Like a proverbial kitten up a tree

Usage examples of helpless.

When Jefferson inquired whether Adams might borrow again from the Dutch, and reported that French officers in Paris were angry over not having been paid what they were due for services in the Revolution, Adams was helpless to do anything.

He had dwelt here in the Scarlet Pylon, alone with his memories amid the ruins of his people, until the coming of Sarchimus, who discovered him during a period of slumber or aestivation, when he was virtually helpless.

Even after all those years, after what he had done to her family, she was as helpless as a Pavlovian dog to stop her response to him.

Even as the door slid shut behind him, a half dozen voices inside her head were whispering warnings of where the danger in this plan might lie, describing the various things that Allo and the Guild might do to her while she was chilled and helpless.

Even in her worst moments on Amabile or in her most discouraging moments of search, she had not been this helpless.

And as she descended she was battered by debris, helpless ammonites, clams, squid, even rocks torn from the floor.

The amphicyon glared in helpless rage at the small human sitting high above it, the human that was forcing, bending, compelling.

It is charged that to-day, in American physiological laboratories and in medical schools as well, helpless animals are subjected to torture.

Maybe there was something to the simpering, helpless, batting-the-eyelashes style of coquettishness practiced by these antebellum women.

IX He felt the wild beast in him betweenwhiles So masterfully rude, that he would grieve To see the helpless delicate thing receive His guardianship through certain dark defiles.

His competitors like Harcourt Biosciences were helpless, buried by an avalanche of new government restrictions on their research.

She had reared eyasses-young birds hatched in the mews or captured still helpless, accustomed before they were feathered to feed from a hand or glove.

She moaned, falling helpless, lost down a black velvet tunnel of exquisite arousal.

African blacks found themselves especially helpless when removed from this.

An attack by tactical fighters against Iceland was expected at any time, and the bomber crews knew that any NATO fighter pilot worthy of his name would instantly jettison his bombload for a chance at air-to-air combat with so helpless a target as a twenty-year-old Badger.