"Rocket" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which a spray of pearls was fastened, while jewels and diamonds of great value were around and suspended from their necks. Harcarrahs, or Brahmin messengers of trust, headed the procession, and seven standard-bearers, each carrying a small green banner displayed on a rocket-pole. After these marched 100 pikemen, whose weapons were inlaid with silver. Their escort was a squadron of cavalry, with 200 sepoy soldiers. They were received by the troops in line, with presented arms, drums beating, and officers in ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... 'A huge rocket sent up from either my estancia house or Coila Villa. There may be several, but you must act when you see the first. There is fuse enough to the bomb to give you time to escape, and the bomb is big enough to burst the lock ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... 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 perilous 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; Oh, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... fancy I saw floating upon the stream, as though after the dreary stripping of the decorations used in some Watteau festival, moss-roses in loosened garlands. Elsewhere a corner seemed to be reserved for the commoner kinds of lily; of a neat pink or white like rocket-flowers, washed clean like porcelain, with housewifely care; while, a little farther again, were others, pressed close together in a floating garden-bed, as though pansies had flown out of a garden like butterflies ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... his arms. Somebody lowered the lights, and they danced in a shadow-land; somebody began to sing, and they all sang in chorus; then somebody began to fling about paper bags full of tiny white wafers, and the bags burst in the air like shells, and their contents fell like stars from a falling rocket, and everybody was covered as with flakes ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... the fighting-tanks just ahead of the power rooms; Canning slid rapidly through the engine room, oozed through a tiny door, and took up his position in the stern-chamber, seated half-over the great ion-rocket sheath. ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... morning of that day the British advanced in force to the attack; and the peaceful little creek was ablaze with flags and bright uniforms, and the wooded shores echoed back the strains of martial music. Twenty-one barges, one rocket-boat, and two schooners formed the British column of attack, which moved grandly up the creek, with the bands playing patriotic airs, and the sailors, confident of victory, cheering lustily. Eight hundred men ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... swish as a rocket soared upward from the Captain's bridge, leaving a comet's tail of fire. I watched it as it described a graceful arc and then with an audible pop it burst in a flare of brilliant colour. Its ascent ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... yonder by Lokken, the little fishing village with the red-tiled roofs—we can see it up here from the window—a ship has come ashore. It has struck, and is fast embedded in the sand; but the rocket apparatus has thrown a rope on board, and formed a bridge from the wreck to the mainland; and all on board are saved, and reach the land, and are wrapped in warm blankets; and to-day they are invited to the farm at the convent of Borglum. In comfortable rooms they encounter hospitality and friendly ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... out. In heaven's name, man, cried Stubb, are you ramming home a cartridge there? —Avast! How will that help him; jamming that iron-bound bucket on top of his head? Avast, will ye! Stand clear of the tackle! cried a voice like the bursting of a rocket. Almost in the same instant, with a thunder-boom, the enormous mass dropped into the sea, like Niagara's Table-Rock into the whirlpool; the suddenly relieved hull rolled away from it, to far down her glittering ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... put out, no rocket rose in the air, no cannon boomed from the portholes; but deep below there was a surging and a murmuring. The mermaid sat still, cradled by the waves, so that she could look in at the cabin window. But now the ship began to make more way. One sail after ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... Rocket Battery, and now acting aid to Colonel Heckmann, and Wm. Lemons, a private in the Ninth New Jersey, advanced under the enemy's heavy firing, when Lieutenant Graham got near enough to, ...
— Kinston, Whitehall and Goldsboro (North Carolina) expedition, December, 1862 • W. W. Howe
... 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, ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... feet, hearing an appalling hiss through the open trap-door, a hiss like the first sound of a rocket! ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... continued he, "professions which are independent of influence, and in which it could be of little use to them. Patrons can be of little advantage to a lawyer or a physician. No judge, no attorney, can push a lawyer up, beyond a certain point—he may rise like a rocket, but he will fall like the stick, if he be not supported by his own inherent powers. Where property or life is at stake, men will not compliment or even be influenced by great recommendations—they will consult the best lawyer, and the best physician, whoever ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... driving an excellent bargain. He suited his wife pretty well, for, at times, She found he was useful to furnish 'the dimes.' The most of his value she found in his pocket, And now he was playing the Stick to the Rocket. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Ground Forces, Navy, Air Forces, Air Defense Forces, Strategic Rocket Forces, Command ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... noble fellow Brand is safe, and we may yet be saved!" As he spoke, a thin stream of light shot upwards from the dark ocean, and broke into a thousand beautiful coruscations above our heads. "A rocket! the schooner had some on board for signals," cried Burkett. "She is under weigh ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... detachable wings to a sky rocket, through the medium of a collar or band, arranged so that the wings may be detached from the collar or band, or the latter detached from the rocket, substantially ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... aeroplanes at play, Or contemplate with secret satisfaction Your fellow-men proceeding towards the fray; Your sole solicitude when men report There is a shovel short, Or, numbering jealously your rusty store, Some mouldering rocket, some wet bomb you miss That was reserved for some ensuing war, But on no grounds to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... about ten, the lighthouse on the reef which stretches out in front of Honolulu, shone out in the darkness. Then began a little display of fireworks, and rockets and blue lights were exchanged between our ship and the shore. A rocket also shot up from a steamer to seaward, and she was made out to be the 'Moses Taylor,' the ship that is to take ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... jest, truly, from one whose hospitality is so famous. Well, to fall in with your wishes, we will come ashore this evening, and if the Captain Delgado chances to sight the Queen's ship Crocodile before he sails, perhaps he will be so good as to signal to us with a rocket." ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... huzza! there goes the balloon— 'Tis up like a rocket, and off to the moon! Now fading from our view, Or dimly seen; Now lost in the deep ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... daily, at 7.0 a.m.; Portsmouth and Southampton, every afternoon, at 4.0; Plymouth and Exeter, every morning, at 8; Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool, daily, at 6.0 a.m.; Portsmouth and Southampton, by the 'Rocket,' at 7.0 a.m.; Gloster, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, and Holyhead leaves Bristol each day ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... high time he got to the floor. Quickly, he looked around for a means of doing so. Near him, floating in the air, was the book he had been reading, but it was out of reach. He had taken off his boots when he started to read, so the Fuller rocket method ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... cried to him chokingly, held out her snowy slender arms to him to come, to feel his lips laid on her white brow, the cry of a young girl's love, a little strangled cry, wrung from her, that cry that has rung through the ages. And then a rocket sprang and bang shot blind blank and O! then the Roman candle burst and it was like a sigh of O! and everyone cried O! O! in raptures and it gushed out of it a stream of rain gold hair threads and they shed and ah! they were all greeny dewy stars ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... briefing shack, a strange figure in blood-colored plastic. The representatives of the press had been handed the mimeographed releases by the PRO and now they sat in silence, studying the red figure of the man who was to ride the rocket. ...
— The Hills of Home • Alfred Coppel
... the combined fleets, consisting of five sail of the line, eighteen or twenty frigates and smaller vessels, besides five bomb-vessels and several rocket-boats, carrying in all about one thousand guns. The armament of some of the smaller vessels is not given, but the guns of those whose armaments are known, amount to over nine hundred. The harbor and defences ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... to guess that a mere demonstration was on foot; for the appearance of attacking infantry followed immediately on a lifting of the barrage, a symptom in itself often difficult to recognise. On this occasion I intended and attempted to send up a coloured rocket, but its stick became stuck between the sides of the dug-out shaft and, by the time the efforts of Sergeant Collett had prepared the rocket for firing, the barrage died down as suddenly as it had started. This ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... of witticisms, then in shouting and song. We have escaped from the tyranny of "Tipperary," none of us sing it now, but that doggerel is replaced by other music-hall abominations which are at present in the full glory of their rocket-reign. A parody of a hymn, "Toiling on," is also popular, and my Jersey mate gave it full vent on ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... touched and passed. With quickening steps tier after tier was covered, until those looking saw the red light flung at last into the air. It circled high between the canyon walls in its flight and dropped like a rocket into the Rat. A muffled report from the lower tier was followed by a heavier and still a heavier one above. A creeping pang shot the heart of the granite, a dreadful awakening was ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... then that he made one last flight over the inner crater and saw light on the floor of stone in the funneled depths. Then he sent the ship like a rocket down to the shelf of rock where Chet had begun his descent; and he worked with trembling fingers to adjust the metal suit and regulate the ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... jar to be awakened so rudely from a trance of love, to turn suddenly from the one you care for most in all the world, and behold the one you have best reason to hate. Nevertheless, it is not in human nature to descend rocket-wise from the ethereal heights of love. I was still in an exalted state of mind when I turned and confronted Locasto. Hate was far from my heart, and when I saw the man himself was regarding me ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... three battalions of infantry were moved along the river until opposite the Arab position. At 9 A.M. the eighteen guns on the island opened a tremendous bombardment at 1,200 yards range on the entrenchments, and at the same time the infantry and a rocket detachment concentrated their fire on the tops of the palm-trees. The artillery now succeeded in silencing three of the five Dervish guns and in sinking the little Dervish steamer Tahra, while the infantry by a tremendous ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... 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 ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... resource he was as young as the latest statute. His first prominence had come when he broke the Shardwell will.* His fee for this one act was five hundred thousand dollars. From then on he had risen like a rocket. He was often called the greatest lawyer in the country—corporation lawyer, of course; and no classification of the three greatest lawyers in the United ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... 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 ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... driver, upon releasing the flares, had nosed up, banked, turned, and was coming in again, down the road toward the advancing column. Von Schlichten peered into his all-armament sight, his foot on the machine-gun pedal and his fingers on the rocket buttons. The highway below was jammed with geeks, and they were all stopped dead and staring upward, as though hypnotized by the lights. It was obviously a mob. A second later, they had recovered and were shooting—not at the ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... favourite tree), was another similar nest, containing four eggs, slightly glossy, with a salmon-pink tinge throughout, and numerous well-marked brownish-red specks and spots, most numerous towards the large end, looking vastly like Brobdingnagian specimens of the Rocket-bird's eggs. The variation in this bird's eggs is remarkable; out of more than one hundred eggs nearly one third have been pure white, and between the dead glossless purely white egg and a somewhat glossy, warm pinky grounded one, with numerous ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... in terms too high of the judicious disposition of the guns, their admirable practice, or the activity with which the cannonade was sustained; but notwithstanding the formidable calibre of our iron guns, mortars, and howitzers, and the admirable way in which they were served, and aided by a rocket battery, it would have been visionary to expect that they could, within any limited time, silence the fire of seventy pieces behind well-constructed batteries of earth, plank, and fascines, or dislodge troops covered ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... Spencer wrapped her up well in cloaks and shawls, and spoke words of kindly cheer in her ear as she set off. The fresh night air blew pleasantly on her, the stars glimmered in full glory overhead, and now and then her eye was caught by the rocket-like track of a shooting-star. Orion was rising slowly far in the east, and bringing to her mind the sailor-boy under the southern sky; if, indeed, he were not where sun and stars no more are the light. ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... even 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 Elysees. The illumination brought out the impressiveness of the vast architectural lines of the Tuileries. The main avenues of the gardens ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... by the forelock," in a very real sense, the Sage of Fleet Street rose with him like a Brock rocket, high, and swift, and light-compelling, into ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... last pinwheel had whizzed itself out in streams and stars of colored fire, until the last sky-rocket had gone hissing upward toward the clouds, and until the last glow of red fire had ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandma Bell's • Laura Lee Hope
... blackness, under the yawn of the forecourse. On a sudden a steamer's 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, ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... 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 ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... Smith and his gallant companions had performed all their operations in darkness, the only light being the flashes of the cannon and muskets playing on them. At length ten o'clock struck—a single rocket ascended into the air. In an instant the fireship and all the trains leading to the different magazines and stores were ignited. The boats lay alongside the former, ready to take off the crew. There was a loud explosion—the priming had burst, and ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... quicker even than triggers. His length of limb happily flashed into the youth's mind. Up went his foot with a sudden kick, and away went the pistol into the air, where it exploded after the manner of a sky-rocket! The bandit did not wait for more. He turned and fled, much to the satisfaction of the victor, who, overcome by prolonged exhaustive toil and excitement, sank down on a heap of rubbish, and lay there in a semi-conscious state. It ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... said Mr 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 observed ethics of South Spainer discipline that the commander never was supposed to so far lower the ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... only in name, like the postboys of the past and the cowboys of the present) have given laborious nights throughout the preceding October. The rouser is much larger and heavier than the ordinary squib; it is propelled through the air like a rocket by the force of its escaping sparks; and it bursts with a terrible report. In order to protect themselves from the ravages of the rouser the people in the streets wear spectacles of wire netting, while the householders board up their windows and lay damp straw on their ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... gendarme is galloping." In fact, he brought tidings of a very deplorable event. While an artillery company had been preparing, in the arsenal of the town, numerous fireworks to celebrate his Majesty's fete, one of them, in preparing a rocket, accidentally set the fuse on fire, and becoming frightened threw it away from him. It fell on the powder which the shop contained, and eighteen cannoneers were killed by the explosion, and ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... at Laing's Nek—every Boer behind a rock. Early in the morning of the 28th January, 1881, he moved to the attack "with the 58th regiment, commanded by Colonel Deane, a mounted squadron of 70 men, the 60th Rifles, the Naval Brigade with three rocket tubes, and the Artillery with six guns." He shelled the Boers for twenty minutes, then the assault was delivered, the 58th marching up the slope in solid column. The battle was soon finished, with this ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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, "Sometimes ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... Father Kelly paused, his persuasive argument rolling back on himself; he didn't know what to do with the watch. It was too perilous to run the risk of new discords over it. The priest cast a distress rocket in a look at the Vicar-General; but the Vicar-General perfidiously ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... 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 Harry's ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the hollows of that foam burn with green fire like so much shattering chrysoprase; and how, ever and anon startling you with its white flash, a jet of spray leaps hissing out of the fall, like a rocket, bursting in the wind and driven away in dust, filling the air with light; and how through the curdling wreaths of the restless crashing abyss below, the blue of the water, paled by the foam in its body, shows purer than the sky through white ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... then, no doubt, 'he talked ostentatiously,' as he had at Fort George about Gunpowder (ante, p. 124). In the Gent. Mag. for 1749, p. 55, there is a paper on the Construction of Fireworks, which I have little doubt is his. The following passage is certainly Johnsonian:—'The excellency of a rocket consists in the largeness of the train of fire it emits, the solemnity of its motion (which should be rather slow at first, but augmenting as it rises), the straightness of its flight, and the height to which ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... us know that he was also keeping watch. Far ahead of us, near C., a rocket went up into the clear sky and then fell slowly, very slowly, in the form of an intensely brilliant ball, lighting up all the surrounding country wonderfully. We knew them well, those formidable German ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... "just one more question. Could that have been the flash of a—a rocket? Like the proposed experiments in Germany. Could it have meant in any way the launching of a projectile—a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... till I reached the 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 down ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... the dome, the night sky is a beautiful thing, even though Deimos and Phobos are nothing to brag about. If you walk outside, maybe as far as the rocket field, you ...
— Fee of the Frontier • Horace Brown Fyfe
... spot, regardless of the flying bullets, with the intent on of tearing away the smouldering missile, but before they could reach the hut the dull red glow gave place to a vivid bluish flame. The mobile weapon was an incendiary rocket. ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... the Manufacturing Districts Coaching trip to Liverpool Coventry English scenery 'The Rocket' The two Stephensons Opening of the railway William Fawcett Birkenhead Walk back to London Patricroft Manchester Edward Tootal Sharp, Roberts and Co. Manchester industry Coalbrookdale The Black Country Dudley Castle Wren's Nest Hill Birmingham Boulton ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... passion, and they shook their mantles in vain rage. At last, seeing the balls cut and strike the trees, they ran away, and we were left in peace and quietness. During the former voyage the Fuegians were here very troublesome, and to frighten them a rocket was fired at night over their wigwams; it answered effectually, and one of the officers told me that the clamour first raised, and the barking of the dogs, was quite ludicrous in contrast with the profound silence which in a minute or two afterwards prevailed. ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... unavoidable but vicious measure of his own. He'd had to resort to it, for the temptation to drive to a terminal, to an airport, or rocket field, or railroad ...
— Citadel • Algirdas Jonas Budrys
... "A rocket mortar of light weight," explained Kennedy, then dropped into French as he explained to Armand the manipulation ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... soary (and flighty) as a rocket to-day, with the unutterable joy of getting that Old Man of the Sea off my back, where he has been roosting more than ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... expecting every instant to hear the sound of feet outside the panels, a rocket shot out from the Nelson and a score of parti-colored balls curved ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... lips. "One hundred and two. One hundred and three," he would say. "Over she goes, and thank the Lord I'm not in the opposite trench. BANG! I told you so. Stretcher-bearers for the Turks, please." Or he would hurl the bomb high into the air, so that it burst above the enemy like a rocket or a star-shell. He would blow a long whistle, as it shot skyward, and say "PLONK!" as it exploded into a shower ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... Blair, who had peeped out from the companion. "We're actually running up to the fleet, and the rocket has gone up for them to haul trawls. It looks very bad, very bad. You're not frightened, ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... Jupiter, but he landed it successfully," said Quest. "He and my mother lived on Jupiter until the oxygen equipment wore out at last. I was born and brought up there, and I was finally able to build a small rocket with a powerful enough drive ...
— The Jupiter Weapon • Charles Louis Fontenay
... fixed and apparently unattended camera came a steady, portentous view of the rocket ... sleek and so incredibly slim that Jordan wondered why on Earth it didn't simply topple over and be ...
— If at First You Don't... • John Brudy
... over the swarming streets, and under the fruitful earth, until it shot across the river: bursting over the quiet surface like a bomb-shell, and gone again as if it had exploded in the rush of smoke and steam and glare. A little more, and again it roared across the river, a great rocket: spurning the watery turnings and doublings with ineffable contempt, and going straight to its end, as Father Time goes to his. To whom it is no matter what living waters run high or low, reflect the heavenly lights and darknesses, produce their little growth of weeds and flowers, turn here, turn ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... a rocket moves toward Mars. It reminds us that the world will not be the same for our children, or even for ourselves in a short span of years. The next man to stand here will look out on a scene different from our own, because ours ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... interesting road, birds and trees, I've no doubt, and wayside flowers, and there's nothing I should enjoy more than watching them. But I can't. Get me on that machine, and I have to go. Get me on anything, and I have to go. And I don't want to go a bit. WHY should a man rush about like a rocket, all pace and fizzle? Why? It makes me furious. I can assure you, sir, I go scorching along the road, and cursing aloud at myself for doing it. A quiet, dignified, philosophical man, that's what I am—at bottom; and here I am dancing with rage and swearing like a drunken ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... utterly forgotten the possibility of Frederick being tried and executed—utterly forgotten that at her wish, if by Margaret's deed, he was summoned into this danger. Her mother was one of those who throw out terrible possibilities, miserable probabilities, unfortunate chances of all kinds, as a rocket throws out sparks; but if the sparks light on some combustible matter, they smoulder first, and burst out into a frightful flame at last. Margaret was glad when, her filial duties gently and carefully performed, she could go down ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Machi met him in a rush and dissolved before the deadly ray as though he had never existed. Its effect must have been a silent explosion, for a fine gray ash came down from the ceiling as the residue which falls when a soaring rocket has exploded and expended its power. The gray ash was Naka Machi, ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... the Secretary once with the lantern so that he staggered; and then, whirling it twice round his head, sent it flying far out to sea, where it flared like a roaring rocket and fell. ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... of the oceans are we, With our liners of rocket speed, Till the God of Ice, in mist-filled trice, Calls to us harshly to pay his price As we sink to ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... his arm. He had reached the end of the platform. There he stood, looking up the line which ran dark under a haze of lights. The high red signal-lamps hung aloft in a scarlet swarm; farther off, like spangles shaking downwards from a burst sky-rocket, was a tangle of brilliant red and green signal-lamps settling. A train with the warm flare on its thick column of smoke came thundering upon the lovers. Dazed, they felt the yellow bar of carriage-windows brush in vibration across their faces. The ground and the air rocked. ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... your own, which is so purely white, you can never, till the day of doom, understand what I am. If ever I have seemed weary it is but to keep up a mannerly appearance; verily I could break forth ten times a day and shoot skywards like a rocket for sheer joy in life. When that mood comes over me there is no holding me, and I should dare swear that the whole fair earth had been made and created for my sole and free use, with all that therein is—and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the safety of the girl beside him—he was fighting, wrenching, wrestling with the motor 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 ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... to wait. A shrewd hissing apprised him that something unusual was about to occur. Like the flight of a great rocket a black object quickly mounted to the zenith. It did not become visible for several seconds; Gerald's nerves crisped with apprehension. The apparition was an incandescent chariot; in it sat Karospina, and beside him—oh! the agony of her lover—Mila Georgovics. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... understanding of the satire back of her mother's quiet eyes, lent to Aunt Victoria's golden calm the quaint touch of caricature which made it self-deceived complacency. At the recollection she sent up rocket after rocket of ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... strenuous spirit can quell a tumult with some 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 disaster in ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... up a handful of snow from the gutter to pound into a ball and toss like a grenade at the back of Major Dampfer's neck. The Major's boots flew out from under him, and he landed belly-down in the snow, burying his pistol's muzzle. The gun went off, flinging itself like a rocket out of his hand. Winfree snatched it up. "Blanks!" he yelled, waving the .45. "He was only going ...
— The Great Potlatch Riots • Allen Kim Lang
... this Fall, in that place at the edge of the great Horse Shoe where the rock has fallen and left a peculiarly shaped chasm: through this the spray leaps up from below, and flashes a hundred feet into the air, in rocket-like jets and points, and then breaks and dissolves away in the pyrotechnic curves of a perpetual Fourth of July. Basil said something like this in celebrating the display, with the purpose of rendering her loss more poignant; but she replied, with tranquil piety, that she would ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... like a rocket. Uneven surface, slippery hills of snow meant nothing to him. He was racing for freedom from threatening years ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... is now—you are always ice or gunpowder. You sit in the great leathern armchair, as quiet as a rocket hangs upon the frame in a rejoicing-night till the match be fired, and then, whizz! you are in the third heaven, beyond the reach of the human voice, eye, or brain.—When you have wearied yourself with padding to and fro across the room, will you tell me your determination, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... the 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 at it by Cowper. [Footnote: "The Inestimable Estimate of Brown."] And the possibility ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... within, the gun fire having snuffed the old man's candle out. But we had flint and steel and tinder-box, and when the punk was alight, Jennifer found the candle under foot and gave it me. It took fire with a fizzing like a rocket fuse, and was well blackened with gunpowder. When the flint had failed to bring the firing spark, the old man had set his piece off ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... his mounted natives and a rocket battery arriving from Rorke's Drift about 10 A.M., took over the command of the camp from Colonel Pulleine. According to the evidence of Lieutenant Cochrane given at the court of inquiry, Colonel Pulleine thereupon stated to Colonel Durnford the ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... off a rocket, and having let off one, there was no sense in keeping the rest. As well let them off too—and so he did, half a dozen of them, and the women and children stood round breathless at the magic of the magician; and Inger ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... night off shore, when freight-laden craft, deceived by beacon lights, are beached upon the treacherous sand or dashed against jagged rocks. The life-savers, with rocket, and gun and line, and breeches-buoys, try in vain, and, as a last resort, grasp the oars of the life-boat and bring to safety one or two of a crew of ten. Sad hearts in homes when the news comes; but it is only one of the scenes in the ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... your balloon to the ground, that you may quit it for them to ascend. Tiddler has enemies, like the best of mines: or they may be named lovers, if you like. And mines that have gone up, go down for a while before they rise again; it's an affair of undulations; rocket mines are not so healthy. The stories are false, for the time. I had the latest from Dartrey Fenellan yesterday. He's here next month; some ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... side, also had seen the sky-rocket which arose up from the chateau and dropped almost instantly ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... witnesses of that time. On every hand we are wrapped in a veil of ignorance, as with a pall of darkness, we no more distinguish the light beyond the cradle than that beyond the tomb. So far as memory is concerned, it would seem that we might be compared with a rocket such as we sometimes see flashing through the sky in the night-time, leaving behind it a line of light, this light never shows anything more than a limited portion of the way. Of like nature is memory, a trail of light left behind on our journey; we die, ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... Richardson with an edge to his voice, "the thing for you to do is to tell them that's your star, and they'll have to speak English from now on, so you can understand them. Why, next thing we know, you'll be getting yourself a rocket or a space-ship and going over to that star to set yourself up as king ...
— McIlvaine's Star • August Derleth
... this had been put to him often during the ten years since his rocket had hurtled through the meteorite belt and down to the surface of Tepokt, leaving him the only survivor. Barred off as they were from venturing into space, the highly civilized Tepoktans constantly ...
— Exile • Horace Brown Fyfe
... almost believe that they are toys out of a child's 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 ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... the signal "Stop, 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 ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Bobby discovered the rocket was about to be shot to the Moon. Naturally he wanted to go along. But could he ...
— Zero Hour • Alexander Blade
... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... became the business of his life; superintended the construction of the Stockton and Darlington Railway (1821-25), the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (1826-29), over which he ran his locomotive the "Rocket" at a maximum rate of 35 m. an hour; in the outburst of railway enterprise which now ensued Stephenson's services were in requisition all over the country; became principal engineer on many of the new railways; bought the country-seat ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... controls, and insulation peeked through rips in the plastic siding here and there. I wondered if the thing had any slow leaks and supposed fatalistically that it had. The agent waved at me, stony-faced, the conveyor belt trundled me outside the dome, and I kicked the weary rocket into life. ...
— The Risk Profession • Donald Edwin Westlake
... 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 modelled, though so mockingly transient, so mountainous in its form, yet so cloudlike in its motion, with its variety and delicacy of colour, when every ripple and wreath has some peculiar passage of ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... street-lamps of a city. Somewhere, far off, a band was playing, at intervals it seemed; and now and then, nearer to, a silvery strain from a bugle shot sharply up through the night, and seemed to lose itself like a rocket among the stars,—the patient, untroubled stars. Suddenly a hand was ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... 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
... strength came back to his body, the more he was aware of the terrible pain in his head. It occurred to him vaguely that when once he opened his eyes, which he would have to do some time, there would be a horrible explosion and his head would go off like a sky-rocket. ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... prepared; cinnamon, ginger, and sugar being added to the pulped carrots, besides a handful of currants, vinegar, and butter. A similar plan was adopted with the salads of burrage, chicory, marigold leaves, bugloss, asparagus, rocket, and alexanders, and many other plants discontinued in modern cookery, but then much esteemed; oil and vinegar being used with some, and spices with all; while each dish was garnished with slices of hard-boiled eggs. A jowl of sturgeon was carried to the upper ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... like dropping a spark into gunpowder. The flame ran quickly, reached the pine-needles, then sputtered and fizzed into a big blaze. The first pine-tree exploded and went off like a rocket. We were startled by the sound and the red, up-leaping pillar of fire. Sudden heat shot back at us as if from a furnace. Great sparks ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... those of the camomile (Anthemis) were occupied by young Oil-beetles in greater or lesser numbers. On one head of camomile I counted forty of these tiny insects, cowering motionless in the centre of the florets. On the other hand, I could not discover any on the flowers of the poppy or of a wild rocket (Diplotaxis muralis) which grew promiscuously among the plants aforesaid. It seems to me, therefore, that it is only on the composite flowers that the Meloe-larvae ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... can 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 the star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free, and the home of ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various
... ammunition 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
... accents madly hoarse, "Death to 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 again ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... cabin of the little scout ship he had worked swiftly, fearful that at any minute one of the marauders might come aboard to search it. Tom was no rocket pilot, but he did know that the count-down was automatic, and that every ship could run on an autopilot, as a drone, following a prescribed course until it ran out of fuel. Even the shell-evasion mechanism could ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... industry, medicine, agriculture are well known. Food irradiation, nuclear power reactors, 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
... by the fates enacted yours in decimo of the Ringe; his prayers are soloecismes for peace, and yet for contention; hee beleeues in Littleton or the present Cheefe-Justice and against this fayth hee thinkes the Chancery Hoeerticall, especially if he speake in a Rocket; his degrees are to proceed either a Court-keeper or an Under-shrieue and then a Judges nod qualifies him; hee may hold two or three Clyents the more; to conclude hee is a very noune adiectiue whom noe man dares trust to stand by himselfe, but requires ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... month of July Dr. Powell, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, and Mr. Anderson, Commissioner for Fisheries, paid us their long -promised visit in H.M.S. Rocket. Though only a portion of our population were at home, our visitors expressed themselves as greatly astonished and delighted at all they saw. Dr. Powell has since written me an official letter, and read me his official report to the minister at Ottawa, both which were ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock
... were lost in the distance. But behind him a man's voice rose with a roar like a rocket and was met with a savage, ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... fire on the American camp he received so warm a welcome from Crutchfield's heavy battery that he was presently glad to escape for shelter behind the Point, and content himself with throwing an occasional shot or rocket into the American camp. ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... employment—have kept her ever since in a ferment of boards, commissions and target-firing. But these would carry us beyond our prescribed limit into a boundless field of inquiry and description. It would be like passing from a notice of the tubular boiler of Stephenson's Rocket to a discussion of the vast railway system ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... deep. Down through the emerald vaults self-hurled That roof the sea-god's awful world. Another moment sees him rise And beat the salt spray from his eyes. He breasts the waves, he spurns their blows; Then, like a rocket, up he goes, Up, up to where the gusty wind With all its wrath is left behind; Still up he soars and high and high A speck of light that dots the sky. Then watch him as he slowly droops Where the great sea-birds wheel their troops. Three broad-winged gulls, ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... 70 yards away in some places and as much as 400 in others. It is rather exciting wandering about in front of the line, as lights go up every now and then and show a bright white light in the air for a minute or two like a rocket. When one goes up you fall flat and pretend you are a sandbag or a milk-can or a rat. You may meet Fritz on the same job sometimes; I always have a bomb handy to give him ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack |
