"Combustible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... regarded as fabulous. Tradition supports the narrative of Sacred Scripture so far as to teach that the channel of the Dead Sea was once a fertile valley, partly resting on a mass of subterranean water, and partly composed of a stratum of bitumen; and that a fire from heaven kindling these combustible materials, the rich soil sunk into the abyss beneath, and Sodom and Gomorrah were consumed in the ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... height of some fifteen or twenty feet—perhaps higher. A bonfire is premeditated. You shall see anon, how the flames will rise. The preparations are completed; the fire is applied. Hear how it crackles and hisses! Slowly but spitefully it mounts from limb to limb, and from one combustible to another, until the whole welkin is a-blaze, and shaking as with thunder! It is a beautiful sight. The gush of unwonted radiance rolls in effulgent surges adown the vale. How the owl hoots with surprise at the interrupting light! Bird ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... are necessary. No creature in the universe, in its circumstances and according to its given property, can act otherwise than as it does act. Fire necessarily burns whatever combustible matter comes within the sphere of its action. Man necessarily desires what either is, or seems to be, conducive to his comfort and wellbeing. There is no independent energy, no isolated cause, no detached activity, in a universe where all beings ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... gallery construction are likewise of ornate treatment. All exterior doors and trim are of metal and all interior carpenter work is done with Kalomein iron protection, so that the building, in its strictest sense, will contain no combustible material. ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous
... but shrink from the necessity of passing judgment upon him, and find relief in leaving him to that tribunal which alone can measure the extent of human responsibility, and sound the depths of the heart. Lawson threw into the conflagration all the combustible materials his eloquence and talents, heated, it is to be feared, by resentment, could contribute. Dr. Bentley, in his "Description and History of Salem" (Mass. Hist. Coll., 1st series, vol. vi.) says, "Mr. Noyes came out and publicly confessed his error, never concealed a circumstance, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... said Doughnut Bill. "The intrusion of our combustible friend was unwarrantable and ungentlemanly, not to say rude, but as the holder of three aces before the draw I claim an interest in the pot. Of course I can't show the cards, but that is the fact. On your honor ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... constructed great engines, such as were used in those days, in the absence of cannon, for throwing rocks and heavy beams of wood, to batter the walls. These machines also threw a certain extraordinary combustible substance called Greek fire. It was this Greek fire that, in the end, turned the scale of victory, for it caught in the lower court of the castle, where it burned so furiously that it baffled all the efforts of the besieged to extinguish it, and at length they were compelled to surrender. ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... captain spoke pretty sharply to them.' It is true: I have the remark in my old note-book; I got it of the third mate in the hospital at Honolulu. But there is not room for it here, and it is too combustible, anyway. Besides, the third mate admired it, and what he admired ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and were repulsed, but during the years 716-717 A.D. the city had to face a combined attack by a Moslem navy and army. The eastern emperor, Leo the Isaurian, conducted a heroic defense, using with much effectiveness the celebrated mixture known as "Greek fire." This combustible, probably composed of sulphur, naphtha, and quicklime, was poured or hurled on the enemy's ships in order to burn them. "Greek fire," the rigors of an uncommonly severe winter, and timely aid from the Bulgarians at length compelled ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... evidence, or sentience, if you like, is combustible; we don't command the spark; it may be late in falling. And you argue in her favour. Consider her as a generous and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... That horn is combustible everyone who has watched the fitting of a hot shoe knows. That it is a bad conductor of heat, the absence of bad ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... genuinely suffuse the whole mind. Such mercurial fire will indeed require a certain imaginative temperament; and there are many persons who, short of a life-long domestic attachment, can conceive of nothing but sordid vice. But even an inconstant flame may burn brightly, if the soul is naturally combustible. Indeed these sparks and glints of passion, just because they come and vary so quickly, offer admirable illustrations of it, in which it may be viewed, so to speak, under the microscope ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... elected year after year without opposition, was defeated. No one had openly opposed him, but a canvass of the returns disclosed a silent vote which was quickly charged to the Masons. This discovery, says Thurlow Weed, "was like a spark of fire dropped into combustible materials." Immediately, Rochester became the centre of anti-Masonry. In September, an anti-masonic convention nominated a legislative ticket, which, to the amazement and confusion of the old parties, swept Monroe County by a majority of over seventeen hundred. Direction was thus given to ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... his Brahman counsellor that it was entirely proper to slay one's foe, be he father, brother, or friend, openly or by secret means. The Raja accordingly pretended to send his nephews on a pleasure-trip to a distant province, where he had prepared for their reception a "house of lac," rendered more combustible by soaking in clarified butter, in which he had arranged to have them burned as if by accident, as soon ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... filled with combustible materials, and fitted with grappling-irons, to hook and set fire to the enemy's ships. Notwithstanding what is said respecting the siege of Tyre, perhaps the practice of using regular fire-ships ought to be dated from the destruction of the fleet of ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... 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 into the study. She wondered how her father and Higgins ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... from the vegetable world and from the earth the food and drink it requires for its sustenance and motion. It receives colloidal food for its muscles: combustible food for its motion; water for the solution of its various parts; salt for constructive and other physical purposes. These have all to be arranged in the body; and they are arranged by means of the membranous envelopes. Through these membranes nothing can pass that is not, for ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... capable of everything; an invention of incendiary firemen is quoted as an example of the diabolical genius which presided over the work of destruction; individuals wearing the fireman's uniform were seen to throw combustible liquids by means of pumps and pails on the burning houses, instead of aiding ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... Rector puts his foot in. The man with the combustible whiskers. Tad overhears an exciting conversation. His duty not clear to him. Attacked by ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... Confederates. By a detour we came into a valley flanked to the east by Raccoon Mountain, and we visited a large saltpetre works at Nick-a-Jack Cave. These works we destroyed by breaking the large iron kettles and by burning all combustible structures. A portion of the detachment was sent under cover of the thick woods to the railroad east of Shellmound, a station near the river, where we expected to cut off a train of cars engaged in loading, for ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... because, when they burst, they make a great noise. They consist of a large shell of cast iron, which is round and hollow. A hole is made through the shell to receive a fusee, as it is called; this is a small pipe, or hollow piece of wood, which is filled with some combustible matter. When a bomb is about to be fired, it is filled with powder, after which the fusee is driven into the vent, or hole of ...
— Whig Against Tory - The Military Adventures of a Shoemaker, A Tale Of The Revolution • Unknown
... the city. The progress of the besiegers induced them to risk an assault, in which they were repulsed, after a hard-fought struggle: and during the following night John Justiniani made a great sortie, during which his workmen cleared the ditch, and his soldiers filled the tower with combustible materials and burned it to the ground. Its exterior, having been protected by a triple covering of buffalo-hides, was found to be impervious even to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... observed at different extremities of the kingdom. The sound of an explosion was heard through Devon and Cornwall, and along the opposite coast of Bretagne. Halley conjectured this and similar displays to proceed from combustible vapors aggregated on the outskirts of the atmosphere, and suddenly set on fire by some unknown cause. But since his time, the fact has been established, of the actual fall of heavy bodies to the earth from surrounding space, which requires another hypothesis. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... Edinburgh a great many years ago, where he mentions, 'those impure tales which will be the eternal opprobrium of their ingenious authour.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, Lord Hailes has forgot. There is nothing in Prior that will excite to lewdness. If Lord Hailes thinks there is, he must be more combustible ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... possible to fix small Drummond lights in place of the gas burners now used in houses; this would greatly reduce the consumption of gas and increase the light obtained, or even render possible the employment of cheap non-illuminating combustible gases other than ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... consultation together, the English commanders determined to resort to stratagem. They sent for a number of useless hulks from Dover, and having filled them with every kind of combustible, sent them all aflame on Sunday night into the thick of the enemy. The result was a panic; cables were cut and frantic attempts made to escape what seemed imminent and wholesale destruction. The ships fell foul of each other; some were wrecked and others burnt. ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... at first entirely charcoal; but the growing scarcity of wood seems to have gradually led to the use of coke, brays or small coke, and peat. An abundance of coals existed in the neighbourhood: by rejecting those of inferior quality, and coking the others with great care, a combustible was obtained better fitted even than charcoal itself for the fusion of that particular kind of ore which is found in the coal-measures. Thus we find Darby's most favourite charge for his furnaces to have been five baskets of coke, two of brays, and one of peat; next followed the ore, and then the ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... laid her alongside L'Orient. One particular only I shall add to the known account of the memorable engagement between these ships, and this I received from Sir Alexander Ball himself. He had previously made a combustible preparation, but which, from the nature of the engagement to be expected, he had purposed to reserve for the last emergency. But just at the time when, from several symptoms, he had every reason to believe that the enemy would soon strike to him, one of the ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... you, Elias?" he said, without noticing the tremor of the helmsman. "See here! I've just made a discovery: this piece of bamboo is non-combustible." ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... these two infernal machines, or "hell-burners," as they were called, a fleet of thirty-two smaller vessels was prepared. Covered with tar, turpentine, rosin, and filled with inflammable and combustible materials, these barks were to be sent from Antwerp down the river in detachments of eight every half hour with the ebb tide. The object was to clear the way, if possible, of the raft, and to occupy the attention ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... gathered together a goodly portion of combustible wood, and there was plenty more at hand, so that a roaring fire was soon casting its light away from the wood, which somewhat sheltered them behind; and as soon as some of the good-sized pieces of bush were well ablaze, Chicory began to send ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... with the exception of those in the stables and other out-buildings, retreated. It was but for a short time, however; soon they appeared on the opposite side of the house, many of them carrying burning brands, which they threw under the fencing. This being of combustible materials, soon blazed up; and, sheltered by the intervening flames and smoke, the enemy opened a hot fire on us. Every now and then, however, a dark form was seen, and as surely a bullet searched it ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... and rendered more combustible by wax and oil, besides the arts they had used, took fire at once. The flames roared high and fiercely, blackening the prison wall, and twining up its lofty front like burning serpents. At first they crowded round the blaze, and vented their exultation only in their ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... as a person "seirchiawc saphwyawc—(and perhaps) elydnan," would necessarily be. The bundles of combustible materials, which he also carried, would add to the weight of his armour, and tend to retard his movements. Or, "yn trwm" may refer to the battle, as being a pressure, or a ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin
... without any other explanation, gave rise to a mistake of the most singular kind. The majority of philosophers imagined that the question was to explain in what way burning communicates itself, and increases in a mass of combustible matter. Fifteen competitors ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... the lamp-light. The room got hotter and closer. Ozias now and then, as he talked, motioned Jerome, who put another stick of wood in the stove. The whole atmosphere, spiritual and physical, seemed to grow combustible, and as if at any moment a word or a thought might cause a leap into flame. A spirit of anarchy and revolution was caged in that little close room, bound to a shoemaker's bench by the chain of labor for bread. The spirit was harmless enough, ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... only seated on four little paperclips," he said, crawling from beneath her. "She's a wicker-willow lunch-basket below. She's a runnin' miracle. Have you had this combustible spirit-lamp long?" ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... fire, and was blazing away along the yard fiercely; and the flame soon reached the loftier sails and running rigging; the fire below was raging between decks, and rising in successive bursts of flame from the hatchways. The vessel had been filled with combustible material, and the doomed brig, in a short space of time, was one mass ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... because of shade, would begin to amount to something much quicker than that supplied by seed trees afterward. Nor is the system feasible where there is much fir or other species less fire-resisting than pine. It is dangerous in practice except where there is very little combustible matter on the ground and fire is generally easy of control, and exceedingly dangerous to advocate because serves as a pretext and example for indiscriminate carelessness with fire under all conditions. Finally, the alleged immunity of pine from injury by ground fires is exaggerated. ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... universal absence of wooden additions and outbuildings, and the New York ash barrel or box kept in the house is also unknown. The local authorities in London keep a strict watch over the manufacture or storage of combustible materials in populous parts of the city. Although overhead telegraph wires are multiplying to an alarming extent in London, their number is nothing to be compared to their bewildering multitude in New York, where their presence is not only a hinderance to the operations ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... allow'd by the Sages and so so's to produce Fire as in Wheels, Mills and several sorts of Mechanick Engines which are frequently Fir'd, and so in Thoughts, Brains, Assemblies, Consolidators, and all such combustible Things. ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... hands. She looks curiously 'round, and then I see her make straight for your bedroom door, and goes into your room. In a minnit more she comes out, with nothin' in her hands. So then I says to myself, 'She's deposited some o' her combustible matter ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... unable to determine; able to make all things, and yet unable to make choice of the time when? For this were impiously to resolve of God, as of natural necessity; which hath neither choice, nor will, nor understanding; which cannot but work matter being present: as fire, to burn things combustible. Again he thus disputeth, that every agent which can work, and doth not work, if it afterward work, it is either thereto moved by itself, or by somewhat else: and so it passeth from power to act. But God (saith he) is ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... a pulverizing apparatus, with the residue produced from the distillation of the naphtha, which Baku and Derbent produce in such inexhaustible quantities. At certain stations on the line there are vast reservoirs of this combustible mineral, from which the tenders are filled, and it is burned in specially adapted fireboxes. In a similar way naphtha is used on the steamboats on the Volga and the ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... mind his business. When a terrible accident occurs, the first cry is that the means of prevention were not sufficient. Everybody declares we must have a new patent fire escape, an automatic engine switch, or a high-proof non-combustible sort of lamp oil. But a little investigation will usually show that all the contrivances were on hand and in good working order; the real trouble was that somebody didn't mind his business; he didn't obey orders; he thought he knew a better way ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... of this combustible is still so precious, that when gathered up, ground anew with paper and sawdust, and at length amalgamated with a mucilaginous water composed of soaked flax-seed, one finally obtains a kind of pulp that one tries vainly to make ignite, but which obstinately refuses to do so, though examples to ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... great service to humanity. The injury which it causes is the result of its misuse. Though unfit for introduction into the human body, except in the most guarded manner, it is adapted to a great variety of uses outside of the body. A combustible substance which is readily convertible into a gas, it may be substituted for gasoline in the cooking of food, lighting of dwellings, and the running of machinery. As a solvent for gums, resins, essential oils, etc., it is used in the preparation ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... has another peculiarity. Fish contains a large quantity of phosphorus and hydrogen, that is to say of the two most combustible things in nature. Fish therefore is a most heating diet. This might legitimate the praise once bestowed on certain religious orders, the regime of whom was directly opposed to the ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... nitre, etc., and those which do not. The metals were considered to be composed of sulphur and mercury. These substances are themselves compounds, but they act as elements in the composition of metals. Sulphur represented their combustible aspect, and also that which gave them their solid form; while mercury was that to which their weight and powers of ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... pleasing Bengal lights, with which people amuse themselves, and then laughingly throw from the windows into the street. Collected together in the story below and on the ground floor, transported to shops, to warehouses and into business cabinets, they find combustible material, piles of wood a long time accumulated, and here do the flames enkindle. The conflagration seems to have already begun, for the chimneys roar and a ruddy light gleams through the windows; but "No," ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... and bound together by thongs of bamboo. Cutting a passage through these, we entered the place, which contained perhaps a hundred houses, neatly built of wicker-work, and having their high conical roofs thatched with palmetto-leaves. Such edifices were in the highest degree combustible, and being set on fire, it was worth while for a lover of the picturesque to watch the flames, as they ran up the conical roofs, and meeting at the apex, whirled themselves fiercely into ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... earnestly request your attention to the necessity of providing a more secure building for this Department. The danger of destruction to which its important books and papers are continually exposed, as well from the highly combustible character of the building occupied as from that of others in the vicinity, calls loudly for ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Martin van Buren • Martin van Buren
... into Upper Town. In the meantime, Livingston, with a regiment of Canadians, and Brown, with part of a Boston regiment, were to make false attacks on Cape Diamond Bastion, St. John and St. Louis Gates, which they were to fire, if possible, with combustible ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... burnt to the ground, by which accident Sheridan and his son lost the few remaining shillings they were worth, what doth my friend Dallas do? Why, before the fire was out, he writes a note to Tom Sheridan, [5] the manager of this combustible concern, to inquire whether this farce was not converted into fuel with about two thousand other unactable manuscripts, which of course were in great peril, if not actually consumed. Now was not this characteristic?—the ruling passions of Pope ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... many credulous as there were skeptics. There is, however, no reliable evidence to support the belief in the spontaneous combustion of the body. A few apochryphal cases only have been recorded. The opinion that the tissues of drunkards might be so saturated with alcohol as to render the body combustible is disproved by the simple experiment of placing flesh in spirits for a long time and then trying to burn it. Liebig and others found that flesh soaked in alcohol would burn only until the alcohol was consumed. That various ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... speedily forgotten. In 1678 or 1679 there would have been an outbreak if those men had never been born. For years things had been steadily tending to such a consummation. Society was one vast mass of combustible matter. No mass so vast and so combustible ever waited long ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in such a temper that the smallest spark might raise a flame. At this conjuncture fire was set in two places at once to the vast mass of combustible matter; and in a moment the whole was ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the bridge over the Tennessee with combustible material, and put it in condition to burn readily, in case we find it necessary to retire to the ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... assaulted, it provokes itself to anger in the understanding, which is effected by various reasonings. These reasonings are like pieces of wood, which the fire inflames, and which thence burn: they are therefore like so much fuel, or so many combustible matters which give occasion to that spiritual flame, which ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... so hot, so tormenting, so intolerably insupportable, as the quickest apprehensions of, and the immediate sinking under, that guilt and indignation that is proportional to the offence. Should all the wood, and brimstone, and combustible matter on earth be gathered together for the tormenting of one body, yet that cannot yield that torment to that which the sense of guilt and burning-hot application of the indignation of God will do to the soul; yea, suppose the fire wherewith the body is tormented in hell should be seven times ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... evident to the impartial observer that Voltaire's visit could only have ended as it did—in an explosion. The elements of the situation were too combustible for any other conclusion. When two confirmed egotists decide, for purely selfish reasons, to set up house together, everyone knows what will happen. For some time their sense of mutual advantage may induce them to tolerate each other, but sooner or later human nature will ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... at War shall send to the army on the coast of Rochelle all the combustible materials necessary to set fire to the forests and underwood of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... I should say it was. I've been worried about having him sit near the gasoline tank, it brings his hair so close to a high combustible. But it has one advantage: if we don't get home before dark we shan't need to light up. Red's torch of a head will do the trick; we can come in ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... and telephonic wires are extended so as to traverse practically all the streets of every city, the fire-insurance companies will find it to their advantage to promote a simple plan, depending on the use of a combustible thread passing round little pulleys in the corners of all the rooms and finally out to the front, where an electrical "contact-maker" is fixed, so that on the thread being burnt and broken at any point in its ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... has many such alarms, and never appears entirely at its ease. It is fully aware of the combustible nature of the component parts of the Governing Machine. There is consequently great outlay of means to insure its safety. An immense number of public spies and functionaries are constantly employed in looking after the fires and lights about ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... which I had come was indeed a novel sight. Its buildings average in height one-third of ours, although they occupy nearly as much ground space. They are composed almost totally of non-combustible materials. ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... pile of readily combustible wood was prepared. The body was taken charge of by persons chosen to perform the last sacred rites, and firmly bound in skins or blankets, and then placed upon the funeral pyre, with all the personal effects of the deceased, together with numerous votive offerings from ...
— Indians of the Yosemite Valley and Vicinity - Their History, Customs and Traditions • Galen Clark
... the explosion is unknown, but it is assumed that some combustible matter was among ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 29, 1917 • Various
... circle was traced by a small rod, tipped apparently with sponge saturated with some combustible naphtha-like fluid, so that a pale lambent flame followed the course of the rod as Margrave guided it, burning up the herbage over which it played, and leaving a distinct ring, like that which, in our lovely native fable-talk, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... knelt before the combustible accumulation he had been diligently heaping together and struck a spark which, seizing on the dry material, immediately ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... fired red-hot shot, and had also a preparation sent, as they said, by the convention from Paris, which seems to have been of the nature of the Greek fire; for it became liquid when it was discharged, and water would not extinguish its flames. This combustible was concealed with great care in the captured ships; like the red-hot shot, it had been found useless in battle. Admiral Hotham's action saved Corsica for the time; but the victory had been incomplete, and the arrival at Toulon of six sail of the line, ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... a quantity of the seared grass, and heaped a dry couch upon which Ben laid his charge within the genial heat that came from the cedar tree. Then they gathered up all the combustible matter within reach, and began to kindle a fire so near to the place where she lay that its heat must help to drive back the chill of death if there was a spark of life yet ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... everywhere green with the curling fronds; and where I do not cut, the foresters and miners will be preparing heaps to carry away for litter and bedding. By the end of July the forest beneath the oaks will be covered with a carpet of stuff as combustible as tinder. Let us but fire it at Newnham, Littledean, Blakeney, Coleford, and at Speech by the courthouse, and we shall lay tens of thousands of oaks in blackened ruin. Philip of Spain has but to scatter the present small navy of England, for no more ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... might be, pari passu. Planks for the decks were much wanted, for, in the terrible strait for fuel which had caused the original assault on the schooner, this portion of the vessel had been the first burned, as of the most combustible materials. The quarter-deck of the Vineyard craft, luckily, was entire, and its planks so far answered an excellent purpose. They served to make a new quarter-deck for the repairs, but the whole of the main-deck and forecastle remained to be provided ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... but little towards gaining either this, or the other castles, made use of fire-balls, which they threw with their hands, designing to burn the doors of the castles. But the Spaniards from the walls let fall great quantities of stones, and earthen pots full of powder, and other combustible matter, which forced them to desist. Captain Morgan seeing this desperate defence made by the Spaniards, began to despair of success. Hereupon, many faint and calm meditations came into his mind; neither could he determine ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... Combustible substances, which in acids and metallic oxyds are a specific and particular principle, are capable of becoming, in their turn, common principles of a great number of substances. The sulphurous combinations have been long the only known ones in this kind. Now, however, ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... in front of them less deadly. Now, as in Napoleon's time, the effect of the guns is moral rather than material. About midday French's horse-artillery guns came into action from the north. Smoke and flames from the dongas told that some of our shells had fallen among the wagons and their combustible stores. ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the pencil of Verrio and the chisel of Gibbons. Meanwhile a great extent of building had been blown up; and it was hoped that by this expedient a stop had been put to the conflagration. But early in the morning a new fire broke out of the heaps of combustible matter which the gunpowder had scattered to right and left. The guard room was consumed. No trace was left of that celebrated gallery which had witnessed so many balls and pageants, in which so many maids of honour had listened too easily ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... later seems certain to happen, and which nothing short of a miracle appears to prevent from taking place every night; I mean the destruction of the whole by fire. All the houses are constructed of the most combustible materials, and the greater number belonging to the native quarter are thatched. Though contrary to law, many of the warehouses contain gunpowder, while the immense quantity of oil and spirits stored up in them would render a conflagration, once commenced, most fearful. Few or ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... action of the burning candle may be thus explained. The radiant heat from the flame melts the tallow or wax, which then passes up into the texture of the wick by capillary attraction until it reaches the glowing wick, where the heat decomposes the combustible matter into carbonated hydrogen (C^{4}H^{4}), and into carbonic ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... words he led the way. The cavalry, scattering as far in advance as was prudent, wherever they set foot, set fire. The peltasts moving parallel on the high ground were similarly employed, burning everything combustible they could discover. While the main army, wherever they came upon anything which had accidentally escaped, completed the work, so that the whole country looked as if it were ablaze; and the army might easily pass ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... fire and burned like brandy, and was not extinguished until it rained. This flame is among the Indians a sign of abundance or sterility according as it exhibits the contrary qualities. There is no appearance of sulphur, saltpetre or any other combustible material. The water has not even any taste, and I can neither offer nor imagine any better explanation, than that it acquires this combustible property by passing over some aluminous land."—Galinee's journal, 1669, in "Marshall ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... combustible invented by the knights of Malta to throw among their besiegers, and afterwards used ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... Massachusetts; and on the spur of the moment, they are setting up a kite to keep the hen yard in order. I hope in God, this article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted. You ask me if anything transpires here on the subject of South America? Not a word. I know that there are combustible materials there, and that they wait the torch only. But this country probably will join the extinguishers. The want of facts worth communicating to you, has occasioned me to give a little loose to dissertation. We must be contented to amuse, when we ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... owned a large rambling Mansion. The pillars were rotten, the galleries tumbling down, the thatch dry and combustible, and there was only one door. Suddenly, one day, there was a smell of fire: the old man rushed out. To his horror he saw that the thatch was aflame, the rotten pillars were catching fire one by one, and the rafters ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... the visitor had rounded up all the firewood into one heap. Now, to this combustible material the fellow was bringing a side of bacon and a small bag of flour. These he dropped on the firewood, then went back for more ...
— The Young Engineers in Nevada • H. Irving Hancock
... is physiologically a consequence of respiratory processes like those in malting. It seems fairly established that when the preliminary heating process of fermentation is drawing to a close, the cotton, hay, &c., having been converted into a highly porous friable and combustible mass, may then ignite in certain circumstances by the occlusion of oxygen, just as ignition is induced by finely divided metals. A remarkable point in this connexion has always been the necessary conclusion that the living bacteria concerned must be exposed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... summer, and especially after the excessive dryness occasioned by the hot winds, the whole face of the country becomes, as it were, combustible, and bush-fires have at such times burst forth apparently spontaneously, and spread with great rapidity. The "Black Thursday" of the colony, some fifteen years since, when fire covered many hundreds of miles, is still remembered with ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... inflammable rubbish and refuse, on which they place the newly formed articles, and then set the floor on fire, until the whole is thoroughly burnt. Fragments of broken objects, etc., are not removed. The combustible material is thus reduced to ashes, and the broken pieces remain within them; their convex surfaces, of course, falling outwards, and thus resting on the floor. In this manner a thick layer of ashes and charcoal, with pottery, is easily formed. These "hogueras" are still from 20 to 40 feet ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier
... utter and complete obliteration by the furious furnace blast that had swept across it, there was still to be seen an unmistakable ground plan and outline of a four-roomed house. While everything that was combustible had succumbed to that intense heat, there was still enough half-fused and warped metal, fractured iron plate, and twisted and broken bars to indicate the kitchen and tool shed. Very little had, evidently, been ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... been devoted to their storage. The warehouses are of all types, from dusty lofts over stores, and ammoniacal lofts over stables, to buildings offering acres of space, and carefully planned for the purpose. They are more or less fire-proof, slow-burning, or briskly combustible, like the dwellings they have devastated. But the modern tendency is to a type where flames do not destroy, nor moth corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal. Such a warehouse is a city in itself, laid out ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... sufficiently unpromising. The fire had kindled in a heap of combustible trumpery brought there for the tableaux. It had got far beyond management before any one discovered it; and now was making fast work in that corner of the room and creeping with no slow progress along the ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... should break forth into a storm, who can insure us that in its progress a part of its fury would not be spent upon us? No reasonable man would hastily pronounce that we are entirely out of its reach. Or if the combustible materials that now seem to be collecting should be dissipated without coming to maturity, or if a flame should be kindled without extending to us, what security can we have that our tranquillity will long remain undisturbed ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... exclaimed a maiden who discharged a similar duty under cover of the dwellings. Then followed a discharge of muskets, all of which were levelled at the glancing light that was glaring in fearful proximity to the combustible materials which filled the most of the out-buildings. A savage yell, and the sudden extinguishment of the blazing knot, announced the fatal accuracy of ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... fagged. It would have made your heart bleed to see him. Thrice did he go round the earth in every parallel of latitude; and at last, wearied and jaded out, back came he to Hecla in despair, and would have thrown himself into the volcano, if he had been made of combustible materials. Luckily at that time our sisters were engaged in settling the balance of Europe; and whilst they were looking over projects, and counter-projects, and ultimatums, and post ultimatums, the poor Devil, unable to assist them was groaning in a corner and ruminating ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... Thousand Barrels of Gun-powder, in that they call the White-Tower, when all at once the middle Flooring did not only give way, or shrink, but fell flat down upon other Barrels of Powder, together with many of the same combustible Matter which had been placed upon it. It was a Providence strangely neglected at that Time, and hardly thought of since; But let any considerate Man consult the Consequences, if it had taken fire; perhaps ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... his chamber window, he saw a great fire in a dorf about half a league from the town, which he observed, almost in a moment, to flash from one end of the dorf to the other, consuming all in its way,—and thus it was said to have been in these suburbs. The reason thereof is the combustible matter whereof their houses are built, being of fir timber and boards, which, especially being old, do suddenly take fire, and violently burn, hard to be quenched, few houses escaping, especially in the dorfs, where one is on fire; which causeth more than ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... schools, "is received in proportion to the recipient." The power of a political treatise depends much upon the disposition of the people; the nation was then combustible, and a spark set it on fire. It is boasted, that between November and January eleven thousand were sold; a great number at that time, when we were not yet a nation of readers. To its propagation certainly no agency of power or influence was wanting. It furnished arguments for conversation, speeches ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... flag of America, and substitute that of England in its place. On the approach, however, of an overwhelming army of the enemy in the autumn of the ensuing year it was abandoned by our troops, after having been dismantled and reduced, in its more combustible parts, to ashes. The Americans, who have erected new fortifications on the site of the old, still retain possession of a post to which they attach considerable importance, from the circumstance of its being a key to the more ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... shattered side Of thundering AEtna, whose combustible And fuel'd entrails thence conceiving fire, Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds, And ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... their powers they have died at an early age, as if in consequence of the premature exhaustion of their nervous energy. Mozart, Burns, Byron, Poe and Chatterton may be cited as remarkable examples of this result. Hence, although their light may have burned with a brighter glow, like a combustible substance in an atmosphere of oxygen, the consumption of material was more rapid, and though it may have shone with a more sober lustre without such aid, we can not but believe that it would have ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... preoccupation had made him forget his wine and his cigar. He emptied the glass at a single draught, but it proved far more difficult to light the cigar. "Zounds! this is a non-combustible," he growled. "When I arrive at smoking ten sous cigars, I sha'n't come here to ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... which were his. The son of Pandu burnt the body of his uncle together with those four wives of his, using diverse kinds of scents and perfumed wood. As the funeral pyre blazed up, a loud sound was heard of the burning wood and other combustible materials, along with the clear chant of Samans and the wailing of the citizens and others who witnessed the rite. After it was all over, the boys of the Vrishni and Andhaka races, headed by Vajra, as also the ladies, offered oblations of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... disciplined and organised the city. Individual and distorted passions kindled the mighty and virtuous love of the people for the triumph of democracy. It is thus that in a conflagration the most tainted substances oft light the fire; the combustible matter is foul, but the flames pure; the flame of the Revolution was liberty; the factious might dim, they ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine |
