"Cannon ball" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... out by passionately going through what he had to say; 'if—you—were—fond—of—Fish?' And on this occasion each word seemed to me to have the force of a pistol-shot, and the last word that of a cannon ball; and he rose as he spoke like a man of might and purpose as he was, and clenched his hand, and quivered upon the stout bow legs that sustained him as he stood: 'Fish,' roared he! 'FISH,' shouted he! 'I asked you if you were fond ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... battery opened there was no time for us to think of anything else. A square is a very good way of meeting a horseman, but there is no worse one of taking a cannon ball, as we soon learned when they began to cut red seams through us, until our ears were weary of the slosh and splash when hard iron met living flesh and blood. After ten minutes of it we moved our square a hundred paces to the ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the greatest danger. The other gentleman signalized his courage in the most undaunted manner, till near the end of the action; when he fell on a sudden into such a trembling, that he could scarce stand: and Mr. Montague going to him to hold him up, as they were in each other; arms, a cannon ball carried away Mr. Montague's belly, so that he expired in ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... soon as it is declared. "The further we went, the lesser the globe of the earth appeared to us; whereas still on the contrary side the moone showed herselfe more and more monstrously huge." After eleven days' passage, the exact time that Arago allowed for a cannon ball to reach the moon, "another earth" was approached. "I perceived that it was covered for the most part with a huge and mighty sea, those parts only being drie land, which show unto us here somewhat darker than the rest of her body; that I mean which the country people call el hombre della ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... mountain-wall! But let us mark the old gate. It was here that the struggle betwixt the French and the Romans took place in 1849. The wall is here of brick,—very old, and of great breadth; and if struck with a cannon ball, it would crumble into dust by inches, but not fall in masses: hence the difficulty which the French found of breaching it. The towers of the gate are dismantled, and the top of the wall for some thirty yards is of new brick; but, with these exceptions, ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... Simon has lost a leg. I saw it at once, and the tears came to my eyes. He lost it at Elchingen, in 1805—it was shot off by a cannon ball." ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... from her the desire to weep in self-pity over her lot. Though her throat was raw and swollen, she called at regular intervals during the morning hours while the sun climbed into view of her ten-foot beat. Even when it rode the heavens a red-hot cannon ball directly above her, the hoarse and lonely cry of the girl echoed back from the hillside every few minutes. There were times when she wanted to throw herself down and give up to despair, but she knew there would be opportunity ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... Elizabeth to be their queen, but she would not, though she sent Lord Leicester to help them with an army. With him went his nephew, Sir Philip Sydney, the most good, and learned, and graceful gentleman at court. There was great grief when Sir Philip was struck by a cannon ball in the thigh, and died after nine days pain. It was as he was being carried from the field, faint and thirsty, that some one had just brought him a cup of water, when he saw a poor soldier, worse hurt than himself, looking at it with longing eyes. He put it from ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and most forcible expression. If the truth is of serious importance to us we dare not obstruct it by phrase- making: we are compelled to be as direct as our inherited feebleness will permit. The cannon ball's path is near to a straight line in proportion to its velocity. "My boy," my father once said to me, "if you write anything you consider particularly fine, strike ...
— The Early Life of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... And like a cannon ball the old man shot between the two, bringing both of them to the ground with his saber and a revolver. The next thing he did was to cut the throats of the horses—the German horses! Then, softly he re-entered the bakehouse and ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... head shot swiftly out, and the great Lion went rolling down the hill as if he had been struck by a cannon ball. ...
— The Wonderful Wizard of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... a bullet at all, Tayoga. It was a cannon ball, though it came out of a wide-mouthed musket, and I'm happy to tell you that it somehow got through your ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... nine o'clock when we stood there and saw Mr. Nemo of Nowhere run down by the car. Anybody driving that car could have made the railroad station just about in time for the ten minutes' past nine express—the Cannon Ball, don't they ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... their Insolence is such As beats my Patience; cursed Miscreants! They are encroaching; fain would be familiar: I'll send their painted Heads to Hell with Thunder! I swear I'll blow 'em hence with Cannon Ball, And give the Devil an Hundred for ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers
... trying to force a way out?" Dick hazarded. "The lid of the hole we came down through is a foot thick, and was set solid in cement; they couldn't have lifted that if they tried for a week. Everything's solid in this place. I sounded every inch of the floor with a cannon ball, but it's all ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... button, and instantly the heavy steel plate was bent, torn and twisted as though a small sized cannon ball ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... second war between the United States and England, in 1812, Kentuckians took a prominent part in nearly all battles against the British. Especially did they distinguish themselves as expert riflemen at the Battle of New Orleans. Most of the cannon ball used in this battle had been made at the old iron furnace in Bath County, near where Owingsville now stands, and a great portion of the powder had been manufactured from the saltpeter leached from the soil in Mammoth Cave, ...
— The story of Kentucky • Rice S. Eubank
... avails the strength of a baker, even full grown?—what avails the defence of a wicker shield? what avails the wheel-spoke, should there be an opportunity of using it, against the impetus of an avalanche or a cannon ball?—for to either of these might that wild figure be compared, which, at the distance of five yards, sprang at once with head, hands, feet and body, all together, upon the champion of the New Town, tumbling him to the earth amain. And now ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... to dust his books and pictures (such as they were) or to make order out of a chaos, of old newspapers, or to put his pipes in the rack or to remove spurs and physical culture apparatus from the sofa, or to bestow tender care upon a cannon ball, an antiquated eighteen or twenty-pounder, which reposed—most useful piece of furniture—in the middle of the hearth-rug, or to see to the comfortless electric radiator that took the place of a grate, ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... sloped at an angle of thirty-four degrees and were covered with iron plating, six inches thick on the forward end and five inches thick on the other end and the sides. With the inclination given, a cannon ball striking would be likely to be turned upward by the iron surface, instead of penetrating. The sloping sides of the house were carried down beyond the point where they met those of the vessel, until two feet below the water. ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... handkerchief with the utmost enthusiasm, in spite of the sadness at her heart. But she now had other use for it in trying to hide her tears. The Callisto was still going straight up, with a speed already as great as a cannon ball's, and was almost out of sight. The multitude then began to disperse, and Sylvia returned to her home. Let us now follow the Callisto. The earth and Jupiter not being exactly in opposition, as they would be if the sun, the earth, ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... there were old howitzers from the year 1842; muzzle-loaders with the characteristic pyramids of cannon ball by the side, such as are often used in Germany at village festivals or to fire a salute. The fort itself was a perfect picture of the obsolete and out-of-date. Apart from the crude, primitive equipment, the organization must have been ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... that picture to remind me how very near I was being put to rest there myself," he said, thoughtfully; then, pointing to the cannon ball, he added, "Yes, and that very nearly did it. The story goes a long way to prove that nothing is ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... he picked it up. "I'd know it in a minute by its shape and weight. Rather light for a cannon ball." ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... hastily called Cabinet meeting the then Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, is reported to have said: "The 'Merrimac' will change the whole character of the war; she will destroy every naval vessel; she will lay all seaboard cities under contribution; not unlikely we may have a shell or cannon ball from one of her guns in the White House before we leave this room." But the fate of the "Merrimac" was sealed, for while she was being moulded out of the old Federal hulk into the terrifying ram, with great ingenuity, by Constructor John L. Porter, with the assistance ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... Kingston. The old mansion, on the hillside, above the landing, was built before 1700 by William Beekman, first patroon of this section. It was used as a church and as a fort during the Indian struggles and still preserves the scar of a cannon ball ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... planted heavy pickets, a foot in diameter, and some twelve feet in height above the ground; so that it was impossible for an enemy to scale them, or affect them in the least, with any thing short of fire and cannon ball. To guard against the former, and prevent the besiegers making a lodgment under the walls, at each of the four corners or angles, was erected what was called a block-house—a building which projected beyond the pickets, a few feet ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... that this emissary of John Bull, seeing the character of our vessel, which no one could mistake, would suffer us to pass on our way unmolested, when a volume of flame and smoke issued from the bow of the sloop-of-war, and a messenger, in the shape of a cannon ball, came whistling over the waves, and, after crossing our bows in a diagonal direction, and striking the surface of the water several times, buried itself in a huge billow at no great distance. This was language that required no interpreter. ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... those on the poop of the galley to look down on to the deck of the other craft, it was seen that Ralph's suppositions were correct. Two bodies lay stretched upon it. One was crushed under the fallen mast; the other lay huddled up in a heap, a cannon ball having almost torn him asunder. The knights leapt on to the deck as soon as the galley ran alongside. Gervaise made first for the man lying beneath the mast; as he came up to him, the sailor opened his eyes and murmured, "Water!" Gervaise ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... hundred men of the 3rd Regiment to the meadow, after the Enemy, when they were out of reach, ordered me up to desire those on the height would wait till he would come up and join them, which I did, but before Mr. Ross could get up, he unfortunately was mortally wounded in the body, by a cannon ball from the hulks, in the mouth of the River St. Charles, of which he died in great torment, but with great resolution, in about two ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... water-pipe. Many of the pieces of marble in the heap contained ornamentations such as successions of the heart pattern, graceful curve scrolls suggesting leaves, and also regular leaf patterns. One stone was absolutely spherical, like a cannon ball, and quite smooth; and some stone implements, such as a conical brown hammer and ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Hunter, who commanded the Second Division, you remember, was so severely wounded by a shell that he had to leave the field early in the action. Colonel Slocum of one of the Rhode Island regiments was mortally wounded; and his major had his leg crushed by a cannon ball which at the same time killed his horse. Many others were wounded and must have had a hard time of it, poor fellows, that hot day. As for the dead that strewed the ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... gardens, on the bluff overlooking the Mississippi. This house was built long before the railroad came to Vicksburg, cutting off its grounds from the river. A patch in the paneling of the front door shows where a cannon ball passed through at the time of the bombardment, and the ball itself may still be seen embedded in the woodwork of one of the ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... time and a third the lantern glowed, and each time a cannon ball crashed through a nipa hut beside the little company, or threw a shower of dust ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... cottages are of great age and a number have been allowed to fall to ruin. In Melcombe Regis at the corner of Edmund and Maiden Streets may be seen, still embedded in the wall high above the pavement, a cannon ball shot at the unfortunate town during the Civil War, in which unhappy period much damage was done, the contending parties successively occupying the wretched port to the great discomfort of ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... "But sound, as you know, only goes a little over a thousand feet a second, at a temperature of thirty-two degrees above zero. In a warmer atmosphere it travels slightly faster. We are going much faster than sound ever travels. A cannon ball will travel about three thousand feet per second, so we are even going to beat cannon balls. At least, we hope we are, when we get ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood
... Besides, how childish to puff up the empty bladder of an old metaphysical foot-ball on the 'modus operandi interior' of Justification into a shew of practical substance; as if it were no less solid than a cannon ball! Why, drive it with all the vehemence that five toes can exert, it would not kill a louse on the head of Methodism. Repentance, godly sorrow, abhorrence of sin as sin, and not merely dread from forecast of the consequences, these the Arminian ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... The fine weather left us, though, and that kept the crew busy; we carried away the fore-royal mast and yard before we were within a thousand miles of the latitude of the Horn. That hit us like a cannon ball of ice. You know what it is at its worst," he told his father; "weeks of snow and hail and fog and gales; and not for anything can you keep an easting. God knows how a ship lives through the seas; but she does, she does, and you ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... seen hurricanes in the great Ohio Valley before, but never one so fierce and violent as this, nor so tremendous in its manifestations. Awe and weirdness followed in the trail of that cannon ball of wind. The rumble of thunder, far and echoing, was almost perpetual. Blackest darkness alternated with broad sheets of lightning so intense in tint that the forest would swim for a moment in a reddish glare before the blackness came. Meanwhile the rain poured as if the bottom had dropped ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... is expressed in foot pounds. Suppose a cannon ball of sufficient weight and speed strikes an object. If the impact should indicate 33,000 pounds it would not mean that the force employed was one horse-power, but that many ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... gem in my bonnet. Say to her its brightness was dimmer than the remembrance of her eyes; and its price meaner than the dewdrop on her lip. Bring her to see me where I lie; and compose my face to greet her. Tell me, my Dutchman, doth a cannon ball give short shrift, or were it easier to die ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... "sister's chile" Uncle Cage only shook his head and chuckled, "Dey may kill me, but dey can't skeer dis nigger." Among the other stories he had listened to was that of a negro having his head shot off by a cannon ball. Sometime after Uncle Cage's installation as cook the enemy made a demonstration as if to advance. A few shells came over our camp, one bursting in the neighborhood of Uncle Cage, while he was preparing the morning meal for ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... tell us of the Saxon folk who were our first farmers, and made clearings in the forests, and tilled the same soil we work to-day. They tell us too of the old monks who knew so much about agriculture; and occasionally the plough turns up a rusty sword or cannon ball, which reveals the story of battles and civil wars which we trust have passed away from our land for ever. The very names of the fields are not without signification, and tell us of animals which are now extinct, of the manners of our forefathers, ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... of June, 1675, a cannon ball struck Turenne, and closed in an instant his earthly career. His renown filled Europe. He was a successful warrior, a dissolute man; and few who have ever lived have caused more wide-spread misery than could be charged ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... that very moment the dog sprang up, and hardly knowing how it happened, Pinocchio found himself astride his back. Barking furiously, the animal shot along like a cannon ball. The poor boy felt sure that he was going to break his neck and prayed for safety. On they rushed. The dog jumped over rocks and ditches as if he had done nothing in all his life but carry ...
— Pinocchio in Africa • Cherubini
... morning, and the accursed German aeroplanes over our positions again. They are usually fired at, but no luck. To-day a shell on our hill dug out a cannon ball about six inches in diameter—probably of Napoleon's or earlier times—heavily rusted. A German attack began, but half an hour of artillery fire drove it back. Major——, R.A., was up forward, and could see the German reserves. Our 4th was turned on: first round 100 over; shortened and went into ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... sky-rocket discharged by a hand that is Almighty. Many of my readers saw that in the year 1680, and if they were not mathematicians, will be amazed to hear, that it travelled with a much greater degree of swiftness than a cannon ball, and drew after it a tail of fire that was fourscore millions of miles in length. What an amazing thought is it to consider this stupendous body traversing the immensity of the creation with such a rapidity; and at the same time ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... else,' says I, as I rose right up an' stood there on the bank, 'an' mighty glad am I to see you Bill, an' to know that your fool head ain't knocked off by a cannon ball.' He shorely jumped up an' down with pleasure an' he called back: 'The good Lord certainly watches over them that ain't got any sense. Dan, you flat-headed, hump-backed, round-shouldered, thin-chested, knock-kneed, club-footed son of a gun, I was never so ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... brought in by a flunkey, he repeated the experiment with which he had so astonished Underhill at the Admiralty, using the flunkey however in place of the cannon ball, and leaving the poor unfortunate creature suspended in mid-air while he himself replied to the many questions that were put ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney |
