Level best

Then came a pause, each man aiming his level best, as indeed one is likely to do when one knows that life itself depends upon the shot.

Val walked out behind his mother, chin squared, eyelids drooped, doing his level best to despise everybody.

―Say papa, baby. Say pa pa pa pa pa pa pa. / And baby did his level best to say it for he was very intelligent for eleven months everyone said and big for his age and the picture of health, a perfect little bunch of love, and he would certainly turn out to be something great, they said.

And, of course, a special credit has to go to those Royal Navy officers who saw the situation for what it truly was, and would do their absolute level best to stop it regardless of treaties or other political considerations, eventually forcing the British Parliament to catch up with their own morality.

The king-to-be is sulking in a carriage beside his mother, who’s doing her level best to prepare her son for what’s to come.