the devil take the hindmost

"Oh, don't talk to me about your socialists, I've got no patience with them," she cried. "It only means that another lot of lazy loafers will make a good thing out of the working classes. My motto is, leave me alone; I don't want anyone interfering with me; I'll make the best of a bad job, and the devil take the hindmost."

1915, W[illiam] Somerset Maugham, chapter CVIII, in Of Human Bondage, New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, →OCLC, page 572

‘Abandon them to their fate, you say?’ He looked over at his first mate, at the lines of experience etched into his face, and knew that he was right. ‘Run before the storm and the devil take the hindmost.’ He’d lived by that rule since he’d sailed from the Port of London on that bitter winter night long ago. It had saved his life many a time since, and yet …

2016, Sally Malcolm, The Legend of the Gypsy Hawk, Camberley, Surrey: Choc Lit Limited, →ISBN, page 45

And if fate should turn her back on them, or turn away from them, leaving them to their own devices, and should they find themselves be sore afraid, then they would simply sail away to the other side of the world. They would ride like the wind. They would sail once more into the breach and damn the torpedos! God save the Queen! And the devil take the hindmost!

2020, Ted Bell, Dragonfire, New York, N.Y.: Berkley, published 2021, →ISBN, page 536

Completely unknown territory lay outside; puzzling, impossible networks of Underground trains and moving staircases; buses that jerked to a stop and barely gave you time to get on before speeding away. No time to ask questions; no time to ask for answers to be repeated; it was all quick and go and don’t come again. London’s for the thrusting and the Devil take the hindmost.

1973, James Broom Lynne, “Monday, 13th December, 08.20 hrs.”, in Collision!, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., →ISBN, pages 62–63

“We’ll trot to the gate, side by side, and then we’ll race straight down the road, and the Devil take the hindmost,” shouted the Grand Vizier as fiercely as he could to his laughing partner.

1976, Jackson Reed [pseudonym; George Jackson Eder], chapter 14, in The Raptures of Love, New York, N.Y.: Pyramid Publications, →ISBN, page 204