|
|
|
More "Explosion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the crowd became excessive; for, just as it had darted out from the narrow channel, lined on both sides with the whole thirty thousand old, middle-aged, and young, men, maids, and matrons of the city, a thick smoke was seen rising from its poop, its frame quivered, and, with a tremendous explosion, the chaloupe rose into the air in ten thousand fragments ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 340, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various
... the destruction of the planet an almost certainty, the collective nervous system was just one micron away from explosion. There was nothing else to think about or talk about, and no one tried to ...
— Alien Offer • Al Sevcik
... caused widespread discontent, and the Chartist movement was at its height in 1839. Labourers and factory owners were alarmed; the Government was besieged with petitions for military protection at a hundred points, and all the elements of a dangerous explosion were gathered together. At this critical time Charles Napier was offered the command of the troops in the northern district, and amply did he vindicate the choice. By the most careful preparation ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... to owe its destructive qualities in shells to the powerful character of the exploder which ignites it. It has been known for some years that all explosives (including gunpowder) are capable of two orders of explosion according as they are merely ignited or excited by a weak fuse or as they are powerfully shocked by a more vigorous excitant. Fulminate of mercury has been found most serviceable for the latter purpose. With melenite the French have reproduced all the results that the Germans ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... succeeded in making the Great Dane carry her on his back quite all the way around the circular coleus bed when the explosion took place. There was a startling thunderclap of fierce words from the portico, and she slipped from the dog's back and stared wide-eyed. Her grandfather was on his feet, towering above the visitor as if he were about to fall ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... There was another explosion, and a puff of smoke seemed to rise right out of the middle of the garden, where the old tree stood, under which we had ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... when I went into society I used to carry her pictures with me in a portfolio and hand them round to the company. I remember, once, a lady thought I was offering them for sale, and I took it very ill. We don't know what we may come to! Then came my dark days, and my explosion with Madame Nioche. Noemie had no more twenty-franc lessons; but in the course of time, when she grew older, and it became highly expedient that she should do something that would help to keep us alive, she bethought herself ...
— The American • Henry James
... say to lowness of spirits; on the contrary, I had those feelings about me only during the time my eyes were employed upon such frightful objects; for my spirits were enlivened by pure air, exercise, and temperance:—nay, I remember to have been struck in the same manner, when the grand explosion of the fireworks was played off, many years ago, upon the conclusion of peace! The blast was so great, that it appeared as if it were designed to take with it all earthly things; and I felt almost forced by it, and summoned from my seat, ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... front of me comes in sight. Catching him up fast. He puts on full speed. Still gaining on him. Pace terrific. Sudden flash just ahead, followed by loud explosion. Fellow's benzine reservoir blown up apparently. Pass over smoking ruins of car. Driver nowhere to be seen. Probably lying in neighbouring field. That puts ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton
... been formed by the rotation of the earth on its axis, as might have been suspected, had all these strata been parallel with that axis. They may, indeed, have been thrown up by explosions, as Whitehurst supposes, or have been the effect of convulsions. But there can be no proof of the explosion, nor is it probable that convulsions have deformed every spot of the earth. It is now generally agreed that rock grows, and it seems that it grows in layers in every direction, as the branches of trees grow in all directions. Why seek further the solution ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... change saltpeter into powder, and the Homeric brain of the great Goethe had sucked up, as an alembic, all the juice of the forbidden fruit. Those who did not read him did not believe it, knew nothing of it. Poor creatures! The explosion carried them away like grains of dust into the abyss ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... night; while beyond the posture of prayer I could do little. Only unformed or half formed thoughts and petitions struggled in my mind, through a crowd of jostling regrets and wishes and confusions, in which I could hardly distinguish anything. But no explosion followed, of either ridicule or amusement, and I had been suffered from that night to do as I would, not certainly always ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... tenancy of our predecessors, was exploded two days after our arrival, inflicting heavy casualties upon "D" Company. Curiously enough, the damage to the trench was comparatively slight; but the tremendous shock of the explosion killed more than one man by concussion, and brought down the roofs of several dug-outs upon their sleeping occupants. Altogether it was a sad business, and the Battalion swore ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... There is an explosion on her left. Mrs. Chichester looks mournfully in that direction to see the cause of it. There is only Mr. Gower to be seen! He, as usual, is misconducting himself to quite a remarkable degree. He is now, in fact, laughing so hard but so silently that the tears are running down his cheeks. ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... alluding to the enthusiasm of a moment, and the manner in which she had expressed it, he endeavoured to falter forth an apology. His excuses, though he was unable to give them any regular shape, were accepted by his companion, who had indeed suppressed her indignation after its first explosion—"Speak no more on't," she said. "And now let us part; our conversation may attract more notice than is convenient ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... the advantage that such an alliance would be to a man threatened with the kind of revelation which menaced Medland; it was clear to his mind that Medland had appreciated it too, and had laid a cunning trap for Dick's innocent feet. It did not suit him to produce yet the public explosion which he destined for his enemy; but he lost no time in determining to checkmate this last ingenious move by some private communication which would put Dick—or perhaps better still, Dick's ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... The explosion, however, did not come at once. Pulteney continued to be on seemingly good terms with Walpole, and shortly afterwards the comparatively humble post of Cofferer to the Household was offered to him—some say was asked for by him. It ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... presently as I rode along I heard a turkey gobble close by, and, dismounting, I crept among the bushes and peered into the fog as well as I could. I saw several dark objects, and drawing up my double-barrelled shot-gun fired at them. Hardly had the noise of the explosion died away, when I heard a great flopping in the bushes, and on going up to it found a large turkey making his last kicks. I picked him up and was about to turn away, when I saw another fine old gobbler desperately ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... was a very short one, but it had its effect in encouraging the crew. Scarcely a minute afterwards a fearful sound was heard. It was that of an explosion. And the ship trembled from stem to stern, while those on the quarter-deck saw the poop lifting up into the air, sending some of those on it overboard, and killing ...
— John Deane of Nottingham - Historic Adventures by Land and Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... a load of supplies to the Y.M.C.A. hut. A quarter of a mile to my right a deafening explosion was accompanied by a mass of debris thrown high in the air. "A German bomb!" was the first thought. And we waited expectantly to see where the next one would strike. When there was no second, I drove around to investigate. ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... engines and came almost to a standstill. There was a sudden flash from one of her sponsons, a puff of smoke, and then the roar of a six-inch gun. The shell struck a palm not a hundred yards from where Jack was standing, and with a loud explosion took off the entire top as neatly as though a knife ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... was succeeded by another explosion of doctrine wholly and peculiarly Japanese, and ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... cortege which wended its way slowly back over the hills to their home. They felt it was paying a tribute to a friend and companion. All doubts on their part had been dispelled. He had been one of their companions on that terrible night when the explosion had sent their ship to the bottom, and had cast them adrift on a sea which ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... significant fact is unnecessary. It contains a lesson and a warning which a fool need not err in reading and understanding. Oppression is a powder magazine exposed always to the danger of explosion from spontaneous ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... feature, an old gray-bearded gunner— I can see him to this day—approached the cannon, put it in position, and took aim for a good while. There was a mighty explosion, mingled ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... became apparent that the people were charged with Independence doctrines, and, like an electrified Leyden jar, only waited for the touch of a skilful hand to produce the explosion. "Common Sense" drew the spark. The winged words flew over the country and produced so rapid a change of opinion, that, in most cases, conservatives judged it useless to publish the answers they had prepared. One or two appeared. None attracted attention. About ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... the part, as indeed he was, being three years my junior. The overwhelming objection, however, was his own insuperable dislike to the idea of acting, and his ludicrous incapacity for assuming the faintest appearance of any sentiment. However, he learned the words, and never shall I forget the explosion of laughter which shook my father, my mother, and myself, when, after hearing him recite the balcony scene with the most indescribable mixture of shy terror and nervous convulsions of suppressed giggling, my father threw down the book, and Henry ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... different events and topics are we excited to talk! It must be some occurrence of very terrible, vile, or grotesque effect that can take our minds from our business. We discuss the ghastly particulars of a steamboat explosion, or the evidence in a trial for murder; or if the chief magistrate addresses his fellow-citizens in his colloquial, yet dignified way, we dispute whether he was not, at the time of the speech, a martyr to those life-long habits of abstinence from which he is known ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... calibres and at all distances. We learn to read the score & distinguish the instruments. Near us are field batteries; far away are siege guns. Over all there is the unmistakable, sharp, metallic twang of the French 75, the whistle of its shell and the lesser report of its explosion. ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... GREAT ELEMENT.—Now, let us examine the question of this power which is able to set gravity at naught. The quality called energy resides in material itself. It is something within matter, and does not come from without. The power derived from the explosion of a charge of powder comes from within the substance; and so with falling water, or ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... this outburst, this revelation, this explosion, may be imagined but can never be ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... what we please with the galleon and the town. But in order to ensure complete success, the ordnance in both batteries must be fired as nearly as possible at the same moment; therefore a resolute man must be left in the lower battery to fire the match upon the instant that he hears the explosion of the guns in the upper battery, after which he must run for his life. I can see exactly how the thing is to be done, sirs; and if you approve of my plan we will be starting at once, with your good leave; for it is already late, and we ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... smoke of the lights we carried increased the stifling sensation. In these circumstances, I felt anxious only to go as far as would enable me to fire a pistol with effect in one of the vaults. This is well worth while, inasmuch as the sound of the explosion was louder than the roar of a cannon. In fact, it almost rent the drum of my ears, and rolled on like thunder through the interior of the pyramid, multiplied and magnified as it was by a thousand echoes. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... was a terrible explosion, a blinding flash, illumining the night like day. A German submarine had launched a torpedo and it had gone home. The foremost British ...
— The Boy Allies Under the Sea • Robert L. Drake
... lamps; and the light from either a student-lamp, or the lamp to which a "student-burner" has been applied, is the purest and steadiest now in use. A few simple rules for the care of lamps will prevent, not only danger of explosion, but much breakage of chimneys, ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... practice, during several years, was confined to about twenty shots. I was afraid to use it; but now and then it was absolutely necessary that it should be cleaned, after lying for months loaded. On such occasions my men had the gratification of firing it, and the explosion was always accompanied by two men falling on their backs (one having propped up the shooter), and the "Baby" flying some yards behind them. This rifle was made by Holland, of Bond Street, and I could highly recommend it for Goliath of Gath, but ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... as she could the meaning and method of the Fenelby Domestic Tariff, and its simple schedule of rates, and Bridget listened attentively. Mrs. Fenelby expected an explosion, and was ...
— The Cheerful Smugglers • Ellis Parker Butler
... of light love and bloody war, with a chorus thundered forth by twenty voices. Meantime, a veteran in the corner is prosing about Dettingen and Fontenoy, and relates camp- traditions of Marlborough's battles, till his pipe, having been roguishly charged with gunpowder, makes a terrible explosion under his nose. And now they all vanish in a puff of smoke ...
— Old Ticonderoga, A Picture of The Past - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... from this shattering explosion of Penny's books, a little quiet work would have begun, had not Doe, with his romantic imagination lit by the glow of Penny's audacity, started to crave the notoriety of being likewise a leader of men. He rose from his desk, approached Mr. Caesar, and ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... entrance and reaching in as far as he could with his hand, felt the forms of two bears. Making sure of the exact position of the head of one of them, he then shoved his gun in until the muzzle was close to the ear of one of the bears and then he fired. The explosion aroused the other bear and as it crawled out Oo-koo-hoo killed it with his axe. The latter was a brown bear while the former ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... proper moment we'd push Junior out of his orbit around Tara, and the greater orbit around Alpha Centauri, by utilizing both speeds, plus the initial thrust. But by being one blast short, forty minutes late, the explosion will take place when Junior is forty minutes out of position"—he paused and calculated rapidly in his mind—"that's about forty-eight thousand miles out of position. When it goes off, instead of sending ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... and to be heard, and was then actually conferring with the Duke. Up to that moment the hatred with which the Presbyterian members of the assembly regarded the merciless persecutor of their brethren in the faith had been restrained by the decorous forms of parliamentary deliberation. But now the explosion was terrible. Hamilton himself, who, by the acknowledgment of his opponents, had hitherto performed the duties of President with gravity and impartiality, was the loudest and fiercest man in the hall. "It is high time," he cried, "that we [should find] the enemies of our religion ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... parson bent over the hearth, Thomasina took Miss Kitty round the waist, and Miss Betty clutched her black velvet bag till the steel beads ran into her hands, and they were quite prepared for an explosion, and sulphur, and blue lights, ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... fill it up with two parts of hydrogen gas, and bring a lighted taper, or other burning body, to the mouth of the bottle, the combustion of the two gasses takes place instantaneously with a violent explosion. This experiment ought only to be made in a bottle of very strong green glass, holding not more than a pint, and wrapped round with twine, otherwise the operator will be exposed to great danger from the rupture ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... the real fighters swept past to the accompaniment of biting snaps like the explosion of firecrackers. Then he fought his way to the front again, elbowing men ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... me, and declare that I cannot possibly go, because I promised yesterday to dine with them and go to the woods to look for mushrooms. I bow and sit down again. My soul is boiling with rage, and I feel that in another moment I may not be able to answer for myself, that there may be an explosion, but gentlemanly feeling and the fear of committing a breach of good manners compels me to obey the ladies. And ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... yere phenomenon of me wiltin' that a-way an' tryin to form some opinions about it, thar's a explosion like forty battles all in one. For a moment, I reckons that somehow we-all has opened up a volcano inadvertent, an' that from now on Loosiana can boast a Hecla of her own. But it ain't no volcano. It's ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... soldiering for the last eight years. He served under Wellington in Spain, fought all through the Chilian War, was Cochrane's right-hand man at the capture of Valdivia, and now he has come to help us. He has been shipwrecked, taken prisoner, wounded times out of number, blown up by a powder explosion—after which he was confined for six weeks in a dark room and fed through a plaster mask—and nearly killed by fever. I should say he has crowded as much excitement into his life as any ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... and lets the bow fly back to its natural shape. So when the hammer falls upon a detonating compound. By knocking out the inner molecular obstructions, it lets the constituent gases resume their normal bulk, and so permits the explosion to ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... read of the vortex caused by a ship sinking, but as far as I could see there was in this case not the slightest disturbance. It was pathetic to see this beautiful ship torpedoed and in thirty-two minutes at the bottom of the sea. I believe the only lives lost were those of men injured by the explosion. Meanwhile five destroyers came up from Helles at a terrific speed, the water curling from their bows; they and all the other destroyers circled round and round the bay, but the submarine lay low and got off. Her commander ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... assist in extinguishing the flames, or to bring away as many as I could of those on board. Several of the other ships were also sending their uninjured boats to the rescue; but before they could reach the blazing ship, we heard a fearfully loud explosion. Up went her decks. Fragments of planks and timbers, and even heavy guns, with human bodies torn and rent asunder, rose in the air; the whole ship blazed furiously, lighting up the surrounding vessels with a lurid glare, when suddenly her hull sank, and all was dark ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... of Peace, the author, did not prevent an explosion of delighted shrieks from the little company, but the child merely fixed her brown eyes, somber with reproof, upon the perfectly grave face of the Doctor of Laws, and demanded, "Now, grandpa, what made ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... an affidavit to the contrary, and therefore I still say nothing against the supposition: indeed, were geologists to assert that the whole continent of America had in like manner been formed by the simultaneous explosion of a train of Etnas laid under the water all the way from the North Pole to the parallel of Cape Horn, I am the last man in ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... there was heard a tremendous explosion in the department of Sky-High. Mrs. Van Buren came running down-stairs. Lucy followed her, all eyes and ears. Irish Nora met them, running up-stairs. The kitten fled out, and jumped over the fence. The ...
— Little Sky-High - The Surprising Doings of Washee-Washee-Wang • Hezekiah Butterworth
... Unfortunately, the instantaneous explosion of such a vast quantity of gun-cotton, by giving rise to a violent commotion in the atmosphere, generated so much vapor and mist as to render the Moon invisible for several nights to the innumerable watchers in the Western Hemisphere, ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... we proceeded, she wrapped me up in a polonaise; but the cold increasing, I inadvertently crept into her bosom. Once there I could not get out, and from thenceforward the poor general had considerably the worst of it. She became so provoking that I wondered how he could refrain from an explosion. To do him justice, he did at last threaten to get out of the carriage; upon which, roused by me, she collared him—and conquered. When he got to his own district, things grew worse, for if any aide-de-camp ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... one hand, passed the other somewhat violently over his now grizzled locks; smoke issued from the uplifted beaver as it were a cloud of wrath, and the safety-valve of his anger opened, and emitted a visible steam, preventing positive explosion and probably apoplexy. 'Good heavens!'—and the archdeacon looked up to the gray pinnacles of the cathedral tower, making a mute appeal to that still living witness which had looked down on the doings of so many ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... story on the front page this morning about an explosion at Columbia Avenue Station—I went out on it with another man my senior in years and experience, whom Watrous expected to write the story while I hustled for facts. When we got back I had all the facts, and what little he had was incorrect—so I said I would dispense with his services ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... vindication of the people's claims. But what can you expect! It takes a loud voice to make the deaf hear. Too long have they answered our voices by imprisonment, the rope, rifle volleys. Make no mistake; the explosion of my bomb is not only the cry of the rebel Vaillant, but the cry of an entire class which vindicates its rights, and which will soon add acts to words. For, be sure of it, in vain will they pass laws. ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... Rosenblatt would leave the cave on the pretext of securing a paper left in his cabin. A pile of brushwood at some distance from the cave would be burning. On his way to his cabin Rosenblatt would fire the train and wait the explosion in his own shack, the accidental nature of which could easily be explained under the circumstances. In order to remove suspicion from him, Rosenblatt was to appear during the early evening in a railway camp some distance away. The plot was so conceived and the details ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... March 10.—An explosion on the tug-boat "John Markee," in Boston Harbor, instantly killed the entire crew, consisting ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... reached the house and seized the infant, and started with frenzied speed to ascend the hill again. Her cousin, who had seen to the safety of the others of his family, had now started out to meet her. They saw each other and hurried with all the speed they could to meet. Within touch a terrific explosion deafened them as the father seized his child, and Margot, struck by a boulder belched from the throat of the fierce volcano, sank back into the ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... air of gloom at this time hung over official Washington, for the minds of all were still oppressed by the memory of that fatal accident—the explosion of the great cannon "Peacemaker" on board the war vessel Princeton—which had killed Mr. Upshur, our secretary of state, with others, and had, at one blow, come so near to depriving this government of its head and his official family; the number of prominent ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... at the dressing station." I went back to the station. For nearly a mile the wounded and gassed men were lying on each side of the road waiting for conveyances to remove them. I spoke to a Tommy who had met with a peculiar accident; he had two plates in his mouth and the concussion of a shell explosion in his immediate vicinity had broken the plates into four pieces, leaving him ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... struck the colony. Food supplies were exhausted. Starvation became a reality. A general drought blanketed eastern Virginia. The Indians too were on short rations. Smith, the provider, who had been injured by an explosion of gunpowder, had returned to England. It was one of the most cruel experiences ever endured by a group of men. The climax came during the ...
— Agriculture in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Lyman Carrier
... breath that swelled him dangerously. He opened his lips and the air rushed out with roaring sound. Again he inspired, raised his clenched hands above his head, stood like some great tottering image upon the brink of internal explosion. ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... him—and the chapel before you came?" Letitia queried cautiously, as if fearing the explosion she felt was sure ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... a veritable explosion, so fierce that she started back in terror. Then he rose from his chair, abruptly quitted the porch and walked down the path toward the bridge in his accustomed ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... left in the camp, including my two guards, were now standing listening eagerly for the voice of the cannon. It came, a loud explosion that dwarfed all rifle-fire any of us had ever heard. With screams of joy the guard began dancing about me and the older men danced around the Dales. They went through all the grotesque attitudes and steps which they use in ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... a quiet morning enough—all except the brief scene with the lunatic. The transaction in the church had not been noisy; there was no explosion of passion, no loud altercation, no dispute, no defiance or challenge, no tears, no sobs: a few words had been spoken, a calmly pronounced objection to the marriage made; some stern, short questions put by Mr. Rochester; answers, explanations given, evidence adduced; an open admission ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... her tousled head through the doorway to see how the gentleman was being put into the box. Two ringing slaps resounded, however, by an explosion of sobs. And as soon as the mother returned she began to gossip about her daughter for the benefit of the two men who were settling me in ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... were filled with gunpowder, and attached by the divers to the wreck, these were connected by conducting wires with a battery on board a lighter above, at a sufficient distance to be out of reach of danger when the explosion took place. Colonel Pasley then gave the word to fire the end of the rod; instantly a report was heard, and those who witnessed the explosions, say that the effect was very beautiful. On one occasion, the water ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... I could tell our guns," murmured Dan at each quick explosion. "Hush! there comes the cheer, now—somebody's charging! It may be our brigade, Big Abel, ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... me." She was growing nervous, and in her nervousness she precipitated the explosion by venturing rashly: "But there's Alice, too, isn't there, to like them?" Her voice was firm and friendly. Once for all she intended him to understand how aloof she stood from ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... for trouble when they destroyed that redoubt, and our men had it. Infuriated by a massacre of their garrison in the mine-explosion and by the loss of their spear-head, the Germans kept up a furious bombardment on our trenches in that neighborhood in bursts of gun-fire which tossed our earthworks about and killed and wounded many men. Our line at Hooge at that time was held by the King's Royal Rifles ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... Cape Cod Indians led to a fight between them and the French in which one Frenchman was killed, and Champlain narrowly escaped death through the explosion of his own musket. At Cape Cod De Monts turned back. Five of the six weeks allotted to the voyage were over, and lack of food made it impossible to enter Long Island Sound. Hence 'Sieur de Monts determined ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... a terrific explosion and a roar, and though Hamilton had been half expecting it, he jumped. ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... and a brood of half-grown Partridges start up like an explosion, a few paces from me, and, scattering, disappear in the bushes on all sides. Let me sit down here behind this screen of ferns and briers, and hear this wild-hen of the woods call together her brood. Have you observed at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... may know real weariness. It comes when one has been trying with all his heart and soul to think his way along some difficult road of thought. Of a sudden he finds himself unable to go on. Something within him stops. A tiny explosion takes place. He bursts into words and talks, perhaps foolishly. Little side currents of his nature he didn't know were there run out and get themselves expressed. It is at such times that a man boasts, uses big words, makes a fool ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... own men and to listen to the faint sounds made by the enemy's workmen. One day they were sitting on two wine kegs, watching four soldiers at work at the end of a short gallery that had been driven towards the Spaniards. Suddenly there was an explosion, the miners were blown backwards, the end of the gallery disappeared, and a crowd of Walloon soldiers almost immediately afterwards ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... that portion of the European movement which burst forth into flame in France between the fall of the Bastille and those fatal days of Vendemiaire, Fructidor, Floreal, Brumaire, in which the explosion came convulsively to its end, we seem to see a microcosm of the Byronic epos. The succession of moods is identical. Overthrow, rage, intense material energy, crime, profound melancholy, half-cynical dejection. The Revolution was the battle of Will against the social forces of a dozen centuries. ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... wondered. She would not move to get up and look again, lest she should rouse her aunt. Suddenly, she heard the boom of a great explosion. ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... top of the stage-coach was so particularly interested in this dispute as the member of the Foreign Legion, who was on his way either to the gallows or a perpetual prison. I observed that he nervously twitched at his handcuffs, perhaps—as I thought—to prepare for escape in case of an explosion; or else to be ready for the rescue; or else to take advantage of his captor, the tall policeman—jump from the stage, and run for dear life and liberty. Never was I more mistaken. True to his race, and to tradition, Pat was only striving to free himself from the leather shackles, in order ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... question about Tom's statement. They had approached close to the side of a small, sunken and wrecked steamer, and in her side was torn a great hole. In the light from the submarine it could be seen that the plates bent inward, indicating that the explosion was ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... news—"the Dutch have taken Holland,"—which, I suppose, will be succeeded by the actual explosion of the Thames. Five provinces have declared for young Stadt, and there will be inundation, conflagration, constupration, consternation, and every sort of nation and nations, fighting away, up to their knees, in the damnable quags ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... scene of this tragedy, to a distant, I wish I could say a happier day. The story I have to tell is of a lovely little girl, with sunny hair and laughing eyes, traveling with her parents, evidently people of wealth and refinement, upon a Mississippi steamboat. There is an explosion, one of those terrible catastrophes which leave the imprint of an unsettled mind upon the survivors. Hundreds of mangled remains are sent into eternity. When the wreck is cleared away this sweet little girl is found ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... surcharged with gossip. There was danger of an explosion any moment. Madame Dunoyer gave it out that the brilliant subaltern was to marry the girl. The Madame was going to capture the youth, either with her own charms or those of her daughter—or combined. Rumblings were heard on the horizon. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... latch of Madame Beck's chamber-door (opening into the nursery) gave a sudden click, as if the hand holding it had been slightly convulsed; there was the suppressed explosion of an irrepressible sneeze. These little accidents will happen to the best of us. Madame—excellent woman! was then on duty. She had come home quietly, stolen up-stairs on tip-toe; she was in her ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... above her water-line and pretty well aft. Those on her deck who saw her make that last leap out of water hoped for the best, though waiting for the worst. But the resulting explosion was nothing tremendous—so officers and men say, and so adding a little more data to U-boat history. The bark of one of their own little 4-inch guns was more impressive. There was a flame and an up-shooting cloud of black smoke, followed instantly by another explosion, that of their own depth ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... rip in the great ice vault a mile long with a noise like the explosion of a barrel of powder. The rip ran north and south about mid-stream. They were on the west sheet and felt it waver and subside till it had found a bearing ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... he would have been if both his legs had not been prematurely carried away; or in what a Trafalgar of triumph he would have ended, if, unfortunately, he had not happened to have been blown blind by the explosion of that unlucky magazine. ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... general attack, and they rushed from their houses armed with heavy sticks and knives and attacked the Europeans. Rumours had for some time been current among them that the Christians intended to conquer Egypt and to put down the Mahomedan religion, and in their excited state a spark caused an explosion. It was perhaps fortunate that it came when it did, and was confined to a comparatively small part of the town; for had it spread over the whole city the loss of life would have been great indeed, for the natives had entirely their ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... no! You would explode—sooner or later. And it would be a very violent explosion. I wonder if you have ever been really furious with any one you cared about—with Tommy ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... on it and was surprised when it blew his hand off. We would drop on top of the Turks' bombs a coat or sand-bag, and it was surprising how little damage was done. If you put a sheet of iron on top of one, or a sand-bag full of earth, it would make the explosion very much worse, but loose cloth would spread out and make a spring-cushion by compression of the ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... explosion; through a cloud of smoke I saw the fellow's right arm stretched straight up in the air, his hand clutching a smoking pistol, and Elerson holding the arm rigid ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... belonged to the boy whose innocent pastime was that of flying kites during recess. Paul wound this string firmly and tightly around the Chinese cracker until it had assumed considerable proportions. He argued on the principle that, if paper resisted the force of the explosion, the additional binding of string would cause a much louder one. The bomb was at last completed and Stockie received a hint to keep his ears open for music that night. The little iron bed of the doomed talebearer was not far ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... powerful conspiracy. The plot was gradually matured, extending itself, in the course of the few following months, not only throughout England, but also into France and Spain. The time for the final explosion was drawing near, when, as usual in such cases, intelligence of the existence of this treason, in the form of vague rumors, reached the queen. One day, when the leading conspirators were assembled at Essex's palace, a messenger came to summon ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... how he had fallen asleep in the chapel, had waked but a minute ago, had left it by the minstrels' gallery, had reached the floor of the hall, and was approaching the western door, which was open, in order to cross the court to his lodging near the watch-tower, when a hellish explosion, followed by the most frightful roaring, mingled with shrieks and demoniacal laughter, arrested him; and the same instant, through the open door, he saw, as plainly as he now saw his noble master, a torrent rush from the archway, full of dim figures, wallowing and shouting. The same moment ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... African coast while on a voyage to India carrying British troops. There was gunpowder aboard li- able to blow up at any moment. Some of it did indeed ex- plode, tearing a huge hole in the vessel's side. A storm added to the terror, and the waters entering the breach caused by the explosion, combated with the fire. After ten days of desperate struggle, the charred and ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... who had a high opinion of him; but like many of his lordship's contemporaries, his Majesty strongly deprecated the frequent outbursts of temper on the part of his Chief Justice. "At a levee, soon after an extraordinary explosion of ill-humour in the Court of King's Bench, his Majesty said to him: 'My Lord Chief Justice, I hear that you have lost your temper, and from my great regard for you, I am very glad to hear it, for I hope you will ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... a variety iv tomaine excelsis—' 'Greek wurruds,' says th' coort. 'Latin an' Greek,' says th' expert. 'Pro-ceed,' says th' coort. 'I come to th' conclusion,' says th' expert, 'that th' man, when he hooked th' watch, was sufferin' fr'm a sudden tempest in his head, a sudden explosion as it were, a sudden I don't know-what-th'-divvle-it-was, that kind iv wint off in his chimbley, like a storm at sea.' 'Was he in anny way bug befure th' crime?' 'Not a bit. He suffered fr'm warts ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... it was all right. There was a terrific, roaring explosion, and she staggered backwards under the savage kick of the recoil. Recovering herself instantly, and proud of the great noise she had made, she peered through the smoke, expecting to see the bear topple over upon his nose, extinguished. ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... stoker and engine-driver, and I wonder I have never had an explosion, for I have been drunk for a week at a time. On one occasion, I had been drunk overnight, and was not very sober in the morning. I went to work at half-past five, instead of five, and, without looking to see ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... at her wonderingly with such an innocent air that another explosion resulted, and sober Laura, all unaware of the little by-play, gave Ivy a smart rap on the back, which ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... through with to secure one. The Emperor and Empress of France were not among the guests. They had been a little upset by an event more tragic than are most marriages—the attempt of Orsini to blow up their carriage, by the explosion of hand-grenades near the entrance of the Italian Opera. They had been only slightly hurt, but some eighty innocent people in the crowd had been either killed or wounded. The white dress of the Empress was sprinkled with blood, ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... there was danger of an explosion. Ray's eyes blazed with wrath. He would have burst into a fury of denunciation, captain or no captain, but there—close at hand—stood many silent groups of the men. For once in his life Ray said not a word. For one long ten seconds he stood there, looking ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... a kerosene explosion. So instant had been the ignition of everything combustible that nearly the whole interior was in flames before assistance could arrive. Stout engines played but upon useless debris, ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... returned under a sniping fire to where the camp had been pitched. Then the fun commenced. A rather distant bang, whis-sh! over our heads; and from amongst the infantry blanket shelters a cloud of earth spouted up, and a small batch of men cleared off from the vicinity of the explosion. It was amusing to see the niggers throw themselves into trenches by the roads and fields. Then came another and yet another shell, without any more effect than making a hole in a tent, and the men of No. 8 Battery Field Artillery (and No. 8 is a ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... curb of the narrowly ordered life of the school, for the short eight months to which they knew the ordeal was restricted? Could this have been attempted seriously, there would probably have been an explosion; but in truth, as far as my observation went, most of the disciplinary officers, the lieutenants, rather sympathized with irregularities, within pretty wide limits. A midshipman was a being who traditionally had little but the exuberance of his ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... infernal machine, it would certainly do a great deal of damage if it exploded where it lay. I strung my nerves up to the sticking-point, went out, unlocked the door, seized the mysterious package in my hands, and flung it as far as I could into a little shrubbery in the garden. There was no explosion such as I had expected. Nothing, indeed, happened; but when I got back to my dining-room, and saw my face in a mirror, I found it was as white as a sheet. The next morning I went out to look for the infernal ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... seldom fail to make their favourite male character as strong as Samson. And then they take such prodigious leaps!! And what is done on the stage is more striking even than what is acted. I once remember such a deafening explosion, that I could not hear a word of the play for half an act after it: and a little real gunpowder being set fire to at the same time, and smelt by all the spectators, the naturalness of ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... his subjects forfeits his divine right to be obeyed. But Junius Brutus and Buchanan damaged their credit by advocating regicide; and Hotoman, whose Franco-Gallia is the most serious work of the group, deserted his liberal opinions when the chief of his own party became king. The most violent explosion of democracy in that age proceeded from the opposite quarter. When Henry of Navarre became the next heir to the throne of France, the theory of the deposing power, which had proved ineffectual for more than a century, awoke with a new ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... to remove him without an explosion. Barneveld, who, said du Maurier, "knew the man to his finger nails," had been reluctant to "break the ice," and wished for official notice in the matter from the Queen. Maurice protected the troublesome diplomatist. "'Tis incredible," said the French ambassador "how covertly ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... twentieth-century readers are so impatient with Enoch Arden, is because Tennyson refused to satisfy the all but universal love of a fight. The conditions for a terrific "mix-up" were all there, and just when the spectator is looking for an explosion of wrath and blood, the poet turns away into the more heroic but less thrilling scene of self-conquest. Mr. Masefield may be trusted never to disappoint his readers in such fashion. It might be urged that whereas Tennyson gave a picture of man ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... quarter in length, by about three quarters of an inch in breadth; and the parallelogramical field which it presents is occupied by a curious piece of carving. By a sort of pictorial illusion, the device appears as if in motion: it would seem as if a sudden explosion had taken place in the middle of the field, and as if the numerous dislodged fragments, propelled all around by the central force, were hurrying to the sides. But these seeming fragments were not elevations in the original ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... beauty and grandeur all other night scenes ever witnessed by him. In some moments he could count thirty shells at once in the air, which was filled with fiery arcs crossing each other at all angles. Between the flaming bases, at the muzzle and the explosion, making two ends of an arch, there were thousands of muskets flashing over the entrenchments. Yet, despite the awful noise and the spectacle so magnificent to the eye, there were few men hurt within the ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... away shortly after that frightful explosion, but, on reaching the arbour, I found the thirty-two rats, toes up, killed by the one and same stroke of lightning. No doubt the iron wires of their cage had attracted the electric fluid ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... last word fairly took Mrs. Wesley's breath away; she glanced at the Rector; but the explosion she expected hung fire, although ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... liked with 'em, and carried out her principles by kicking the Professor's shins for him. Plucky girl is Julia; she puts me very much in mind of what I was when I was her age at Eton, and pinned a detonating cracker to old Botherboy's coat-tail, so that, what between the pin and the explosion, it's my belief he would have found himself more comfortable in the battle of Waterloo, than he felt the first time he sat down. Ah! those ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... first but then with a succession of leaps and bounds as a muffled explosion from the interior of the building marked the passing of some overheated container. He halted at a safe distance, wiping his smoke-grimed face, until Varr rejoined him. A faint cheer from beyond the boundary fence carried to them over the roar of ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... cleared space before the battery, returned the fire with energy, and the marine howitzers also responded. Soon a shell from the enemy's work came flying through the woods with a hum, which increased to a howl, and burst with a startling explosion within a few rods of the hospital. Nobody was hurt; but the incident had a very marked effect on Jack Winch. He got better at once, and moved to the rear with an alacrity surprisingly in contrast with ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... or strain. To burst is to break by pressure from within, as a bombshell, but it is used also for the result of violent force otherwise exerted; as, to burst in a door, where the door yields as if to an explosion. To crush is to break by pressure from without, as an egg-shell. To crack is to break without complete severance of parts; a cracked cup or mirror may still hold together. Fracture has a somewhat similar sense. In a fractured limb, the ends of the broken bone may ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... nameless fermentation, generally into DRY-ROT. Rotting, none guesses whitherward;—rotting towards that thrice-extraordinary Spontaneous-Combustion, which blazed out in 1789. And has kindled, over the whole world, gradually or by explosion, this unexpected Outburst of all the chained Devilries (among other chained things), this roaring Conflagration of the Anarchies; under which it is the lot of these poor generations to live,—for I know not what length of Centuries yet. "Go into Combustion, my pretty ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... hand for silence as a strange, low sound rolled out from the works. Was it the roar of fire or an explosion of steam? But no sign of fire followed, and nothing shook or broke. Only there came a second roar, louder than the first, and then the great gates of the great yard burst open, and out poured a crowd of men, jumping, dancing, shouting, ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... dangerous one, from the liability of the stones to burst in consequence of their enormous weight and the velocity with which they revolve; but, about twenty years since, a new method of clamping the stone was adopted, by means of which the danger of bursting is much diminished. The last explosion which took place in this department occurred about nine years ago. The operation of grinding, however, is objectionable also from the very unhealthy nature of the work. Immense quantities of fine dust fill the air, and the premises are always drenched with water, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... crosse with Mouquet. But when his sister Catherine was entombed in the pit he was one of the first to come forward to the rescue, and he worked day and night with frantic energy. The ninth day, in his haste, he was imprudent enough to open his lamp, and a sudden explosion of gas reduced him to a calcined, ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... their admiration, particularly the carpenter's tools and our clothes; but what appeared to surprise them above all other things was the effect produced upon the flesh by a burning-glass, and of its causing the explosion of a train of gunpowder. They perfectly understood that it was from the sun that the fire was produced, for on one occasion when Jack requested me to show it to two or three strangers whom he had brought to visit us I explained to him that it could not be done ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... charged with a leaden tinge from the solid cloud-bank overhead. The river was leaden; all distances the same; and even the far-reaching ranks of combing white-caps were dully shaded by the dark, rich atmosphere through which their swarming legions marched. The thunder-peals were constant and deafening; explosion followed explosion with but inconsequential intervals between, and the reports grew steadily sharper and higher-keyed, and more trying to the ear; the lightning was as diligent as the thunder, and produced effects ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Thaddeus. Springing from the ground, he was preparing to rush towards the gates, when loud cries of distress issued from within. They were burst open, and a moment after, the grand magazine blew up with a horrible explosion. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... making some remarks on the character of Marshal Turenne, declared that she would have loved him had he not burned the Palatinate. "And of what consequence was that, Madame," said the young Napoleon, "provided it assisted his plans?" We may here trace the same unfeeling heart that ordered the explosion of the magazine of Grenelle, which, if his orders had been executed, must have laid Paris in ruins. Some of my readers may, perhaps, not have seen an authentic statement of this most horrid circumstance, I shall therefore give a translation of the letter ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... no words to tell her how lovely we thought it. Cedar Lake, which we passed before reaching Minneanopolis, could not bear the comparison. An old man, pointing out some large flour-mills near the road, told us of a terrible explosion there in 1877, when many lives were lost. The machinery and mills were shattered to pieces, and thousands of pounds' worth of damage was done; yet in 1878 they were again in full working order, and as celebrated as ever for ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... from where the glow had been, but even that was dissipated fairly rapidly in the chill breeze. Quite obviously there would be no fire. After several more minutes of watching, he was sure of it. There couldn't have been much heat produced in the explosion—if it could really be ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... was equally satisfactory, except that they agreed that a somewhat larger charge of powder should be used to increase the noise of the explosion. ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... progress was not very rapid however; for we find that gas was not introduced into the Mall of St. James's Park until the year 1822. It is difficult to fix the exact date when gas foot-lights appeared upon the stage. But in the year 1828 an explosion took place in Covent Garden Theatre by which two men lost their lives. Great alarm was excited. The public were afraid to re-enter the theatre. The management published an address in which it was stated that the ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... each hand. A half-hour spent so would have rasped the nerves of the most phlegmatic man in the town, and Jack was not phlegmatic; fifteen minutes of watching that silent weeping sufficed to bring a muffled explosion. ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... match to make the end red, and fired the train he had laid, "and blew up the whole castle into the air, with all the Spaniards that were within." "Much the better way of the two," says one of the chroniclers, who saw the explosion. ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... blast took place, throwing dust and gravel on our carriage, and had our postillion brought us a little nearer (it was not for want of hallooing and flogging that he did not), we should have had a still more serious share of the explosion. The explanation I received from the drivers was, that they had been told by the overseer that as the mine had been so long in going off, he dared say we would have time to pass it—so we just waited long enough to make the danger imminent. I have only to ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... dared not come out and proclaim their hostility, for they well knew he had the means to expose them. To seek his ruin by an open show of opposition would be to touch fire to the train, that, in the explosion, would involve them all in a common ruin. They must approach him, Joab like, and drive the dagger to his heart while saluting him with professions of friendship. But his patience had become wearied by a protracted sickness and ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... under my hand, but at the door I stopped. It was ajar; and there, under the light, I spied Morrow. In his arms I got glimpses of black lace and wavy, brown hair, and a white cheek that he was accomplishing wonders with. They wouldn't have heard a man-hole explosion. ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... the general conception in which the representation culminates is poetic but abrupt, is reached not gradually but by sudden intuition, if the original operation is not a regular development but a violent explosion—then, as with the semitic races, metaphysical power is wanting; the religious conception becomes that of a royal God, consuming and solitary; science cannot take shape, the intellect grows rigid and too headstrong to reproduce the delicate ordering ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... was taken at a lower portion of Col. Roosevelt's body, but a bystander struck Schrank's arm at the moment of explosion, and elevated the direction of the shot. After passing through the Colonel's heavy military overcoat, and his other clothing, it would have certainly killed him had it not struck in its course practically everything ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... the side gate round to the front was but the work of an instant with Jupp, and, followed by Mary, he was almost as quickly on the spot as the sound of the explosion had been heard. ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... tunnel to a convenient distance. At a certain point during the conference Rosenblatt would leave the cave on the pretext of securing a paper left in his cabin. A pile of brushwood at some distance from the cave would be burning. On his way to his cabin Rosenblatt would fire the train and wait the explosion in his own shack, the accidental nature of which could easily be explained under the circumstances. In order to remove suspicion from him, Rosenblatt was to appear during the early evening in a railway camp some distance away. The plot was so conceived and the details so arranged ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... something were stretched taut in his brain, at breaking point; as if some vast thing were on the point of revelation. All else had vanished,—the scene round him, the sense of the invisible; there was but the point of space left, waiting for an explosion. ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... much further away. They pottered about just beyond rifle shot, and their numbers were slightly increased. Tazzuchi, full of enthusiasm for his artillery, tried a carefully aimed shot at one of the largest. But the explosion was quite outdone in noise by the cackle of laughter which followed it. So slow was the flight of the missile that the eye could trace it. So short was its journey, and so curved its trajectory, that it came very near to hitting one of the boats of the divers, and the men working ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... and unrestrained multitude for a short interval; but these storms soon pass away, and reason resumes her sway. To attempt to restrain such a mob by a foreign force is to attempt to restrain the explosion of a mine when the powder has already been ignited: it is far better to await the explosion and afterward fill up the crater than to try to prevent it and to perish ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... Harman's mind as the days passed by. He had an air of being malignantly up to something and she could not imagine what this something could be. He spoke to her very little but he looked at her a great deal. He had more and more of the quality of a premeditated imminent explosion.... ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... he cried, and there was a little explosion; a cork spurted out and struck the ceiling; there was smoke and the crackling of glass. He turned round and faced me, a smudge of ink on one of his cheeks, and that customary nervous unhappy ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... for a general explosion of laughter drowned the last words, and Ben's command "Out, you rascal!" sent Sanch to the right-about ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... what useful purpose the play was intended to serve." The balance has to be redressed by the more fashionable papers, which usually combine capable art criticism with West-End solecism on politics and sociology. It is very noteworthy, however, on comparing the press explosion produced by Mrs Warren's Profession in 1902 with that produced by Widowers' Houses about ten years earlier, that whereas in 1892 the facts were frantically denied and the persons of the drama flouted as monsters of wickedness, in 1902 the facts are admitted and the ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... in a mine as long as I have, you won't think there's any fun to be made of warnin's. Before the explosion of fire damp in the old workings, I've been told the miners heard ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... was the suspicion eternally attached to the slave himself,—the suspicion that a Nat Turner might be in every family; that the same bloody deed might be acted over at any time and in any place; that the materials for it were spread through the land, and were always ready for a like explosion. Nothing but the force of this withering apprehension,—nothing but the paralyzing and deadening weight with which it falls upon and prostrates the heart of every man who has helpless dependants to protect,—nothing but this could have thrown a brave people into consternation, or ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... falling bodies, the sudden shivering splinter of chopped logs, the crystal shatter of pounded ice, the crash of a tree hurled to the earth by a hurricane, the irrational, persistent chaos of noise made by switching freight-trains, the explosion of gas, the blasting of stone, and the terrific grinding of rock upon rock which precedes the collapse—all these have been in my touch-experience, and contribute to my idea of Bedlam, of a battle, a waterspout, an earthquake, and ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... at the end of the explosion showed me how vivid the scene still was in the clerk's mind and how it ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... came out of Margaret's lips like an explosion. Nan stared very sternly at her. "If you don't," she said in a low tone, "I'll tell your father all about how you came ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... same instant, a fearful explosion occurred. The sequoia, violently wrenched, trembled from its roots to ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... Devil. To prevent an explosion, I was obliged daily to represent to him that he would dishonour himself, as well as his son, by exposing her conduct, and would infallibly bring upon himself the King's displeasure. As no person had been less favourable to this marriage ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... of panic, concedes everything demanded; and by sunrise the next morning the whole affair has been finished. Two centuries, on our old East Indian system of negotiating with China, would not have arrived at the same point. Later in the very same year occurred another and more atrocious explosion of Canton ruffianism; and the instantaneous retribution which followed to the leading criminals, showed at once how great an advance had been made in winning respect for ourselves, and in extorting our rights, by this energetic mode of action. ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... some hours when they were suddenly aroused by the sound of a terrific explosion. Instantly they sprang to their feet, wide awake, and Mother De Smet came rushing from the cabin with the ...
— The Belgian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... multitude, the crowd exclaims: Behold the true Romans, the fathers of the country! and as the two counselors Pucelle and Menguy pass along they fling them crowns." The quarrel between the Parliament and the Court, constantly revived, is one of the sparks which provokes the grand final explosion, while the Jansenist embers, smoldering in the ashes, are to be of use in 1791 when the ecclesiastical edifice comes to be attacked. But, within this old chimney-corner only warm embers are now ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... shut it, and stared downward, obviously scanning some papers lying on the desk in front of him. Malone waited patiently for the explosion, but ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... began to ascend the rapid, while the long lake-like reach was left behind, a turn or two completely hiding the enemy from sight; and though twice over they heard their shouts and yells, the scare created by the explosion had been sufficient to make them give the party what Shaddy ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... observed Kennedy, as we picked our way about. "Explosions at powder-mills are frequent, anyhow. After an explosion there is very little debris to clear away, as you may imagine. These buildings are easily repaired or replaced, and they keep a large force of men for these purposes, as well as materials for ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... out for me—let me know who the man is and you'll hear an explosion in this outfit that will raise the big top right off ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... with alarm. "Whatever are you doing? You will set the house on fire in a moment, and be the death of us all!" Upon that, with an indescribable expression of firmness, Mimi ordered every one to stand aside, and, regardless of all possible danger from a premature explosion, strode with long and resolute steps to where some small shot was scattered about the floor, and began ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... it started without delay. Give him about a quarter of the solution and have the rest put in the vault. Be sure that his laboratory is set up far enough away from everything else to avoid trouble in case of an explosion, and caution him not to work on too much copper at once. I gather that an ounce or so ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... slept all day; others showed extraordinary indifference, perhaps due to a touch of delirium, like the man with a wound in the abdomen which I was dressing one morning, and who when he saw me turn my head at the sound of an explosion which ploughed up a neighbouring field, assured me quietly that "those ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... is chiefly to be blamed for this. Men who have the constant handling of dynamite, and who move from place to place, are rapidly destroying the life of the rivers and streams. Having noted a good pool, they return by night and drop into it a dynamite cartridge, the explosion of which brings every fish, big and small, to the surface. With these destructive causes, which do not belong to the natural order of things, should be mentioned another that does, namely, the frequency of floods in the season when the trout are spawning. But for this ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... arising from amid a mass of tools, into which he had been tossed by the explosion, was to run to where Professor Roumann lay in a semi-conscious condition. An instant later Mark slowly arose, and made his way to where Professor Henderson was rubbing his ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... has a perfectly serious and very characteristic explosion at the prominence of these agreeable ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... Boulogne on the 2nd of October; and soon after nine at night a detachment of fire-ships was launched. But this enterprise proved signally abortive. The catamarans sent exploded with an awful noise, and created a great alarm, not only in the French flotilla, but also in the shore batteries; but the explosion only wounded some half-dozen Frenchmen, while they blew up nothing but themselves. In the whole affair, which lasted till four o'clock in the morning, the French had only fourteen killed and seven ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... they could find cover. [Footnote: Official Records, vol. xix. pt. i. p. 451.] My own tents had been pitched at the edge of a little grove of forest trees, and the headquarters mess was at breakfast at sunrise when the cannonade began. The rapid explosion of shrapnel about us hastened our morning meal; the tents were struck and loaded upon the wagons, horses were saddled, and everything made ready for the contingencies of the day. It was not till seven o'clock ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... keep had settled down upon one side, so that they could scarce keep their footing upon the sloping platform. Gazing over the edge, they looked down upon the horrible destruction which had been caused by the explosion. For forty yards round the portal the ground was black with writhing, screaming figures, who struggled up and hurled themselves down again, tossing this way and that, sightless, scorched, with fire bursting from their tattered clothing. Beyond this circle ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the corner and up the Avenue, there was suddenly a terrific explosion, which threw him completely out of the machine! The car, without a driver, its engines whirring madly, dashed into a helpless corner fruit stand, scattering oranges, bananas, apples and desolation in its wake, as it vainly endeavored to climb to the second story with super-mechanical intelligence! ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... sickening sensation to feel the decks breaking up under one's feet, the great beams bending and then snapping with a noise like heavy gunfire. The water was overmastering the pumps, and to avoid an explosion when it reached the boilers I had to give orders for the fires to be drawn and the steam let down. The plans for abandoning the ship in case of emergency had been made well in advance, and men and dogs descended to the floe and made ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... percussion powder. To each is attached two little straps of lead, which are bent under the upper part of the rail to hold the torpedo in position. When it is struck by the ponderous wheels of a locomotive, it explodes with the sound of a cannon cracker. The explosion of two torpedoes, one directly after the other, is the signal for caution, and bids the engineman proceed slowly, keeping a sharp lookout for danger. The explosion of a single torpedo is the signal of immediate danger, and bids him stop his train ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... first instance on record of the use of a torpedo-vessel in warfare. A Connecticut officer named Bushnell, an ingenious mechanician, had invented during his college-life an oddly-conceived machine for submarine explosion, to which he gave the appropriate name of "The American Turtle." He had the model with him in camp. A report of the existence of this contrivance reached General Putnam, then in command at New York. He sent for Bushnell, talked the matter over with ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... it comes in contact with the air. The naphtha was mingled, I know not by what methods, or in what proportions, with sulphur, and with the pitch that is extracted from evergreen firs. From this mixture, which produced a thick smoke and a loud explosion, proceeded a fierce and obstinate flame, which not only rose in perpendicular ascent, but likewise burned with equal vehemence in descent or lateral progress; instead of being extinguished, it was ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... after we got in bed, we were roused by loud cannonading towards Baton Rouge, and running out on the small balcony up here, saw the light of a great fire in that direction. From the constant reports, and the explosion of what seemed to be several powder magazines, we imagined it to be either the Garrison or a gunboat. Whatever it was, it was certainly a great fire. We all ran out in our nightgowns, and watched for an hour in the damp air, I without even shoes. We listened to the fight ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... a cylinder made to rotate with great rapidity by the pressure of air reduced to one-twentieth of its ordinary volume; then when they had made holes sufficiently deep, they withdrew the machines and charged the mines with dynamite. Immediately after the explosion, streams of wholesome air were liberated which dissipated the smoke; then the debris was cleared away, and the borers returned to their place. The same work was thus carried on day and night, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... swore to his partner, with an explosion of accompanying profanity. "Figure on cleanin' up on the goods an' cuttin' back to the States. Tha's what they aim to do. Before I can head 'em off. Me, I'll show 'em they can't play ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... one but the enemy. General Lake, a fitting instrument for any cruelty, was appointed to take his place; and Lord Castlereagh informs us that "measures were taken by Government to cause a premature explosion." It would have been more Christian in the first place, and more politic in the second place, if Government had taken measures to prevent any explosion ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... nature of Colonel Pasley's operations. Large hollow vessels, called cylinders, were filled with gunpowder, and attached by the divers to the wreck, these were connected by conducting wires with a battery on board a lighter above, at a sufficient distance to be out of reach of danger when the explosion took place. Colonel Pasley then gave the word to fire the end of the rod; instantly a report was heard, and those who witnessed the explosions, say that the effect was very beautiful. On one occasion, the water rose ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park
... and taken to the oars as soon as the falls were released. If they had not, being so short-handed for the size of the boat, they would have been stoved; as it was they were nearly wrecked by a balk of timber from the explosion. It missed them by a short two fathoms, drenching them with spray, and then the night shut down pierced by voices, voices of men swimming and ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... this explosion of bad temper and ill-feeling, had Mr. Sharp himself not entered the room, nobody will ever know. Miss Carrington had been led into a most unjust and unkind criticism of the Lockwood twins. She had been deliberately led into it ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... is said to have caused a great quantity of rockets and other combustibles to be prepared. Moscow itself was designed to be the great infernal machine, the sudden nocturnal explosion of which was to consume the Emperor and his army. Should the enemy escape this danger, he would at least no longer have an asylum or resources; and the horror of so tremendous a calamity, which would be charged to his account, as had been done in regard to ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... injured as the result of the explosion of a bomb in a first-class carriage on the Brazil Central Railway. The culprit, we understand, has written to the company expressing regret, but pointing out that no seat was available in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... has ceased to exist as a separate individual. He is merged, vaguely and vastly, in his adventure. He is the Motor Ambulance Field Corps; he is the ambulance car; he is the electric spark and the continuous explosion that drives the thing along. It is useless to talk to him about anything that happened before the War or about anything that exists outside it. He would not admit that anything did exist outside it. ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... without reason, as a "fast" talker, gave the following description of the blowing up of a steamboat on the Mississippi: "I had landed at Helena for a minute to drop some letters into the post-office, when all of a sudden I heard a tremendous explosion, and, looking up, saw that the sky was for a minute darkened with arms, legs, and other small bits and scraps of my fellow-travellers. Amongst an uncommonly ugly medley, I spied the second clerk, about one hundred and fifty feet above ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... I should hate the child, who, punctual as the clock, had every morning and evening an explosion of tenderness and wished me good-day and good-evening, because he was ordered to do so. It is in this way that all that is generous and spontaneous in human sentiment becomes strangled at its birth. You may judge from ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... hotels in a strange city, the dreary rehearsing of lines which had been polished to the last syllable more than a week ago—these things had sapped the nerve of the Primrose Way company and demoralization had set in. It would require only a trifle to produce an explosion. ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... man of much milder spirit than Endecott, faithfully records this judgment, under its date in his Journal, with additional particulars. The explosion took place "about dinner time, no man knows how, & blew up all, viz. the captain, & nine or ten of his men, & some four or five strangers. There was a special providence that there were no more, for many principal men were going aboard at that time, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... was shaken to its foundation, from center to circumference. Men stood trembling and gazed with horror and astonishment. Not another cannon was fired, and the noise they made was no more when compared with the noise of the explosion, than the sound of a pop-gun compared to the sound of a cannon. In fact it was no comparison at all. Thousands stood ghastly and pale not knowing what the next moment might reveal. The proud Bashaw had been badly "shook up" and disturbed in his dreams of conquering the Americans. He had ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... in cooping up the formidable bandit in a house at Neuilly, belonging to a great English lady, known under the name of Lady Beltham. This Englishwoman was the mistress and accomplice of the notorious Fantomas.[9] But at the precise moment when Juve was about to arrest him, a frightful explosion occurred, and the building, blown up by dynamite, collapsed in ruins, burying the two friends and some fifteen ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... House the square was a seething seat of excited people, and the array of police on horse and on foot might have been assembled for a revolutionary outbreak. There were dense masses of people up Whitehall, and right on to Westminster Bridge. The scuffle that ended in the arrests was the poorest explosion to ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... the explosion of the Florence's first oil tank with a grim smile. The vessel was already clear of the fleet. She could do no damage now save to the Richard and her crew. With his eyes fixed on the fire, Mascola prayed to his saints that the second and larger tank might explode before Gregory could sever ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... not, Sir? Shall the Presbyterian Kirk of Scotland have its General Assembly, and the Church of England be denied its Convocation?' He was walking up and down the room while I told him the anecdote; but when he uttered this explosion of high-church zeal, he had come close to my chair, and his eyes flashed with indignation.[1366] I bowed to the storm, and diverted the force of it, by leading him to expatiate on the influence which religion derived from maintaining the church with ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... was ready. "My preparations being completed," wrote General Beauregard, "I opened fire on Fort Sumter." Little did he know it,—but in that explosion the BRICK MOON also was lifted into ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... you are bound by such strong ties of sympathy. I wonder that about this time, or say between four and five o'clock in the afternoon, too late for the morning papers and too early for the evening ones, there is not a general explosion heard up and down the street, scattering a legion of antiquated and housebred notions and whims to the four winds for an airing—and so ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... was a shock, the mountain man gave no outward sign of it. The lower right side of Hawk's face had been torn away as if by some explosion, and blood, darkened by clay and rude styptics, clotted the long beard that naturally fell in a glossy black. His disordered garments, blood-smeared and hanging loose—his coat sleeve and his shirt torn from his forearm for bandages, his soft hat ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... 'Shenandoah,' the opening act of which ends with the firing of the shot on Sumter, there was a wide window at the back of the set, so that the spectators could see the curving flight of the bomb and its final explosion above the doomed fort. This scenic marvel had cost time and money to devise; but it was never visible after the first performance, because it drew attention to itself, as a mechanical effect, and so took off ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... conviction which I chased away from my mind as often as it returned, that our Arcadian experiment was taking a ridiculous and at the same time impracticable development, became clearer and stronger. I felt sure that our little community could not hold together much longer without an explosion. I had a presentiment that Eunice shared my impressions. My feelings towards her had reached that crisis where a declaration was imperative: but how to make it? It was a terrible struggle between my shyness and my affection. There was another circumstance in connection ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... figured far less prominently than the trade unions, and among the latter the building trades and the German-speaking furniture workers and cigar makers stood in the front of the movement. Early in the strike the workingmen's cause was gravely injured by a bomb explosion on Haymarket Square in Chicago, attributed to anarchists, which killed and wounded a ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... his fists. His face was like an explosion of smiles. He pointed to my Father's page in ...
— Fairy Prince and Other Stories • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... July was fine, with a fresh easterly breeze, and though the troops on the deck of the Racoon were packed like sardines the passage was a pleasant one. As we neared our destination artillery were at work on Achi Baba, and the flashes of the explosion followed by the dull boom of the guns were—to most of us—our first glimpse of ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... forecastle; and here was the enemy crying and pleading like a frightened child. His obsequious "Here, sir," his horrid fluency of obtestation, made the murder tenfold more revolting. Twice Carthew raised the pistol, once he pressed the trigger (or thought he did) with all his might, but no explosion followed; and with that the lees of his courage ran quite out, and he turned and ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... throughout the world. Old institutions are neither hard nor obstinate to-day, and the immense and various constructive forces at work are saturated now with the conception of evolution, of secular progressive development, as opposed to the revolutionary idea. Only a very vast and terrible war explosion can, I think, change ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... a sudden cry from Herb, followed closely by an explosion that knocked them off their feet. For a moment they lay there, a bit dazed by the shock. Then they scrambled to their feet and looked about them. Herb, being the nearest to the explosion, had got the worst of it. His face and hands were ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... African coasts, entirely failed us as we hauled round Cape Trafalgar, and left our ship rolling heavily in the swell, to the great danger of our masts. At half-past twelve o'clock one of the Spanish three-deckers blew up, with a tremendous explosion, and soon after the other. They had previously separated, after their masts had fallen, and the rigging was consumed; and they were seen for some time burning at a distance from each ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... risen to its last degree of violence, and you have ceased to listen to one another, and all speak at the same time, you ought to have your place at the corner of the room which is farthest removed from the field of battle, to have prepared the way for your explosion by a long silence, and then suddenly to fall like a thunder-clap over the very midst of the combatants. Nobody possesses this art as I do. But where I am truly surprising is in the opposite way—I have low tones that I accompany with a smile, and an infinite ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... she has lost him more truly than if he were actually dead. The only deeply perplexing feature in the case is its uncertainty. He may be all right before morning, and he may never recall a thing that happened before the explosion of ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... are made by the meeting of the lips with each other or with the teeth, by the tongue with the teeth or hard-palate, and the root of the tongue with the soft-palate. The interruption may be complete, as in p or t, or only partial, as in th. The sound of the consonant results from the slight explosion or puff which follows the recoil of the movable parts ...
— The Child-Voice in Singing • Francis E. Howard
... was blown up in Havana Harbor, war became inevitable. A number of the peace-at-any-price men of course promptly assumed the position that she had blown herself up; but investigation showed that the explosion was from outside. And, in any event, it would have been impossible to prevent war. The enlisted men of the navy, who often grew bored to the point of desertion in peace, became keyed up to a high pitch ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... in our front wall broken, threatening explosion of all the buildings? The wild thought swept me. But it was not that. I could see light stabs from the cliff outside the main building. Miko had dared to send some men to attack our almost ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... which Neeland offered. "Well, this is merely one symptom of a very serious business, Mr. Neeland. That an attempt should actually have been made to murder you and to blow me to pieces in my cabin is a slight indication of what a cataclysmic explosion may shatter the peace of the entire world at any moment now.... Good-bye. And I warn you very solemnly to take this affair as a deadly serious one and not as ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... of the 'bit of writing' which Harry Verney, by the instigation of his evil genius, had put into the squire's fly- book? Tregarva had waited in terrible suspense for many weeks, expecting the explosion which he knew must follow its discovery. He had confided to Lancelot the contents of the paper, and Lancelot had tried many stratagems to get possession of it, but all in vain. Tregarva took this as calmly as he did ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... the river in the waning light. Once more we encountered a battery, making five in all; I could hear the guns of the assailants, and could not distinguish the explosion of their shells from the answering throb of our own guns. The kind Quartermaster kept bringing me news of what occurred, like Rebecca in Front-de-Boeuf's castle, but discreetly withholding any actual casualties. Then all faded into safety and sleep; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... frustrated owing to the Germans bombing the party as it was on the point of entering their trenches. Unfortunately the two N.C.O.s who fired the torpedo were missing, and it is presumed that they were blown to bits by the explosion. ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... barrel to-day. There must be an explosion of some sort soon. Certainly Confederate notes have fallen very ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... impending tragedy. The three unconscious officers on three camp-beds were lying out in the middle of a sea of mud like three lone islets. Their shuddering subordinates were taking cover at long range, whispering among themselves and crouching in attitudes of dreadful expectancy like men awaiting the explosion of a mine or the cracking of Doom. As explosions of those dimensions are liable to be impartial in their attentions I took horse and rode afield. But according to my batman, who braved it out, the Lieutenant woke up first, exploded noisily and detonated the Field Officer ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... Arabs pretend that it oozes from the fissures in the cliff, and collects in large pieces on the rock below, where the mass gradually increases and hardens, until it is rent asunder by the heat of the sun, with a loud explosion, and falling into the sea, is carried by the waves in considerable quantities to the opposite shores. At the northern extremity of the sea the stink-stone is found; its combustible properties are ascribed, by the Arabs, to the magic ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... first espied the looming shadow of a catastrophe. In August he wrote to Lord Charlemont that the events in France had something paradoxical and mysterious about them; that the outbreak of the old Parisian ferocity might be no more than a sudden explosion, but if it should happen to be character rather than accident, then the people would need a strong hand like that of their former masters to coerce them; that all depended upon the French having wise heads among them, and upon these wise heads, if such there were, acquiring an authority ...
— Burke • John Morley
... the Grand Vizier's office had been proposed for the hour at which the explosion took place, and it was supposed that the cowardly assassins had intended to murder the Turkish officials while they were attending to their duties. Happily the meeting had been postponed, and therefore but little harm was done beyond the damage ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 44, September 9, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... weighed (it was estimated by the engineers) from 800 to 1000 tons. Fifty cases of highly explosive powder were suitably placed all around it. Excursion steamers took hundreds of people from all parts of the Lake to see the explosion, and at the proper moment, while everybody held his breath, the fuses were fired, the blasts took effect, the rock flew down to the level beneath, shattered into four great masses. A new El Capitan now rises above us, though it lacks the smooth unbroken dignity of the great Yosemite ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... woman—broke forth into a torrent of yells and curses. Such hideous obscenities, such revolting blasphemies he had never heard in his life before—he had never dreamed that life contained within it the possibility of such depravity. It was like an explosion from some loathsome sewer; and its source was the lips of ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... ground, although this is not a very pleasant situation, especially in hard rain. During a thunder-storm, the earth is in a state of electricity as well as the clouds, and the light and heat which are produced at the explosion indicate the annihilation of the two electricities. Sometimes the discharge is only from cloud to cloud, sometimes from the earth to the clouds, and sometimes from the clouds to the earth, as one or other may be in the positive or negative state. The clouds are usually more ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 287, December 15, 1827 • Various
... is derived from the explosion of a mixture of gas and air. Where a gas supply is available, such engines are very convenient, for, once started, they will run for hours without attention. They are economical in the consumption of gas, and give trouble only where the quality of ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... and there came the sound of many moccasined feet and the hurling of many bodies against the door. The door held, and the man put the muzzle of his gun in one of the cracks between the logs and fired. The explosion was followed by a yell. Shot and cry preluded pandemonium. Without were demoniacal cries, quick crashing blows against the door, stealthy feet, clambering forms; within were smoke and the noise of the muskets, the crying of the child, and a red and flickering light which now brought ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... all discouraged by this failure, nor by the discovery of its secret printing-press by the police, the Executive Committee next tried to attain its object by an explosion of dynamite in the Winter Palace when the Imperial family were assembled at dinner. The execution was entrusted to a certain Halturin, one of the few revolutionists of peasant origin. As an exceptionally clever carpenter and polisher, he easily found regular employment in the ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... patriotic exertions of the militia whenever called into action, by the fidelity of the Army, and energy of the commander in chief in promptly arranging the difficulties presenting themselves on the Sabine, repairing to meet those arising on the Mississippi, and dissipating before their explosion plots engendering there. I shall think it my duty to lay before you the proceedings and the evidence publicly exhibited on the arraignment of the principal offenders before the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... was shocking, there was a tremor in the air and the echo of a rumbling sound beneath the girl's feet. The crack of a distant explosion followed. Then another, and another, until the sound became a continual grumble of ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... easily to her lips! It was the first time he had ever heard her utter it. It swept away his flying restraint even as the flame of powder snaps through a fuse to explosion; and he made a sudden, swinging step toward her, and caught her in his arms savagely, greedily, tenderly fierce. All his love was bursting, molten, to speech; but she lifted both hands and ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... the woman came in, she began a perfect torrent of abuse. Bok could not piece out, try as he might, what it was all about. But he did gather from the explosion that the woman considered him a hypocrite who wrote one thing and did another; that he was really a thief, stealing a woman's money, and so forth. There was no chance of a word for fully fifteen minutes ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... Amyas expected an explosion: but Sir Richard pulled a shilling out and put it on the table. "There—my fine is paid, sirrah, to the poor of Kilkhampton: but hearken thou all the same. If thou wilt not speak an oath, thou shalt speak on compulsion; for to Launceston gaol thou goest, there to answer for Mr. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... the game are dissimilar in many ways—only the spirit is the same; namely, an effort to rouse the bodily system to as near the bursting-point as possible without an absolute explosion. ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... the flashlight and fork despite the explosion. The blast had hurled him away from the spot where the missile was buried, so Tom began trying ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... everything was explained. The Boar's Snout spread apart with an explosion that split the earth, and went up in a volcano of smoke and flame. Claude and the Colonel's messenger were thrown on their faces. When they got to their feet, the Snout was a smoking crater full of dead and dying men. The Georgia ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... A sudden explosion of cold wind, striking down blanket-wise and bewildering from out the west, made Wilbur look up quickly. The gray sky seemed scudding along close overhead. The bay, the narrow channel of the Golden Gate, the outside ocean, were all whitening with crests of waves. At his ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... more his lost strength came back to his body, the more he was aware of the terrible pain in his head. It occurred to him vaguely that when once he opened his eyes, which he would have to do some time, there would be a horrible explosion and his head would go off like ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Parish-History, and to the students of Friedrich's character in old age! Had no result whatever in European History; so unexpected was the turn things took. A FURSTENBUND which was swallowed bodily within few years, in that World-Explosion of Democracy, and War of the Giants; and—unless Napoleon's "Confederation of the Rhine" were perhaps some transitory ghost of it?—left not even a ghost behind. A FURSTENBUND of which we must say something, when its Year ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... my mother. One winter they went to Nassau, the next to the south of France: from both places she wrote such despairing letters that my poor old father and mother were nearly beside themselves. It was like the explosion of a bomb-shell in the household when a letter came from Virginia. Sometimes I used to read and suppress them: they were filled with shrieks and lamentations. Harry was in a rapid decline; the mental torture was more than she could bear; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... shuddered behind Mike, but it didn't give. Mike's apartment was reasonably soundproof, but it wasn't built to take the kind of explosion that would shake the door that Mike the Angel had just closed. It was a two-inch-thick slab of armor steel on heavy, precision-bearing hinges. So was every other door in the suite. It wasn't quite a bank-vault door, but it would do. ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... by a roar like the explosion of a park of artillery. The volcano on the main island had burst into a state of eruption. Smoky flame-light overspread the sky, and flashed through the open doorway of the hut. He sprang from his bed—and found himself up to his knees ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... unction" that he might, after all, be of use to Mrs. Vavasour, by using his power over her husband: but he knew in his secret heart that any move of his in that direction was likely only to make matters worse; that to-day's explosion might only have sent home the hapless Vavasour in a more irritable temper than ever. And thinking over many things, backward and forward, he saw his own way so little, that he actually condescended to go and "pump" Frank Headley. So he termed it: but, after all, it was only like asking ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... seen that, owing to the ravages of the Black Death, and the strikes which followed, the country was on the verge of revolt (SS244, 245). This new tax was the spark that caused the explosion. The money was roughly demanded in every poor man's cottage, and its collection caused the greatest distress. In attempting to enforce payment, a brutal collector shamefully insulted the young daughter of a workman named ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... adventurers with whom Janina was filled penetrated to the pacha's presence, and offered to sell the secret of a powder whereof three grains would suffice to kill a man with a terrible explosion—explosive powder, in short. Ali heard with delight, but replied that he must see it ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... is only suitable for a stationary installation and where it can uninterruptedly work for a long period of time. Besides, the enormous quantity of hot water under pressure constitutes a constant danger, and the explosion of a steam generator with boiler tubes ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 664, September 22,1888 • Various
... camp had been pitched. Then the fun commenced. A rather distant bang, whis-sh! over our heads; and from amongst the infantry blanket shelters a cloud of earth spouted up, and a small batch of men cleared off from the vicinity of the explosion. It was amusing to see the niggers throw themselves into trenches by the roads and fields. Then came another and yet another shell, without any more effect than making a hole in a tent, and the men of No. 8 Battery Field Artillery ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... expanding water has stored up the heat which would have raised steam, and the moment expansion begins after fracture this energy is suddenly let loose. Steam forms instantaneously, augmenting the effects of the explosion. From this it will be gathered that all pipes should be properly protected against frost; especially near ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... about," said the fireman, picking up the Talking Doll. "There must have been an explosion!" Of course he did not know that the toys themselves had gone down into the basement to play, and that the fire was caused by the train running over ...
— The Story of a China Cat • Laura Lee Hope
... automatically-generated control messages! Transformed by this stroke of programming ineptitude into a monster of Frankensteinian proportions, it broke loose on the night of March 31, 1993 and proceeded to {spam} news.admin.policy with a recursive explosion of over ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... With a mighty effort he hurled the spluttering missile over the ridge of earth that he had noticed to one side, and then, with an involuntary sigh of relief, he instinctively huddled with the balance of the party in an expectant attitude, waiting for the explosion on the ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... stand the force of an explosion. It wasn't the water pressure. Mr. Hooper; you'll notice that the stones there are forced in against the water; not out with it. And the cracks—they're further evidence. We heard the explosion about eleven o'clock; saw the ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... piece of bark, which he lighted at the fire, and, standing behind an angle of the building, he applied the light to the touch-hole. Every man was watching the scrub to see the effect of the discharge. There was a fearful explosion, succeeded by shrieks of horror and fear from the blacks, as the ball and nails and broken glass went whistling over their heads through the trees. Then there was a moment of complete silence. Campbell, like a skilful general, ordered his men to pursue at once the flying foe, in order ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... only by the occasional lowing of the cattle, the boy ranchers waited—waited for they knew not what. And then, as suddenly as an explosion, came a cry in the ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... sat, there hung an orchid, a most curious creation, an explosion of scarlet flame. "That is the odonto-glossum," said Mrs. Winnie. "Have ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... dream. I was in a big, well-furnished, airy room, with people moving about in it; I knew none of them, but we were on friendly terms, and talked and laughed together. Quite suddenly I was struck somewhere in the chest by some rough, large missile, fired, I thought, from a gun, though I heard no explosion; it pierced my ribs, and buried itself, I felt, in some vital part. I stumbled to a couch and fell upon it; some one came to raise me, and I was aware that other persons ran hither and thither seeking, I thought, for medical aid and remedies. I knew within myself that my last ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the menacing, shrapnel look, and it seemed that there might be an explosion of sharp-pointed ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... they succeed in preventing an immediate explosion, the mere fact of a total secession, and of the formation of two Confederacies, almost equal, (in appearance at least,) will permit no one to count on the prolonged preservation of peace. What repulsion, what grievances will be found in all relations, in all questions! And from a grievance ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... onlooker's teeth; the man who had struck stopped dead in his tracks. There came a second shot; then in sharp staccato succession four others, followed by the ugly little metallic click announcing that the gun had emptied itself. Before the last explosion the balancing body sagged limply ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
Copyright © 2025 Diccionario ingles.com
|
|
|
