"Detonation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cannon were thundering—so close that it seemed each hilltop would bring them into view, and as the detonation puffed across the landscape, one even fancied one could feel the concussion in one's ear. Up from a field ahead of us an aeroplane rose and, in a wide spiral, went climbing up the sky, now almost cleared, and presently disappeared in the north. Then, after satisfying a sentry ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... lightly played with by babes and sucklings. The sand-box tree of the West Indies has large round fruits, containing seeds about as big as an English horsebean; and the capsule explodes, when ripe, with a detonation like a pistol, scattering its contents with as much violence as a shot from an air-gun. It is dangerous to go too near these natural batteries during the shooting season. A blow in the eye from one would blind ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... left the deck to go in search of his superior officer with the generous intention of comforting him, if it were possible to do so. But the captain had disappeared, and three minutes had not elapsed when a detonation ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... through to the surface before the tough skin could get much more than cherry red. And the ship would bury itself in the soft red soil (how deep?) before the impact sandwiched the containers of fissionable material enough for detonation proximity. ...
— Jack of No Trades • Charles Cottrell
... moment came the sharp shrill notes of the fifes and the quick detonation of the drum-stick taps. The rattle of the drums came closer and closer, when two folding-doors opened, and through them stalked in grim solemnity the 'Phantom Guard,' led by ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... tone, ever increasing in volume, until, like an express train, with an overwhelming sense of speed and power, and with an appalling roar, it crashed upon them. In the field on their left, there leaped fifty yards into the air a huge mass of earth and smoke. Then a stunning detonation. ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... and Oldham's sappers already at work. These, aided by ropes and scaling ladders, got down to the ledge; and from this point they and Oldham slung themselves down to the bed of the stream, by the same means. A few sappers had followed, when a box of dynamite exploded with a violent detonation, and the rest of the ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... wall in time to save himself, as the bamboo frame leapt underfoot. Outside, the crest of the slope ran black against a single burst of flame. The detonation came like the blow of ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... the side of the hearth where a few pieces of green wood smoked without burning, they started at each of the distant reports of the cannon. At each detonation that shook the window-panes, Mme. Favoral thought that it was, perhaps, the one that ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... is impossible! Absolutely impossible, I tell you! What you are inventing now is impossible!... You forget that a shot from a gun, a shot from so powerful a weapon, makes a noise. Why, deuce take it, the detonation must be heard!" ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... the detonation which had so startled Jerry and Bob, and now, with others, they looked over the top of the trench at the ruins of the truck. It was blown apart, and the wooden body and wheels were scattered about while the engine was a mere mass of twisted and ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... crest where I stood, the whole landscape about me was illuminated with the fierce glare of the bursting shells, while the ground on which I stood quivered with the thunderous detonation of ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... one torpedo was fired at the Lusitania, which hit her starboard side below the captain's bridge. The detonation of the torpedo was followed immediately by a further explosion of extremely strong effect. The ship quickly listed to starboard and ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... same idea—that of getting near one another. They called out, "Bell!" "Simpson!" "This way, doctor!" "Where are you, captain?" But no answers were heard; the vapour did not conduct sound. They all fired as a sign of rallying. But if the sound of the voice appeared too weak, the detonation of the firearms was too strong, for it was echoed in all directions, and produced a confused rumble without appreciable direction. Each acted then according to his instincts. Hatteras stopped, folded his arms, and waited. Simpson contented himself with stopping his sledge. Bell retraced his ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... flash split up the sky as a stone splits a window pane. Pulsating streaks of fire, red, green, and blue, radiated in all directions, half-blinding them with the brazen glare. And before it faded, a crackling detonation seemed to rip the very heavens ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... too near the ground, or I might get a shot in the ankles from one of the other men. I can't say it was an absolute pleasure. The seat (if seat it could be called) was anything but comfortable, and the detonation of the gun just over my head was decidedly trying; still it was a novelty, and if the other women could stand ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... February 22, 1831, a violent detonation was suddenly heard in the coal mine of Bois-Monzil, belonging to M. Robinot. The waters from the old works rushed impetuously along the new galleries. "The waters, the waters!" such was the cry that resounded from ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... find their way to my department. For some reason or other they always presented themselves after dinner—like the coffee. The first arrival was a young cavalry officer, knocked off his horse in the preliminary encounters by what had evidently been the detonation of a well-pitched-up high-explosive, and who was still suffering from a touch of what we now know as shell-shock. He proved to be the very embodiment of effective military training, because, although he was to the last degree vague as to how he had got back across the Channel ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... observed that these different birds did not appear to be at all wild. They approached without fearing anything. Then, had they not yet learned to fear the presence of man, and was this coast so deserted that the detonation of a firearm had never ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... darlin', if ye have th' belly-ache!" cried this tall man, and, without more warning, there was a tremendous flash and detonation, a mighty flying of the clear waters just under the bows of the foremost ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... left, a jagged gap appeared. Suddenly, far below, toward the river, a crashing detonation shattered harsh echoes from ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... glacier had not disputed their passage; it maintained the silence and the immobility of marble; nothing but the snarl of the surging flood re-echoed from its face. But with the suddenness of a rifle-shot there came a detonation, louder, sharper than any blast of powder. The Norwegian cursed; the helmsman dropped his eyes to the white face in ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... of fire. The fatal touch is given. The detonation of the blast goes shrieking up to heaven. The mansions of bonanza kings are tottering to their doom; That swirling tide of fiery fate halts at the gaping tomb. Beyond the cataclysm's brink, the multitude, too dazed to think, Behold the ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... the boom upon their ears; duller and duller at each successive detonation, which tells that the distance between them and the frigate, instead of diminishing, increases. However sad and disheartening, they cannot help it. They dare not put the barque about, or in any way alter her course. They must ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... switch and closed it. As he did so the cabin rocked on its foundations and both Carnes and Walter were thrown to the ground. The thud of a detonation deep in the earth ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... and Tom, their ears rang with the noise until they felt as though surely their ear-drums had been ruptured by the force of that awesome detonation. ...
— The Grammar School Boys in Summer Athletics • H. Irving Hancock
... end of the sixteenth century they still used the arms employed in the time of Genghis. Each one of Iermak's warriors faced a crowd of the enemy. If his bullet only killed one of them, the frightful detonation of his gun put to flight twenty or thirty. In the first combat, held on the bank of the Tobol, at a place called Babassan, Iermak, under shelter of intrenchments, checked by some discharges of musketry the impetuosity of ten thousand men of Mahmetkul's cavalry, who rushed forward ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... three groups, each having a gunner to lead it, half a dozen boys to sing, and a dwindling jar of cider for the purposes of the ceremony. The divided choirs clashed their music, heard from a distance; the guns fired at intervals, each sending forth its own particular detonation and winning back a distinctive echo; then the companies separated widely and decreased to mere twinkling, torchlit points in the distance. Accumulated smoke from the scattered discharges hung in a sluggish haze between earth and moon, and a sharp smell of burnt powder ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... the hole, squeezed down a copper cap upon a strip of fuse, and, lighting the latter, retired expeditiously towards the river. Standing behind a big cedar, he watched the train of blue vapour and thin red sparks creep on through the dusk until a blaze of yellow flame leapt up, and a stunning detonation rolled across the woods. The hillsides took up the sound, and flung it from one to another in great reverberations, while the pines, quivering in all their sprays, shook drops of water down. Alton stood still and listened, silent and intent, while the discord died, until ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... noticed a peasant walking slowly on the edge of the pavement with his hands in the pockets of his sheepskin coat and his shoulders hunched up to his ears under the falling snow. On being overtaken this peasant suddenly faced about and swung his arm. In an instant there was a terrible shock, a detonation muffled in the multitude of snowflakes; both horses lay dead and mangled on the ground and the coachman, with a shrill cry, had fallen off the box mortally wounded. The footman (who survived) had no time to see the face of the man in the sheepskin coat. After ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... bulkheads. At the same instant arose a screaming of women's voices, and one voice, that of Sir John Malyoe, crying out as in the greatest extremity: "You villains! You damned villains!" and with that the sudden detonation of a pistol fired into the close space of ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... accustomed to such a sound when salutes are fired or on a field-day, but I assure those who have not had a like experience, that to hear the same in actual warfare, and to know that each detonation is dealing death and destruction to human beings and property, sends a shiver down the back akin to that produced by icy cold water. I counted four or five; then there it was again and again and again, till altogether I reckoned twenty ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... word seemed to have the explosive force of nitroglycerine. Its detonation rang through the room and left them all silent, as though their ears were stunned and their tongues paralyzed. Alec was the first to see that some event far out of the common had reduced his cousin, Count Julius Marulitch, almost to ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... I said, "that many powders are violently explosive, and some more so than others. This violence of explosion is called detonation, by which is meant the almost instantaneous conversion of the ultimate molecules of an explosive compound (i.e. ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... still morning air. Looking in the direction of the report, we saw on the far right side of the cantonment a thick black column of smoke shoot up high into the atmosphere. A quarter of an hour passed, and then another detonation similar to the first sounded in our ears on the left rear flank, followed, as before, by a dense cloud ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... to take the glass which was all but slipping from his hand, when Lakalatcha flamed with redoubled fury. It was as if the mountain had suddenly bared its fiery heart to the heavens, and a muffled detonation reached ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... up in "the workshop." The studio had been changed for some new fancy of the crack-brained pair; they had packed aside the plans and models and had set up a lathe, a forge and a miniature foundry. To the clang of hammer and the squeak of file was added the detonation now and then of some explosive which did not emit the sharp sound or pungent smoke of gunpowder or the more ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... grenade that encompasses large areas is a dramatic if unachievable illustration. Perhaps a high altitude nuclear detonation that blacks out virtually all electronic and electrical equipment better describes the intended effect regardless of likelihood of use. Depriving the enemy, in specific areas, of the ability to communicate, observe, and to interact is a more reasonable and ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... the emerging men; he hurled another. A leap of blue flame, which flared high and blinding, followed its detonation. He hurled at the other causeway, first halting by a bomb the out rush of men; and thus he marked the mouth of this second causeway the next instant by a sheet ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes
... the parapet. Above on the cliff stood huge sappy pines. All day the sky was grey and cloudy, and the smoke from the chimneys spread like a low pall over the earth. The dynamite exploded with a great detonation and ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... was tearful and romantic; happily he repented him of his lugubrious sentiment, and restored to France its old gaiety in the Barbier de Seville and the inimitable Mariage de Figaro; but amid the mirth of Figaro can be heard the detonation of ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... somewhat after ten o'clock in the morning, in the midst of this hilarious scramble to be off to the floe, there was a flash and spit of fire, and the clap of an explosion, and the clatter of a sealing-gun on the bare floor; and in the breathless, dead little interval between the appalling detonation and a man's groan of dismay followed by a woman's choke and scream of terror, Dolly West, Bad-Weather Tom's small maid, stood swaying, wreathed in gray smoke, her little hands pressed tight to ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... detalo. Details (minutes) detaleto. Detain malhelpi, deteni. Detect eltrovi. Deter malhelpi. Deteriorate difekti. Determine decidi. Determination decideco. Determined decida. Detest malami. Dethrone detroni. Detonation eksplodbruo. Detract kalumnii. Detriment malprofito, perdo. Detrimental malhelpa. Devastate dezertigi, ruinigi. Develope vastigi. Development vastigo. Deviate malrektigxi. Deviation malrektigxo. Device devizo. Devil ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... I might have lasted it out better than many others. There's nothing the matter with my heart." He withdrew his right fist from his pocket, and the blow he struck on his chest resounded like a muffled detonation ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... A deeper detonation was merging into the uproar. It came from the ships, Thurston knew, where anti-aircraft guns poured a rain of shells into the sky. About the invaders they bloomed into clusters of smoke balls. The globes shot a thousand feet into the air. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... Judges vii., where Gideon captured the camp of the Midianites with the roar of trumpets, the crash caused by the breaking of innumerable pitchers, and the flash of a multitude of lanterns, had reference to the use of gunpowder; that the noise made by the breaking of the pitchers represented the detonation of an explosion, the flame of the lights the blaze, and the noise of the trumpets the thunder of the gunpowder. We can understand, in this wise, the results that followed; but we cannot otherwise understand how the breaking of pitchers, the flashing of lamps, and the clangor of trumpets ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... occasionally, he errs through perverseness, not through unwariness. His language often settles into clear and most beautiful prose, often takes an imperfect and incoherent shape of poetry, and often, cloud against cloud, bursts with a vehement detonation in the air. Diogenes was hated both by the vulgar and the philosophers. By the philosophers, because he exposed their ignorance, ridiculed their jealousies, and rebuked their pride: by the vulgar, because they never can endure a man apparently of their own class who avoids their society and partakes ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... the third week in February that a Conference war was declared in Philadelphia, Buffalo, and Baltimore. In the ears of Mr. Gunterson the triple detonation rang terribly, like the very voice of doom, and it was with the desperation of hopelessness that he addressed himself to the solution of ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... Herr Haase's excavations; they had an instant in which to note, faint as the whirring of a fly upon a pane, the buzz of some small mechanism within the thing. Then, not louder than a heavy stroke upon a drum, came the detonation of the buried cartridges in the first hole, and the earth above them suddenly ballooned and burst like an over-inflated paper-bag and let through a spit of brief fire and ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... the upper meadows: the Staubbach seen only as a grey veil suspended from its rock, and the great Alps pale above on the dark sky. She condescended nevertheless to gather a great bunch of the white catchfly,—to make 'pops' with,—her friend Marie at the Giesbach having shown her how a startling detonation may be obtained, by skilful management, out of ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... with his black hair flowing over his shoulders, and with a sort of pea-coloured swaddling-cloth thrown round him. In his hand he held a long military musket, and he dashed along on the tips of his slippers with the air of a somnambulist and with the nimbleness of a tiger. At intervals a detonation could be heard. ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... to hang over the battle-field. Sometimes, a perpendicular column of smoke rose up, in the motionless distance, and the detonation reached us a little while afterwards, as if astray, and ashamed of ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... a point well forward of her mount. The mass of the wreckage, however, went to starboard. Explosion of the depth charges, rather than that of the torpedo outward or in throwback, supposedly effected this. About five seconds elapsed between the torpedo's detonation and those of the mines. They probably went off close together, for accounts vary as to whether there were in all two or ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... the north-west partially on fire for some days, but not to an alarming extent until the 7th of October, when it came on to blow furiously from the westward, and the inhabitants along the river were suddenly surprised by an extraordinary roaring in the woods, resembling the crashing and detonation of loud and incessant thunder, while at the same instant the atmosphere ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... that the fin was turning away from them. Instantly he sighted for its center, made sure of his bead, and fired. He saw the fin flutter wildly, then there was a great swirl of waters, and as the heavy detonation rang over the lagoon the black fin vanished ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... came down in torrents, the thunder echoed clap on clap, each detonation preceded by an awful zig-zag of fire. The tempest grew in fury, and, scarce able to ride on the shifting wind, the plaintive voices of the bells rang ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... orgasm, climax, aphrodisia^; force, brute force; outrage; coup de main; strain, shock, shog^; spasm, convulsion, throe; hysterics, passion &c (state of excitability) 825. outbreak, outburst; debacle; burst, bounce, dissilience^, discharge, volley, explosion, blow up, blast, detonation, rush, eruption, displosion^, torrent. turmoil &c (disorder) 59; ferment &c (agitation) 315; storm, tempest, rough weather; squall &c (wind) 349; earthquake, volcano, thunderstorm. berserk, berserker; fury, dragon, demon, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the infernal machine sped. A sickening pause—then a deafening detonation, followed by another and another, cut the stillness, and the earth beneath was aflame with light as the high explosives and shells stored in the concealed ammunition depot were set off. Nothing escaped destruction; flesh and blood, mortar and brick went skyward together, and a great gash in the ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... soon there was a thundering roar of artillery, and a dense volume of white smoke, through which glanced the flash of the cannon, all round the great semi-circle. The scream of shells, and the blaze and detonation with which they burst, were incessant. Away on the right the sea was covered with warships, which seemed to have nothing to do, and certainly were not assailing the coast defences. Some of the seaward forts were able to get ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... to tail. A violent detonation flung echoes from sea and shore; and bits of splintered wreckage spun down past the windows, to plunge into the ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... then, entitled "The Royal Society of British Artists and its Future—An Interview with the New President"—a most appalling volley of figures was fired off at brule-pour-point distance. Under this deafening detonation I, having no habit, sat for days incapable—dreaming vaguely that when a President should see fit to wash his people's linen in the open, there must be indeed crime at least on the part of the offender at whose instigation such official sacrifice of dignity could come about. ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... he would burst out laughing. A big voice, a good fellow. He had a comic foundation under a tragic exterior, he asked nothing better than to frighten you, very much like those snuff-boxes which are in the shape of a pistol. The detonation makes one sneeze. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... whose light only is seen by us. Globe or ball lightning takes the form of globes of fire, sometimes visible for ten seconds, descending from the clouds. On reaching the earth they sometimes rebound, and sometimes explode with a loud detonation. No adequate explanation has ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... entirely dependent on the direction of the wind. In gas projectiles such as shells, hand grenades, and trench mortar bombs, a part or the whole of the explosive charge is replaced by a liquid which is converted into gas by the explosion. The explosive force and noise of detonation of these projectiles is less than that of the ordinary kind, and a large number of them are usually discharged into a comparatively small space. After the explosion, the irritant chemicals form a small gas cloud, though some may sink to the ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... stood behind the Nordenfeldt shields with the bullets pattering against the steel and stinging the air overhead? He or his ghost, barefoot in the sand that sopped the blood of fallen comrades, the ship shaking with the detonation of her guns, the hoarse cheering of her crew re-echoing in his half- deafened ears? A dream, yes; tragic and wonderful in the retrospect, filled with wild, bright pictures; ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... nitro-glycerine; but M. Roca, in testing a variety of samples, was struck by the difference among them in regard to energy of explosion, and discovered that if a portion of free carbon, sufficient to combine with the oxygen disengaged from the nitro-glycerine, was present at the moment of detonation, the effect was greater than where, as in the case of gunpowder, the solid portion alone furnished oxygen enough to burn all the free carbon, without calling upon the nitro-glycerine for any. In fact, it appeared ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various
... patch, he added the last trace of pressure. He saw a train of sparks leap from the jerking muzzle, and felt the butt jar upon his shoulder. Still, as is almost invariably the case with a man whose whole force of will is concentrated on holding the little sight on a living mark, he heard no detonation. He recognized, however, the unmistakable thud of the bullet smashing through soft flesh, and that was what he ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... The detonation was answered by a cry, a scream of pain, from the lighted cage. It paused on the instant, like a bird stricken a-wing, some four floors below, but at once resumed its ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... detonation. The plane staggered. Its pilot fought and fought, but his craft had no power at all. It came down fluttering, with the pilot gaining every imaginable inch toward the sandy shore. It seemed certain that he would come down on the white ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... at a flier almost directly overhead and fired. He could have sworn he hit it, but nothing happened. Grim's dynol pistol flamed redly nearby. The tracer pellet scorched upward, impacted, against the hull of a flier. There was a faint detonation, and the next instant the air was full of ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... from somewhere inland, followed at a few seconds' interval by a heavy detonation, exactly like the firing of ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... up to a periscope depth, and I surveyed her from a position off her stern. She was sinking fast, but I felt so furious at being nearly trapped that I could not resist giving her a torpedo; detonation was complete, and a mass of wreckage shot into the air as the hull of the ship disappeared. As to the two boats, I left them to make the best course to land that ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... would conclude that nitro-glycerin carried about exposed cannot explode, even if you drop a coal of fire into it; if the liquid is confined, or is under pressure, then an explosion will ensue; if paper be moistened with it and put on an anvil and a smart blow given with a hammer, a sharp detonation ensues; if gunpowder or the fulminates of mercury, silver or gun-cotton be ignited in a vacuum by a galvanic battery, none of them will explode; if any gas be introduced so as to produce a gentle pressure during the decomposition, then a rapid evolution of gases will result; the results ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... in those sixteen days it seemed to burst and escape in an actual detonation, splitting his head—there, as he waited in the strange room where never a curtain stirred. . . . It was a trick his brain played him, repeating, echoing the awful explosion of the French seventy-four Achille, ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... more closely as they dwindled. They charged upon the attacking robot things. They were unguided, of necessity, but the robot bombs had to be equipped with proximity fuses. No remote control could be so accurate as to determine the best moment for detonation at 4,000 miles' distance. So the war rockets had to be devised to explode when near anything which reflected their probing radar waves. They had to be designed to be triggered ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... viz., the detonation produced by the Columbiad, had the immediate effect of troubling the terrestrial atmosphere, by accumulating a large quantity of vapor, a phenomenon which excited universal indignation, for the moon was hidden from the eyes of the watchers for ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... rocks, like the balls from nature's mighty artillery, were hurled a half mile into the air, while a dense mass of ashes and sand was flung to three or four times this height. All the next day the terrible detonation kept up, and a hail of bullet-like stones poured downward from the skies. Rarely has a more terrible Sunday been seen. It was as if the demons of earth and air were let loose and were seeking to destroy man and his ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... yet above it there rang out the detonation and shock of a great explosion, where a delayed mine belched upward under the pressure of the hastening troops coming up with the attacking reserve. Earth, stones, wire entanglements, arms and men shot upward in a dense geyser of death, ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... again, running as madly as if a troop of demons was after him. A flash cleft the darkness; a deep detonation thundered and echoed against the hills; the building against which Hetty leaned shook as if an earthquake had seized it, and Thursday Smith was thrown flat on his face and rolled almost to the terrified girl's feet, where he lay motionless. Only the building saved her from pitching ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... a can filled with small missiles that scatter after firing from the gun. Grape shot: a cluster of small iron balls, which scatter upon firing. Shell: explosive missile; a hollow cast-iron ball, filled with gunpowder, with a fuze to produce detonation; a long, hollow projectile, filled with explosive and fitted with a fuze. Shot: ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... of the mighty tornarssuit the wind now steadily beat upon the ice. The two men were almost lifted from their feet. Not far away they heard the tumultuous crash of the rising waves. As they were lashing the blubber to Ootah's sledge, a resounding detonation vibrated through the ice under him—the field on which they stood slowly but unmistakably began ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... with Planchet into the boat, and five minutes after they were on board. It was time; for they had scarcely sailed half a league, when d'Artagnan saw a flash and heard a detonation. It was the cannon which announced ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... sad impression to see that we were reduced to such a point of distress as to be compelled to throw our powder to the winds to keep from leaving it to the enemy. But a still sadder reflection came into our minds at each detonation,—the grand army must be rapidly hastening to dissolution when the material remaining exceeded our needs, and the number of men still left was so much short of that required to use it. On the 30th, the Emperor's headquarters were in a poor hovel which had neither ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... siderite, and it is on record that a loud explosion took place when the meteorite fell at Ensisheim. In this we have a characteristic feature of the phenomenon. Nearly all the descents of meteorites that have been observed seem to have been ushered in by a detonation. We do not, however, assert that this is quite an invariable feature; and it is also the case that meteors often detonate without throwing down any solid fragments that have been collected. The ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... reply, the detonation of two gunshots, softened by distance, floated down from the ridge above them. "There!" said Miss Cantire eagerly. ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... enough dynamite in a cartridge to make a sharp detonation but not enough to do any damage, unless, as happened here, there were two of them in a small space that was enclosed on ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... would soon exhibit itself. What all these creatures—bears, cougars, lynxes, wolves, and even alligators—are now, is no criterion of their past. Authentic history proves that their courage, at least so far as regards man, has changed altogether since they first heard the sharp detonation of the deadly rifle. Even contemporaneous history demonstrates this. In many parts of South America, both jaguar and cougar attack man, and numerous are the deadly encounters there. In Peru, on the eastern ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... would be the suspicion on the part of any one that Lily's engagement to George Ramsey troubled her. All the time, as she hurried along the familiar road, she realized that strange, shocked feeling, as of some tremendous detonation of spirit. She bowed mechanically to people whom she met. She did not fairly know who they were. She kept on her way only through inertia. She felt that if she stopped to think, she would scarcely know the road to the school-house. She wondered when she met a girl somewhat older than herself, ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... harps is in my ear and something like an earthquake quivers through my limbs. And this sound grows into a mighty crunching and waxes into thunder which sounds afar and returns from the distance in echoing detonation. ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... came a tremendous detonation, which made even the launching-slip tremble, and a huge column of water, like a geyser, rose in the air about eight hundred feet out in the river, directly ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... nose first. Those in the starboard boats saw her stand on end for full five minutes, screws spinning, before a muffled detonation blew the bowels out of her and sucked her down like ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... up at her. "Dairy Detonation Devastates Desert," the alliterative Chronicle banner read; "Bossy's Blast Rocks Bay Area," said the Trib; "Atomic Butter-And-Egg Blast Jars LA," the somewhat inaccurate Herald-Ex proclaimed; "Thompson Ranch ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... seemed to contemplate a village of the dead. It was thought possible to launch a boat and tow the Regent from her place of danger; and with this view a signal of distress was made and a gun fired with a red-hot poker from the galley. Its detonation awoke the sleepers. Door after door was opened, and in the grey light of the morning fisher after fisher was seen to come forth, yawning and stretching himself, nightcap on head. Fisher after fisher, I wrote, and my pen tripped; for it should rather stand wrecker after wrecker. There was ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... distorted whirl burst upward in a huge geyser of annihilation, came a detonation that ripped, stunned, shattered; that sent both the defenders staggering ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... Queen Elizabeth clock of the Castle was striking twelve, and the fishermen on Irish waters were raising a cheer for their friend at home. A loud detonation rang out over the town. It was the report of a gun. There was another, and then a third. The shots were from a steamer ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... gallant rush forward they retook the principal positions with the bayonet. As they saw the Pontificals swerve back they uttered cries of joy. It was two o'clock. The enemy's fire slackened; something was going on which the volunteers could not make out. All at once there was a sharp unfamiliar detonation, resembling the whirring sound of a machine. The French had come ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... the din of all the great double petards of the Saint-Jean, the discharge of twenty arquebuses on supports, the detonation of that famous serpentine of the Tower of Billy, which, during the siege of Paris, on Sunday, the twenty-sixth of September, 1465, killed seven Burgundians at one blow, the explosion of all the powder stored at the gate of the Temple, would have rent his ears less rudely at that solemn and ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... back and roared with laughter over his great triumph. C. and R! Poof! He would send Stolz' nephew to prison, and then roll a bomb along Wall Street whose detonation would startle the financial world clean out of its orbit! Stolz had failed to notice that Ames's schemes had so signally worked out that C. and R. was practically in his hands now! The defeated railroad magnate at length backed out of the Ames office purple with rage. And then he pledged himself ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... The detonation dazed her; then, as he flung the rifle into the water, she caught him by neck and belt and flung ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... tents and dugouts with lumps of earth. One of the men of the 88th Field Ambulance, just in front of us, got wounded. They began again with heavier shells—Jack Johnsons—about 5 a.m. to-day, seven falling near us, and as we lay underground we could feel the earth shake with every detonation. Last night was the first time they ever gave us such a visit. They are chary of using their big guns after dark in case they should ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... presidio were alike lost in the escalading vines or leveled by the pushing boughs of gnarled pear and olive trees that now surmounted them. The dust lay thick and impalpable in hollow and gutter, and rose in little vapory clouds with a soft detonation at every stroke of his horse's hoofs. Over all this dust and ruin, idleness seemed to reign supreme. From the velvet-jacketed figures lounging motionless in the shadows of the open doorways—so motionless ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... bullets hissed over his head. The battle had begun! Another hour and the Mormon kingdom would be at the mercy of the avenging host from the mainland—and Marion would be his own for ever! He heard again the deep rumble of a heavy gun and from its sullen detonation he knew that it was fired from a ship at sea. A nearer crash of returning fire turned him into a deserted street down which he ran wildly, on past the last houses of the town, until he came to the foot of a hill up which he climbed more slowly, ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... fallout from a nuclear war; an important aspect of this new study was its inquiry into all possible consequences, including the effects of large-scale nuclear detonations on the ozone layer which helps protect life on earth from the sun's ultraviolet radiations. Assuming a total detonation of 10,000 megatons—a large-scale but less than total nuclear "exchange," as one would say in the dehumanizing jargon of the strategists—it was concluded that as much as 30-70 percent of the ozone ...
— Worldwide Effects of Nuclear War: Some Perspectives • United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
... his ears had caught a single whip-like crack. A stunning crash followed a lurid glare, lighting up sky and sea. Again came the sharp detonation, but little louder than a fire-cracker. ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... peal of thunder which seemed to come from the very bowels of the earth, followed by a detonation like the discharge of an army's artillery, and the sides of the crater opened, and with a wild roar the pent-up torrent burst forth, and leaping into the lake, rolled, a mighty avalanche of water, toward the ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... than the obsolete and time-worn Resistance. An idea, however, had got abroad that the Russians either have or intend to have a locomotive torpedo capable of carrying the same weight of explosive in its head, and the object of the experiment was to ascertain what would be the effect of the detonation of such an enormous charge upon the submerged portions of a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... its attention between preparations for the Old Times Dance and the progress in the dewatering of the Blue Poppy shaft. Now and then the long hose was withdrawn, and dynamite lowered on floats to the surface of the water, far below, a copper wire trailing it. A push of the plunger, a detonation, and a wait of long moments; it accomplished nothing, and the pumping went on. If the earthly remains of Harry Harkins were below, they steadfastly refused to come to ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... common sense as even to tell a lie when it was necessary." And in the course of sentencing, my lord had this obiter dictum: "I have been the means, under God, of haanging a great number, but never just such a disjaskit rascal as yourself." The words were strong in themselves; the light and heat and detonation of their delivery, and the savage pleasure of the speaker in his task, made them ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... surprise, Rube was allowed ample time to reload, and our three barrels once more protruded over the shoulders of Garey's horse. Our animals still held their respective positions. Three of them were too well used to such scenes, to be startled by the detonation of a rifle; and the fourth, fastened as he ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... when the fire was at its height. It came with a roar, tossing the licking flames into a wild chaos of protest. They were swept apart, and a great detonation boomed across to expectant ears. A pillar of smoke and flame shot up to the heavens. Then a deluge of smoke partially ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... rose above a fresh detonation, "You dare—and you think I'm going to ask you whom I shall fall in love with? Fish? What do you call those other shrimps who don't think of anything but drinking and sport, whether they attend to business or not?—their fathers make them, anyhow. And ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... very quickly and confusedly toward dawn. The silence was rent across like a piece of torn silk. The crash of bombs, the peppery, sharp detonation of rifles broke up the sullen air. Out of the dark, vague shapes loomed, the trench filled with the sound of deep breathing and scuffling, and the ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... river bank. The tranquil silver surface quivered and glittered before him. He saw what he knew he would see, the black target of a man's head above it, making for the Bar. He took deliberate aim and fired. There was no echo to that sharp detonation; a distant dog barked, there was a slight whisper in the trees beside him, that was all! But the head of the man was no longer visible, and the liquid silver filmed over again, without a speck ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the first down the rope. The explosion had certainly done enough damage, and if the ice "cradle" beneath the vessel's keel had not been so thick she must have been sunk with the shock of the detonation. The ice "blanket" that covered her though had been shattered like a pane of glass—and, with picks thrown down onto the decks from above the boys soon cleared a path to the door of a sort of raised ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... silver, soluble in nitric acid and ammonia. When the precipitate is dried and heated on platinum-foil, it disperses as white vapour with slight detonation. Sulphate of lime in excess gives a white precipitate, soluble in nitric or hydrochloric acid, but insoluble in oxalic, tartaric, ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... The detonation that followed startled him out of his self-possession. He dropped the pistol, and was out of the shop and half way across the street before he could recover himself. Then, ashamed of his cowardice, he forced himself to pick up the weapon and went forward to examine the two-inch ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... just then was like a mountain chasm when a storm that has been gathering is about to break. In the air a deep rumble, and then a loud detonation. Blackness overhead, and things around that seemed to move ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... detonation seemed to strike at the smalls of their backs, throwing them half out of their seats. The glass slide upon the Queen's side of the coach ran down with a crash, and one of the large gilt baubles from its roof toppled and fell into the road. At the same instant a great blast and swirl of smoke blew ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... past that door? Really, the deathlike stillness on the other side was more mysterious than would have been the detonation of ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... armed and protected in much the same way. This is the bombardier-beetle, common in certain other countries, but also found in England, which if chased will discharge from its stern a puff of bluish-white smoke, accompanied by a slight detonation. It can fire many shots from its stern chasers. It is said that a highly volatile liquid is secreted by glands, which when it meets the air passes into vapour so suddenly as to produce ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... be the property of the parents, and should be produced only when they are wanted. No great apparatus is necessary for showing children the first simple operations in chemistry: such as evaporation, crystalization, calcination, detonation, effervescence, and saturation. Water and fire, salt and sugar, lime and vinegar, are not very difficult to be procured; and a wine-glass is to be found in every house. The difference between an acid and alkali should be early taught ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... foe who was upon his feet, and to utterly fright the savages from their propriety. Beaujeu and a dozen more fell dead upon the spot, and the Indians already began to fly, their courage being unable to endure the unwonted tumult of such a portentous detonation. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... phases of the action. Across the deck they heard the guns of Tweedledee's battery open fire with a roar, and then the cheering of the crews, mingled with the cordite fumes, was drowned by an ear-splitting detonation in the confined spaces of the mess deck, followed by ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... fires at hazard, without disquieting himself as to the choice of his victim; and the soldier, who was bold enough to undertake this double murder, has not force nor courage to consummate it. He flies, carrying in his hand a useless whip, with a heavy mantle on his shoulders, in spite of the detonation of two pistols at his ears, and the rapid steps of an angry master in pursuit, which ought to have set him upon some better means of escape. And we find this man, full of youth and vigor, lying with his face to the ground, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of her interview with Olive, slept that night in a succession of heavy-dreamed dozes punctuated by violent starts of waking, like a train creeping into a London terminus through an irregular detonation of fog-signals. Why had Riviere sent no answer to her message? What had Olive said to him? Had she done the best possible thing to free Riviere? That was the never-ceasing anxiety. In her great love for him, the one thing she ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... now augmented, wears A threatening aspect, ominously dark; Enveloping the heaven's canopy In lowering shadow and portentous gloom; In pall of ambient obscurity. The fork-ed lightnings ramify and play Upon a background of sepulchral black; The growling thunders rumble a reply Of detonation awful and profound, To every corruscation's vivid gleam; In deep crescendo and fortissimo, In quavering tremolo and stately fugue Echoes, reverberates ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... rockets viciously aflame, it twisted and looped around the incandescent rods of destruction so thickly and starkly outlined, under perfect control; unaffected by the hideous distortion of all ether-borne signals. Through a pirate screen it went, and under the terrific blast of its detonation one entire panel of the stricken battleship vanished, crumpled and broken. It should have been out, cold—but, to the amazement of the observers, it kept on fighting with scarcely lessened power! ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... intense darkness with its baleful blue death-light, followed by a crash, appalling as if the battlements of heaven had been shattered. Once the whole air seemed ablaze, and the simultaneous shock of the detonation was so violent, that Beryl involuntarily sank on her knees, and hid her eyes on a chair. The rain fell in torrents, that added a solemn sullen swell to the diapason of the thunder fugue, and by degrees a delicious coolness crept into ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... on the alert for her, and his bullet broke her shoulder. The lioness, with a frightful howl of agony, rolled down the steps, overturning Joe in her fall. The poor fellow imagined that he could already feel the enormous paws of the savage beast in his flesh, when a second detonation resounded in the narrow passage, and Dr. Ferguson appeared at the opening above with his gun in hand, and still smoking from ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... penetrated the stiff soil to a depth of five feet seven inches, and rebounded on impact with some more solid substance at the bottom so quickly that it left the mark of its penetration perfect, and only broke up on reaching the surface again. In this case there was no burst, but only a detonation of the fuse. After nine at night we were astonished to see the beams of a searchlight sweeping Observation Hill. Our foes apparently had got an engine on the railway between Surprise Hill and Thornton's Kop with an electric light attached to it. They are evidently prepared to bring against ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... substances over the surface, but is considered as very elementary in its nature, and competent to account for all the phenomena of capillarity, chemical affinity, attraction of aggregation, rarefaction, ebullition, volatilization, explosion, and other thermometric effects, as well as inflammation, detonation, &c. &c. It is considered as a form of heat to which the term native calorie is given, and is still further viewed as the principle of the two electricities and ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... of space, Even melts. Therefore, when this same wind a-fire Hath split black cloud, it scatters the fire-seeds, Which, so to say, have been pressed out by force Of sudden from the cloud;—and these do make The pulsing flashes of flame; thence followeth The detonation which attacks our ears More tardily than aught which comes along Unto the sight of eyeballs. This takes place— As know thou mayst—at times when clouds are dense And one upon the other piled aloft With wonderful upheavings—nor be thou Deceived because we see how ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... works differently from any other," he explained. "When the charge is fired there is not instantly a detonation and a bursting. The powder burns slowly and generates an immense amount of gas. It is this gas, accumulating in the cracks and crevices of the rock, that I hope will burst and disintegrate it. Of course, an explosion eventually follows, as you ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton
... buckle and hurl themselves aft with a grinding crash of disrupted joints. Holding desperately to the precious little body within his arms, Carr was thrown off his feet. There was a detonation as if the universe had been blasted into oblivion—then darkness, and ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... was a continuous roar of explosion and detonation that echoed and reechoed across the water like the pealing of tropical thunder. In fact, it was these noises, mingled with the fierce reports of our guns, which impressed us the most. Taking it all in all, the scene ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... Moroturo, a stratum of clayey earth, black, strongly soiling the fingers, emitting a powerful smell of sulphur, and inflaming spontaneously when slightly moistened and exposed for a long time to the rays of the tropical sun. The detonation of this muddy substance is very violent.) Possibly, also, the mountainous lands, near the llanos of Monai, may have a baneful influence on the surrounding plains. The south-easterly winds may convey to them the putrid exhalations that rise from the ravine of Villegas, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... forward as if to do this when the leaden windows shuddered, and the house itself trembled with the sharp crash of our light cannon, followed almost immediately by the deeper detonation of the heavier guns from the citadel. The red sand in the glass began to fall again, and its liberation seemed to unfetter my paralysed limbs. Bareheaded as I was, I rushed like one frantic along the passage and ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... on sea and on land made every effort to keep off the pirates. They flew banners at morn and eve and fired guns seaward, so that the enemy, understanding by the flash and the detonation that we were prepared to resist, abstained from landing. But when the pirates handled their swords skilfully, their attack was fearful. Our countrymen when they saw these swordsmen, trembled and fled. Their fear ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... heavy-lidded blue eyes. The band was continuing its advance through the village, slipping over to the other side of the barricade of carts without paying much attention to their curious countryman, when suddenly sounded a loud detonation, making the horizon vibrate ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... I could explain the screen, but not the detonation ray. I am inclined to believe from other casualties that the destruction, though reported as an instantaneous explosion, was not that. Other ships have been destroyed, and they seemed to catch fire, and burn, but with terrific speed, more like gun powder ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... down, and it outlined it as clearly as a figure on the moving picture screen. Then suddenly there came a flash, followed by a dull detonation, and a black cloud appeared, spreading into a flower of death near the cigar, and at the edge of the black beam. The cheers grew frantic. The anti-aircraft battery in the White House grounds had grasped the situation, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... sometimes become rather long, especially when we mean to indicate whether the metal has been oxydated in the air, by detonation with nitre, or by means of acids; but then they always convey just and accurate ideas of the corresponding object which we wish to express by their use. All this will be rendered perfectly clear and distinct by means of the tables which ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... for many moments thereafter, none of them knew very definitely what had happened. There was a cloud of dust, a terrific detonation, a sudden absolute darkness, as in some revulsion of nature, a stifling sensation. They were penned within the grotto by a great fragment of the beetling cliff. Doubtless it had been previously fractured by the action of continuous freezes, and the concussion ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock |
