"Explosive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... inbreathing, ending in an explosive "Huh!" This was Dickie's expressed attitude toward the sex. For Dickie was nineteen, which is the scornful age, you know. What are girls when a fellow is going to be a soph. in the fall, with the prospect of playing quarterback ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... young professor—in fact, to treat me as they had treated their tutors. Any mistake made by a student at a quiz elicited from sundry benches expressions of regret much too plaintive, or ejaculations of contempt much too explosive; and from these and various similar demonstrations which grew every day among a certain set in my class-room, it was easy to see that a trial of strength must soon come, and it seemed to me best to force the fighting. Looking over these obstreperous youths I noticed one tall, black-bearded ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... haystacks, and the monotonous noise of the engines is the steady jingle of the splendid team. Anon, the intermittent funnel-roar of protest at every violent roll becomes the regular blast of the high-pressure engine, and I recognise the exceedingly explosive steamer in which I ascended the Mississippi when the American Civil War was not, and when only its causes were. A fragment of mast on which the light of a lantern falls, an end of rope, and a jerking block or so become suggestive of Franconi's Circus ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... sudden explosive sound, and, with a crunch and a jerk which almost threw them from their seats, the machine came to a standstill. Brockton and his chauffeur were out in an instant, the one peering beneath, the other examining more closely. He emerged in a moment, and there was a jargon ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... strains bring peace to my soul; songs more sweet than morning, I hear again! My tears spring forth, the earth has won me back." He dropped his head upon his breast and wept. As he sat thus, in tender mood, a strange happening took place. A queer, explosive sound, and a jet of flame, and—there stood the devil, all in red, forked tail, horns, and cloven hoof! He stood smiling wickedly at the softened old man, while ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... contrary, the last long mile had been covered in a final desperate spurt, the paddles swinging in swift unison to the accompaniment of a ferocious chant of one syllable: "Hough! Hough! Hough!" This explosive cadence had echoed down the stream ahead of them; and now, as the panting crews emerged from the jungle, they found themselves flanked by a long line of their fellow-warriors, bristling with drawn arrows and ready spear points. But of the enemy whose presence that great xylophone ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... King Leo. He does not choose the "darkest, gloomiest forests," but prefers the thin woods, where he finds wild fruits for himself and family. His tremendous roar does not shake the jungle: it is a hollow apish cry, a loudish huhh! huhh! huhh! explosive like the puff of a steam-engine, which, in rage becomes a sharp and snappish bark — any hunter can imitate it. Doubtless, in some exceptional cases, when an aged mixture of Lablache and Dan Lambert delivers his voce di petto, the voice may be heard for some distance in the still African ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... to the ship for two 'Express' rifles, each carrying a heavy charge and explosive bullets. In addition we have our revolvers and some dynamite bombs—the ones that were designed to be used in blasting ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... called to me: "Look at that fire in Sailly, sir!" I turned round and saw a great yellow flare illuminating the sky in the direction of Sailly, the fiery end of some barn or farm-building, where a high explosive ...
— Attack - An Infantry Subaltern's Impression of July 1st, 1916 • Edward G. D. Liveing
... explosive laughs followed this statement, which caused an expression of mild injury to settle over the countenance ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... of scientific experiment has outrun our expectations. Atomic science is in the full tide of development; the unfolding of the innermost secrets of matter is uninterrupted and irresistible. Since Alamogordo we have developed atomic weapons with many times the explosive force of the early models, and we have produced them in substantial quantities. And recently, in the thermonuclear tests at Eniwetok, we have entered another stage in the world-shaking development of atomic ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman
... sobbing for breath, his unwieldy bulk trembling with fright and weariness. When his steps slackened, through sheer inability to keep up, Nicanor, with a bound forward, dragged him after, so that, to save himself from falling on his face, he bounded also, on his fat legs, with explosive grunts of breathlessness. ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... well-directed critical outburst freezes them. Such has been the Harvey method of approach. Having reduced his subjects to a state of terror, he flatters them, cajoles them, and finally makes terms with them; but he always remains a more or less unstable and uncertain quantity, potentially explosive. ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... Eagle Falls. Our road here was blasted through some fiercely solid and hostile rock. One boulder alone that stood in the way 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 ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... itself freely. Yet, even after making allowance for his secluded life, we are astonished at the powerful grasp which Calvinism, in its expiring age, had laid upon so penetrating an intellect. The framework of dogma was so powerful, that the explosive force of Edwards' speculations, instead of destroying his early principles by its recoil, expended its whole energy along the line in which orthodox opinion was not injured. Most bold speculators, indeed, suffer from a kind of colour-blindness, which ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... unfortunate Breton peasants, who cannot even speak French, and an equal number of Berlin grocers, who probably ask for nothing better than to be back in their shops, destroying each other at a distance of two or three miles with balls of lead and iron, many of them filled with explosive materials. I confess that I pity the horses almost as much as the men. It seems a monstrous thing that in order that the Alsacians should be forced into becoming subjects of King William of Prussia, an omnibus horse, who has honestly ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... our return to the battery the Turkish advance began to waver. They had been sprayed by an incessant hail of shrapnel and high explosive for over three hours, and even their fatalistic courage could not stand the strain. The Light Horse were now holding their own, and soon a monotonous voice from the O.P. chanting over the wire, told that the Turks were retreating. Slowly the range increased—2400—2600—2800—until ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... most affectionate and devoted of friends in my trouble, we returned to Canterbury: I mean my aunt, Agnes, and I. We proceeded by appointment straight to Mr. Micawber's house; where, and at Mr. Wickfield's, my friend had been labouring ever since our explosive meeting. When poor Mrs. Micawber saw me come in, in my black clothes, she was sensibly affected. There was a great deal of good in Mrs. Micawber's heart, which had not been dunned out of it in all those ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... pretty blue flame over a hot coal fire. Worst of all is the "fire-damp." If you stir up the water in a marsh, you will see bubbles of it rise to the surface. It is harmless in a marsh, but quite the opposite in a mine. When it unites with a certain amount of air, it becomes explosive, and the least bit of flame will cause a terrible explosion. Even coal dust may explode if the air is full of it, and it is suddenly set in motion by too heavy a ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan
... The ministers who might have been ready to subordinate the peace of their own country and of Europe to their personal plans have resigned, and others have taken their places of whom we need not fear this. I believe, therefore that I may state that our outlook toward France is more peaceful and less explosive today than it was a year ago and I am glad to do this, because I wish to quiet, not to excite, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... threw open the door, ushering in half a dozen gentlemen, and among them the rightful host, just returned after a week's absence,—cutting off the major's outburst, and producing another equally explosive:— ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... berth, imagine her trying, while she rolled down to her middle deck, to damage one of these belted brutes, who meantime would be leisurely picking out the particular plank by which she intended to introduce into her enemy's vitals a weight of explosive metal sufficient in all truth to blow her out ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... the long drain-board of the sink, turned to the wall, and buried her face in her hands. The cook, Bert, though he cast a startled glance at her would not have dared to speak, after that encounter of the morning, but a rather explosive sniff was too eloquent an appeal ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... brightness it will not impress us as being crimson at all, but rather a dull, coppery red. Its spectrum indicates that it is smothered with absorbing vapors, a sun near extinction which, at intervals, experiences an accession of energy and bursts through its stifling envelope with explosive radiance, only to faint and sink once more. It is well to use our largest ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... invention-date and the inventor of gunpowder, as of all old discoveries which have affected mankind at large: all we know is that the popular ideas betray great ignorance and we are led to suspect that an explosive compound, having been discovered in the earliest ages of human society, was utilised by steps so gradual that history has neglected to trace the series. According to Demmin[FN183], bullets for stuffing with some incendiary ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... was a crack like a pistol shot as the bunk-post snapped, the chest leaped like a live thing at the man, and Fitzgibbon's heels flew out from under him. He landed upon his back, and the chest landed upon his stomach; and the wind went out of him with an explosive oof! ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... went back to Amos's lodgings, and spent an hour or so writing a long letter to Mr Ivery. I described to him everybody I had met, I gave highly coloured views of the explosive material on the Clyde, and I deplored the lack of clearheadedness in the progressive forces. I drew an elaborate picture of Amos, and deduced from it that the Radicals were likely to be a bar to true progress. ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... tried several methods of self-analysis, and repeated to himself that he had experienced a great happiness and was probably on the threshold of a great success. These two reflections did not help him much. The happiness had been of the explosive kind, and the success in the business matter was more than problematic, as well as certainly distant ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... fly on the stage whenever he should have been off it, and vice versa, and followed him about behind the scenes endeavoring to keep him in his right mind with regard to his exits and his entrances, and receiving from him explosive Irish benedictions in return for my warnings and promptings. Throughout the whole first representation I was really as nervous for and about him as I was about the play itself and my own particular part in it. My father did the impossible with Sir Thomas Clifford, in making him both ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... at the vine-draped shadows, listening to the soft rustlings and faint twig-snappings of life in the jungle. Two short, popping sounds echoed across the stillness, drowned out almost immediately and silenced by an explosive crash. Alan started, "Blaster fighting! But ...
— Survival Tactics • Al Sevcik
... granite which supported Prospect Heights, and he intended to penetrate into it. To do this, the opening through which the water rushed must first be cleared, and the level lowered by making a larger outlet. Therefore an explosive substance must be manufactured, which would make a deep trench in some other part of the shore. This was what Harding was going to attempt with the minerals which nature placed ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... time mineral oils are used which possess flashing-points above 75 deg.F. The highly volatile components of petroleum are dangerous because they form very explosive mixtures with air at ordinary temperatures. A mineral oil like kerosene, to be used with safety in lamps, should not be too volatile. It is preferable that an inflammable vapor should not be given off at temperatures under 120 deg.F. The oil must be of such physical characteristics ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... will note was the second explosive point in our conversation. I was too much concerned at the moment to take in all his words implied or to appreciate the fine dexterity with which a difficult situation was being handled. These decisive sentences were cracked ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... attacks daily, or the child may have from forty to fifty such attacks. When children feel these attacks coming on they seek support, holding on to chairs or they stand by the mother's knee. The coughing is explosive, rapid, and forceful, the child fails to catch its breath and is compelled to take a deep inspiration, which is the whoop; it then goes on coughing more. The face may become purple, the eyes protrude, and the veins of the face swell ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... state of things in the United States, I do not think a general, or even a very extensive, slave insurrection is possible. The indispensable concert of action cannot be obtained. The slaves have no means of rapid communication; nor can incendiary freemen, black or white, supply it. The explosive materials are everywhere in parcels; but there neither are, nor can be ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... consideration as well as social outlets. Instruction out of proportion with and superior to condition works differently with different nations. For the German adult it is rather soothing and a derivative; with the adult Frenchman it is especially an irritant or even an explosive.] ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... stuffed with fyrework, whereof the bigger sort for the same has screws of iron to receive a match to carry fyre for to break in small pieces the said hollow shot, whereof the smallest piece hitting a man would kill or spoil him." In short, Peter Van Collet here introduced the manufacture of the explosive shell in the form in which it continued to be used down to our ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... to your instructions, I have examined the explosive machine sent to this arsenal yesterday. It is a small miniature case containing twelve copper cartridges, such as are used in a Smith & Wesson pocket pistol, a bundle of sensitive friction matches, a strip of sand-paper, and some fulminating ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... were for a few minutes, listening to the firing. For the first time the note of real hand-to-hand fighting came into the battle din. They could hear the crashing volleys of rifle fire, and the explosive crackling of machine guns coming into play for the first time. That was confirmation enough of their guess that a regular assault on the line of forts was ...
— The Belgians to the Front • Colonel James Fiske
... his rooms and, in a feverish race against time, made himself fit to chase a man in evening dress. There was no car in sight when he came down, and he, too, took a cab with an explosive order to the driver: "124 Tejon Avenue, ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... we find the process of religious evolution already far advanced; the god has separated himself from his worshippers, and assumed an anthropomorphic form. Indra, while still retaining traces of his 'weather' origin, is no longer, to borrow Miss Harrison's descriptive phrase, 'an automatic explosive thunder-storm,' he wields the thunderbolt certainly, but he appears in heroic form to receive the offerings made to him, and to celebrate his victory in a solemn ritual dance. In Greek art and literature, on the other hand, where ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... was slow and inevitable. For them and for me it came without any definite shock. I still went among them in safety, because no jolt in the downward glide had released the increasing charge of explosive animalism that ousted the human day by day. But I began to fear that soon now that shock must come. My Saint-Bernard-brute followed me to the enclosure every night, and his vigilance enabled me to sleep at times in something like peace. The little pink sloth-thing became shy and left me, to crawl ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... A rapid, spitting, explosive sound, close behind the car and a little to the right, took her mind away from Musa and back to the adventure. She looked round, half expecting what she should see—and she saw it, namely, the detective on a motor-cycle. It was an "Indian" machine and painted red. And as she looked, ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... and tormals were creatures of talent. They'd originally been found on a planet in the Deneb area, and they were engaging and friendly small animals, but the remarkable fact about them was that they couldn't contract any disease. Not any. They had a built-in, explosive reaction to bacterial and viral toxins, and there hadn't yet been any pathogenic organism discovered to which a tormal could not more or less immediately develop antibody-resistance. So that in interstellar ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... defences. The whole fighting was of a cold, deliberate, merciless nature. No quarter was given or taken. One of the battalions opposing us was similar to our own, a students' battalion from Bavaria. The enemy used explosive and dum-dum bullets, and sniped off any of our wounded lying exposed in the open. They were helped in their work by an arrangement we had come to regarding wounded. It was not permitted to stop to take back prisoners or to stop to dress a wounded chum; but it was permitted ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... intensity of his gaze that burnt into mine. The draught, the mental confusion, the noise and stirring in my head, seemed to last an interminable time. Curious vague impressions of half-forgotten things danced and vanished on the edge of my consciousness. At last he broke the spell. With a sudden explosive sigh he ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... very sorry to miss. She was driving a young horse that she'd only bought a week or two previously, warranted to be perfectly steady with motor traffic, bicycles, and other common objects of the roadside. The animal lived up to its reputation, and passed the most explosive of motor-bikes with an indifference that almost amounted to apathy. However, I suppose we all draw the line somewhere, and this particular cob drew it at travelling wild beast shows. Of course my sister didn't know that, but she knew it very distinctly when she turned ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... consumptive German chemist, who in his laboratory compounds a new explosive, has more effect upon the wars of the modern peoples than ten thousand soldierly legs and arms; and the man who invents one new labour-saving machine may, through the cerebration of a few days, have performed the labour it would otherwise have taken hundreds of thousands ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... demon-like beast lashed out again, spread on the air as if it were flying, looking something like a dragon, then closing up again, inconceivably powerful and explosive. The man's body, strung to its efforts, vibrated strongly. Then a sudden sharp, white-edged wrath came up in him. Swift as lightning he drew back and brought his free hand down like a hawk on the ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... the dynamite, ran to the team and popped the explosive into the stove oven and slammed the door. Then he flew to his sack, hoisted it to his shoulder and staggered back toward ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... Court Lines have risen another few shillings to 34s., the large business in them being probably due to the fact that they are one of the few shipping shares which can be obtained. Rubber shares are equally firm. Nobel's Explosive Company has just issued its report for last year, showing a profit of L529,738 after providing for excess profits duty. The dividend is 15 per cent, free of income-tax, or 5 per cent more than last year. This increase in the dividend came as a surprise to the market, ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... 'Squire PUNCHINELLO believes in Old Hyson and Hyson Jr., in Oolong and Bohea, in Souchong and Gunpowder, in Black and Green; and if there were Scarlet or Yellow or Blue Teas, Col. PUNCHINELLO would equally admire, steep, sweeten and sip them. Nor is Dr. PUNCHINELLO less an admirer of the explosive fire-cracker, sent to us by JOHN, to assist us in the preservation of our liberties. The Hon. Mr. PUNCHINELLO declines dogs (in pies,) and opium (in pipes,) nor can he say whether he approves of bird's nests (in porridge,) as he has never eaten any, and never wants ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... large, light-gray eyes, with their shaggy, sandy eyebrows, and stiff, wiry, sun-burned hair, were rather unprepossessing items, it is to be confessed; his large, coarse mouth was distended with tobacco, the juice of which, from time to time, he ejected from him with great decision and explosive force; his hands were immensely large, hairy, sun-burned, freckled, and very dirty, and garnished with long nails, in a very foul condition. This man proceeded to a very free personal examination of the lot. He seized Tom by the jaw, and pulled open his mouth to inspect his teeth; made ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... which he was executed. The only thing that I know which indicated insensibility was that when he was lecturing one day in chemistry he told us that in performing the experiment which he was then showing us a year or two before with some highly explosive gas a copper vessel had burst and a part of it had been thrown with great violence into the back of the bench where a row of students were sitting, but fortunately the student who sat in that place was absent that day and ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... a large, light person with protuberant blue eyes that looked as if at some time they had been two-thirds choked from their sockets and a characteristic of opening every sentence with her mouth shaped to an explosive O, which she filled with as much breath as it ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... nevertheless, too enthusiastic, imaginative, impulsive, for the repose of a sober scholar; an admirable woman, still, as you see, a woman, a fire-work. The girl resembled her. Why should she wish to run away from Patterne Hall for a single hour? Simply because she was of the sex born mutable and explosive. A husband was her proper custodian, justly relieving a father. With demagogues abroad and daughters at home, philosophy is needed for us to keep erect. Let the girl be Cicero's Tullia: well, she dies! The choicest of them will furnish us examples ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... can say so much"—from which I gathered that my friend had tempered his self-accusations with at least one legitimate boast. From this ghostly counselling, Jim turned to me; and though he never got beyond the explosive utterance of my name and one fierce handgrip, communicated some of his own emotion, like a charge of electricity, to his best man. We stood up to the ceremony at last, in a general and kindly discomposure. Jim was all abroad; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fourth pistol shut and went after the man who'd dropped down behind a desk. He came upon that man, hopelessly panicked, just as his hands closed on a clumsy gun that was supposed to set off a chemical explosive to propel ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... opera houses of Munich, Berlin, Schwerin, Hanover, and London, and had made the Italian tour with Angelo Neumann's Wagner company which Seidl conducted in 1882. Earlier in life he had been an artillery officer in the German army, which fact coupled with his explosive manner of singing prompted one of Dr. von Blow's witticisms. The doctor had been conductor of the opera in Hanover when Schott was there and had conceived a violent dislike for him. Some years after the latter's New York season, conversing socially ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... imagination, reason, intelligence, will, emotion, desire, all the elements of mind. We cannot see this mind, but we can see its products. To deny the subconscious is to deny the artist while looking at his picture, to disbelieve in the poet while reading his poem, and to doubt the existence of the explosive while listening to the report. The subconscious is an artist, a poet, and an explosive by turns. If we deny its existence, a good portion of man's doings are unintelligible. If we admit it, many of his actions and his afflictions which have seemed absurd stand out in a new ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... description of her blindness, which stirred my memory within me. I closed my eyes for a second and it all came back to me, the gun stuck in the mud, the men straining at the wheels, the shells bursting, the reek of high explosive, the two leaders lying dead on the road, and, above all, two gallant horses doing the work of four and pulling till you'd think their hearts ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... savages nor wild beasts to fear, I supposed. But my uncle seemed to believe in his arsenal as in his instruments, and more especially in a considerable quantity of gun cotton, which is unaffected by moisture, and the explosive force of ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... something of the poet in my nature; something, possibly, of the tribune. And, for my small part, I shall remain devoted to that more emphatic, more striking, and (if you please) more popular method, of the explosive bomb. Yes,' he cried, with unshaken hope, 'I will still continue, and, I feel it in my bosom, I shall ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... plastic intermediary projected beyond the limits of her bodily organism. Certain it is that such a projection does at times take place, and it seems rational to suppose that "raps" may be due to the explosive expulsion of this neural energy after it has reached a certain "tension." One quite striking incident which has been narrated to me by a physician of my acquaintance tends rather to confirm this view. ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... the same to me after now," sobbed Page, and as she spoke the Gretry girl, hypnotised with emotion and taken all unawares, gave vent to a shrill hiccough, a veritable yelp, that woke an explosive echo in every ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... alone can secure me station in the outside world." She began to pace the great apartment, oblivious of her surroundings, conscious only of a surging rebellion against even the small necessity of biding her time. The day's happenings on the schooner had shown her clearly the explosive condition of her crew; she had no mistaken ideas that for her to load up the schooner and sail away was simple. Further, she detected in recent events a growing unrest among the band, the cause of which she had but begun to fathom. Even now, through the tapestry sounding-stone, ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... their respective adherents, discharging their heavy artillery, consisting of large sheets loaded with scoundrel, villain, liar, rascal, numskull, nincompoop, dunderhead, wiseacre, blockhead, jackass." As single words were not always explosive enough to make a report equal to their feelings, they had recourse to compounds;—"pert and prating popinjay," "hackneyed gutscraper," "maggot of corruption," "toad on a dung-heap," "snivelling sophisticating hound," are a few ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... it does not prove that its leaders judged rightly and acted virtuously: but, beyond a doubt, it condemns the previous order which brought it about. What a horrid thing is the explosion! Why, is the obvious answer, did you allow the explosive materials to accumulate, till the first match must fire the train? The greatest blot upon Burke, I need hardly say, is that his passions blinded him in his age, to this, as we ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... Doctor, excited, horrified, interested, read the account. The two explosions had taken place almost simultaneously, and had evidently been caused by the same kind of infernal machine, whether containing dynamite or some other explosive was not quite certain. As for the police-agent who had been killed, it was known that he had been threatened by some secret society, supposed to have lurking-places in various parts of London, he having a year or two before been mainly instrumental ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... that the sniper had finished, so I touched him—and he half rolled towards me. I lifted him up and said, 'Did you catch it?' All he could do was to point to his chin. He was an awful sight. A dum-dum or explosive bullet had caught his jawbone and had blown the left lower jaw and part of the neck away. I realised at once that it was hopeless, for it took four bandages to stop the spurting. One of our fellows ran off for the stretcher-bearers. One of these came back, but ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams
... of the gasolene and began scraping her slippers, side and bottom, on the running-board of the automobile. The jelly-bean contained himself no longer. He bent double with explosive laughter and after a second ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... newspapers are to be believed, he is crazy. Music all color, no rhythm, no themes, and then his preaching of Nietzsche—it's all wrong, all wrong, my boy. Art was made for joy. When it is anything else, it's a dangerous explosive. Chemically separate certain natural elements and they rush together with a thunder-clap. That's what Illowski has done. It isn't art. It's science—the science of dangerous sounds. He discovered that sound-vibrations rule the universe, that ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... have been secured in the heart of Mayfair and a competent staff of instructors has already been appointed, who, with the aid of gramophones, will be able to train the students to perfection in the requisite command of the most explosive gutturals, labials and sibilants. Doctor Prtnkeivitchsvtnshchitzky will be the director of the College; Dr. SETON WATSON and Mr. WICKHAM STEED have kindly undertaken to supervise the Yugo-Slav section, and the list of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various
... an explosive cap, to which five or six wires are attached and staked down on the ground. Any one stumbling over one of these wires explodes the bomb and throws a charge of broken iron to a distance of fifty feet. How the Spaniards are going to prevent stray cattle and their own soldiers from wandering ...
— Cuba in War Time • Richard Harding Davis
... instant, the frailer buck trumpeted challenge. Corliss—broad-shouldered, supple of waist, graceful and strong—smiled down negligently; yet the very air between the two men seemed charged with an invisible explosive. Ray laughed quickly, as in undisturbed good nature; then, flourishing his stick, turned ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... something of what he had in mind, she put a prompt veto upon the importation of any considerable number of tadpoles, or any such experimental creatures, into their flat. She had no objection whatever to his use of one of the rooms of the flat for the purposes of a non-explosive chemistry that, so far as she was concerned, came to nothing; she let him have a gas furnace and a sink and a dust-tight cupboard of refuge from the weekly storm of cleaning she would not forego. And having known people ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... Spitler came on with a machine gun and the position was consolidated and held in spite of heavy shelling by the Bolo armored trains and his desperate raids at night and in the morning, for the purpose of destroying the bridge. His high explosive tore up the track but did no damage to the bridge. His infantry recoiled from the Lewis gun and machine gun fire of the Americans that covered the bridge and ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... reputation of a Doctor Faustus in the popular mind. Even educated people in this very place shake their heads and pity my daughter there for living with an alchemical parent, within easy smelling-distance of an explosive laboratory. Excessively absurd, ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... imagine that it is possible to be within ten miles of your energetic presence without being acutely aware of it, you do yourself the greatest injustice. How are you? And how are your good newspaper friends? [Burge makes an explosive movement; but Lubin goes on calmly and sweetly] And what are you doing here with my old friend Barnabas, ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... of which depends upon the strength of the acid, the duration of treatment, and one or two other factors. The nitrocelluloses are all highly inflammable bodies, the more highly nitrated burning with explosive force. They are produced commercially and are known as "gun cotton" or "pyroxyline". The most highly nitrated body forms the basis of the explosive variety; the least highly nitrated forms that of the soluble gun cotton used for making collodion ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... boiled down and sugared off is mighty apt to get an explosive flavor, and one had better be careful with that kind if one is timid; which I'm not. As I said, also, I am ready for a little taste of life, so I read on without fear. And, to be fair, Alfred had ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... another voice answered it. At that Georgie's heart sank, for this proved that there must be at least two burglars, and the odds against him were desperate. After that came a low, cruel laugh, the unmistakable sound of the rattle of knives and forks, and the explosive uncorking of a bottle. At that his heart sank even lower yet, for he had read that cool habitual burglars always had supper before they got to work, and therefore he was about to deal with a gang of professionals. Also that explosive uncorking clearly indicated champagne, and he knew that they ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... buck Inter-Solar. We'll make you an offer—" That was Kallee's contribution, made probably because his commanding officer couldn't find words explosive enough. ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... our ammunition is climbing down to less than nothing—looks as though we were going to have a hot time soon. I turned in and helped Krylov all the morning and somehow his fat, ugly face, his little exclamations, his explosive comical rages, his sudden rough kindnesses did one a world of good. We filled the wagons and sent them back, then about midday, under a blazing hot sun, we went on with the others. Is there any place in the globe ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... clearly those of others. The mistakes they make in their own families open their eyes to those of others, and then they are often very impatient. I know one gentleman who has excellent knowledge of the proper training of the young, but as a parent he is a total failure. He is so explosive and lacking in patience and firmness, perhaps also in love, that his knowledge has not helped him. It is not what we know, but what we apply, ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... to just about the right proportions, mind you—would attack, on oozing through the skin, would be this glycerine; and the certain product of this union under intense cold—this hull was frozen in the ice, remember—would be nitro-glycerine; and, as the yield of the explosive is two hundred and twenty per cent. of the glycerine, we can be morally sure that in the bottom of this hold, each minute globule of it held firmly in a hard matrix of sulphate or nitrate of calcium—which would be formed next when the acids met the hydrates and carbonates of lime—is over ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... Danvers in the office of the robing, for the maid, as her mistress managed to hint, was too steeped 'in the colour of the occasion' to be exactly tasteful, and had the art, no doubt through sympathy, of charging permissible common words with explosive meanings:—she was in an amorous palpitation, of the reflected state. After several knockings and enterings of the bedchamber-door, she came hurriedly to say: 'And your pillow, ma'am? I had almost forgotten it!' A question ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... channels was perhaps attached by the mind to some group of objects. It was completely suppressed but it left an abnormal tension in the central system. If now a chance experience touches on this group of ideas, there results an explosive reaction; and movements, convulsions, spasms, obsessions, and fears set in which get their particular character not through the secondary intrusion but from the primary desire. To discharge that intrusion ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... allay all doubt of exactly what was wanted, he formed a model company and drilled it himself. He was a natural man; troops warmed to him because of an unabashed use of broken English and his violently explosive use, under stress, of "gottam!" which was his only quasi-English oath. In countenance he was strikingly like Gen. George S. Patton and there were other points of resemblance. A private soldier at Valley Forge was impressed with "the ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... return from Portugal, in company with Miss Rose, the heiress; the Honourable Melville Jocelyn, the diplomate; and the Count and Countess de Saldar, refugees out of that explosive ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... an explosive voice behind the group. "And who may you be, young sir, who think your opinion so well ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... gap of half a dozen tables between us and the next group. The flamboyant Algerian removed the coffee cups. When we were alone again, I reiterated my explanation. At every stage of my knowledge I was held in the bond of secrecy. Lackaday's sensitive soul dreaded, more than all the concentrated high-explosive bombardment of the whole of the late German Army, the possibility of Lady Auriol knowing him as ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... collarbone in delivering a very high note. Tenors sometimes reach for their high notes with their arms and legs, and if the high note comes out all right, we forget the effort in the thrill over the result, provided effort does not degenerate into contortion. Similarly in an unusually powerful, explosive fortissimo, a momentary use of pure abdominal breathing may be excusable. But these are exceptions that prove the rule, and very rare ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... mistake. An S.O.S. went up after dark, and, at the time of firing No. 3 gun, the layer and another gunner were both badly hit by what appeared to be a "premature" just outside the bore of the piece. Throughout this period we were firing nothing but high explosive shells. Great therefore was our surprise when, three weeks later, letters arrived from both men, who were in hospital, to say that in each case shrapnel bullets had been extracted from them! What had actually occurred was this: At the same time that the trigger was pulled and ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... elements, a similar decomposition being brought about by the passage of electric sparks through the gas. Chlorine takes fire when passed into ammonia, nitrogen and hydrochloric acid being formed, and unless the ammonia be present in excess, the highly explosive nitrogen chloride NCl3 is also produced. With iodine it reacts to form nitrogen iodide. This compound was discovered in 1812 by Bernard Courtois, and was originally supposed to contain nitrogen and iodine only, but in 1840 R. F. Marchand showed that it contained hydrogen, whilst R. Bunsen showed ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... gentleman, however, planted so much powder and so many explosive contrivances in the roads leading into Hawkeye, and then forgot the exact spots of danger, that people were afraid to travel the highways, and used to come to town across the fields, The Colonel's motto was, "Millions for defence but ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the late Baltic campaign; but it is doubtless Mr. Whitworth's wonderful accuracy of construction that is destined to give it celebrity, by arming it with a power and correctness it wanted before.[CQ] An explosive ball has also been introduced by Colonel Jacob of Eastern celebrity, which from its greater flight will prove, when perfected, a more deadly arm than the old spherical explosive ball invented and forgotten years ago. ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... mix two colourless bodies which, explosive in themselves, neutralize each other's qualities on combination. You will observe that the same process is used in pouring one gas out of one jar into another, as in pouring water, and it is equally harmless. Here, for instance, is an empty jar, and here is a glass jar ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... entrusted with secrets of the utmost value and took part in making the plans and procuring the dynamite to execute them. The quality of his nerve (as well as his foolhardiness) is shown by the fact that he once carried a dress-suit case full of the explosive around the city, jumping on and off street cars, and dodging vehicles. When the proper moment came and the dynamite had been placed in an uncompleted building on Twenty-second Street, Guthrie gave the signal ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... the window of her sitting-room in the twilight—a cold evening in early winter. Sibylla was in an explosive temper. It was nothing unusual for her to be in an explosive temper now; but she was in a worse than customary this evening. Sibylla felt the difference between Verner's Pride and Deerham Court. She lived but in excitement; she cared but for gaiety. ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... an old story to Jimmie; but now the Irishman went on to a new proposition. There was a way to stop the work of the Empire, a way that had been tried in other places, and had worked. Reilly knew where to get some T.N.T.—an explosive many times more powerful than dynamite. They could make bombs out of the steel tubing of bicycles, and Jimmie, knowing the Empire Shops as he did, could find a way to get in and arrange matters. There was big money in it—the fellows who did ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... once infection or inflammation has occurred at any point in it, there is nothing to prevent its spreading like a prairie fire, all over the entire abdominal cavity from diaphragm to pelvis. If this wretched little remnant were a coil of explosive fuse within the brain-cavity itself, which any jar might set off, it could hardly be richer ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... the attack of July 1st, on one day in August of the previous year I had such a broad view that if a shell were to explode anywhere along the front of five miles it would have been visible to me, and I saw not a single burst of smoke from high explosive or shrapnel. Apparently the Germans never expected to undertake any offensive here. All their energy was devoted to defensive preparations, without even an occasional attack over a few hundred yards to keep in their hand. Tranquillity, which amounted to the simulation of a truce, was the result. ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... certain substance sold Under the name of fulminate of gold, A high explosive, popular for blasting, Producing an ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... destruction would doubtless never have been cleared away if, on the 30th of November, Neb, strolling on the beach, had not found a piece of a thick iron cylinder, bearing traces of explosion. The edges of this cylinder were twisted and broken, as if they had been subjected to the action of some explosive substance. ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... learn, however, that "Passed by Censor" was only a guarantee for the harmlessness and not for the veracity of the stories narrated; and in particular that the famous "Q"-boat ruse of the demented female with the explosive baby was a pure work ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... brusque, explosive fashion, "I like Schuyler, and I care not who knows it! Dammy! I was cool enough with him and his lady when they arrived, but he played Valentine to my Orson till I gave up; yes, I did, George, I capitulated. Says he, 'Sir Lupus, if ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... dynamite, not only gives no warning of its explosive properties but resembles that agent of disruption in following a curiously wayward path. Curtis was piloted into an elevator by an affable negro, was conducted to 605, which, of course, lay on the sixth floor, and was plunged forthwith into the prosaic business ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... 18-pounders, twenty 4.5-inch howitzers, and four 3.7-inch howitzers, while eight 60-pounders, eight 6-inch howitzers, and four 4.5-inch howitzers were employed in counter battery work. The absence of wind placed us at a heavy disadvantage. The high explosive shells bursting about the crest of 1070 raised enormous clouds of dust which obscured everything, and after a short while even the flames of exploding shells were entirely hidden from view. The gunners had to stop firing for ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... one who has handled both a rifle and a shotgun can recognize the difference in sound. The explosive force of the one is many times greater ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... existence:—"with unaccountable hardihood," as Archenholtz has it, physiognomically TRUE to Friedrich's general style just now, if a little incorrect as to the case in hand, "sees good to march direct, once for all, athwart said Chain; right across its explosive cannonadings and it,—counter-cannonading, and marching rapidly on; such a march for insolence, say the Austrians!" [Archenholtz (ii. 115-116); who is in a hurry, dateless, and rather confuses a subsequent DAY (September ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... been an easy job to block. So they sank the floating dock in the southern portion of the channel and moored the Koenig by bow and stern hawsers, to the shores on either side in position for sinking. Instead of flooding her they prepared an explosive bomb and timed it to go off at the fall of the tide. But the bomb failed to explode, and an ebb tide setting in, broke the stern moorings and drove her sideways on the shore. Here she lies now and the channel is still free to all our ships to come and go. We found, at the occupation, ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... him again; she might never have really loved him at all; but he would content himself with a benevolent toleration. Like her, he was afraid of love. The word meant too much or too little, he was not sure which. It was too explosive. Its dynamic force was at too high a pressure for the calm routine of married life. If Lois could find a substitute for love, he was willing to accept it, giving her his own substitute in return. All he asked was the privilege of seeing her, of being with her, of proving his devotion, of having ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... heavens to entertain her. She hath placed our land in such a state of defence that no invader can approach it; she hath brought from over the great black water the amazing 'pom-poms' of the English, which shed a thousand bullets at one charge, and she hath caused cannon to be cast to project explosive shells beyond the reach of the eye. She hath taught you at once the beauty of nature and the folly of man. Truly she is a great queen; therefore let not her son Omar who hath returned from over the great sea, wrest ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... battlefield, the ground outside intrenchments, or round the glacis of a fortification made approach by an attacking army impossible and the position impregnable. These pellets, only the size of No. 4 bird shot and harmless out of contact with air, became highly explosive two minutes after they had been scattered broadcast upon the soil, and any friction would discharge them with sufficient force to fracture or dislocate the bones of the human foot or to put out of service the leg ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... seemed decidedly intrigue at sight of us together at a little table, talking cozily; and that detective look came into his eyes which cats have when a mouse occurs to them. He laughed merrily, though, and chaffed us on making "secret plans." Dick hasn't a very nice laugh. It's too explosive and loud. (Don't you think other animals must consider the laughter of humans an odd noise, without rhyme ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... drawn on, and yet in most of the mechanical work, hand work, the toilsome method of the Pharaohs of Egypt prevails. There are no railroads or trolleys or steam vehicles. The boats are driven by explosive engines, and there are electric carriages of velocity and power. But the latter are infrequent. The canals are numerous, especially about Scandor, and the great trunk canals are broad avenues ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... passing of this act, if any person or persons shall wilfully discharge, or attempt to discharge, or point, aim, or present at or near the person of the queen, any gun, pistol, or other description of fire-arms whatsoever, although the same shall not contain explosive or destructive substance or material; or if any person shall strike, or attempt to strike the person of the queen with any offensive weapons, or in any manner whatever; or if any person shall wilfully throw or attempt to throw any substance whatever at or on the person of the queen, with ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... we know who sour their lives, who ruin all that is sweet and beautiful by explosive tempers, who destroy their poise of character, and make bad blood! It is a question whether the great majority of people do not ruin their lives and mar their happiness by lack of self-control. How few people we meet in life who are well balanced, who have that exquisite ...
— As a Man Thinketh • James Allen
... they retired to make their plans. Meanwhile Stanley commanded his crew to tear the bottom boards up for paddles, and, pushing the boat hastily into the water, they paddled away, their commander firing the while with his elephant rifle and explosive bullets. They were saved. ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... shattered by our artillery preparation as it was when taken in an attack. The wire entanglements were miles in depth, and the great trees by the roadside were mined. This was done by cutting a groove three or four inches broad and of an equal depth and filling it with packages of explosive. I suppose the purpose was to block the road in case of retreat. Only a few of the mines had been ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... reputation, Dayaks being killed here occasionally every year, but of late the government has blasted out rocks and made it more passable. However, even now it is no trifle to negotiate these rapids. Below them we halted and threw explosive Favier into the water in the hope of getting fish, and as soon as the upheaval of the water began the Kenyahs, as if by a given signal, hurried all the prahus out to the scene. With other natives than Dayaks this would have given me some ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... government. By the "business at hand" they meant a new explosive and slow-burning powder that was to be used in the new type of fourteen-inch turret guns being made in Glasgow. Some of that explosive was in my possession. The fact that it was not discovered in my effects, nor was anything else incriminating found on me is ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... he was not employed for his imagination. "Why," he hesitated, "because I suppose the cartridges would blow up in the men's pouches and in the machine-gun belts; and then the trench-mortar ammunition and the hand grenades; well, everything explosive would simply explode! And then we'd go over to what was left of them, and it ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... mat and a nose-guard two bottles of 'neutralizer.' What it is composed of is a secret. But the bottles are to be carried in the pocket, so as to be ready for every emergency. The disadvantage of this plan consists of the fact that the neutralizer is highly explosive, and if a man should happen to sit down on a bottle of it in his coat-tail pocket suddenly it might hist him through the roof. But see how ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... the British? To a certain extent, I presume you never heard tell of the Laughton-Zigler automatic two-inch field-gun, with self-feeding hopper, single oil-cylinder recoil, and ballbearing gear throughout? Or Laughtite, the new explosive? Absolutely uniform in effect, and one-ninth the bulk of any present effete charge—flake, cannonite, cordite, troisdorf, cellulose, cocoa, cord, or prism—I don't care what it is. Laughtite's immense; so's the Zigler automatic. It's me. It's fifteen ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... by a fearful barrage at four o'clock when I got up, washed my clothes: was visited by the Y.M.C.A. Secretary: was shelled from five o'clock till ten o'clock. I went for chow and found shell ball gone through kitchen. High explosive, black smoke shells bursting intermittently, tiles fell into my dugout. I took pick shovel in with me; my kitten ran away but came back. A three-legged cat came to the ruined home where I am; its leg evidently had been cut off by shrapnel. Great air fight all ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... speed, which they estimated at about 100 miles an hour, with a temperature of 1000 deg. centigrade. As to the probable explanation of these phenomena, no lava, he said, had been seen to flow from either of the volcanoes, but only steam and fine hot dust. The volcanoes were, therefore, of the explosive type; and from all his observations he had concluded that the absence of lava-flows was due to the material within the crater being partly solid, or at least highly viscous, so that it could not flow like an ordinary lava-stream. Since his return this theory had received striking ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... public by its reading of bulletins and of such a quantity of miscellaneous information that the significance of it becomes obscure. At the start of the war the Germans had the advantage of many mobile howitzers and immense stores of high explosive shells, while the French were dependent on their soixante-quinze and shrapnel; and at this disadvantage the brilliancy of their work with this wonderful field gun on the Marne and in Lorraine was the most important contributory factor ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... and moss-covered, holding in check its tiny lake, was now nothing but ruins. The shots had been placed in the lower point, which was fifty feet down and conical as it struck and rested on the mother rock. Whoever had placed the charges knew well the explosive directions of his powder, and his ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... and, from their rent and jagged appearance, discovered that, like the first long passage down which we had passed through the cliff before we reached the quivering spur, it had, to all appearance, been torn in the bowels of the rock by the terrific force of some explosive gas. At length this cave ended in a third passage, through which gleamed a faint glow ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... on the wind to the camp of the Yellow-Eyes. Looking out across the plains, they saw the herd break into a wild stampede, while behind them sped the Bat and Red Arrow, waving long-lashed whips, to the ends of which were suspended blown-up buffalo-bladders, which struck the hard ground with sharp, explosive thumps, rebounding and striking again. The horses were terrorized, but, being worn down, could not draw away from the swift and supple war-steeds. There were more than two hundred beasts, and the white men were ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... His whole body became vibrant with the obvious desire to fight,—and no antagonist in sight. Uttering a tremendous grunt, he arched his back again, stamping with all four feet, somewhat like the capers of a Mexican "broncho" when preparing to buck"; then he snorted once more, with such explosive force as seemed to shake the tree beside which we were hidden, as he looked about ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... height of a man it was piled with explosive shells for field guns, cased in straw covers like wine bottles, and stacked in neat rows, with their noses all pointing one way. Our guide led us along an aisle of these deadly things, beckoned us through another doorway at the side, where a sentry stood with a bayonet fixed on his gun, and with ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... quarter after four Mr. Uhl scratched his head and said something very explosive in German. He started up the stairs, got halfway up—and came down. It had occurred to him very suddenly that three men had already gone up the stairs and had failed to return. He called a fireman ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... up and speak to my pals, and perhaps be introduced to the girl, but I hadn't got quite cheek enough, and they seemed to be having such a good time, it was a shame to interrupt. The elf was talking, with explosive sort of gestures in between mouthfuls, evidently telling something very interesting. And you know, I always pretend to myself in a kind of fairy story that he's really a person of immense, mysterious influence, a weird power behind the throne, starting or stopping revolutions. ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Sary vented an explosive "Humph!" and grabbed the meat-platter. As she left the kitchen, she sent an insulted glance at her mistress, but the recent correction in speech made her forget the hornet. The watchful insect had been sitting directly ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... the great relief of all present. The completed device was raised to the top of a 100-foot steel tower on Saturday, July 14. During this process workers piled up mattresses beneath the gadget to cushion a possible fall. When the bomb reached the top of the tower without mishap, installation of the explosive detonators began. The 100-foot tower (a surplus Forest Service fire-watch tower) was designated Point Zero. Ground Zero was at the base ...
— Trinity [Atomic Test] Site - The 50th Anniversary of the Atomic Bomb • The National Atomic Museum
... this signal, Austrian shells began to come over. They do not use shrapnel because the rocky soil of Italy makes that unnecessary. They fire a sort of shell that goes bang and releases a cloud of smoke overhead, and then drops a parcel of high explosive that bursts on the ground. The ground leaps into red dust and smoke. But these things are now to be seen on the cinema. Forthwith the men working on the road about us begin to down tools and make for the ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... thing, but in such matters most men never learn wisdom from experience. A man of John Niel's age might have guessed that it is dangerous work playing with explosives, and that the quietest, most harmless-looking substances are sometimes the most explosive. He might have known that to set to work to cultivate the society of a woman with such tell-tale eyes as Jess's was to run the risk of catching the fire from them himself, to say nothing of setting ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... metal and explosive were being hurled through the air as if Atlas were hurling stars about. There was something elemental, and superhuman about such colossal force. One felt like a pygmy in a ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... Harry Hawke, as a fearful burst of high explosive shook the very ground; and, looking over their shoulders, they saw the ruined tower they had just left sink to the ground amid a huge column ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... by with a deep ground note which rose in pitch to a yell as the gust hurled itself through the cordage; each sea that came down seemed likely to be the last, but the sturdy yacht—no floating chisel was she—ran up the steep with a long, slow glide, and smashed into the black hollow with a sharp explosive sound. Marion Dearsley might have been pardoned had she shown tremors as the flying mountains towered over the vessel. Once a great black wall heaved up and doubled the intensity of the murky midnight by a sinister shade; there came a horrible silence, ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... several of these "whale factories" on the Labrador coast. They send out a fast steel steamer, with a harpoon gun at the bow. When a whale is sighted they give chase, and when near enough discharge into the monster a harpoon with an explosive bomb attached. The explosion kills him. Then he is lashed alongside, towed into the station, hauled out on the timberways, and there cut up, every part of the enormous carcass being utilized for ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary |
