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More "Melee" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the more formidable as an opponent because he could be angry without losing his command of the situation. His first onset was terrific; but in the fiercest excitement of the melee he knew when to call a halt. A certain member of Parliament named Michael Thomas Sadler had fallen foul of Malthus, and very foul indeed of Macaulay, who in two short and telling articles took ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... blasters, and I'm not willing to do that as long as there's any other way," Verkan Vall said. "We'd lose men, even with needlers against bows, and there's a chance that some of our equipment might be lost in the melee and fall into outtime hands. You say this sacrifice comes off tomorrow ...
— Temple Trouble • Henry Beam Piper
... up to the wretched shanty, built of driftwood, and entered. The interior was a melee of washtubs, rickety chairs, babies, and flies. The woman of the house hung out a ragged smile upon her puckered mouth, etched at the lips with many thin lines of worry, and aped hospitality in a manner at once pathetic and ridiculous. A little girl, ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... gown!" They speedily drove the assailants back out of the lane; but these, reinforced by the great body beyond, were then too strong for them. The shouts of the young men, however, brought up others to their assistance, and a general melee took place, townsmen and gownsmen throwing themselves into the fray without any inquiry as to the circumstances from which it arose. The young students carried swords, which, although contrary to the statutes of the university, were for the time generally ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... who did the thinking in this emergency knew his business. When the next scrimmage was on, many of the spectators were astonished to see a Clifford player jump away from the melee with the ball in his grasp, and hurl himself deliberately ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... one and then another of the enemy was passed, team-mates formed hasty interference for the runner and, suddenly, to the consternation of the Brimfield stand, the quarter, with the ball snuggled in the crook of his left elbow, was out of the melee, with a clear field before him and two Benton players guarding his rear. Crewe made a desperate effort to get him near the thirty-yard line, but the interference was too much for him, and after that, although Brimfield trailed the runner to the goal line and over, there was no doubt ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... discomfort, Mal engine, evil design, Mal-fortune, ill-luck, mishap, Marches, borders, Mass-penny, offering at mass for the dead, Matche old, machicolated, with holes for defence, Maugre, sb., despite, Measle, disease, Medled, mingled, Medley, melee, general encounter, Meiny, retinue, Mickle, much, Minever, ermine, Mischieved, hurt, Mischievous, painful, Miscorr fort, discomfort, Miscreature, unbeliever, Missay, revile,; missaid, Mo, more, More and less, rich and poor, Motes, notes on a horn, Mount lance, amount ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... of death and ruin; sinister places where the fallen or broken trunks of the great beech trees, as they had crashed down-hill upon and against each other, had assumed all sorts of grotesque and phantasmal attitudes, as in a trampled melee of giants; there were other parts where slender plumed trees, rising branchless to a great height above open spaces, took the shape from a distance of Italian stone palms, and gave a touch of southern or romantic grace to the English midland scene; while ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... resourceful? He ran out into the darkness to discover the cause of the shooting. A number of sailors and firemen were striving to launch a boat. There was a struggle going on. He could not distinguish friend from foe in the melee, but he threw himself ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... column came marching up there on the morning of the 9th, not dreaming, I suppose, that there were any Union soldiers near. The Confederates were surprised to find our cavalry had possession of the trains. However, they were desperate and at once assaulted, hoping to recover them. In the melee that ensued they succeeded in burning one of the trains, but not in getting anything from it. Custer then ordered the other trains run back on the road towards Farmville, and ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... consisted of deer-hides. Each Indian dismounted, and unstrapping the blanket which had served as a saddle headed his mustang for the water-hole and gave him a slap. Then the hides and packs were slipped from the pack-train, and soon the pool became a kicking, splashing melee. Every cedar-tree circling the glade and every branch served as a peg for deer meat. Some of it was in the haunch, the bulk in dark dried strips. The Indians laid their weapons aside. Every sagebush and low stone held a blanket. A few of these blankets were of solid color, most of them ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... main dependence of infantry. In a melee, the infantryman with his bayonet has at least an even chance with the cavalryman, but the main dependence of infantry is rifle fire. Any formation is suitable that permits the free use of the necessary number ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... raging in the road, with the bodyguard attacked front and rear, while it soon became evident that the aim of the assailants was to reach the queen's chariot, doubtless in the hope of being able to secure possession of it and drive it off through the melee. ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... young woodsman, utterly unused to the ways of the sea, the next half-hour was a bewildering melee of hurrying, sweating toil, with low-spoken orders and half-caught oaths and the glimmer of a dying fire over all the scene. He was rowed to the sloop with the first boatload and there Job Howland set him to work passing water-kegs into the hold. He had had no ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... owner, without other assistance, made the trip. The nature of part of the 'cargo load,' as it was called, made it necessary for them to linger and trade along the sugar-coast, and one night they were attacked by seven negroes with intent to kill and rob them. They were hurt some in the melee, but succeeded in driving the negroes from the boat, and then 'cut cable,' 'weighed ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... quite fifty of the tethered steeds had broken loose in the excitement, and were rushing here and there and fighting in a most alarming way. I have always had a dread of horse-fights, and this was not a single fight; it was a melee, fresh horses every minute breaking loose to join it. Right in my way two angry stallions rose up, boxing one another like the lion and the unicorn, and a little boy of ten or thereabouts ran in between and, jumping, caught ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... Thorvald had moved too. And now down into the somewhat frantic melee of the aroused camp fell a shower of slim weighted reeds, each provided with a clay-ball head. The majority of those balls broke on landing as the Terrans had intended. So, through the beetle smell of the aliens, spread the acrid, throat-parching fumes of the hot spring ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... in the corner by the doorway. The hitting continued. Phipps, the Unitarian, had a front tooth broken, and Henfrey was injured in the cartilage of his ear. Jaffers was struck under the jaw, and, turning, caught at something that intervened between him and Huxter in the melee, and prevented their coming together. He felt a muscular chest, and in another moment the whole mass of struggling, excited men shot ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... affair had ended here, it would have been fortunate; but the bad feeling exhibited on the parade ground was renewed, by some evil-minded person, and the colored population, becoming roused to madness, they proceeded to wreak their vengeance on a company in Stinson's tavern, after which a general melee took place, in which several men were wounded, and it is likely some will die of the injuries received. The colored village is a ruin, and much more like a place having been beseiged by an enemy than any thing else. This is the reward which the colored men have received ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... few days after this affair, Jim Bilton, one of the men who had figured so conspicuously in the row, and owed Wilkins a grudge for the black eye he had received in the melee, challenged his shipmate ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... day's interval hostilities recommenced, victory remaining with the commons, who had the advantage in numbers and position, the women also valiantly assisting them, pelting with tiles from the houses, and supporting the melee with a fortitude beyond their sex. Towards dusk, the oligarchs in full rout, fearing that the victorious commons might assault and carry the arsenal and put them to the sword, fired the houses round ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... voices of the night—the owl's recitative, the capriccio of the crickets, the concerto of the frogs in the grass. The piccaninnies and the dawdlers from the quarters had been dismissed to their confines, and the melee of the day was reduced to an orderly and intelligent silence. The six coloured waiters, in their white jackets, paced, cat-footed, about the table, pretending to arrange where all was beyond betterment. Absalom, in black and shining pumps posed, superior, ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... one smoking a short pipe and the other snapping the ash from a scented cigarette, stood aloof from the hurrying throngs on the platform, looking on with the measured interest of those who are in a melee but ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... explosion of a percussion-cap, knocking the slayer of beeves down a sand-bank,—followed, alas! by the too impetuous youth, so that both rolled down together, and the conflict terminated in one of those inglorious and inevitable Yankee clinches, followed by a general melee, which make our native fistic encounters so different from such admirably-ordered contests as that which I once saw at an English fair, where everything was done decently and in order; and the fight began and ended with such grave propriety, that a sporting parson ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... Europe is placed on exhibition. At the New York state fairs during the early '50s the tournaments of the volunteer fire department of the various cities throughout the state formed one of the principal attractions. Many a melee occurred between the different organizations because they considered that they had not been properly recognized in the line of march or had not been awarded a medal for throwing a stream of water farther than ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... captain pointed at Davis who, in the melee, had leaped overboard and was in the canoe pushing his way into ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... only the shortest moment of time is available for consideration, and then this rapid consideration and decision have to be given under the most unfavourable external conditions, at the fullest speed of one's horse, or in the maddening confusion of the melee. Further, in most, cases it will be quite impossible for the Leader of a Cavalry 'Mass' to take in with accuracy the strength and dispositions of the enemy. The more extended radius of action of modern firearms and the greater distance between ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... find in the melee near this town, one of the Irishmen got his arm broken in two places. The one shot in the forehead is badly marked, but not dangerously injured. I learn to-day, that the carriage in that company, owing to ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... Rond Royal where it had taken refuge in a near-by copse, and after an hour's hard chase was finally cornered in the courtyard of some farm buildings of the Hameau d'Orillets. A troop of cows was entering the courtyard at the same moment, and a most confused melee ensued. The Inspector of Forests saved the situation and the cows of the farmer, and the stag fell to the carabine of Prince de la Moskowa, with the young Prince Murat on his pony in the ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... still sagged with the weight of the pistol as much as at the circumstance that, aside from the inevitable damage to his clothing—a coat-sleeve ripped from the arm-hole, several buttons missing, suspenders broken—he had come out of the melee unhurt, not even bruised, save for the hand that had been cut by the emerald. He wrapped a handkerchief about this wound, and took the pistol out, deriving a great deal of comfort from the way it balanced, its roughened grip nestling snugly ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... the figures, and they were gone, and in their place roared and swelled the Chesapeake.... The sound of the storm became the sound of a battle-cry. He saw a clanging fight where sword clashed upon armor, and artillery belched fire and thunder, and horse and man went down in the melee, and were trampled under foot amidst shrieks and oaths and stern prayers. The boy who had leaned upon the dial fought coolly, desperately, drunk with the joy of battle, stung to fierce effort by his father's eyes. The great banner, blazoned with the Cross of Saint George, streamed in ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... into those fronting him and whose weapon swung like the club of Hercules. His bowmen and blowgun men, at last out of missiles, came charging in with bare hands or weapons seized from fallen warriors. Maneuvering had ended. Henceforth the fight was a grappling melee. ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... sure. They swarmed upon him, so many that they got in each other's way. Now he was down, now up again. They swayed to and fro in a huddle, as does a black bear surrounded by a pack of dogs. Still the man at the heart of the melee struck—and struck—and struck again. Men went down and were trodden under foot, but he reeled on, stumbling as he went, turning, twisting, hitting hard and sure with all the strength that many good clean years in the open had stored within him. Blows fell upon ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... In the melee which followed Corporal Dunning was hit by the oil well promoter, who in return received a blow full in the mouth which loosened several of ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... and tactics of society are infinitely more numerous and infinitely finer than those of strategy. Woe betide the rash knight who dashes into the thick of the polished melee without some slight experience of his barb and his lance! Let him look to his arms! He will do well not to appear before his helm be plumed with some reputation, however slight. He may be very rich, or even very poor. We have seen that answer with ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... as I could. But it was impossible to run far. Every street and alley vomited men—all struggling together, fighting, shouting, or shrieking, striking one another down, trampling over the fallen—a hideous melee. There was an incessant rattling noise in the air, and heavier peals as of thunder shook the houses. Here a wide rent yawned in a wall—there a roof caved in—the windows fell into the street ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... a mass of Dutch. He called on them to halt and reform, and their officers supposing him to be one of their generals who had arrived from headquarters, set to work to extricate their men from the melee. The Prince passed with the utmost coolness through their line as if to see what was doing in front, while Claverhouse and Collier followed him as if they were attached. As soon as he had got to the open ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... been heaping up a lonely little drift on the bare floor. The widow covered the boys tenderly and took their treasures off the bed, all save the little wooden monkey, which, as if frightened by the melee, had hidden far under the clothes. She went below stairs to the fire, which every cold day was well fed until after midnight, and began to enjoy the sight of her own gifts. They were a haunch of venison, ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... rush with swinging flashing ax had caught the Mercutians unawares. They had relied upon their sun-tubes, and in the melee succeeded only in inflicting frightful havoc on their own kind. Now, however, they came for Hilary in a solid mass, huge three-fingered hands flailing, seeking to thrust him down by sheer weight of numbers. ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... pleased with thee, O tiger among men. Thou hast no cause of fear. I will rout all thy foes in battle, O great warrior. And, O thou of mighty arms, be at thy ease. Accomplishing great and terrible feats in the melee, I will fight with thy foes. Tie quickly all those quivers to my car, and take (from among those) a sword of polished ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... resounded to a frightful medley of squeals, bellowings, and crashes in the brush. This time Jonathan had caught up the axe, and approaching the furious melee of whirling hoofs and gnashing teeth from one side, attempted to get in a blow. In their wild movements the enraged animals nearly ran over him, ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... by his side, and sat looking at the distance with knitted brows. He had received some terrific bruises in the late melee, but was prepared to fight till he died. He had said but little through the day. He was not talkative. His courage was of a quiet order. He felt the solemnity of the occasion. It was a little different from sitting at the head of a Board of bank directors, or shaving notes ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... flung it aside, and crammed myself into a loose, one-piece costume of Orcon which I tore off a corpse. Then I fought while my three companions repeated the operation. We succeeded in confusing the mob to such an extent that we were able to work our way through the fringes of the melee and move clear across the first room, before we ...
— The Winged Men of Orcon - A Complete Novelette • David R. Sparks
... John shouted, and the troop, dashing forward, were soon hotly engaged with the enemy, who were in strong force at the point where they were attacking the house. The orders of their commander were now impossible to follow. It was a fierce melee, where each fought ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... dans les nuages roses; C'etait la fin d'un jour d'orage, et l'occident Changeait l'ondee en flamme en son brasier ardent. * * * * * Les feuilles s'empourpraient dans les arbres vermeils; L'eau miroitait, melee a ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... for hurling missiles, and with tubes for projecting Greek fire to create smoke and set their opponent on fire. The main tactics of the time, however, consisted in grappling with the enemy and transforming the combat into a hand-to-hand melee. ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... was his faithful lieutenant Venalcadi. In a breathless melee Christian sword and Moslem sabre clashed and rang. His turban gone, his great curved scimitar red to the hilt, the undaunted corsair fought his last fight as became the terror of his name. Almost had he succeeded ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... ranks were disordered by the pursuit, and we thus lost one of our chief advantages; for the Bedouins, unable to resist the charge in line of disciplined cavalry, are no despicable opponents in a hand-to-hand melee. And this the combat soon became. Greatly outnumbered, we fought for our lives, and of course fought our best. I found myself near the colonel, who was assailed by two Arabs at one time. He defended himself like a lion, but his opponents were strong and skilful, and years have impaired ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... broke forth into cheers, and Job's eyes, usually so blue, flashed fire. He sprang from Bess' back, and, in an instant, had struck the bully a blow that sent him reeling back into the arms of Yankee Sam. A moment, and a general melee seemed imminent, when Dan Dean stepped up and called a halt. He was the smoothest, most affable, meanest fellow in town, nephew by marriage to the lord of Pine Tree Mountain, and, as he had always boasted, the lord that was ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... stead. Before a rifle or a revolver could be brought to bear on the huge form, Alexis had come to such close quarters with his foes as to prevent the use of firearms. The German leader did draw his revolver, but the melee was so fierce and men were tangled up so that he was unable to fire for fear of hitting one of ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... Blind-Staggers, Professor Trask, Dr. Murchison, Wong, Indian Jim, and, finally, each of the other's tenderest folly—till a living caricature too true or too cutting precipitated an appeal to arms, and the Lighthouse, which was always in the way, was tipped over in the melee, and had to be thrown out of the window, there to burn itself into ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... in vain that they gorge with blood and wine their deceived soldiers; the moment is approaching when these men will no longer consent to march against the city which is fighting for them. Already, yesterday, the melee of a battle could be distinguished from the fort of Vanves; the line had come to blows with the gendarmes of Valentin and Charette's Zouaves. Courage, Parisians! A few more days and you will have triumphed ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... distrust the Spanish, were always ready to wreak small injuries on them when the chance afforded. These natives attempted to separate the pair and drag the girl to their huts. The friar attacked them with spirit, but the brown men were too many for him, and in the melee both he and Maria ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... goin'?" the lieutenant was asking in a sarcastic howl. And a red-bearded officer, whose voice of triple brass could plainly be heard, was commanding: "Shoot into 'em! Shoot into 'em, Gawd damn their souls!" There was a melee of screeches, in which the men were ordered to do conflicting ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... officer, with its noble dedication "To Friend and Foe." Here are some of the French books—books in which the clear, passionate intellect of that race, with its savage irony, burns like a flame. Romain Rolland's Au-Dessus de la Melee, written in exile in Switzerland; Barbusse's terrible Le Feu; Duhamel's bitter Civilization; Bourget's strangely fascinating novel The Meaning of Death. And the noble books that have come out of England: ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... bodies held motionless and strictly poised, like rams preparing for a fight, rushed in with their heads down, and butted continuously till one gave way. The rest of the caravan then broke up their order of march, and commenced a general melee. In my ignorance—for it was the first time I had seen such a scrimmage—I hastened to the front with my knobbed stick, and began reflecting where I could make best use of it in dividing the combatants, and should no doubt have ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... trees. He began to shoot and it took nine shots for him to dislodge the bears. Worse than that they all tumbled out of the tree—apparently unhurt. The hounds, of course, attacked them, and there arose a terrible uproar. Haught had to run down to save his dogs. Bill was going to shoot right into the melee, but Haught knocked the rifle up, and forbid him to use it. Then Bill ran into the thick of the fray to beat off the hounds. Haught became exceedingly busy himself, and finally disposed of two of the bears. Then hearing angry bawls and terrific yells he turned to see Bill climbing a tree ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... So out came their swords as they rode at the two. But they found them ready and watchful. And though the odds were two to one, it was not hard matter to hold the robbers off until Sir Launcelot came charging into the melee. ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... of the jury, the pinch of the case lies in the interval of two hours interposed betwixt the reception of the injury and the fatal retaliation. In the heat of affray and CHAUDE MELEE, law, compassionating the infirmities of humanity, makes allowance for the passions which rule such a stormy moment—for the sense of present pain, for the apprehension of further injury, for the difficulty of ascertaining with due accuracy the ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... moment she was surrounded. Two soldiers seized her, and two more dragged the children away from her. She screamed and the children cried, the soldiers swore and struck out right and left with their bayonets. There was a general melee, calls of agony rent the air, rough oaths drowned the shouts of the helpless. Some ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... misty rain the figure of one horseman slowly grew familiar. She caught fleeting glimpses of him, as he darted into a melee, as he spurred round to find a hotter field. Suddenly her eyes widened, and she pressed a hand ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... Ferdinand secured the throne, and reigned as King of Bohemia right royally it would seem. His coronation took place in the great hall built by Vladislav, and the solemn ceremony was followed by a tournament, also held in the same hall—a tournament on horseback, mind you, and ending up with a melee in which thirteen knights a-side took part. There was a banquet too, and the waiting was done by squires on horseback. A great ball brought the festivities to an end. The great fire in Prague in 1541, which destroyed all the State documents, may ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... bodies of Russian horse, each nearly equal in strength to the Italians, were seen. There was a movement among the Sardinian horse. They formed into two bodies and dashed at the Russians. There was a cloud of dust, swords could be seen flashing in the sun, a confused melee for a minute or two, and then the Russians broke and rode across the plain, pursued by ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... melee Butzow regained consciousness; his wound being as superficial as that of the American, the two men were soon donning their clothing, and, half-dressed, ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... swearing in French beside me, and glanced around through the mad turmoil to see him cutting and hacking with broken blade, pushing into the midst of the melee as if he had real joy in the encounter. While I thus had him in view, a knife whistled through the air, there was a quick dazzle in the sunlight, and he reeled backward off his horse and disappeared in ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... the barrier, when the whole Syracusan fleet closed in upon them on all sides, and forced them back Then the battle became general, and soon the two fleets were scattered over the whole surface of the bay in little groups, and each group engaged in a wild and furious melee. There was no attempt to manoeuvre, but ship encountered ship; as accident brought them together, and advanced to the attack, under a shower of javelins and arrows. Then followed the dull crash of collision, ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... particular case the watchers appeared almost unduly excited, shouting "four!"—"big box"—"five gendarmes!" and other incoherences with a loudness which predicted great things. As nearly always, I had declined to participate in the melee; and was still lying comfortably horizontal on my bed (thanking God that it had been well and thoroughly mended by a fellow prisoner whom we called The Frog and Le Coiffeur—a tremendously keen-eyed ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... Nevertheless, Madame la voituriere, who, Stanhope explains, was not only dressed up to enact the part she had undertaken, but was "not of the mildest or most peaceable temper," forced a way through the melee with such success that, in due course, she deposited her travellers in safety at Brussels whither they were bound; when, to their extreme amusement, her task accomplished, she speedily "transformed herself ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... seemed to close in together, and the fight became general. It became a melee. With his swinging right arm Blake battered and pounded with his revolver butt. With his left hand he made cutting strokes with the heavy papier-mache tea-tray, keeping their steel, by those fierce sweeps, away from his body. ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... Disregarding the melee behind me, I leaped through the wreckage with the other raiders. The steel door barred all further progress with its cold blue impassibility. How were we to surmount this last and ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... braves for every man he could muster at that point with a gun, dashed up and down the old wagon roads along the right of way, a conspicuous target for the Indians. His hat, in the melee, had disappeared, and, swinging a heavy Colt's revolver, which the Indians shrank from with a healthy instinct of danger, he pressed back the hungry red line again and again, supported only by such musketry fire as the men crouching under, within, and ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... spring, in anticipation of this melee, reporters from the Kansas City papers were sent to cover the story of the proceedings of ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... jabbering was terrific. At last, the two outside boats, having the advantage of a clear berth on one side, got away, and made a pretty race of it, followed by such of the rest as could by degrees extricate themselves from the melee. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... immense bunch, in the middle of the yard. It looked like a fight, a mob, a knock-down,—anything, so we rushed out to the door hastily, fearfully, ready to scold, punish, console, frown, bind up broken heads or drag wounded forms from the melee as the case might be. Nearly every boy in the school was in that seething, swarming mass, and those who weren't were standing around on the edges, screaming and throwing up their hats in hilarious excitement. It was ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... presently I identified as human, although in fact it was animal enough. A moment I hesitated, then, distinguishing among the sounds of conflict an unmistakable, though subdued, cry for help, I leaped forward and found myself in the midst of the melee. This was taking place in the lee of a high, dilapidated brick wall. A lamp in a sort of iron bracket spluttered dimly above on the right, but the scene of the conflict lay in densest shadow, so ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... life of a fellow—creature was at stake. So I scrambled up after the pilot to the top of the fence, with a loaded pistol in my hand, a young active Spaniard following with a large brown wax candle, that burned like a torch; and looking down on the melee below, there Sneezer lay with the throat of the leopard in his jaws, evidently much exhausted, but still giving the creature a cruel shake now and then, while Mangrove was endeavouring to throttle the brute with his bare hands. As for the poor pigs, they were all huddled together, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... that he had heard. Hopkins shrugged a shoulder and chewed at his cigar, to which his teeth had clung grimly throughout the melee. ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... crowd, Where stream the colours flying, and frown the features grim, Of your emblem lion with his staunch and crimson[126] limb. Up, up, be bold, quick be unrolled, the gathering of your levy,[127] Let every step bound forth a leap, and every hand be heavy; The furnace of the melee where burn your swords the best, Eschew not, to the rally where blaze your streamers, haste! That silken sheet, by death strokes fleet, and strong defenders manned,— Dismays the flutter of its leaves the chosen of ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... precisely reversing the temper of all true soldiers, so nobly instanced by the son of Saladin, when he sent, at the very instant of the discomfiture of his own army, two horses to Coeur de Lion, whose horse had been killed under him in the melee; cruel, inasmuch as he ought not to have exulted in the thought of the death, by slow suffering, of brave men; blasphemous, inasmuch as it contained an appeal to Heaven of which he knew the hypocrisy. He himself died in February; and the woodcut of which I speak represented ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... to me are the chief masses of the complex of motives in us, the group of sense, the group of pride, curiosity and the imitative and suggested motives, making up the system of impulses which is our will. Such has been the common outfit of motives in every age, and in every age its melee has been found insufficient in itself. It is a heterogeneous system, it does not form in any sense a completed or balanced system, its constituents are variable and compete amongst themselves. They are not so much arranged about one another as superposed and higgledy-piggledy. The senses and curiosity ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... the mustangs loose among those Shefford had noticed, and presently there rose a snorting, whistling, kicking, plunging melee. A cloud of dust hid them, and then a thudding of swift hoofs told of a run through the cedars. Joe Lake began picking over stacks of goat-skins and bags of wool that were ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... Better mounted and perhaps more ardent, the Pawnees had, however, reached the spot in sufficient numbers to force their enemies to retire. The victors pushed their success to the opposite shore, and gained the solid ground in the melee of the fight. Here they were met by all the unmounted Tetons, and, in their turn, they were forced to ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Captain Dillon, of Dillon's regiment, marched out and, after hard fighting, drove the Austrians from house to house; but, on reaching a spot where the ground was open, he was attacked on all sides, and for a time the enemy and our men were mixed up together in a melee. ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... the loveliest sites in England, is perhaps the most hideous town in creation. All ups and down and back slums. Not one of its wriggling, broken-backed streets has handsome shops in an unbroken row. Houses seem to have battled in the air, and stuck wherever they tumbled down dead out of the melee. But worst of all, the city is pockmarked with public-houses, and bristles with high round chimneys. These are not confined to a locality, but stuck all over the place like cloves in an orange. They defy the law, and belch forth massy volumes of black smoke, that hang like acres of crape over ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... to tell what I saw and heard, I want to say here that throughout the entire melee I never saw one periscope! And there were thousands like me who never saw a periscope. But there were hundreds of others—cool, sensible people—who are ready to make affidavits that they did ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... have despised people for showing emotion—who have thought them wanting in self-control—I went down and must needs throw myself into the melee, like a romantic fool! Did I do any good? They would have gone away without me I dare say.' But this was over-leaping the rational conclusion,—as in an instant her well-poised judgment felt. 'No, perhaps they would ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... people nearer home. They had a grievance against the butcher and his manipulation of the meat. The clamour at the shambles of the butcher despot was growing in volume. Hungry masses crowded the shops, and that some should emerge meatless from the melee was inevitable. Nepotism was reputed to be much in vogue. The Colonel had curbed the meat vendors in the matter of price; a strictly limited number of oxen were slaughtered daily, but the number was sufficient to provide everyone ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... deck standing close to his brother midshipman, but after that, no one could give an account of him. Denham began to be greatly alarmed, fearing that the young lord had been thrown overboard, or that he might in the melee have fallen down below; but at that moment he was unable to make any further inquiries; for, as the mouth of the harbour was approached, the forts on either side opened their fire on the prize. Although ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... cut out to one side was overturned. The frantic chauffeur and hospital-corps orderly were working to extricate the wounded from their painful position. A gun was overturned against the ambulance. A melee of horses and men was forming at the foot of the garden gate in front of the narrowing bounds of the road into the town, as a stream banks up before a jam of driftwood. The struggle for right of way became increasingly wild; the dam of men, horses, and wagons grew. A Brown dirigible was descending ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... harmony and good order. At St. James's Fair, held at Kelso on 5th August last, a Scotch butcher-boy quarrelled and fought with an Irish mugger. Scotch and Irish rallied round these champions of the two countries, and in the melee which ensued, a young Scotchman was unhappily and barbarously killed. The Kelso crowd, in very natural rage, burned the muggers' camp, threw their carts into the Tweed, and drove them from the neighbourhood of the town. But there remained the resident Irish of the town, and it seems to ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... the bridle of the less enthusiastic Adan, was already far ahead. The boys rode straight into the melee, firing through the smoke until their ammunition was exhausted. Even Adan after the first few moments lost all sense of fear, and following Roldan's example, snatched the gun from a fallen soldier and fired and reloaded until his hands were ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... West Africa furnishes a considerable output of very small diamonds, which are found in dry sand far from any present rivers. These diamonds cut to splendid white melee and the output is large enough to make some difference in the relative price of small stones as compared to large ones. The South West African field seldom yields a stone that will afford a ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... branches, until the poor little beast has none left to clutch in falling, and comes down a heap of fur and teeth and claws into the midst of the dogs. Instantly there follows a scrimmage, where often an honest bark is changed in the middle to a yelp of pain, until many a time the melee changes to a ring of hurt and angry but vanquished curs around a 'coon lying on his back, with bloody teeth and claws ready to try it again; and then he is shot by the hunters, merciless to the last. More often the whole tree must be cut down, and the brave 'coon falls with it, and is dashed ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... part in the melee of gnashing, rolling, rearing dogs, laying about among them with impartial hand, quickly subduing them to obedience. He stood looking stonily at Mackenzie, unmoved by anger, unflushed by exertion. In that way he stood ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... in art; it is by qualities which are non-dramatic that his dramas are redeemed from dishonour. When, in 1830, his Hernani was presented at the Theatre Francais, a strange, long-haired, bearded, fantastically-attired brigade of young supporters engaged in a melee with those spectators who represented the tyranny of tradition. "Kill him! he is an Academician," was heard above the tumult. Gautier's truculent waistcoat flamed in the thickest of the fight. ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... Chateau-Ausone, one of the two best of the St Emilion clarets.' Here he tends his roses and sends his boy round to the neighbours to bid them to luncheon, while he interviews the cook. Six, including the host, is the right number—if more it is not a meal but a melee. Then there are all his relatives to be commemorated in verse, his grandfather and his grandmother and his sisters and his cousins and his aunts (especially ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... speaks of the selection of M. de la Salle by M. de Seignelay: "Il n'est point de vertu qui ne soit melee de quelque defaut: c'est le sort ordinaire de l'humanite. Ce qui met le comble a notre humiliation, c'est que les plus grands defauts accompagnent souvent les plus eminentes qualites, et que la jalousie ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... in favour of the Britishers. The short, heavy Navy cutlasses were much better adapted for a melee of this sort than the rifles and bayonets with which the Turks ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... fascination. A football game is also a fight, with the additional qualification that no injury is planned, and with an advantage over the prize fight in the fact that it is not a single-handed conflict, but an organized melee—a battle where the action is more massive and complex and the strategic opportunities are multiplied. It is a fact of interest in this connection that, unless appearances are deceptive, altogether the larger number of visitors to a university ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... friends of the Colonna drew themselves on one side—the defenders of the Orsini on the other—and the few who agreed with the smith that both factions were equally odious, and the people was the sole legitimate cry in a popular commotion, would have withdrawn themselves from the approaching melee, if the smith himself, who was looked upon by them as an authority of great influence, had not—whether from resentment at the haughty bearing of the young Colonna, or from that appetite of contest not uncommon in men of a bulk and force which assure them in all personal ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... killed our wounded may be unpleasant, but it is at any rate interesting; the real tragedy is in the desolated fields, the desolated houses, the desolated hours and days, the bored and desolated minds that hang behind the melee and just outside the melee. The peculiar beastliness of the German crime is the way the German war cant and its consequences have seized upon and paralysed the mental movement of Western Europe. Before 1914 war was theoretically ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... malicious intelligence. This emblem of their fancied mistress had been borne in front of the smugglers, when they mounted the poop of the Coquette; and the steeled staff on which the lantern was perched, had been struck into a horse-bucket by the standard-bearer of the moment, ere he entered the melee of the combat. During the conflagration, this object had more than once met the eye of Ludlow; and now it appeared floating quietly by him, in a manner almost to shake even his contempt for the ordinary superstitions of seamen. While he hesitated in what manner ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... turned his eyes upward from the melee. Above him towered the gigantic bulk of the pachyderm, the little eyes flashing with the reflected light of the fires—wicked, frightful, terrifying. The warrior screamed, and as he screamed, the sinuous trunk encircled him, lifted him high ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... from wall to wall—the loaded table was overturned—the tressels were thrown upon their backs—the tub of punch into the fire-place—and the ladies into hysterics. Piles of death-furniture floundered about. Jugs, pitchers, and carboys mingled promiscuously in the melee, and wicker flagons encountered desperately with bottles of junk. The man with the horrors was drowned upon the spot-the little stiff gentleman floated off in his coffin—and the victorious Legs, seizing by the waist the fat lady in the shroud, rushed out with her into the street, and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of Homoly Hill; and, hanging upon that, all manner of redoubts and batteries to the rightward and rearward:—but how it was done no pen can describe, nor any intellect in clear sequence understand. An enormous MELEE there: new Prussian battalions charging, and ever new, irrepressible by case-shot, as they successively get up; Marshal Browne too sending for new battalions at double-quick from his left, disputing stiffly every inch of his ground. Till at length (hour not ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... Forster rode right at them. There was a confused melee for a moment, and then his figure appeared beyond the line, through which he had broken. With yells of fury the troopers reined in their horses and tried to turn them, but before they could do so the officer was upon them again. His revolver cracked ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... strides would surely overhaul him in the end. If only he had known how to drive a car, he might have commandeered one of the long row waiting by the gate. But he was no motorist. Miss Airedale could have saved him, in her racing roadster, but she had not emerged from the melee in the chapel. Perhaps the Bishop had bitten her. His blood warmed ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... upheaval. Some of them even turned on the whites, who rushed so recklessly among them; so that for a minute a fierce hand-to-hand fight raged on the narrow strand, and even among the crowded canoes in the water. In the confusion of this melee Christie became separated from his men, and ere he realized the full peril of his position received several knife wounds in quick succession. Staggering under these, he fell, was instantly dragged into a canoe, ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... the selected rooster allowed several other occupants of the crate to escape. Instantly the air was filled with fluttering, squawking fowls while fifty frenzied police officers and Chinamen attempted vainly to reduce them to captivity again. In the midst of the melee McGuire caught his rooster, and fearful lest it should escape him managed somehow to decapitate it. The body, however, had been flopping around spasmodically several seconds upon the floor before he realized that the oath had not been ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... service, which might cost him who rendered it so dear; but the young man, who was tall and powerful, thinking that this was not a moment to exchange politenesses, took the prince in his arms and forced him into the saddle. At this moment, M. d'Arcy, who had lost his pupil in the melee, and who was seeking for him with a detachment of light horse, came up, just as, in spite of their courage, the prince and his companion were about to be killed or taken. Both were without wound, although the prince had received four bullets in his clothes. ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... sufficient composure to tell them how the thing must have swooped silently upon him from above and behind as the first premonition of danger he had received was when the long, clawlike fingers had clutched him beneath either arm. In the melee his rifle had been discharged and he had broken away at the same instant and turned to defend himself with the butt. ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... our iron capped staffs full at the heads of the Romans with all our might. My staff struck hard and square on the helmet of a legionary, who, falling backward, dragged down with him the soldier behind. Through this gap my horse plunged into the thickest of the legion. Others followed me. In the melee the fight grew sharp. Mikael, always at my side, leaped sometimes, in order to deliver a blow from a greater height, to my horse's crupper, other times he made of the animal a rampart. He fought valorously. ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... lied,—Johnson himself is still at the fort. Instead of five hundred are four thousand English. Advancing along the trail V-shape, regulars in the middle, Canadians and Indians on each side, the French come on a company of five hundred English wagoners. In the wild melee of shouts the English retreat in a rabble. "Pursue! March! Fire! Force the place!" yells Dieskau, dashing forward sword in hand, thinking to follow so closely on the heels of the rabble that he can enter the English fort before the enemy know; but his Indians have forsaken him, ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... service to know of it and to take what steps they could to insure his safety. I am told that what actually happened was that on one occasion his Royal Highness went to the aid of the police, hard pressed by a gang of rioters; and he was injured in the general melee. It all took place in a moment and of course no one had any idea that he would involve himself in it. When he was picked up by the detectives he gave a certain address." Here the Comptroller assumed an air of the utmost discretion. "To that address he was taken; ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... land of the new. It was in this fashion that America was divided between the powers of Europe and the aborigines were dispossessed of their country. The barbaric rule of might from which the paleface had fled hither for refuge caught up with him again, and in the melee the hospitable native ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... of the chaotic melee in which these titans were engaged had emerged one group more powerful than the rest and more respectable, whose leader was the Personality to whom I have before referred. He and his group had managed to gain control of certain ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... in to make a reconciliation; but before he had time to exert himself, the Dutchman running behind the counter, Dunn aimed another blow at him, which glanced from his arm and swept a tin drench, with a number of tumblers on it, into a smash upon the floor. This was the signal for a general melee, and it began in right earnest between the Dutch and the Irish,—for the Dutchman called the assistance of several kinsmen who were in the front store, and Dunn, with the assistance of Dusenberry, mustered recruits from ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... by the impetuous captain, hurled itself against Captain Richland's company. The Confederate leader was supported by half a dozen "fire-eaters," and about two score men; and although the charge was not entirely successful, yet in the general melee resulting, the captain and about half of those behind him managed to escape. The others were either shot down or added to the prisoners ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... fire; then, in obedience to the commands of their half-clad colonel, they charged. A moment and they were fighting hand to hand with their returning comrades. Spaniard clashed with Spaniard, and somewhere in the melee the six marauders battled for ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... down at my watch, fearful, for a moment, that it had been broken or lost in the melee. It was still running, ...
— The Infra-Medians • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... ensued was a desperate, and almost indiscriminate melee. The attacking party had been so sure of taking the people by surprise, that they formed no plan of attack; but simply arranged that, at a given signal from their chief, a united rush should be made upon the church, and a general massacre ensue. As we have ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... brigade was either killed or wounded. Taliaferro's brigade was driven back, and Early's left was broken. Some regiments attempted to change front, others retreated in disorder. Scattered groups, plying butt and bayonet, endeavoured to stay the rout. Officers rushed into the melee, and called upon those at hand to follow. Men were captured and recaptured, and, for a few moments, the blue and grey were mingled in close conflict amid the smoke. But the isolated efforts of the Confederates were of no avail. The first line was irretrievably broken; ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... work," Billy muttered over and over; and, though he saw much that occurred, assisted by the friendly Irishman he was coolly and safely working Saxon back out of the melee. ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... attempt had failed, Mr Braine and the doctor rushed to the assistance of the others, and a fierce melee ensued in the darkness, wherein the fresh comers, who dared not use their revolvers for fear of injuring friends, devoted their principal efforts to keeping the enemy from using their krises, weapons admirably suited ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... and on Easter day, April eighth, they made demonstrations so serious that the scheming commander—Buonaparte again, it was believed—found the much desired pretext to interfere; there was a melee, and one of the militia officers was killed. Next morning the burghers found their town beset by the volunteers. Good citizens kept to their houses, while the acting mayor and the council were assembled to authorize an attack on the citadel. The authorities could not agree, ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... lay half hidden in the general melee. It had a bold, irrepressible look, as though it were aware of having blown the room to smithereens and was rather amused. Stonehouse could see the large, sprawling hand that covered it. He touched ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... sir," said I, whipping old Rene smartly. And in another minute we were thumping and bumping over great paving-stones, too noisily for conversation to be carried on, and getting into a melee of carts, wagons, and horsemen, all bound for Beaucaire. The women were now in great delight, looking from side to side, commenting on the dress of one, the equipage of another, nodding to acquaintance, and crying "O, look!" to each other, when they saw anything beyond common. I had enough to ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... rabbit's son became angered, and fastened an arrow to his bow and drove the arrow through the bear's heart. Then he turned on Mrs. Bear and served her likewise. During the melee, Rabbit shouted: "My son, my son, don't kill the two youngest. The baby has kept me from starving and the other one is good and ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin
... nevertheless forced its way out here and there. The canvas seemed to me immense. Politicians and preachers, workers and capitalists, artists and philistines, "good" women and prostitutes, soldiers and conscientious objectors jostled one another in the melee. Bloomsbury, Westminster, Chelsea and Mayfair each had its appointed place, while race-courses and night-clubs alternated with mining villages and methodist chapels. But, unlike Delancey's other stories, ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... around and saw that his captors were very busy. Now if ever was the time to take a hand in the melee. Swiftly he rose. He spoke a hurried ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... account the beauty of their ladies and the strength of their spears against all comers. Edinburgh can never have been so amusing, never so gay and bright, as in these fine times; though, no doubt, there was always the risk of a rush together of two parties of gallants, a melee after the old mode of Clear the Causeway, a hurried shutting of shops and pulling forth of halberds. For the younger population, at least, no doubt these risks were almost the ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... Princess called aloud to her damsels, saying, "Who is left in the convent?"; and they replied, "None but the gate keepers;" whereupon she went up to Sharrkan and took him to her bosom, he doing the same, and they returned to the palace, after he had made an end of the melee. Now there remained a few of the Knights hiding from him in the cells of the monastery, and when the Princess saw this she rose from Sharrkan's side and left him for a while, but presently came back clad in closely meshed coat of ring mail and holding in her hand a fine Indian scymitar. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... a melee on the floor, furious, savage, mad. In cold fact, it lasted merely for seconds; but Chris was grappling with a man whose strength was as desperate as his own, and who had not been weakened by a solar plexus blow or a cramping wait of hours in one position: the American had passed through ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... was like a melee on the front line after a charge, as I found out later on. There were some three hundred men newly drafted into the Third Battalion; there were some three hours in which we had to get our equipment and learn to adjust it. As it was, many of ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... taking their hatchets, swords or other weapons, penetrated the gaps in the now disordered French, who could not move to cope with their unarmoured assailants, and were slaughtered or taken prisoners to a man. The second line of the French came on, only to be engulfed in the melee; its leaders, like those of the first line, were killed or taken, and the commanders of the third sought and found their death in the battle, while their men rode off to safety. The closing scene of the battle was ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... he emerged. An appetizing odor of fried pork floated upon the air from the direction of the cook tent, and people seemed to be rushing all over the lot in wildest confusion, but Jim caught a glimpse of a bit of pink-and-white check through the melee, ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... for boys for cowards or for men bewildered. They have not wasted their first blows; for they have unhorsed thirteen. The noise of their blows and strokes has reached as far as to the army. In a short time the melee would have been desperate, if the enemy had dared to stand before them. The king's men run through the host to take their weapons, and dash into the water noisily, and the enemy turn to flight; for they see that it is not good to stay there. And the Greeks follow ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... death. He had been wounded several times, and was so breathless and hurt by his falls from the deck that at the end he could no longer even attempt to climb the sides of the Spanish vessel. Captain Martin was able to take no part in the melee. He had at the beginning of the fight taken up his post on the taffrail, and, seated there, had kept up a steady fire with a musket against the Spaniards as they ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... the universal melee, when the stones and arrows are raining on the combatants, and some furious hailstorm is the slightest illustration with which we should expect him to heighten the effect of the human tempest, so sure ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... time he was not an abolitionist, and, perhaps because he had married the daughter of a slave owner, he had taken no strong position either for or against slavery. One day an officer arrested a black man in St. Louis who resisted arrest, and in the melee the officer was killed. His friends claimed that the negro was a freeman, and that there was a plot to kidnap him and sell him into the Southern cotton fields, and that he had a right to resist. ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... struggle ensued, in which blows were given and taken freely. Snap was struck in the breast and in the cheek, but not seriously hurt. In the melee Shep managed to squirm free from those who held him and he quickly ranged up by ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill
... aroused, and, not relishing the fun of being buffeted unmercifully in their beds without resistance, they one and all turned out and, seizing their pillows, joined in the fight. The attack, begun with tactical judgment, turned now into a confused melee. Friend and foe were mixed up in one grand shindy, and for many minutes the battle continued without intermission. Blows fell fast and thick; there was a rushing about of half-clad figures swaying bolsters, and each one intent on the same object—namely, that of overcoming ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... (Shelley) Wilt thou be a blackleg? Nay. Soaring, sing above the melee, "Shorter hours ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... out of that melee of flying hoofs and prodding horns without being at least seriously injured was ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... was soon in the thick of the melee, and kept so close to the point of contact that a British musket ball struck a pin out of his hair close to one of his ears. Wherever the danger was greatest there was Warren, now a soldier joining in the fight, now a surgeon binding ...
— Revolutionary Heroes, And Other Historical Papers • James Parton
... equally willing, was chewing Bill's paw with the gusto of a gourmet. An Irish terrier, with no personal bias towards either side, was dancing round and attacking each in turn as he came uppermost. And two poodles leaped madly in and out of the melee, barking encouragement. ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... hear the pants of the athletes as they locked closer, closer. Strength failing, the Spartan snatched at his enemy's throat; but the Athenian had his wrist gripped fast before the clasp could tighten, and in the melee Glaucon's other hand passed beneath Lycon's thigh. The two seemed deadlocked. For a moment they grinned face to face, almost close enough to bite each other's lips. But breath was too precious for curses. The Spartan flung ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... wielding a heavy sledge hammer, did valiant service, clearing a space around him with little difficulty. Joe Wegg, Arthur Weldon, Cox the detective, Lon Taft, Nick Thome and even little Skim Clark were all in the melee, fighting desperately for time to enable Thursday Smith to work his press, using whatever cudgels they had been able to pick up to keep the assailants from the pole. Slowly, however, they were forced back by superior ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... indeed doing. The old mill had been surrounded and the chief of police had entered the building, followed by several other men of the party. The counterfeiters were taken by surprise, but they did not give up at once. Some began to fight, and in the melee two were seriously wounded. Then all but three surrendered, these three doing what they could to get out by a back way. One of ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... the precautions to prevent the mischief that might happen at these martial exercises few were exhibited in which a great number were not wounded, some killed in the melee, others crushed by the falling of the scaffolds, or trod to death by the horses. Kings, princes, and gallant knights from every part of Europe have perished at different times while attending or taking part in those mimic battles. Successive popes thundered out their anathemas ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... invitation, and the two were presently engaged in a melee of gossip over the sayings and doings of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... speed, turning in the saddle to look back at the tidal wave which they are leading, disappear in a cloud of sabres, clashing and cutting; but the fight is partly obscured by the rising dust and the mist from the over-heated animals. Riderless horses come, wounded and trembling, out of the melee; others appear, running in fright, carrying dying troopers still sitting their chargers, the head drooping on the breast, the sword-arm hanging lifeless, the blood-stained sabre dangling from the wrist, tossing, swinging, and cutting the poor ...
— History of the Second Massachusetts Regiment of Infantry: Beverly Ford. • Daniel Oakey
... to Sohlberg and the butler, who had entered. "Get her out of here quick! My wife has gone crazy. Get her out of here, I tell you! This woman doesn't know what she's doing. Take her out and get a doctor. What sort of a hell's melee ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... bottle from the ground, and made a dash at Gordon. The latter let out a vicious drive with his left that caught Mick under the ear and sent him down like a bullock. In a second the whole crowd surged together in one confused melee, everybody hitting at everybody amid a Babel of shouts and curses. The combat swayed out on to the race-course, where half a dozen men fell over the ropes and pulled as many more down with them, and those that were down fought on the ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... was the blue feather that fell; and Lance, swinging round, charged into the melee—seven reds now, ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... kick followed and was caught by Still on his forty-five. With good interference he secured five before he was thrown. Brimfield, still working fast, reached the opponent's thirty-five before a punt was again necessary. This time Innes passed low and Freer kicked into the melee and the pigskin danced and bobbed around for many doubtful moments before Marvin snuggled it under him on the Morgan's forty-three yards. From there a forward went to Still and gained seven, and, playing desperately, the Brimfield backs ploughed through for two firsts and placed the ball on the ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... the rush: the crash of steel upon steel, the hideous melee, where friend and foe seemed blent in one dense struggling mass; the cries which pain sometimes extorted from the bravest; the shouts of the excited combatants, ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... everywhere shown themselves superior with the bayonet and at close infighting, even as the Germans had displayed an incredible courage in advance under gunfire, and rightly held their heavy artillery to be the finest in the world, in the melee around the colors of the Magdeburg Regiment, there was nothing to choose for either side. The lieutenant color bearer was killed, in the midst of a ring of dead, and not until almost the whole regiment had been killed under the impact of far superior numbers, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... Calcutta, why it was nothing to this! What a scramble there must have been for that solitary window and a mouthful of fresh air! Lions, tigers, jackals, hyaenas, boa-constrictors, kangaroos, eagles, owls, bees, wasps, bluebottles, with Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japhet, and their wives, all in one fierce melee. But the contention for the precious vital air must, however violent, have soon subsided: fifteen minutes would have settled them all. Yet curiously enough the choking animals-suffered no appreciable injury; by some occult means they ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... hole's good enough for his face! You villians, you thieves, you robbers! (General melee. Lorarii weaken.) ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... made no sign that he had heard. Hopkins shrugged a shoulder and chewed at his cigar, to which his teeth had clung grimly throughout the melee. ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... grass that grew there. That handful of grass became a terrible bolt of iron endued with the energy of the thunderbolt. With it Krishna slew all those that came before him. Then the Andhakas and the Bhojas, the Saineyas and the Vrishnis, urged by Time, struck one another in that fearful melee. Indeed, O king, whoever amongst them took up in wrath a few blades of the Eraka grass, these, in his hands, became soon converted into a thunderbolt, O puissant one. Every blade of grass there was seen to be converted into a terrible iron bolt. All this, know, O ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... some loss of temper; and our china-closet was altogether too small for the officials who had to wash the china there, and they were constantly at odds with my mother for her firmness in resisting their tendency to carry our china and silver to the general melee of the kitchen sink. Moreover, our dining-room not having been constructed with an eye to modern expansions of the female toilet, it happened that, if our table was to be enlarged for guests, there arose serious questions of the waiter's ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... sides, it is obvious that two fleets, passing in opposite directions, and each trying to flank the rear of the other, will eventually circle around a common center; and if the effort to improve position dominates the effort to evade fire, this circle will narrow until the battle becomes a melee. ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... which was hewing its way through a mass of Dutch. He called on them to halt and reform, and their officers supposing him to be one of their generals who had arrived from headquarters, set to work to extricate their men from the melee. The Prince passed with the utmost coolness through their line as if to see what was doing in front, while Claverhouse and Collier followed him as if they were attached. As soon as he had got to the open space in front, for what remained of the Dutch were in rapid retreat, and were scattering in ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... sallied out and mingled in the confused mass of the enemy, doing tremendous execution with their axes and knives. Hitherto the king had kept his reserve in hand; but now that the English archers were defeated and their horsemen in inextricable confusion, he moved his division down and joined in the melee, his men shouting ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... "We saw the awful melee, the struggle to the death with that song above all the shouting and the shrieks... You who imagine you know La Marseillaise because you have heard it played at prize distributions must acknowledge your error. ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... boasts itself as Chateau-Ausone, one of the two best of the St Emilion clarets.' Here he tends his roses and sends his boy round to the neighbours to bid them to luncheon, while he interviews the cook. Six, including the host, is the right number—if more it is not a meal but a melee. Then there are all his relatives to be commemorated in verse, his grandfather and his grandmother and his sisters and his cousins and his aunts ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... team, in the meantime, was doing what Packard later described as "a vaudeville turn of its own." The near wheeler was bucking as though there were no other horse within a hundred miles; the off wheeler had broken his single-tree and was facing the coach, delivering kicks at the melee behind him with whole-hearted abandon and ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... of the knights detached himself from the melee and rode to her side with some word of command, at the same time grasping roughly at her bridle rein. The girl raised her riding whip and struck repeatedly but futilely against the iron headgear ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... later, when Quarrier had emerged brilliantly from the melee, she looked up again, triumphantly, supposing Siward was lingering somewhere waiting to join her. And she was just a trifle surprised and disappointed to find him nowhere in sight. She had wished him to observe the ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... and rear, while it soon became evident that the aim of the assailants was to reach the queen's chariot, doubtless in the hope of being able to secure possession of it and drive it off through the melee. ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... be there; for quite fifty of the tethered steeds had broken loose in the excitement, and were rushing here and there and fighting in a most alarming way. I have always had a dread of horse-fights, and this was not a single fight; it was a melee, fresh horses every minute breaking loose to join it. Right in my way two angry stallions rose up, boxing one another like the lion and the unicorn, and a little boy of ten or thereabouts ran in between and, jumping, caught ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... Sixteenth, and even from the Front one glorious year, was at once Foxy's disgust and terror. As a little boy, he could not for the life of him avoid turning his back to wait shuddering, with humping shoulders, for the enemy's charge, and in anything like a melee, he could not help jumping into the air at every ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... the suffocating melee would result in the death or permanent injury to some of us, I was at last dragged by a policeman to the edge of the crowd. Although I offered not the slightest resistance, I was crushed continuously in ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... taking the shield and the lance, which was heavy, stiff, and decorated, and about his waist he girt a sharp, bright, and flashing sword. Then he followed his brother and lord into the fight. The latter demeaned himself bravely in the melee for some time, breaking, splitting, and crushing shields, helmets and hauberks. No wood or steel protected the man whom he struck; he either wounded him or knocked him lifeless from the horse. Unassisted, he did so well that he discomfited all whom he met, while his companions did ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... moment as it seemed, the prince and his comrade found themselves in a fierce melee, in which for a while they could scarce move hand or foot, jammed in by the press of men and steeds, but surrounded by friends and comrades, who were eagerly pressing forward toward the foe. Cries and shouts rent the air, mingled ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... heard De Croix swearing in French beside me, and glanced around through the mad turmoil to see him cutting and hacking with broken blade, pushing into the midst of the melee as if he had real joy in the encounter. While I thus had him in view, a knife whistled through the air, there was a quick dazzle in the sunlight, and he reeled backward off his horse and disappeared ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... shot, with blood spilled and bone splintered, with pain and tremendous horror and invading nausea, with delirium, with resurgence of the brute, with jungle triumph, Berserker rage and battle ecstasy came the shock—then, in a moment, the melee. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... speaker, whose voice had a strong Gascon accent, and saw a young man from twenty to twenty-five, resting his hand on the crupper of the horse of the first speaker. His head was bare; he had probably lost his hat in the melee. ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... attack. This attacking column might have been called a forlorn hope, so few men had she with her. The little party were repulsed, and at one moment her squire, d'Aulon, saw that his brave mistress was fighting alone, surrounded by the English. At great peril she was rescued from the melee. Asked how she could hope to succeed in taking the place with hardly any support, she answered, while she raised her helmet, 'There are fifty thousand of my host around me,' alluding to the vision of angels that in moments of extreme ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... coat, flung it aside, and crammed myself into a loose, one-piece costume of Orcon which I tore off a corpse. Then I fought while my three companions repeated the operation. We succeeded in confusing the mob to such an extent that we were able to work our way through the fringes of the melee and move clear across the first ...
— The Winged Men of Orcon - A Complete Novelette • David R. Sparks
... see the man," and hurling his javelin, struck him straight upon the breast, with such force that the cuirass was pierced and a slight flesh-wound inflicted. The king fell from his horse; but at the same moment Cyrus received a wound beneath the eye from the javelin of a Persian, and in the melee which followed he was slain with eight of his followers. The Six Hundred could lend no effectual aid, because they had rashly dispersed in pursuit of the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... was burst open, the room was filled with their foes—uplifted weapons, deadly blows, cries, curses in English and French—in short, such a melee ensued that it passes all our power to describe it. The fire was kicked over the place—blood hissed as it ran over the floor and met the hot embers—the torches were speedily extinguished or converted into weapons—men rolled over and over in deadly strife, seeking ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... engagement, struggle, encounter, fray, affray, melee, scrimmage (Colloq.); pugnacity, belligerence. Associated words: militant, combative, combativeness, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... altercation between two students, who were making themselves unpleasant, and the proprietor of the place. The next night the students returned in force and demanded free drinks, and, upon their being refused, precipitated a general melee in which clubs were used and even knives were drawn. In the end, the unfortunate owners were chased to the outskirts of town by the ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... and with tubes for projecting Greek fire to create smoke and set their opponent on fire. The main tactics of the time, however, consisted in grappling with the enemy and transforming the combat into a hand-to-hand melee. ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... confidence in themselves from being habitually outdone by stronger brothers and sisters, or in slow minds which seem "stupid" to others and to themselves, or in natures too sensitive to risk themselves in the melee. To these, one who brings the gift of encouragement comes as a deliverer and often changes the course of their life, leading them to believe in themselves and their own good endowments, making them ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... themselves on one side—the defenders of the Orsini on the other—and the few who agreed with the smith that both factions were equally odious, and the people was the sole legitimate cry in a popular commotion, would have withdrawn themselves from the approaching melee, if the smith himself, who was looked upon by them as an authority of great influence, had not—whether from resentment at the haughty bearing of the young Colonna, or from that appetite of contest not uncommon in men of a bulk and force which ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... came a yell—the rebel yell—and a horse leaped forward. Other horses leaped too, everybody yelled in answer, and the cavalcade swept forward. There was a massing of horses, the white girth flashing in the midst of the melee, a great crash and much turning, twisting, and sawing of bits, and then all dashed the other way, the white girth in the lead, and the boy's lips fell apart in wonder. A black thoroughbred was making a wide sweep, an iron-gray was cutting in behind, and all ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... river bed. Like specks on the laboring tide was the white of bandages. An ambulance trying to cut out to one side was overturned. The frantic chauffeur and hospital-corps orderly were working to extricate the wounded from their painful position. A gun was overturned against the ambulance. A melee of horses and men was forming at the foot of the garden gate in front of the narrowing bounds of the road into the town, as a stream banks up before a jam of driftwood. The struggle for right of way became increasingly wild; the dam of ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... the car, was to cut a tire. By getting his opponent into a stooping position; over the damaged wheel, it would be easier to overcome him. But a hasty search revealed that he had lost his knife in the melee. And second thought gave him a better plan. After all, to get the letter was not everything. To know its destination would be important. He had no time to think further. The messenger was coming down the steps, not stealthily, but clattering, with the ring of ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... men who had gone for Andrew were much too infirm to get close to "The Falcon." For with the daylight her work had begun, and she was surrounded on all sides by a melee of fishing-boats. Some were discharging their boxes of fish; others were struggling to get some point of vantage; others again fighting to escape the uproar. The air was filled with the roar of the waves and with the voices of men, blending in shouts, orders, expostulations, ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... graceful assent, while a sharp-looking old dowager at the side of the table called out, "a rubber of four on, my Lord;" and now began an explanation from the whole party at once. Nicholas saw this was his time, and thought that in the melee, his hint might reach his mistress unobserved by the remainder of the company. He accordingly protruded his head into the room, and placing his finger upon the side of his nose, and shutting one eye knowingly, with ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... Davis, the blacksmith, wielding a heavy sledge hammer, did valiant service, clearing a space around him with little difficulty. Joe Wegg, Arthur Weldon, Cox the detective, Lon Taft, Nick Thome and even little Skim Clark were all in the melee, fighting desperately for time to enable Thursday Smith to work his press, using whatever cudgels they had been able to pick up to keep the assailants from the pole. Slowly, however, they were forced back by superior numbers until finally one of the mill hands clambered ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... are Carl Heft, surely! Good lad, I did not see you in the melee, but I have no doubt you acquitted yourself well. I also am going to the front trench, to our company's sector. We ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... was passing through the narrow way left by the crowd. His foot struck one of the loaded burros in the eye. The animal staggered over against the wall of men, trampling on somebody's feet. Somebody yelled and cursed vehemently, stepping on somebody else. A small-sized panic and melee ensued forthwith. More of the animals took alarm, and Algy was frightened half to death. His pony, a wall-eyed, half-witted brute, stampeded in the crowd. Then ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... cordiale with Britain was sundered in a minute. The melee grew into a fierce battle, and only the increasing distance of the vessel from shore stopped the firing, the last shots ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... to my argumentative German acquaintance of Bentheim and Aix. During the melee of changing cars I was, however, separated from him, and became engaged in conversation (spoken in English) with a Dutch chocolate merchant. The argument must have been interesting, for I did not at first notice a ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... thirty of his men succeeded in reaching land in canoes, seized the fort without any difficulty, and although his followers were so few managed to disperse a body of the enemy who were approaching, with the English governor at their head, to recover it. In the melee the governor was one of the first to be killed—stabbed, say the Spaniards, by the Irishman, who took active part in the expedition and fought by the side of Rui Fernandez. Meanwhile some of the inhabitants, ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... but forced him off to six or eight times that distance from his enemies. Luckily for him, all of the Indians had dropped their rifles in the pursuit, or this retreat might not have been effected with impunity; though no one had noted the canoe in the first confusion of the melee. ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... a sift of snow that had been heaping up a lonely little drift on the bare floor. The widow covered the boys tenderly and took their treasures off the bed, all save the little wooden monkey, which, as if frightened by the melee, had hidden far under the clothes. She went below stairs to the fire, which every cold day was well fed until after midnight, and began to enjoy the sight of her own gifts. They were a haunch of venison, a sack of flour, ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... was chewing Bill's paw with the gusto of a gourmet. An Irish terrier, with no personal bias towards either side, was dancing round and attacking each in turn as he came uppermost. And two poodles leaped madly in and out of the melee, barking encouragement. ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... overturned—the tressels were thrown upon their backs—the tub of punch into the fire-place—and the ladies into hysterics. Piles of death-furniture floundered about. Jugs, pitchers, and carboys mingled promiscuously in the melee, and wicker flagons encountered desperately with bottles of junk. The man with the horrors was drowned upon the spot-the little stiff gentleman floated off in his coffin—and the victorious Legs, seizing by the waist the fat lady in the shroud, rushed out with her into the street, and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Hougoumont—the appearance of Buelow on the heights of Saint Lambert—the charge of the Inniskillings and the Scots Greys—the death of valiant Ponsonby. We see Marshal Ney Prince of Moskowa—the bravest soldier in France—we see him everywhere where the melee is thickest, everywhere where danger is most nigh. His magnificent uniform torn to shreds, his gold lace tarnished, his hair and whiskers singed, his face blackened by powder, indomitable, unconquered, superb, we hear him cry: "Where are ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... dirty work," Billy muttered over and over; and, though he saw much that occurred, assisted by the friendly Irishman he was coolly and safely working Saxon back out of the melee. ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... refused to accede to these terms; and while the interpreter was addressing some, the rest tried to push forward. Some of the militia opposed them by holding their muskets in a horizontal position, on which one of the mutineers fired, and the militia returned the fire. A melee commenced, in which fourteen mutineers were killed and wounded. The fire of the Africans produced little effect: they soon took to flight amid the woods which flanked the road. Twenty-eight of them were taken, amongst whom was the ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... 'three sheets in the wind,' and making for trouble. Vootgert, the Belgian, was the first to fall foul of the Mate, and that sorely-tried Officer could hardly be blamed for using all four limbs on the offending 'squarehead.' Seeing their shipmate thus handled, the watch would have raised a general melee, but the boarding-house 'crimps,' having no liking for police interference, succeeded in calming the valiant ones by further draughts of their fiery panacea. To us boys (who had heard great tales of revolvers and other weapons ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... flashed into a flame, and he leaped up with doubled fists and made for the offender, who coolly awaited him. A warning cry from George recalled his brother to his senses, and, instead of attacking his assailant, he laughingly plunged into the melee, which went on ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... wild and exciting rush before we got through; and I have but little recollection of what took place beyond the fact that I struck out right and left in melee after melee, wherein blows were aimed at us with the butts and barrels of rifles, and shots fired at close quarters, but in almost every case I believe without effect. Then the call rang out, "Halt!" and, with our enemies at a distance, we formed up again, ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... to the assistance of the four companions, while the other ran toward the hotel of M. de Treville, crying, "To the rescue, Musketeers! To the rescue!" As usual, this hotel was full of soldiers of this company, who hastened to the succor of their comrades. The MELEE became general, but strength was on the side of the Musketeers. The cardinal's Guards and M. de la Tremouille's people retreated into the hotel, the doors of which they closed just in time to prevent their enemies from entering with them. As to ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... through a throng of men, women, and children, all as excited as herself. It was a scene of wild confusion, women shrieking and wringing their hands and fainting, and men fighting and trampling down everything in their way. In the midst of the melee Marija recollected that she did not have her bankbook, and could not get her money anyway, so she fought her way out and started on a run for home. This was fortunate for her, for a few minutes later the police ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... decreed, it would be his death. His respect for his fellows was measured by their power of withstanding him, and the man he had the greatest affection for, perhaps, was a soldier, now incapacitated, who had once in a melee succeeded in knocking him from his saddle. At the same time he believed in his own astuteness, not without some reason be it said, and in the back of his mind there was always a certain admiration for the man who could get the better ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... at once ordered his division into two detachments, and giving one to Bourbon the bastard, to make head against the Stradiotes, he hurried with the second to the rescue of the van, flinging himself into the very midst of the melee, striking out like a king, and doing as steady work as the lowest in rank of his captains. Aided by the reinforcement, the rearguard made a good stand, though the enemy were five against one, and the combat in this part continued to rage with ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Singleton rode alone with all the others pursuing him wildly; no wonder Bessie felt enthralled by the novelty of the sight. She uttered a little scream once when the horses and riders all crushed together in a sort of confused melee. ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... through any game of battle or tourney such as the King loved to organize when he had his knights round him. It was often that the esquires as well as the knights competed in these contests of skill and strength, or followed their masters into some great melee, and it was a point of honour with the latter that their followers should be well and suitably equipped ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... even turned on the whites, who rushed so recklessly among them; so that for a minute a fierce hand-to-hand fight raged on the narrow strand, and even among the crowded canoes in the water. In the confusion of this melee Christie became separated from his men, and ere he realized the full peril of his position received several knife wounds in quick succession. Staggering under these, he fell, was instantly dragged into a ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... With this melee raging in his skull, Cam dodged back to Everett. He found that worthy sliding liquidly from the booth, his side-pocket familiar now half-emerged and regarding his ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds
... some took one side, some another. The issue may be well foreseen. Swords were drawn. I had left mine in the ante room; Zicci offered me his own,—I seized it eagerly. There might be some six or eight persons engaged in a strange and confused kind of melee, but the Prince and myself only sought each other. The noise around us, the confusion of the guests, the cries of the musicians, the clash of our own swords, only served to stimulate our unhappy fury. We feared to be interrupted by the attendants ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was checked, that the spot where lay the Confederate general would mark the highest point attained by the crimson wave of Southern valor, for Union troops were concentrating in overwhelming numbers. The wound in my hand had broken out afresh. I hastened to get back out of the melee, the crush, and the 'sing' of bullets, and soon reached my old post of observation, exhausted and panting. The correspondents were still there, and one of them patted me on the shoulder in a way meant to be encouraging, and offered to put ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... Professor Trask, Dr. Murchison, Wong, Indian Jim, and, finally, each of the other's tenderest folly—till a living caricature too true or too cutting precipitated an appeal to arms, and the Lighthouse, which was always in the way, was tipped over in the melee, and had to be thrown out of the window, there to burn itself ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... she did not move. Then a new cry of warning broke upon our ears. Turning, I saw a dozen black pirates dashing toward us from the melee. We had been discovered. With shrieks of rage the demons sprang for us. With frenzied insistence I continued to press the little button which should have sent us racing out into space, but still the vessel refused to budge. Then it came ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... screams of stricken men and horses as they were dragged down by the blood-mad cats. The leaping carnivora and the plunging horses, prevented any concerted action by the Abyssinians—it was every man for himself—and in the melee, the defenseless woman was either forgotten or ignored by her black captors. A score of times was her life menaced by charging lions, by plunging horses, or by the wildly fired bullets of the frightened ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Sand, stones, anchors, and other obstructions were heaped upon the track. The remaining four companies therefore left the cars and started to march. They soon met the mob, flying a secession flag. A melee ensued. The troops moved double-quick toward the Washington depot, surrounded by a seething mass of infuriated secessionists filling the air with their brick-bats and stones, while bullets whizzed ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... whole scope of the natural laws, that the individual, as far as the present sphere of being is concerned, is to the Author of Nature a consideration of inferior moment. Everywhere we see the arrangements for the species perfect; the individual is left, as it were, to take his chance amidst the melee of the various laws affecting him. If he be found inferiorly endowed, or ill befalls him, there was at least no partiality against him. The system has the fairness of a lottery, in which every one has the like chance of ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... hundred and twelve cartridges with which they had started the fight, there remained sixty-eight. That meant they had expended thirty-nine in the last charge alone. As near as they could make out, they had accounted for eight of the enemy, four in the melee just finished. Besides, there were a number of ponies down. At first glance this might seem like poor shooting. It was not. A rapidly moving figure is a difficult rifle-mark with the best of conditions. In this case the conditions would have rendered an Easterner incapable of hitting ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... copse, and after an hour's hard chase was finally cornered in the courtyard of some farm buildings of the Hameau d'Orillets. A troop of cows was entering the courtyard at the same moment, and a most confused melee ensued. The Inspector of Forests saved the situation and the cows of the farmer, and the stag fell to the carabine of Prince de la Moskowa, with the young Prince Murat on his pony in ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... skirmish if he had been at home in England. For many good reasons,—including dust and smoke, and that what attention he dared distract from his commanding officer was pretty well absorbed by keeping his hard-mouthed troop-horse in hand, under pain of execration by his neighbors in the melee. By and by, when the newspapers came out, if he could get a look at one before it was thumbed to bits, he would learn that the enemy had appeared from ambush in overwhelming numbers, and that orders had been given to fall back, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... furnishes a considerable output of very small diamonds, which are found in dry sand far from any present rivers. These diamonds cut to splendid white melee and the output is large enough to make some difference in the relative price of small stones as compared to large ones. The South West African field seldom yields a stone that will afford a finished ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... into the ring. They sweep across the arena and over the showman's barriers. Miguel gets a frightful trampling. Who cares for gates or doors? They tear the beasts' houses bar from bar, and, laying hold of the gaunt buffalo, drag him forth by feet, ears, and tail; and in the midst of the melee, still head and shoulders above all, wilder, with the cup of the wicked, than any beast, is the man of God ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... Fair; and declared that the 'Dear Duck' letter, and various other matters, must be explained, and urged somebody to speak; and then, when Campbell does speak with all the energy of a real gentleman, a general outcry and an indiscriminate melee ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... we should have lost our big Standard-Bearer that day, if our bigger Dwarf had not been at hand to bring him out of the melee when he was wounded. He was unconscious, and would have been trampled to death by our own horse, if the Dwarf had not promptly rescued him and haled him to the rear and safety. He recovered, and was himself again after two or three hours; and then he was happy and proud, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that battery of Homoly Hill; and, hanging upon that, all manner of redoubts and batteries to the rightward and rearward:—but how it was done no pen can describe, nor any intellect in clear sequence understand. An enormous MELEE there: new Prussian battalions charging, and ever new, irrepressible by case-shot, as they successively get up; Marshal Browne too sending for new battalions at double-quick from his left, disputing stiffly every inch of his ground. Till at length ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... men, the city is gained; but I can go no further for I am dying." He was losing so much blood that he felt he must either die without confession, or else permit two of his archers to carry him out of the melee and do their best to staunch ...
— Bayard: The Good Knight Without Fear And Without Reproach • Christopher Hare
... done, is the boredom. To get killed our wounded may be unpleasant, but it is at any rate interesting; the real tragedy is in the desolated fields, the desolated houses, the desolated hours and days, the bored and desolated minds that hang behind the melee and just outside the melee. The peculiar beastliness of the German crime is the way the German war cant and its consequences have seized upon and paralysed the mental movement of Western Europe. Before 1914 war was theoretically ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... horses to the wounded and sick. All endeavored to avoid the contagion of the pest-ridden sick. To them Roland gave his horse from preference. Three fell dead from the saddle; he mounted his horse after them, and reached Cairo safe and sound. At Aboukir he flung himself into the melee, reached the Pasha by forcing his way through the guard of blacks who surrounded him; seized him by the beard and received the fire of his two pistols. One burned the wadding only, the other ball passed under his arm, killing a ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... is in vain that they gorge with blood and wine their deceived soldiers; the moment is approaching when these men will no longer consent to march against the city which is fighting for them. Already, yesterday, the melee of a battle could be distinguished from the fort of Vanves; the line had come to blows with the gendarmes of Valentin and Charette's Zouaves. Courage, Parisians! A few more days and you will have triumphed ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... robber knights were certain that these were but timid men. So out came their swords as they rode at the two. But they found them ready and watchful. And though the odds were two to one, it was not hard matter to hold the robbers off until Sir Launcelot came charging into the melee. ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... this fashion that America was divided between the powers of Europe and the aborigines were dispossessed of their country. The barbaric rule of might from which the paleface had fled hither for refuge caught up with him again, and in the melee the hospitable native suffered ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... upward from the melee. Above him towered the gigantic bulk of the pachyderm, the little eyes flashing with the reflected light of the fires—wicked, frightful, terrifying. The warrior screamed, and as he screamed, the sinuous trunk encircled him, lifted ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Odysseus-Fritz, Achilles-Franz and Patroclus-Paul, and as no policeman was near, they would have mastered the three peaceable, well-bred boys, but at that moment Pixy, who had been watching the game, sprang in the midst of the melee, grasped the sleeve of one of the boys, snarling savagely, as if he were a terribly dangerous dog, indeed. The frightened boy tore himself loose with such force that he fell to the ground and Pixy, as though scorning to attack a fallen enemy, grasped the seat of the pants of ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... bashfully groping for the selected rooster allowed several other occupants of the crate to escape. Instantly the air was filled with fluttering, squawking fowls while fifty frenzied police officers and Chinamen attempted vainly to reduce them to captivity again. In the midst of the melee McGuire caught his rooster, and fearful lest it should escape him managed somehow to decapitate it. The body, however, had been flopping around spasmodically several seconds upon the floor before he realized that the oath had not been administered, and his voice suddenly rose above ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... defeated at the start in this melee of conversation. Maurice also kept silent, with a slightly disdainful smile under his golden moustache, and an attack of coughing soon disabled Gustave. Alone, like two ships in line who let out, turn by turn, their volleys, the lawyer and the actor continued their ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... upon the condition of the fishing-boats added materially to the cost of the victory. Four of the craft had been jammed in the melee and were leaking badly. How they ever made port at all was a thing she could not understand. Three of the other vessels had sustained bent shafts and broken propeller blades. All the fleet were more or less battle-scarred but their defects ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... its intent is honest, and its editors independent of influence from any self-interested source, the literary tournament of criticism becomes either a parade of the virtues with banners for the favorites, or a melee where rivals seek revenge. Venal criticism is the drug and dishonest criticism the ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... old mill had been surrounded and the chief of police had entered the building, followed by several other men of the party. The counterfeiters were taken by surprise, but they did not give up at once. Some began to fight, and in the melee two were seriously wounded. Then all but three surrendered, these three doing what they could to get out by a back way. One of the three was ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... apparent fact after the disengaging from the general embrace, when all had subsided into different seats, and Aunt Jane, who had appeared from somewhere in her little round sealskin hat, had begun to pour out the tea. The first sentence that emerged from the melee of greetings and ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... walls sundering them. The spectacle, in the "old" bathroom, when a convoy of walking cases has arrived, is one which should appeal to a painter. Clouds of steam fill the air, and through the fog you perceive a fine melee of figures, some half dressed, some statuesquely nude, towelling themselves or preparing to wash, or shaving at bits of mirror propped on the window-sills. Pink bodies wallow voluptuously in the deep porcelain-ware ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... crash of steel upon steel, the hideous melee, where friend and foe seemed blent in one dense struggling mass; the cries which pain sometimes extorted from the bravest; the shouts of the excited combatants, until ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... victorious campaign in broad daylight. Huxley's pessimistic saying that typhoid was like a fight in the dark between the disease and the patient, and the doctor like a man with a club striking into the melee, sometimes hitting the disease and sometimes the patient, is no longer true ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... came, and then there was a hubbub and a clatter, and poor Miss Lowder's head was overlooked in the melee; for these were all the rooms the house afforded for the entertainment of wayfarers, and as there were nine ladies in our party, it is not difficult to imagine the ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... relation to Genoese politics, Gianettino pulls a string and has a sanction for the wholesale murder of his countrymen. Fiesco pulls another string and gets men and galleys ad libitum. We do not see an intelligible clash of great political ideas, but a wild melee, in the outcome of which we have no reason to be particularly interested. It is all as little tragic as a back-country vendetta, or a factional fight in the halls ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... smugglers, when they mounted the poop of the Coquette; and the steeled staff on which the lantern was perched, had been struck into a horse-bucket by the standard-bearer of the moment, ere he entered the melee of the combat. During the conflagration, this object had more than once met the eye of Ludlow; and now it appeared floating quietly by him, in a manner almost to shake even his contempt for the ordinary superstitions ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... suddenly amongst tribes who have been encamped near one another on amicable terms, and between whom some cause of difference has arisen, probably in relation to their females, or some recent death, which it is imagined the sorcerers have been instrumental in producing. In the former case a kind of melee sometimes takes place at night, when fire-brands are thrown about, spears launched, and bwirris [Note 62 at end of para.] bran-dished in indescribable confusion. In the latter case the affray usually occurs immediately after the ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... the life of a fellow—creature was at stake. So I scrambled up after the pilot to the top of the fence, with a loaded pistol in my hand, a young active Spaniard following with a large brown wax candle, that burned like a torch; and looking down on the melee below, there Sneezer lay with the throat of the leopard in his jaws, evidently much exhausted, but still giving the creature a cruel shake now and then, while Mangrove was endeavouring to throttle the brute with his bare hands. As for ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... king, "mordieu! am I not the first gentleman in my kingdom? Were they not great battles that I fought in my youth? Forward, then, gentlemen, and I will take the lead; it is my custom in the melee." ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... weapon swung like the club of Hercules. His bowmen and blowgun men, at last out of missiles, came charging in with bare hands or weapons seized from fallen warriors. Maneuvering had ended. Henceforth the fight was a grappling melee. ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... then another of the enemy was passed, team-mates formed hasty interference for the runner and, suddenly, to the consternation of the Brimfield stand, the quarter, with the ball snuggled in the crook of his left elbow, was out of the melee, with a clear field before him and two Benton players guarding his rear. Crewe made a desperate effort to get him near the thirty-yard line, but the interference was too much for him, and after that, although Brimfield trailed ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... utterly unused to the ways of the sea, the next half-hour was a bewildering melee of hurrying, sweating toil, with low-spoken orders and half-caught oaths and the glimmer of a dying fire over all the scene. He was rowed to the sloop with the first boatload and there Job Howland set him to ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... detective service to know of it and to take what steps they could to insure his safety. I am told that what actually happened was that on one occasion his Royal Highness went to the aid of the police, hard pressed by a gang of rioters; and he was injured in the general melee. It all took place in a moment and of course no one had any idea that he would involve himself in it. When he was picked up by the detectives he gave a certain address." Here the Comptroller assumed an air of the utmost discretion. "To that address he was taken; and there ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... enemies, and began to rake the road with rifle fire; then, in obedience to the commands of their half-clad colonel, they charged. A moment and they were fighting hand to hand with their returning comrades. Spaniard clashed with Spaniard, and somewhere in the melee the six marauders battled for ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... whole Syracusan fleet closed in upon them on all sides, and forced them back Then the battle became general, and soon the two fleets were scattered over the whole surface of the bay in little groups, and each group engaged in a wild and furious melee. There was no attempt to manoeuvre, but ship encountered ship; as accident brought them together, and advanced to the attack, under a shower of javelins and arrows. Then followed the dull crash of collision, and the fierce rush of the fighting-men, as they endeavoured to board. ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... were all engaged in the fiercest melee which imagination can well paint, fighting as furiously as men of the same blood only seem to fight when once the claims of kindred are cast aside. Swords ascended and descended with deadly violence; horses raised themselves up on their hind legs, and, catching the deadly ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... chaotic melee in which these titans were engaged had emerged one group more powerful than the rest and more respectable, whose leader was the Personality to whom I have before referred. He and his group had managed to gain control of certain conservative fortresses ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... evil design, Mal-fortune, ill-luck, mishap, Marches, borders, Mass-penny, offering at mass for the dead, Matche old, machicolated, with holes for defence, Maugre, sb., despite, Measle, disease, Medled, mingled, Medley, melee, general encounter, Meiny, retinue, Mickle, much, Minever, ermine, Mischieved, hurt, Mischievous, painful, Miscorr fort, discomfort, Miscreature, unbeliever, Missay, revile,; missaid, Mo, more, More and less, rich and poor, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... oak, the "Chene de Mi-Voie," on a lande or large plain, half way from each town. The battle began with great fury, at first to the disadvantage of the Bretons, when Bembro' was killed, which threw dismay among the English; but a German, who succeeded in the command, rallied their courage, and the melee became thicker than ever. Beaumanoir was wounded, and his loss of blood and his long fast produced a burning thirst, and he asked for water. "Bois ton sang, Beaumanoir, ta soif se passera," was the reply of Geoffroy du Bois; and Beaumanoir, forgetting ...
— Brittany & Its Byways • Fanny Bury Palliser
... stillness returned, save for the little voices of the night—the owl's recitative, the capriccio of the crickets, the concerto of the frogs in the grass. The piccaninnies and the dawdlers from the quarters had been dismissed to their confines, and the melee of the day was reduced to an orderly and intelligent silence. The six coloured waiters, in their white jackets, paced, cat-footed, about the table, pretending to arrange where all was beyond betterment. Absalom, in black and ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... the eye with his elbow. It was an awful blow. I shouldn't wonder but that I went blind. Never again will I take part in anything as tough as this. I know I'll be laid up for a week," and with this gloomy thought he limped off, for he had been rather roughly handled in the melee. ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... midst of the melee a carriage came along the roadway. It contained Mrs. Bangs and the ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.
... in good weather with his faithful dogs alone, and came into the camp of the Crees armed with only a revolver. If he had gone with ten men, there would have been an instant melee, in which he would have lost his life. This is what the chief had expected, had prepared for; but Jim was more formidable alone, with power far behind him which could come with force and destroy the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... barrel into Thompson's mouth in turn, and fired twice, completing the work Simms had begun. The giant Coy hurled his bulk into the struggling mass now crowded into the corner of the room, and some say he held Ben Thompson's arms, though in the melee it was hard to tell what happened. He called out to Simms, "Don't mind me," meaning that Simms should keep on firing. "Kill the —— of ——!" he cried. Coy no doubt was a factor in saving Simms' life, ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... life and I want free air, And I sigh for the canter after the cattle, The crack of whips like shots in battle, The melee of ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... picture presented itself to Nancy's mind of the men of the world engaged in one grand melee of brawling; struggling, belaying one another with their bare fists, drawing ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... an airdrop onto the citadel roof and fight our way down with needlers and blasters, and I'm not willing to do that as long as there's any other way," Verkan Vall said. "We'd lose men, even with needlers against bows, and there's a chance that some of our equipment might be lost in the melee and fall into outtime hands. You say this sacrifice ...
— Temple Trouble • Henry Beam Piper
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