"Rocket" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rode through them, and out on the picket-line. Among his other studies, being a musician, he soon learned the various notes and tones of round and conical bullet, of globular and case shot, of shell and rocket, as an Indian learns the various sounds and calls of birds and beasts. Never wearing eye-glasses, until very late in life, and then only for reading, he was able, when standing behind or directly before a cannon, to see the missile moving ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... the yacht, and that I was to be landed again in that foreign port penniless. Was it under the stimulus of that thought that I recalled of a sudden the first appearance of the Sea Queen in my life, and remembered the flash of the rocket? ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... ascended the tower of St. Stephen's; while in the city below every form was prostrate in prayer. With his own hand he fired the nightly rocket, and watched its myriads of stars as they shot heavenward, illumined the darkness, and then fell back into nothingness. His heart beat painfully, as the last scintillations went out, and left but the pall of night behind. But he gazed on in silence, and in anguish unutterable. ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... the slope—two men at the wheels, the others straining ahead—the gun lifted out and set, Polhemus ramming the charge home, Captain Holt sighting the piece; there came a belching sound, a flash of dull light, and a solid shot carrying a line rose in the air, made a curve like a flying rocket, and fell athwart the wreck between her forestay and jib. A cheer went up from the men about the gun. When this line was hauled in and the hawser attached to it made fast high up on the mainmast and above the raging sea, and the car run off to the wreck, ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... aged eyes As when it nursed the blossoms of our spring. Such is true Love, which steals into the heart With feet as silent as the lightsome dawn That kisses smooth the rough brows of the dark, And hath its will through blissful gentleness, Not like a rocket, which, with passionate glare, Whirs suddenly up, then bursts, and leaves the night Painfully quivering on the dazed eyes; A love that gives and takes, that seeth faults, Not with flaw-seeking eyes like needle points, But loving-kindly ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Redwood went further. He gave a perfect Brock's benefit of diagrams—exactly like rocket trajectories they were; and the gist of it—so far as it had any gist—was that the blood of puppies and kittens and the sap of sunflowers and the juice of mushrooms in what he called the "growing phase" differed in the proportion ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... all Rats"—the fatal match is struck, The cannon pointed upwards—then kerchuck! Fiz! Snap! Ker—boom! Slug 14's grotesque form Sails out to ride a race upon the storm, Up through the roof, and up into the sky— As if he sought for "cases" up on high, Till like a rocket, or like one who's trusted, He fell ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... for the game to begin, the New York, which was the flagship, sent up a rocket, warning the other vessels to be on the lookout for the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 18, March 11, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... Up it goes through the branches of the trees, leaping from limb to limb, faster and faster, till it shoots from the tree-tops fifty or more feet into the air above them, and bursts into an ecstasy of song, rapid, ringing, lyrical; no more like its habitual performance than a match is like a rocket; brief but thrilling; emphatic but musical. Having reached its climax of flight and song, the bird closes its wings and drops nearly perpendicularly downward like the skylark. If its song were more prolonged, it would rival the song of that ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... the man that his first act was to wipe the grime of the stoke-hold off his face and hands. Then he drew a chart from the locker in which he had placed it two hours earlier. Mr. Boyle, who had been attending to the signals both by siren and rocket, joined him. Courtenay pointed to ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... some families then, let me tell you!), and when they all died, and why. I met him one morning in a cemetery. I was hunting for a certain stone and I asked him a question. Heavens! It was like setting a match to one of those Fourth- of-July flower-pot sky-rocket affairs. That question was the match that set him going, and thereafter he was a gushing geyser of names and dates. I ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... summit of that long, long hill that leads straight down to my home. Excitement lent a new impulse to my energy, and my heart thumped hard as I recognized familiar cottages still standing. This raised my hopes and sent me rocket-like ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... (VMF), Air Forces (Voyenno-Vozdushniye Sily, VVS); Airborne Troops (VDV), Strategic Rocket Troops (Raketnyye Voyska Strategicheskogo Naznacheniya, RVSN), and Space Troops (KV) are independent "combat arms," not subordinate to any of the three branches; Russian Ground Forces include the following combat arms: motorized-rifle troops, ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... at the observing instruments with which the ship was equipped and instructed them in their duties and the manipulation of the instruments. He placed one man at the control lever of the stern rocket-motors. As he turned away from the control board he saw Lura standing quietly in a corner. He opened his arms and she ran to them ...
— Giants on the Earth • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... a volume does one stray thought of the past contain within itself. It is like a rocket thrown up in the night. It suddenly expands into a brilliant light, and sheds a thousand sparkling meteors, that scatter in all directions, as if inviting attention each to its own train. Yes, that one ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... alphabet, which was an Egyptian Temple in itself, there then appeared a procession of new horrors, called arbitrary characters; the most despotic characters I have ever known; who insisted, for instance, that a thing like the beginning of a cobweb, meant expectation, and that a pen-and-ink sky-rocket, stood for disadvantageous. When I had fixed these wretches in my mind, I found that they had driven everything else out of it; then, beginning again, I forgot them; while I was picking them up, I dropped the other fragments of the system; ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... heavy sea, the certain loss of one or the other. Many of the smacks carry dogs, and it is found that these become even better watchers than their masters; for they can be relied on to call the attention of the watch, by sharp barking, to the letting up of the rocket, however distant. ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... of day were sicklied by cold night, When sentries froze and muttered; when beyond the wire Blank shadows crawled and tumbled, shaking, tricking the sight, When impotent hatred of Life stifled desire, Then soared the sudden rocket, broke in blanching showers. O lagging watch! ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... in the case of the lighthouse and of the ship's deck, to place the firing-point of the gun-cotton at a safe distance, no such arrangement could compete, as regards simplicity and effectiveness, with the expedient of a gun-cotton rocket. Had such a means of signalling existed at the Bishop's Rock lighthouse, the ill-fated 'Schiller' might have been warned of her approach to danger ten, or it may be twenty, miles before she reached the ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... was present at blast-off time. He happened to be the grandfather of a certain competent young crewman. The old man was a proud figure during the brief ceremonies and his eyes filled with tears as the mighty rocket climbed straight up on its fiery tail. He remained there gazing up at the sky long ...
— It's a Small Solar System • Allan Howard
... his black night-cap on, [1] And every star its glim is hiding, [2] And forth to the heath is the scampsman gone, [3] His matchless cherry-black prancer riding; [4] Merrily over the Common, he flies, Fast and free as the rush of rocket, His crape-covered vizard drawn over his eyes, His tol by his side and his pops ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... off like a rocket. Job kept his seat instinctively, as was natural to him; but before he could more than grab at the rein—lying loosely on the pommel—the filly 'fetched up' against a dead box-tree, hard as cast-iron, and Job's ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... Forces, Navy, Air Forces; Airborne troops, Strategic Rocket Forces, and Military Space Forces are classified as independent combat arms, not subordinate to ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... beneath us: our landlord's family have returned from a pilgrimage to a far-distant temple of the Goddess of Grace. (Although Madame Prune is a Shintoist, she reveres this deity, who, scandal says, watched over her youth.) A moment after, Mademoiselle Oyouki bursts into our room like a rocket, bringing, on a charming little tray, sweetmeats which have been blessed and bought at the gates of the temple yonder, on purpose for us, and which we must positively eat at once, before the virtue is gone out of them. Hardly rousing ourselves, we absorb these little edibles flavored with sugar ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... in a vacuum, where an ordinary propeller could not act, the bullet may become a prime mover, and co-operate with the gun. A rocket can burn without an atmosphere, and the recoil of the rushing fumes will impel ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... now reactors for shipboard use, are with us, and it is hardly the beginning. I frequently ask myself, of late, what 10 years from now will be the commercial, shall we call it, applications of our missile and rocket programs.[2] ...
— The Practical Values of Space Exploration • Committee on Science and Astronautics
... sufficient nerve to get into your bathing suit like lightning, and go overboard with a lantern and a rocket or two, with only a ...
— The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip - "Making Good" as Young Experts • Victor G. Durham
... like a rocket when he finally set him free; his feathery tail disappeared between the columns of the redwoods. Without speaking, Cherry and Peter started ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... rocket, and three more with him. They all yelled as they ran. They were street gamins of the better class, and were both sympathetic and entertained. They lived in a tenement-house near Allbright, and knew him quite ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... which resembles an ordinary rocket, is fired from a rifle and is designed for short-range use. It consists of a steel cylindrical shell a few inches long fastened to a steel rod. A parachute is attached to the cardboard container in which the illuminating mixture is packed and the whole is stowed away in ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... of the German submarine had the intention of allowing passengers and crew ample opportunity to save themselves. It was not until the Captain disregarded the order to lay to and took to flight, sending up rocket signals for help, that the German commander ordered the crew and passengers by signals and megaphone to leave the ship within ten minutes. As a matter of fact, he allowed them twenty-three minutes, and did not fire the torpedo ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... Forces (internal and border troops); CIS Forces (Ground, Air, Air Defense, Strategic Rocket) Manpower availability: males 15-49, NA; NA fit for military service; NA reach military age (18) annually Defense expenditures: $NA, ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the scanner screen on the control deck of the rocket cruiser Polaris, Captain Steve Strong replaced the microphone in its slot and watched a bulky figure in a space suit step out of the air lock and drift away from the side of the ship. Behind him, five boys, all dressed in the vivid blue uniforms of the Space Cadet Corps, strained forward to ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... sovereignty, colonies on Mars and Venus, that sort of thing. Some of these ideas didn't seem quite logical; a number of them were complete reversals of present trends, and a lot seemed to depend on arbitrary and unpredictable factors. Mind, this was before the first rocket landed on the Moon, when the whole moon-rocket and lunar-base project was a triple-top secret. But I knew, in the spring of 1970, that the first unmanned rocket would be called the Kilroy, and that it would be launched some time in 1971. You remember, ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... play-box, artificially carved and artificially coloured. So it is with the great convulsion of Nature which was known as Byronism. The volcano is not an extinct volcano now; it is the dead stick of a rocket. It is the remains not of a natural but ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... recalled digging up the remains of a campfire in Pirate's Field during the installation of equipment for the moon rocket, the first great experiment that had put the Spindrift Island scientific group in business as a research foundation headed by Rick's father, Hartson Brant. It was during this experiment that Scotty had joined the staff after rescuing Rick from ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... Angel. "A few minutes ago a bomb was set off in my apartment. I think it was a rocket, and I know it was heavily laced with hydrogen cyanide. That's Suite 5000, Timmins Building, up on 112th Street. I called you because I have a hunch it's connected with the incident at ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... born before their time "Nothing new under the sun" The power of steam known to the ancients Passage from Roger Bacon Old inventions revived Printing Atmospheric locomotion The balloon The reaping machine Tunnels Gunpowder Ancient firearms The steam gun The Congreve rocket Coal-gas Hydropathy Anaesthetic agents The Daguerreotype anticipated The electric telegraph not new Forgotten inventors Disputed inventions Simultaneous inventions Inventions made step by step James Watt's difficulties with his workmen ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... like huge clouds than living beings. The guns of the ramparts soon replied, and the roar was deafening; while the plunging of shot along the ramparts and roofs made our situation perilous in no slight degree. But, in the midst of this hurricane of fire, I saw a single rocket shoot up from the camp, and the whole range of the batteries ceased at the instant. The completeness of the cessation was scarcely less appalling than the roar. While every telescope was turned intently to the spot, where the columns and batteries seemed to have sunk ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... Roy was seldom absent from Aruna's side. They said little, but his presence wrapped her round with a sense of companionship more intimate than she had yet felt even in their happiest times together. While rocket after rocket soared and curved and blossomed in mid-heaven, her gaze reverted persistently to the outline of a man's head and ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... put is the destruction of the enemy's observation balloons, on which he depends for the regulation of his artillery fire. An airplane which is to be used for this work is specially fitted with a number of rocket tubes which project in all directions, so that it looks like a pipe-organ gone on a spree. The rockets, which are fired by means of a keyboard not unlike that of a clavier, are loaded with a composition containing a large percentage of phosphorus and are fitted with gangs of barbed ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... the nucleus which was turned toward the Sun; and the rays being bent backward, formed a part of the tail. The nucleus of Halley's comet; with its emanations, presented the appearance of a burning rocket, the end of which was turned sideways by the force of the wind. The rays issuing from the head were seen by Arago and myself, at the Observatory at Paris, to assume very different forms on ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... am de man," said the negro, smiting his broad chest with his fist, "what's ready to serve as a rocket-stick to bof, an' ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... had our fathers of old— Excellent herbs to ease their pain— Alexanders and Marigold, Eyebright, Orris, and Elecampane, Basil, Rocket, Valerian, Rue, (Almost singing themselves they run) Vervain, Dittany, Call-me-to-you— Cowslip, Melilot, Rose of the Sun. Anything green that grew out of the mould Was an excellent herb to our ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... pieces of its own weight. In such a way Babylon rose and fell, and Nineveh, and Thebes, and Carthage, and Rome. Mere bulk, unorganized, becomes its own destroyer. It dies of clogging and congestion. But when Stephenson's Rocket ran twenty-nine miles an hour, and Morse's telegraph clicked its signals from Washington to Baltimore, and Bell's telephone flashed the vibrations of speech between Boston and Salem, a new era began. In came the era of speed and the finely organized nations. In came cities of unprecedented ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... rapturously gazing at it. All at once the sky grew dark; black clouds passed over it; profound darkness covered the beautiful world, and dreadful shrieks and groans resounded through the air. But from the midst of the black clouds a bright, dazzling star burst like a rocket, and set fire to every thing, until all countries were in ruins, and all cities burned down. And as I saw that, I cried in my anguish, "Fire! fire!" Fortunately, you came and awakened me.' That, sire," said the castellan, drawing a deep breath, ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... Two years ago the service imported a lifeboat and rocket apparatus from England to test them here. The lifeboat was found to be nearly perfect, but too heavy for launching on our flat beaches with light crews: she weighed four thousand pounds. This boat was invented by ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... up a rocket, mayn't she, Mr Russell?" said Mark, after a long silence, during which the boat had risen and fallen with the swell, and felt beating with a living pulsation as the men toiled ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... a royal flourish, sprang in air to seek her; but her outraged mate was ahead of him, and with a scream she fled, leaving a tuft of feathers in her mate's beak. In turn the Cardinal struck him like a flashing rocket, and then red war waged in Rainbow Bottom. The females scattered for cover with all their might. The Cardinal worked in a kiss on one poor little bird, too frightened to escape him; then the males closed in, and serious business began. The Cardinal would have enjoyed ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... she would not do, for people who would consent to be done for, and would allow her to dominate all their thoughts and deeds. But the moment they revolted, or showed the weakest inclination to do things their own way, she blazed up and was off like a rocket. Her taste for governing was little short of a mania, and I could see, in my mind's eye, just how she had essayed to rule Daisy, and how in her failure she had written to me, ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... "The rocket, Brutus," said my father. "If you will get in, Mademoiselle, we will contrive to push you through the breakers. Best take your coat off, my son, and place it ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... come from behind me, which made me turn back my head; and I did see a sudden fire or light running in the sky, as it were towards Cheapside ward, and it vanished very quick, which did make me bethink myself what holyday it was, and took it for some rocket, though it was much brighter than any rocket, and so thought no more of it, but it seems Mr. Hater and Gibson going home that night did meet with many clusters of people talking of it, and many people of the towns about the city did see it, and the world do make much ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... the unfinished intonation, like a rocket that had never dropped its stick, and started up ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... very large, and was divided into several sections, each of which was equipped with runways and/or other landing facilities to suit one class of craft—propellor jobs, jets, or helicopters. There were even a few structures that looked like rocket pits. ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... reputation to enjoy; but this country is full of fellows who came here knowing as little about oil as I knew and who have accomplished more sensational results. I've come up like a rocket, to be sure; it remains to be seen whether I shall fall ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... proofs, glued on to enormous pages, posters, screens. It is now that you may shiver and feel pity. The appearance of these sheets is monstrous. From each sign, from each printed word, go pen lines, which radiate and meander like a Congreve rocket, and spread themselves out at the margin in a luminous rain of phrases, epithets, and substantives, underlined, crossed, mixed, erased, superposed: the ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... more, and then Jones dropped the lunch-basket overboard by accident, and we went up nearly four miles Conly got blue in the face, Jones fainted, and I came near going under myself. A minute more we'd all've been dead men; but I gave the valve a jerk, and we came down like a rocket-stick. When the boys came to, Jones said he wanted to get out; and as we were only a little distance from the ground, I threw out ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... you see by the dawn's early light What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?— Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the clouds of the fight O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming! And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there; O! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free, and the ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... beach where they first ate seafood out of curiosity, then continued because they liked it. And due to their protein diet the Terran had grown well over six feet in height and the Ssassaror seemed to have touched off a rocket of expansion in his body with his protein-eating. Those Ssassarors who shared his guilt—became meat-eaters—became ostracized and eventually moved off to live by themselves. They were called Ssassaror-Giants and were pointed to as an object lesson to the young of the normal Ssassarors ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... those generators in the rocket. They're new." He fumbled in his coat pocket for his pipe and tobacco. "I never thought I'd run another nuclear-bomb test, as long ...
— The Answer • Henry Beam Piper
... McClellan laid a plan to surround and capture them. This plan was only known to McClellan, General Scott, and Colonel Scott, a relation of the General, by marriage. As the troops started out at night, for their assault, a signal rocket went up from Washington. On their arrival at Munson's Hill, the bird had flown. McClellan, being informed of this, immediately called on General Scott, finding there Colonel Scott. He immediately said to the General: "The enemy have been warned of our movements by a rocket; ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... case the south-side men have nothing to do with her. But sometimes the vessel shows all her lights and rushes upon the South Pier. Then the men wait for the last lurch and that wallowing crash that they know so well. The rocket is laid, and flies out over the rigging; the brigadesmen haul on their rope, and the basket comes rocking ashore along the line. It is not child's play to stand in the open and work the rocket apparatus; sometimes ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... on either side; so close were we, that the enemy were distinctly seen loading their guns above us. After a few broadsides, we brought our starboard broadside to bear on the Fish-market, and our larboard side then looked to seaward. The rocket-boats were now throwing rockets over our ships into the mole, the effects of which, were occasionally seen on the shipping on our larboard bow. The Dutch flag was to be seen flying at the fore of the Dutch Admiral, who, with his squadron, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... then thrown forward to see wreaths of water speeding below like ghosts. The stars jolted back and forth in wide arcs. There were explosions at the bows, and the ship trembled and hesitated. Occasionally the skipper split the darkness with a rocket, and we gazed round the night for an answer. The night had no answer to give. We were probably nearing the North Pole. About midnight, the silent helmsman put away his pipe, as a preliminary to answering a foolish question of mine, and said, ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... ringing assurance, but long before the leader of a financial movement has got word to his following, wide-spread over the country, it has taken alarm, the rout has begun, and the field is strewn with corpses. A great financial excitement, like a rocket, should soar triumphantly into the air, leaving behind it a comet-like trail of glory, climaxing in a shower of gold; diverted from its course, it runs a mad, brief, tragic career along the earth, spreading ruin and ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... A rocket! They were looking for us then! The pinnace must have been picked up! A cheer—what a cheer!—came brokenly from our lips; and we lashed furiously at the oars, steering to where a glare in the mist had ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... than means to help capacity to rise is "machinery by which to facilitate the descent of incapacity from the higher strata to the lower." He repeats in new phrase his warning] "that every man of high natural ability, who is both ignorant and miserable, is as great a danger to society as a rocket without a stick is to people who fire it. Misery is a match that never goes out; genius, as an explosive power, beats gunpowder hollow: and if knowledge, which should give that power guidance, is wanting, the chances are not small that the rocket will simply ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... up from her seat like a rocket and cried, "If that is all you have to say about it, why then I will give you a bit of my mind. The child is now eight years old and knows nothing, and you will not let her learn. You will not send her to church or school, as I was told down in Dorfli, and she is my own sister's child. I am ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... glory! You guys are too stupid to see that but it's there. The glory of being on the first rocket ship to the Moon. The name of Joe Spain written down in the history books and said over by people and school kids for thousands of years! Immortality! That's ...
— The Stowaway • Alvin Heiner
... silently as we can, to the causeway, across which we must make a dash, and, I hope, may take the pirates by surprise. I would send the Ypsilante, meantime, to approach the harbour; and when we reach the causeway, we will throw up a rocket, and she must commence a feigned attack on the mouth of the harbour, blazing away as hard as she can. This will distract the attention of the pirates, and make them fancy that they have most to fear from their enemies on that side. As soon as she opens her fire, we will rush on; and as the ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... had been made of that very region on February 21, and this photograph showed everything down to the twelfth magnitude, but not a trace of the stranger which burst into view between the 21st and the 22nd like the explosion of a rocket. ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... lights showed on the starboard bow—a green beam, and a yellow one above, with the water on fire beneath them, and sparks floating away upon her coil of smoke, that made you think of the spangles of a falling rocket. She went past swiftly, at no great distance from us. There was not a moan in the hot breeze to disturb the wonderful ocean stillness, and you almost thought you caught the beating of the iron heart in her, and the curious monotonous songs which engines sing as they work. ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... and the planes and rudders, to keep the machine from up-ending, from turning turtle in mid-air, from sticking her nose under an air-layer and swooping, hurtling over and over, down, down, like a shattered rocket, to dash herself to pieces on the waiting ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... numerous improvements have been made in the arms both of infantry and artillery, making them much more destructive. The effect of this is to incline men to prefer the shallower formations, even in the attack. We cannot, however, forget the lessons of experience; and, notwithstanding the use of rocket-batteries, shrapnel-shot, and the Perkins musket, I cannot imagine a better method of forming infantry for the attack than in columns of battalions. Some persons may perhaps desire to restore to infantry the helmets and ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... poor Doctor Brown, in the midst of all this hubbub, cut his own throat with his own razor. Whether this dismal catastrophe were exactly due to his mortification as a baffled visionary, whose favorite conceit had suddenly exploded like a rocket into smoke and stench, is more than we know. But, at all events, the sole memorial of his hypothesis which now reminds the English reader that it ever existed is one solitary notice of good-humored satire pointed ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... fix the rocket apparatus. She was late in making her distress signals. But I doubt if anything could have been done. She went ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... came about that Mahmoud on a splendid war-horse, and five of his mounted staff, arrived at the head of the oncoming column; and Kagig saw them in a moment when the flare from the castle roared like a rocket hundreds of feet high and scattered all the shadows on that section of the road. Kagig passed the word along, but it was Monty who devised the instant plan, and one of Will's men who ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... of projection with a dark ground, and breaking a little white over it, as we see done with judgment and truth by Ruysdael. But to paint the actual play of hue on the reflective surface, or to give the forms and fury of water when it begins to show itself—to give the flashing and rocket-like velocity of a noble cataract, or the precision and grace of the sea wave, so exquisitely modeled, tho so mockingly transient—so mountainous in its form, yet so cold-like in its motion—with its variety and delicacy of color, when ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... for Recreation, there are three general sorts, viz. Those that ascend or mount in the Air. Those that consume on the Earth: And such as burn on the Water. And these are again divided into three Particulars, viz. For the Air, the Sky-Rocket, the flying Saucisson, and Balloon: For the Earth, the Ground-Rocket, the fiery Lances, and the Saucissons descendent. For the Water-Globes or Balls, double Rockets, and single Rockets; and of these in their particular Orders, to make them, and ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... At the signal rocket the enemy swept forward toward the canal, with companies of British sappers bearing scaling ladders and fascines of sugar cane. They moved with stolid unconcern, but the American cannon burst forth and slew them until ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... another of the Staff added as he saw one of the enemy's detonator bombs disintegrate three or four hundred acres of a Mongolian base encampment fifty miles to the northwest and shoot it a monstrous blazing rocket twenty or thirty miles into the ...
— The Sword and the Atopen • Taylor H. Greenfield
... Five men were buried that night in the little cemetery there by the dugout. We stood or sat about for a while! no one had much to say. The grey mist thickened and enveloped us. And we became as very shadows ourselves. Somewhere in the mist up the hill, near where the rocket's red glare flushed on the dim horizon, a man began whistling the intermezzo from "Thais." It fitted the unreality of the scene, and soon two of us were whistling together. He heard me and paused. Then we walked toward one another whistling and met. It was the Gilded Youth from the ship—the ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... almost immediately, when all the innumerable crowd, knowing well that there was nothing else to wait for, and that all was said and done until ten o'clock the next morning, the time when the cardinals had their first voting, went off in a tumult of noisy joking, just as they would after the last rocket of a firework display; so that at the end of one minute nobody was there where a quarter of an hour before there had been an excited crowd, except a few curious laggards, who, living in the neighbourhood or on the very piazza itself; were less in a hurry ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... he said, in explanation of his order, "send up a rocket. They are made so that they are visible by day as well as night. In the daylight their explosion produces a dense cloud of black smoke visible at several miles. They also make a terrific report that is audible ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... the British columns in sight than they were driven back by a brisk fire of shot and shell. Then followed a furious artillery duel. In vain the British pounded away with field pieces, rocket guns, and mortars; they were forced back by the ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell
... to send up a rocket the instant the parapet was gained and the enemy aroused. A few more strokes, and the boats would reach the landing-place. Just then a loud hail came from the walls of the fort. Ronald answered, in French, ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... energy once more and the Nomad shot skyward like a rocket. Through the floor port he saw Nazu's tiny ovoid scudding over the treetops. Then ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... or I fire," the Falaba steamed off and sent up rocket signals to summon help, and was only brought to a standstill after a chase of a quarter of ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... a rocket; it shoots into the sky, flares, fades, and falls to the ground in dust so unnoticeable that you can hardly find its remnants, search how you may. Of course, I know that our lives don't really shoot upwards towards the stars to illumine the ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... this. Eliza had had a rocket-like career of success in the hotel which pleased and amused her; but she felt that to forgive the Brown family for having a carriage and pair required large-mindedness while her father's carriage still stood in the unfurnished drawing-room, and even Mrs. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... separated by his store of knowledge, as by a wide space that he has crossed, from smaller minds, he is brought closer to the ignorant by the presence of the vast unknown. Instead of feeling that he has soared like a rocket away from the ground, he thinks of himself rather as a flower might think whose head was an inch or two higher than a great company of similar flowers; he has perhaps a wider view; he sees the bounding hedgerow, the distant line ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Robb; "they were yarning about pirates that infest the Grecian Archipelago. They sneak out of the bays and from under the islands with the suddenness of a rocket. They have very swift schooners, many of them built in America for the slave trade, and they are full of well-armed, bloodthirsty villains who stick at nothing." It was according to the strictly ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... is hampered by manpower shortages; so is production for its huge rocket program. Labor shortages have also delayed its cruiser and carrier programs, and production ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... sky-rocket, and seems to have had the traditional descent. From 1900 to 1906 everybody was talking about him; since 1906 one scarcely hears mention of his name. He was ridiculously overpraised, but he ought not to be forgotten. As an artist, he will not bear ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... unknown man standing on the corner of Elm and Superior streets was hit by a rocket which went between his legs and becoming entangled in his overcoat exploded up his back. He immediately departed for ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... of my most valued and exemplary clerical friend, who, with a cool head and steady nerves, found himself standing in safety at the top of the spire, with his hand upon the vane, which nothing terrestrial had ever looked down upon in its lofty position, except a bird, a bat, a sky-rocket, or a balloon. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... ain't I a daisy? Excuse your old pal busting forth; But my name's going hup like a rocket; it's spreading east, west, south, and north. Like that darned hinfluenza, but more so; and now, s'elp me scissors, I find I was famous afore I was born! Sounds a licker, but ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 26, 1891 • Various
... watchfulness and expectancy as the two boats approached nearer and nearer across the dark waters. Suddenly there shot up high into the air a rocket and when far toward the clouds, a "bomb burst in air," and there followed a shower of many ...
— The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth"
... circumference; it was not exactly Charybdis, or the Maelstrom, but rather more like the wave occasioned by the sudden turning of a man-of-war's boat. Being hooked, and having by this time set his nose peremptorily down the stream, he flashed and whizzed away like a rocket. My situation partook of the nature of a surprise. Being on a rocky shore, and having had a bad start, I lost ground at first considerably; but the reel sang out joyously, and yielded a liberal length of line, that saved me from the disgrace of being ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... remember the days of Ponderevo, the great days, I mean, of Ponderevo? Perhaps you had a trifle in some world-shaking enterprise! Then you know him only too well. Astraddle on Tono-Bungay, he flashed athwart the empty heavens—like a comet—rather, like a stupendous rocket!—and overawed investors spoke of his star. At his zenith he burst into a cloud of the most magnificent promotions. What a time that was! The Napoleon ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... Ten men out of a hundred reached it in a few cases and when they arrived they sent up rocket signals to say that they were there! there! there! Two or three battalions literally disappeared into the blue. I thought that the Germans might have taken a considerable number of prisoners, but not so. Those isolated lots who went on to their objectives regardless ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... begun to wait, 'n' Hannah waited until if Hannah had waited any longer she 'd have gone off like a rocket, she was that mad again. Gran'ma Mullins said Hannah always got so red she got purple if she only was rememberin' it after. 'N' in the end she could n't stand it no longer 'n' she set off for the pond herself. She always said as she just hoped 'n' prayed as they was both on 'em drowned ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... 1 and 2 of the patrols of attack will be relieved from the usual patrol duty from this date. They will employ their time at rocket shooting. A target will be in place on the east side of the ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... kite and we are flying it, the mastery impulse is directly aroused and gratified; but we also like to watch a kite flown by some one else, and similarly we like to watch a hawk, a balloon or aeroplane, a rocket. We like also to watch things that balance or float or in other ways seem to be superior to the force of gravity. Why should such things fascinate us? Perhaps because of empathy, the "feeling oneself into" the object ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... of gunpowder, and duck- shot, and 'high-wines,' and ham sandwiches, upon the silvonian banks of the ragin' Kankakee, where the 'di-dipper' tips ye good-by wid his tail, and the wild loon skoots like a sky-rocket for his exiled home in the alien dunes of the wild morass—or, as Tommy Moore so illegantly describes the ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... if he had foreseen this occasion." Alas! the same thing had been said, in the same words, for the unhappy Marie Antoinette; but away with these gloomy presentiments! After the concert the discharge of a rocket from the palace gave the signal for the fireworks. These had been arranged for the whole length of the Avenue of the Champs lyses. The illumination brought out the impressiveness of the vast architectural lines of the Tuileries. The main avenues of ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... would be worth going South to hear. Starting from a low bush, it mounts in the air and continues its flight apparently to an altitude of several hundred feet, remaining on the wing a number of minutes, and pouring out its song with the utmost clearness and abandon,—a slowly rising musical rocket that fills the night air with harmonious sounds. Here are both the lark and nightingale in one; and if poets were as plentiful down South as they are in New England, we should have heard of this song long ago, and had it celebrated ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... had mastered the alphabet, there then appeared a procession of new horrors, called arbitrary characters; the most despotic characters I have ever known; who insisted, for instance, that a thing like the beginning of a cobweb meant expectation, and that a pen-and-ink sky-rocket stood for disadvantageous. When I had fixed these wretches in my mind, I found that they had driven everything else out of it; then, beginning again, I forgot them; while I was picking them up, I dropped the other fragments of the system: in short, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... something strained and morbidly intent in their expressions, a glassiness of the staring eye and a starchiness in the smiling lip, that has made me suffer under my bed-cover and swear that next time I would depart like a sky-rocket! ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren
... which they traversed. They remained on each successive encampment long enough (if I may so express myself) to sow themselves there. They left behind them at least a remnant of their own population while they went forward, like a rocket thrown up in the sky, which, while it shoots forward, keeps possession of its track by its train of fire. And hence it was that Attila, when he found himself at length in Hungary, and elevated to the headship ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... his head, with something of the rush of a rocket, from the stooping posture to listen, and his frown of non-intelligence might be interpreted as the coming on of the fury Radicals are prone to, by a gentleman who believed in their constant disposition ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... fascinating hats and caps" were appreciated as proper to the genius of the place, and the writer of Casa Guidi Windows had the happiness of seeing her hero, M. le President, "in a cocked hat, and with a train of cavalry, passing like a rocket along the boulevards to an occasional yell from the Red." By a happy chance they lighted in Paris upon Tennyson, now Poet-laureate, whom Mrs. Browning had hitherto known only through his poems; he was in the friendliest mood, and urged that they should make use of his ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... laid my aching head on my pillow I murmured: "Had I been an American citizen, much as I believe in sound currency and an honest dollar, one more rocket, a few more fog-horns, and I should have cast my vote for ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... our leading bus arrived within range and began to spit bullets through the propeller, a signal rocket streaked from the first Boche biplane, and the trio dived almost vertically, honking the while on Klaxon horns. We were then ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... ignited wood three or four times in the air and then applied the flames to the paper tips of the combustible cones. Apparently saltpetre and sulphur had been mixed in the preparation of these. They burned fast, making a noise like the fuse of a rocket. ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Flyaways wanted to see not only Goldilocks but also the Three Bears and they took a remarkable journey through the air to do so. Tommy even rode on a Rocket and met the monstrous Blue Frog. When they arrived at Goldilocks' house they found that the Three Bears had been there before them and mussed everything up, much to Goldilocks' despair. "We must drive those bears out of the country!" said ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... proving mild, they walked into the grounds of the building, where they naturally broke into groups, conversing on the incidents of the day, or of such other matters as came uppermost. Occasionally, gleams of light were thrown across them from a fire- ball; or a rocket's starry train was still seen drawn in the air, resembling the wake of a ship at night, as it wades through ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... has bartered his rum for a coach and a crib, at the First Lord's stern decree, And he learns the use of the rocket and squib (which are useful as lights at sea): And they train him in part of the nautical art, as much as a landsman can, For they teach him to paddle the gay canoe, and to row ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... was last in Varret's review. "Donna Bailey, age twenty-three, five-five, one-fifteen. Hair blonde, eyes blue, complexion fair. Convicted of manslaughter by negligence, while piloting an atmosphere sport rocket in an intoxicated ...
— This World Must Die! • Horace Brown Fyfe
... the rocket was about to be shot to the Moon. Naturally he wanted to go along. But could he smuggle ...
— Zero Hour • Alexander Blade |
