"Deadbeat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... men had made in the relief of Kimberley have been already recorded. They arrived there on Thursday with their horses dead beat. They were afoot at three o'clock on Friday morning, and two brigades out of three were hard at work all day in an endeavour to capture the Dronfield position. Yet when on the same evening an order came that French should ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... I'm waiting for, your honor! The best face in Derry wouldn't tempt me this minute. I'm just dead beat meself—and the baste! It's to Boyne Fair we've been this day, and a terrible time entoirely we've had ...
— Only an Irish Girl • Mrs. Hungerford
... a pipe and started out all right, but I very soon got tired. The sleepers were a long way apart, and the track between frightfully rough. I walked for hours without seeing the slightest sign of a station or a break in the woods, and finally I sat down dead beat. My feet were all blisters, and I felt that I couldn't walk another yard. Fortunately it was a warm night, and I made up my mind to crawl under the bracken just inside the wood and go to sleep. I found a comfortable place, ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to be fed and rested; he was dead beat when I led him into the unlocked stable, and when I had seen to him I meant to rouse up Billy Jones and tell him all the ugly stuff I had unearthed—and seen too—for the killing of four innocent men was hot in my mind. But I did not, ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... here, Like a brock in his earth: I'll not be trapped and torn ... Yet, I don't know. Why should I go? No worse To be taken here than elsewhere: and I'm dead beat: I'm all to rovers, my wit's all gone agate: And how can I travel in these boots? A week since The soles bid a fond farewell to the uppers: I've been Hirpling it, barefoot—ay, kind lady, barefoot. You'd hardly care to be in my shoes, Judith? While ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... me. But this summer, as we were marching here, not a man of us except the Duke himself, with a notion why we were coming this way at all, we stopped to storm the Schellenberg, a hill overlooking the Danube near Donauwoerth. We were all dog tired—dead beat, in fact, for we had marched till we were almost blind. However, as it was the Duke's, day, he ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... something to eat for his visitor. While the man eagerly devoured his food, and washed it down with a cup of tea, Mr. Belcher went to his room, and wrote an order on his tailor for a suit of clothes, and a complete respectable outfit for the legal "dead beat" who was feasting himself below. When he descended, he handed him the paper, and gave him money for a bath and a ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... Poor Moggy's dead beat, I'm afraid. Neither of us could sleep a wink last night for the dust and sand. Well, it's all well that ends well. We'll cool her off in the valley. How is everything going on there? Mrs. Templestowe all right, and Mrs. Page, and the children? I declare," stretching himself, "it's a blessing to ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... dinner. But then Saint Munchausen presides over the mahogany where fox-hunting feats are discussed. One use of a lash is to lead a horse by putting it through the rings of the snaffle, and to flip him up as you stand on the bank when he gets stuck fast, or dead beat in a ditch or brook. I once owed the extrication of my horse from a brook with a deep clay bottom entirely to having a long lash to my whip; for when he had plumped in close enough to the opposite bank for me to escape over his head, I was able first to ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... was soaked to the skin, as hungry as a hunter, and dead beat into the bargain. The farm manager insisted that I must stay the night—it was imposible to go on in that storm—and go ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... of sport was humiliated and abashed. Also he had caroused in his time—who was there in those first days at Kimberley and on the Rand who did not carouse, when life was so hard, luck so uncertain, and food so bad; when men got so dead beat, with no homes anywhere—only shake-downs and the Tents of Shem? Once he had had a native woman summoned to be his slave, to keep his home; but that was a business which had revolted him, and he had never repeated ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... was not popular in the village for two reasons. The capitalistic storekeepers called him a dead beat and the church people had rotten-egged him for a speech he had made denouncing religion. I saw by his hands that he didn't work much, and from the hands of his wife I learned who raised the watermelons he was feeding to me. I remember wondering why he didn't pay his grocery ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... struck, to be clearly heard at some distance. The armature does not strike these alternately by a pendulous movement, as we may easily strike only one continuously, the friction and inertia of the armature causing its movements to be perfectly dead beat when not driven by some external force, and it is kept in its zero position by a strong directive magnet placed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... the kettle, being dead beat, boiled over, and was taken off the fire. Mrs. Peerybingle then went running to the door, where, what with the wheels of a cart, the tramp of a horse, the voice of a man, the tearing in and out of an excited dog, and the surprising and mysterious ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... was almost froze with skeer; But we rousted up some torches, And searched for 'em far and near. At last we struck hosses and wagon, Snowed under a soft white mound, Upsot, dead beat,—but of little Gabe No ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... met the Company Commander's over the table, and he shrugged his shoulders slightly. "Dead beat." His lips framed the words, and he returned to the contemplation of his cigar, which was not doing all that ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... very few minutes more of this work will sew me up altogether, when, O joyful sound! a faint cry from H., who is some distance ahead, comes back to us. "Hurrah! here's the top!" Panting and exhausted, we at length reach the summit, and throw ourselves on the ground dead beat. ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... dead beat, both on you," he said, sympathetically. "It's give you a rare fright, I'll be bound, and us too! Your teacher's half crazed after you, poor thing! She'll be main glad to see you ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... now, I reckon Dave could use him," Bob said. "I reckon he needs a li'l' attention. Then I'm ready for grub an' a sleep twice round the clock. If any one asks me, I'm sure enough dead beat. I don't ever want to ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... from mine, cursed them individually and collectively as everything he could think of, and only stopped to scratch his big bushy head to figure out some new condemnations. While doing this he saw me coming from the port side, and forthwith he told me to take charge of the ship, as he was dead beat out and would have to soak his head again before coming on watch. He smelled horribly of stale liquor, and his eyes were bloodshot. I thought he would be just as well off below, so I made no ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... come, asking Dixon where Miss Porter was, that he might tender congratulations. He wanted to see the boy that had ridden Lauzanne, also—wanted to take his hand and tell him what a grand race he had ridden. But Dixon had been ready with excuses; the boy was dead beat after the race—he was only a kid—and had gone to Dixon's home. Miss Porter was perhaps in the stand, or perhaps she had gone home also. Crane knew of Langdon's objection. It was a silly thing, he said, due to overeagerness. He had taken no part in it, he assured Dixon. ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... have you to want him out of your way, now Lord John has come over to your side? You have the thing at a dead beat. ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... preparing to turn his right flank. In fact, had he not broken the bridge over the Marne at La Ferte-sous-Jouarre, and thereby delayed the Emperor thirty-six hours, he would probably have been crushed before he could cross the River Aisne. His men were dead beat by marching night and day over roads first covered by snow and now deep in slush: for a week they had had no regular rations, and great was their joy when, at the close of the 2nd, they drew near to the 42,000 troops that Buelow and Winzingerode mustered ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... gasp out: "Well, sir, I've done my best. You told me to keep them on the run, and so I hunted them up and down and round—and now—I'm just dead beat myself." ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... the salmon and old Robert; for, as soon as the former discovered that danger awaited him at the foot of the rock, he made every possible effort to break away, and then, getting more and more exhausted, allowed himself to be led in again. And then at last, on his sailing in almost on his side, so dead beat was he, a firm stroke of the gaff caught him behind the shoulder, and the next moment he was in mid-air, the next again ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... me an' my wife a lift as far as Engleton? We've been on tramp this last week, an' we're both dead beat." ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... it not been, that upon that precinct Shorter was the ascent than on the other, He I know not, but I had been dead beat. ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... quietened down a little. Every one's nerves were on edge, and all of us were thoroughly tired out. In every part of the trench lay numbers of dead bodies; in fact, to move about, one had to climb over them. I sat down, dead beat, for some time on what I thought was a sandbag. I discovered afterwards ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams
... not want to wake the village if we can help it, Tawaina; but I do not see any chance of escaping without a fight. Our horses are all dead beat, and the Indians will easily overtake us, even if we get ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... in quite a racy fashion. He seems to be up to date in his notions. I am a bit curious to find out if he can paint or if it is only tall talk, but he certainly seems bent on it. Now I must turn in, for I am dead beat. Oh, by-the-bye, Livy, I told Miss Williams that you would go round and see her to-morrow afternoon. It would really be a charity," as Olivia seemed very much astonished at this. "The poor girl is so lonely, ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... handle of a long knife in its sheath. It went swiftly through his mind that those who sent him on this errand should have warned him of the size of the quarry. Suddenly, almost without his own volition, he found himself saying: "I ask your pardon. I was dead beat an' fair famished, an' I ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... leaped a hedge and she was coming over it after me—a wonderful athletic young figure in midair silhouetted against the sky line. . . . That was the last I saw of her. I fancy she must have pulled up dead beat—or ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... said the secretary. "No, no, my dear fellow, you are dead beat; the stake is worth playing for, and don't suppose we are such flats as to lose the race for want of jockeying. Your humbugging registration will never do against a new reign. Our great men mean to shell out, I tell you; we have got Croucher; we will denounce the Carlton ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... dead beat out, and I've brought it to you. You've just got to help me," she finished, sinking ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... irreproachable little waistcoat all undone. I have known him do the oddest things with chairs and get into postures inconceivable to ordinary men. I have known him drop his aitches for a whole evening because he was too dead beat to hang on to them. And Norah, going home with me, would say, "Poor Jimmy—he does get it ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... is dead beat. Here—let me hoist you on my back, I'd as lief go to Crockton as anywhere else to-night, and I know every inch of these hills, I've been looking after cattle here since I were a babby! There ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... could not help smiling. She knew perfectly well that Dorothy thought it no harm to indulge in a tiny cigarette herself, not often, nor every day, but sometimes when she was dead beat, as she expressed it. Effie had to keep this knowledge of her friend's delinquencies to herself. If Dr. Staunton knew that Dorothy did not consider smoking the unpardonable sin in woman, he would not allow her inside ...
— A Girl in Ten Thousand • L. T. Meade
... commencing to have its effect on me, and McLean and I were both tired out; we were dead beat and looked around for a quiet spot where we could rest. Billy McLean was my especial pal ever since I had ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... said Ashe. "You are a human correspondence course in efficiency, one of the ones you see advertised in the back pages of the magazines, beginning, 'Young man, are you earning enough?' with a picture showing the dead beat gazing wistfully at the boss' chair. You ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... twenty miles from the mainland, with a dead beat to it, I decided to seek for a position more accessible to New Guinea, and as I had not a teacher to spare for this little island, Mr. McFarlane decided to leave two of the Loyalty Island teachers here. It is fertile, and appears ...
— Adventures in New Guinea • James Chalmers
... the imp, stoutly, with his arms akimbo—"and why not? Don't you see that the poor boy is dead beat; and was I goin' to stand by and see him faint by his-self; all alone on ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... take no notice o' me, Master Nic," he said hoarsely. "Just put an oar over the ztarn and keep her head ztraight. Zhe'll go down fast enough. We ought to row up to fetch that fish we left, but we couldn't do it, zir; for I'm dead beat trying to get to you—just ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... speaking," asserted Mike earnestly. "You can find that out for yourself in the morning. Nobody'll molest ye. Yer jus' dead beat for want o' sleep, I can see that. Go upstairs and go to bed. I'll keep watch, and not a ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... to such tomfoolery for one," replied Tommy. "I'm dead beat." He went and sat down doggedly on the main hatch. "You got us on; get us off again," ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... us that night. I threw open the door of the bedroom next to mine, and went and locked myself into my own room. He was dead beat with roaming the streets, without a penny in his pocket, all day long. The bed to lie on was all he wanted ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... with you. If I go anywhere it will be up to Rosenthal's. I'm getting worried. It's after three o'clock now. She's got no money to get anything to eat. She'll come home dead beat out if she's been hungry ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... came home dead beat. I got into my cellar, was so tired that I threw myself down on the bed and wrapped myself up in my blankets, boots, mud, lice and all. I hadn't been asleep long before the Huns started "hating" the chateau. They have put over twenty-five large calibre shells ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... are getting better, but they only take very light loads still and get back from each journey pretty dead beat. In their present state they don't inspire confidence, but the hot weather is ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... will see she has as much as she can carry before long. It's all the better to make all snug before starting; it saves a lot of trouble afterwards, and the extra canvas would not have made ten minutes' difference to us at the outside. We shall have pretty nearly a dead beat down the Solent. Fortunately the tide will be running strong with us, but there will be a nasty kick up there. You will see we shall feel the short choppy seas there more than we shall when we get outside. She is a grand boat in a really heavy sea, but in short waves she puts her ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... can pity him for I remember once when I walked some miles through the snow, and my shoes got clogged up, I was so tired, what Uncle Tom called 'dead beat,' that I could not help crying the last mile before I ...
— Georgie's Present • Miss Brightwell
... who in fact looked tired and hungry. "You needn't put on them things," glancing at the shining steel handcuffs. "I s'pose, missus," he said, looking at Mansy, "you couldn't give a half-starved creetur a crust o' bread, could ye? I'm dead beat!" ...
— The Island House - A Tale for the Young Folks • F. M. Holmes
... the Porter, leaving me with that orphaned sort of feeling which a luggageless Englishman experiences; it is pouring cats and dogs; I am dead beat; I creep into the dark omnibus. I find myself quite alone. I wait impatiently—a quarter of an hour—twenty-five minutes—still no Porter; I am famished; to distract myself, I peer through the door, whence I can discern the messy vista of the railway-station in the rain; it's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... would certainly be delayed. I will go off to the Embassy and hustle a bit. If the wheels can be hurried, they shall be, I assure you. Then I'll go on to Benzonana, get your petrol, and come straight back. Meanwhile take my advice and have a sleep, like your man there. You look dead beat, and no wonder. Why, I ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... girl again from where he stood; "No, miss," he answered, "I think not. She's dead beat after a long tramp. The soles are wore off her shoes. Or likely she's fainted. It's a pity of her," he added for the relief of his own feelings, looking at ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... to Herrick?" he said in a concerned tone; "he looks dead beat. We thought he was dining at the Wood House; at least you said so, Yea-Verily, my child, and I ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... I was almost froze with skeer; But we rousted up some torches, And searched for 'em far and near. At last we struck hosses and wagon, Snowed under a soft white mound, Upsot, dead beat—but of little Gabe No hide nor ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... an' tewed as lang as I could, but my mouth began to get full o' watter, my legs an' airms were dead beat, an' I reckoned that 'twere all ower wi' me. An' then a fearful queer sort o' thing happened me. I were i' my father's farm on t' wold, laikin' wi' my brothers same as I used to do when I were a lile barn. An', what's more, I thowt it were my ninth birthday. You see, when I were nine ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... it, I knew it," groaned Hardock. "He was dead beat when we got back, for we've had an awful day. It's only been his spirit which has kept him up. And now I'm dead beat, too, for I had to almost carry the Major when we were nearly back. It's like killing ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... clawed his mouth free. "I got some dogs out there—dead beat," he said huskily. "Somebody go and take care of them, and I'll tell you what's ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... might have taken me to the ball with them," she said, saucily shaking her curls off her face. "I should have looked better than some of them, I'll be bound. I'm dead beat with fatigue. I've had all the work dressing them, and they are to ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... the Rank and File.—To spend an annual holiday in marching and counter-marching, and then, after thirty miles of moving over a heavy country, to return to London dead beat. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 9th, 1892 • Various
... I am glad I did. At last I determined I would wait till the house was quiet, and that then I would go down alone, and watch in the library in the dark. I lay down on my bed in my clothes to wait, and then—I had been up most of the night before with Denis; I was dead beat with acting and dancing—by ill luck I fell asleep. When I woke up I found to my horror that it was close on four o'clock. I instantly slipped off my shoes, and crept out of my room and down the stairs. I could not get to the library from the hall, as the stage blocked the ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... replied Hervey, with an air of relief. "You understand what it is for a man to need rest. I'll just hang around till the folks come, and then sneak off to bed. You don't mind, Prue, do you? I'm dead beat, and I want ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... below the wire, and hoping to work up to it. It was perhaps lucky I had so bad a cutlass, and my smarting hand bid me stay before I had got up to the wire, but just in season, so that I was only the better of my activity, not dead beat as yesterday. ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the prairie! I was almost froze with skeer; But we rousted up some torches, And sarched for 'em far and near. At last we struck hosses and wagon, Snowed under a soft white mound, Upsot, dead beat, but of little Gabe No hide nor hair ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... this mighty Nimrod brought home three bears and four deer. "How did you do it?" asked the envious multitude. "I was asleep in my wigwam, was waked up by a rumpus outside, rushed out with my gun, and chased the crowd around the hut till I was dead beat, then I bent my rifle across my knee into the exact circumference shape of my house, and fired. The bullet whistled by me for half an hour, chasing the varmints who were chasing each other; bum by, the bullet caught up, went through the whole crowd, and by gum; that 'ere ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... that," returned the first speaker; "and how about that dead beat of a half-nephew who borrowed twenty dollars of Yuba Bill on the way down, and then wanted to get off at Shootersvilie, but Bill wouldn't let him, and scooted him down to Spindler's and collected the money from Spindler himself afore he'd give ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... back of the tired-out fisherman. When he has met with an accident to his nets during the night, when he has fouled on some rocks in dragging them in for example, it is a desperately fatiguing affair to set to work to mend them when he gets ashore, dead beat with the labours of the morning. The fishermen, for what reason I do not know, will not entrust this work to their wives; they will rather, after having been out all night, keep at it themselves, though they drop off to sleep every few minutes. ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... military assets of the locality, and the brigadier just looked at the water and the lawn, and said, "A land flowing with milk and honey,—this is where I shall camp. I could not resist camping in such a spot even if I had old man De Wet dead beat a furlong from home!" And it was indeed an entrancing spot to the Karoo-worn warrior. Just one of those delightful oases which do exist, but which do not abound in Cape Colony. Upon them stand the best and oldest farms, for when the forebears of the present owners first ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... became of the bowlers? The airy young Barnacle replied that they grew tired, got dead beat, got lamed, got their backs broken, died off, gave it up, went in ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... we were perishing of cold and there was a great depth of snow." Xenophon said: "Upon my word, with weather such as you describe, when our provisions had run out, when the wine could not even be smelt, when numbers were dropping down dead beat, so acute was the suffering, with the enemy close on our heels; certainly, if at such a season as that I was guilty of outrage, I plead guilty to being a more outrageous brute than the ass, which is too wanton, they say, to feel fatigue. Still, I ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... counting the Jap, who still spoiled good grub, and it took a long time to snug that schooner down to double reefs and one head sail. The water in the hold had gained on us, and we pumped while we could stand it, then knocked off, and dropped down on deck for a snooze. We were dead beat, and told the cook to call us if the wind freshened or if anything happened. He didn't call us, but something happened. I wakened in time, and stood up, sleepy and stupid and cold; for you can't sleep on deck, even in the tropics, without getting chilled; and ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... the other north and east over the hills. Till ten o'clock or later we beat the country, searching behind every rock, and going through the woods and bracken in a close line. But we saw no sign of a stranger, and came back at last, dead beat, for food and a rest. When we got back we found that the policeman left in charge had been nosing about, and whiling away his time by collecting the boots of every one in the house and fitting them to the footprints on the flower-bed. As ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... last crawled out of the water, he was nigh dead beat. In the soft still light which the moon poured down he could see beyond the beach a dark strip which seemed to promise a bed. He staggered blindly over the stones to this refuge, found that it was grass, and, sinking upon it, ...
— The Flamp, The Ameliorator, and The Schoolboy's Apprentice • E. V. Lucas
... like a top, for I was dead beat; but two or three times I awoke with a tremendous start under the impression that I was falling. I've always found it so when obliged to spend the night in the branches of a tree. Did you ever sleep so, ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... kept each muscle of the body in full exercise whilst dancing, so now the jester, bidding the flute-girl quicken the time (presto! presto! prestissimo!), fell to capering madly, tossing legs and arms and head together, until he was fairly tired out, and threw himself dead beat upon the sofa, gasping: ...
— The Symposium • Xenophon
... the bit free and untiring as yet; Her neck was arched double, her nostrils were wide, And the tips of her tapering ears nearly met— "You're lighter than I am," said Alec at last; "The horse is dead beat and the mare isn't blown. She must be a good one—ride on and ride fast, You know your way now." ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... no canon, sir," said Griggs sharply. "The poor brutes are all dead beat; they've come to something that they can nibble, and they've struck work. The ponies are at it too. It's as good as saying that they won't stir another peg till ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... like that claret, and it does me good. I come in sometimes dead beat. I drink a couple of glasses, and I'm a new man. I took to it in the first instance for the same reason that I took to the cigars—it was cheap. I have it sent over direct from Geneva, and it costs me six shillings a dozen. How they do it I don't ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... any one but you. That's the—the hard luck of it. Florence caught us out on the slope. We were returning from the fire. We were dead beat. But we got to the ranch before any damage was done. We sure had trouble in finding a trace of you. Nick spotted the prints of your heels under the window. And then we knew. I had to fight the boys. If ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... overside. I cannot tell whether the lightning struck and split it, or whether, already blasted by the explosion, it had stood upright for those few seconds until a heave of the swell snapped the charred stays and released it. Nay, even the dead beat of ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... haversack, back over the Doubloon and into the wilds of Manzanilla, to settle certain disputed squatter claims, and otherwise enforce the law; and now the night had fallen, and he was not yet home. However, he rode up at last, dead beat, with a strong touch of his old swamp-fever, and having had an adventure, which had like to have proved his last. For as he rode through the Doubloon at low tide in the morning, he espied in the surf that river-god, or Jumby, of which I spoke just now; namely, the gray back-fin of a ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... sir, he'll do all right. Come you below and have a drop o' something, you're dead beat. There, sir, let him be a bit, and he'll talk to you fast enough. He's a tough little heart of oak, he is; let him be ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... privates blundered against our village and tripped over it. They had lost their way, were mud from hoofs to horns, dead beat, soaked to the skin, chilled to the bone, fed up to the back teeth. They were not going any further, neither were they going to be deluged to death if there was any cover to be had anywhere. They nosed about, and soon discovered a few sheets of corrugated iron, bore ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... returned dead beat and utterly tired out from a second unsuccessful search for the Captain. The floe is of enormous extent, for though we have traversed at least twenty miles of its surface, there has been no sign of its coming to an end. The frost has been so severe of late that the overlying snow is ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... boy for flooring and flushing it, Hitting and stopping, advance and retreat, For taking and giving, for sparring and rushing it, And will ne'er say enough, till he's down right dead beat; No crossing for him, true courage and bottom all, You'll find him a rum un, try on if you can; You shy-cocks, he shows 'em no favour, 'od rot 'em all, When he fights he trys to accomplish his man; ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... attention as it deserved to the narrative with which the officer favored us en route, of how he had been gradually getting the clew to the fugitive's many doublings and disguises till he came upon his retreat at last. "They mostly make for home when they're dead beat," he remarked, alluding to Bruce's having selected London as ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... he said. "I could almost wish she had made good her escape. She got out, Heaven alone knows how, to see her child, which she had heard was ill. But the ground she must have covered in the time! She was absolutely dead beat when she was taken. And she was not in her prison clothes. That is so inexplicable. How she got others she alone knows. Some one must have befriended her, and given them to her—some one very poor, for she was miserably clad, and the extraordinary thing is that though she was ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... kangaroo's weak point. But now we lose sight of both dogs and kangaroo; a burst of three minutes has sufficed to exhaust our first wind, and to break one of our shins; for tearing through grass as high as one's middle and stumbling over charred stumps and fallen trees, soon reduces one to the "dead beat" predicament. Jerry, alone, thanks to his hard ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... Kerl," meaning "a boar that refused to be shot," or "I could easily have killed him if my gun," etc., till every one, sleepy and tired, had no more conversation to exchange, and the Duke left, as he said, to write letters, and we simpler mortals did not mind saying that we were dead beat and went to bed. ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... upon—Tulp at my heels. If he had not, from utter weariness, cried out after a time, I should have followed the track straight, unceasing, over the four leagues and more to the Sacondaga. As it was, I had presently to stop and retrace my steps to where he sat on a wayside stump, dead beat. ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... but his own oddness he thought, for everyone was full of his praises as they strolled on talking of the race. Miller praised his style, and time, and pluck. "Didn't you feel how the boat sprung when I called on you at the Cherwell?" he said to the Captain. "Drysdale was always dead beat at the Gut, and just like a log in the boat, pretty much like some of the ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... child and I went on, like two pendulums crossing each other in their swing, trying to reach the same dead beat of mutual intelligence. ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... now,' said Agatha, who was never discomposed. 'Come upstairs to bed at once, you are wet through. How could you walk through such a storm! Not another word till you have had something to eat. Come along—you are dead beat.' ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... to think where we are without askin' any questions, and I'm dead beat. I don't remember no such house as this on ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... night we arrived at a little inn. The beds were not made, and, knowing how long it took a Finn to accomplish anything of the kind, we begged her to be as quick as possible, as we were dead beat. She pulled out the wooden bed, she thumped the mattress, and at last she went away, we hoped and believed to fetch the sheets. She remained absent for some time, but when she returned it was not with the sheets; it was with what to her mind was far more important, ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... tall and wiry, and 'peared like a young man what had parstured 'mongst wild oats. He seemed cut out for a gintleman, but run to seed too quick and turned out nigh kin to a dead beat. One-half of him was hanssum, 'minded me mightly of that stone head with kurly hair what sets over the sody fountin in the drug store, on Main Street. Oh, yes'ir, one side was too pretty for a man; but t'other! Fo' Gawd! ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... under us if we don't give them an hour or two," he said, quietly. "They 're both dead beat." ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... knowin' whether you'll pay or not! Ecod! What is you? A scoundrel? A dead beat? A rascal? A ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... him if he means to go, I quite admit. But I haven't much faith in his keeping on the straight, and that's a fact. I don't like his going back to the hut, and I'd have prevented it if I'd known. But I slept in the sitting-room last night, and I was dead beat. ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... later returned with a collection of roots and cuttings and seedlings, which would have taken another person hours to plant properly, but which Faith got into the ground somehow in less than one. She had been too dead beat to get water and put round their roots, and it never occurred to Audrey to do so for her; so the poor things hung wilting and dejected-looking in the early morning sunshine, and only added to the unsightliness of ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch |
