pell-mell up to town, followed by Boxmoor, Tring, and Aylesbury—I missed Wolverton and Weedon while taking a pinch of snuff—lost Rugby and Coventry before I had done sneezing, and I had scarcely time to say, "God bless us," till I found we had reached Birmingham. Whereupon I began ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... him in the aisles; but he can never be said to be seen at his best, in a spectacle like this, until the spectacle moves, until it is felt rushing over the sky of the street, puffing through space; in which delectable pell-mell and carnival of hurry—hiss in front of it, shriek under it, and dust behind it—he finds, to all appearances at least, the meaning of this present world and the hope of the next. Hurry and crowd have kissed each other and his soul rests. "If Abraham sitting in ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee

... the Athabasca. The Sault was the dividing line between Canada and the Wilderness, between the east and the west, and there were no hostiles within a thousand miles of us. Little Fellow would have dragged me pell-mell back to the beach, but I needed no persuasion. La Robe Noire tore ahead with the springs of a hunted lynx. Little Fellow loyally kept between me and a possible pursuer, and we set off at a hard run. That creature, ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... suddenly Odysseus heard the booming of breakers on a rocky shore. Before an order could be given, or any measure taken for the safety of the ships, the little fleet was caught by a strong landward current, and whirled pell-mell through a narrow passage between the cliffs into a land-locked harbour. Drawing their breath with relief at their wonderful escape, they beached their vessels on the level sand and lay down to wait for ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell

... take her back now, and also keep my tryst with Boyd at Catharines-town. I could not leave her here by this trail, even guarded—had I the guards to spare—for soon in our wake would come thundering the maddened debris of the Chemung battle, pell-mell, headlong through the forests, desperate, with terror leading and fury lashing at ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... hulk, the passengers and crew expecting that she would every moment go down. The working and rolling of the vessel, at one instant of dread, displaced and destroyed all the furniture of the cabin and saloons, and, broke it to pieces, throwing the passengers pell-mell about the cabin. Everything that occupied the upper deck was washed away, and a large part of the passengers' luggage was destroyed. Between twenty and thirty of those who were on board, including several ladies, had limbs and ribs fractured, ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne

... to wear the khaki of scouts if we did, fellows!" cried Tom Chesney. "Come on, and let's give them a taste of their own medicine," and with loud shouts the five comrades started to gather up the snow as they chased pell-mell toward ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster

... rumours of him—accounts of the great deeds he had done, and of the yet greater deeds that were expected of him. And at length there was a procession: white-bearded priests bearing wands; maidens playing upon the sackbut; guards in full armour; a pell-mell of unofficial citizens ever prancing along the edge of the pageant, huzza-ing and hosanna-ing, mostly looking back over their shoulders and shading their eyes; maidens strewing rose-leaves; and at last the orchestra ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... retire, Their Delhis[390] manned some boats, and sailed again, And galled the Russians with a heavy fire, And tried to make a landing on the main; But here the effect fell short of their desire: Count Damas drove them back into the water Pell-mell, and with a whole gazette ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... ammunition failing, determined, at great risk, to charge the whole body. They did so, and the Mantatees gave way, and fled in a westerly direction; but they were intercepted by the Griquas, and another charge being made, the whole was pell-mell ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat

... difficult and hard as drawing a swollen cork out of a soda-water bottle. Finally, with a sort of noble rebound of effort, the exhausted instructor is to put a vast deal of information back into the girl before the student claps her book together and rushes pell-mell to the next classroom, there to be similarly uncorked, if the teacher has learned the art and her mental muscle ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks

... qualities I have endeavored to indicate by calling them Venetian. Observe the rare fidelity which has contributed its weight of sincerity to this admirable relief. Every prominent head of the many members of the Assembly, who nevertheless rally behind Mirabeau with a fine pell-mell freedom of artistic effect, is a portrait. The effect is like that of similar works designed and executed with the large leisure of an age very different from the competition and struggling hurry of our own. In every respect this work is as French as it is individual. It is penetrated with a sense ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell

... called the conductor, and rattled the door. The railroad men tumbled out pell-mell, all but one. Conrad shook him, and he went out ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... ride for it!" shouted Shaw, rushing past at full speed, his led horse snorting at his side. The whole party broke into full gallop, and made for the trees in front. Passing these, we found beyond them a meadow which they half inclosed. We rode pell-mell upon the ground, leaped from horseback, tore off our saddles; and in a moment each man was kneeling at his horse's feet. The hobbles were adjusted, and the animals turned loose; then, as the wagons came wheeling rapidly ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... wheels, dear JOHNNY! As to missionaries, well, They are troublesome—and useful; but to put things all pell-mell On account of priests and parsons, and of quite an alien creed, That's scarce "diplomatic," JOHNNY; it ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various

... the steamer, the loss of life would have been appalling. The captain turned his boat and beached it as soon as possible, not, however, before the men began leaping over the sides of the vessel in one grand pell-mell. The dark waves of unknown death were below them, while the shells shrieked and burst through the steamer. There was but little choice for the panic stricken men. Fortunately the waters here were shallow ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... confusedly toward the summit. Without a word the brigade commander struck spurs into his horse and dashed up the long slope at a run, closely followed by his enemy and aid. What they saw when they overtook the straggling, running, panting, screaming pell-mell of the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various

... ranks and made full use of the Indian habits of warfare. The braves would steal like snakes about the pathless forests, and dashing unexpectedly on the outposted redcoats, kill a handful in one fierce charge, and then retreat pell-mell back into their shelter, whither to follow them was to court certain death. The injuries thus inflicted were not overwhelming, but they were teasing for all that. Day by day the waste went on—loss of sentinels, of stragglers, sometimes ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... his master, who was heaving everything pell-mell into his haversack. "By the way, what ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest

... 1810 that Shelley, impressed somehow or other with the belief that Stockdale was the poet's friend, rushed pell-mell into the publisher's Pall Mall shop, and besought him to do the friendly thing by him, and help him out of a scrape he had got into with his printer by ordering him to print fourteen hundred and eighty copies of a volume of poems, without having the money at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... the centre with cavalry having failed, those left of the squadrons and their infantry-supports fall back pell-mell in broken groups across the depression between ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... expired in the shock of being raised. The Emperor walked on and said nothing, though many times when he passed by the most mutilated, he put his hand over his eyes to avoid the sight. This calm lasted only a short while; for there was a place on the battlefield where French and Russians had fallen pell-mell, almost all of whom were wounded more or less grievously. And when the Emperor heard their cries, he became enraged, and shouted at those who had charge of removing the wounded, much irritated by the slowness with which this was done. It was difficult to ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Memoirs of Napoleon • David Widger

... to the narrow fissure, and after a short time the stone moved and was raised. A staircase with high, steep steps, sinking into darkness, awaited the impatient travellers, who rushed down pell-mell. A sloping gallery painted on both walls with figures and hieroglyphs came next, then at the end of the gallery some more steps leading to a short corridor, a sort of vestibule to a hall in the same style as the first one, but larger and ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier

... edges of pain; Part burst, riderless, over the plain, Crashing their spurs, and twice slaying the slain. See, by the living God! see those foot Charging down hill—hot, hurried, and mute! They loll their tongues out! Ah-hah! pell-mell! Horses roll in a human hell; Horse and man they climb one another— Which is the beast, and which is the brother? Mangling, stifling, stopping shrieks With the tread of torn-out cheeks, Drinking each other's bloody ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt

... first outcry, my forebodings had warned me of the true object and centre of alarm. There was nothing now but uproar, above, beneath, and around us; footsteps stumbling pell-mell up the public staircase, eager shouts and heavy thumps at the door, the whiz and dash of water from the engines, and the crash of furniture thrown upon the pavement. At once, the truth flashed upon my friend. His frenzy took the hue of joy, ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... I felt required consideration. I paused. Seeing it he said, "But I will tell you what I think of it. I think it will surprise and confound the enemy. They won't know what I am about. It will bring forward a pell-mell battle, and ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett



Words linked to "Pell-mell" :   harum-scarum, hurried, helter-skelter



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