"Petrol" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bullet from a sniper or whether killed deliberately by his fellow-criminal was never revealed. For when the end came Orming had apparently planned a final act of venom. It was known that in the basement a considerable quantity of petrol had been stored. The contents had probably been carefully distributed over the most inflammable materials in the top rooms. The fire broke out, as one witness described it, "almost like an explosion." Orming must have perished ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... was nearly always civilly treated, because so many German soldiers had known her as a friend in hospital and told other soldiers. At one such sale she bought a serviceable motor-car for 750 francs; at another drums of petrol. ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... far as possible. By all the laws of aeronautics this aeroplane should have crashed before leaving the ground, but it did not. Sammie climbed it to five hundred feet in an hour and a half. As Sammie now had seven and one half hours petrol left and was still four hours away from his objective, it would have been quite justifiable for him to return without going any farther; in fact, it was the only reasonable thing for him to do; but Sammie always trusted to luck rather than reason, and ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece
... sea is as tetchy as petrol. Trailing fingers are terminals which ignite living flames, and the propeller of the little boat creates an avengeful commotion of light which trails far astern. Blobs of light are cast off from her bows as she rounds the familiar sandspit and ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... house, howled all night. The peasant lying next us watched his home burn to pieces. It was straight across from us. A soldier came to tell him that his wife was wounded but not dead. He lay through the night, motionless, and not once did he turn his eyes away from the blaze of his home. Petrol burns ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... private conveyance. I could not set our future dates and ports more closely together; for, before I left town, I had purchased a sturdy power boat of our own, capable of doing her ten or twelve miles under her own petrol. I was in no mind to fall farther and farther back of the Belle Helene each day; and I counted upon our piratical energy to keep us going more hours a day than Cal Davidson—curses on ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... forlorn, eaten by rust and worm, when suddenly an idea occurred to their business imagination. Why should they not use the automobile to advertise and sell the cure about the country? The apostle in charge would pay for his own petrol, take a large percentage on sales, and the usual traveller's commission on orders that he might place. But where to find an apostle? Brave and desperate men came in high hopes, looked at the car, and, shaking their heads sorrowfully, went away. At last, ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... lorries in commission and himself in his flag char-a-banc, aptly named the Queen of Eryx, at their head. Lever, marlin-spike or steering wheel, it is all one to the brain which can co-ordinate squadrons as easily as rolling-stock, to the man who is now sometimes known as the Stormy Petrol of the Cabinet. Yet even so the sailor is strongest in him still. It is not generally known that Sir ERIC has already cocked his weather eye at our inland waterways as an auxiliary line of defence in case ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... After re-filling with German petrol in the morning, they started off upon their journey. They soon came up with all kinds of derelict enemy transport and Turkish stragglers coming in. At one point ahead, could be seen a crowd of people (which proved ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown
... the biggest wrecking jobs I ever did before were a couple of petrol dumps and a railroad bridge." He got to his feet along with the lawyer. "No need to call the butler; I'll ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... remnants of the luxurious scrub. Wire twined in untidy coils here and there, but there was nothing to hide the blackened bodies. Sometimes at night low fires licked among the corpses, apparently started by the Turks by throwing over their parapet paraffin or petrol, and there would be spasmodic explosions for an hour or more of the ammunition in the equipment round the dead forms, sounding like the burning of a Guy ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... sure that he had plenty of time, looked at the machinery and filled up the petrol tank from a gallon tin in the back of the car. Then he went back to ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... The petrol lamp above the head of the accused had flared up, and begun to smoke, causing the chimney to crack with a sharp report. This diversion effected a momentary silence among the crowd, and the Public Prosecutor was ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... professional pianist for his pet pianoforte. They motored a good deal, with France as a permanent background and all Europe as a playground. They flitted about the continent, a whirl of glittering blue-and-cream enamel, tan leather coating, fur robes, air cushions, gold-topped flasks, and petrol. Giddy knew Como and Villa D'Este as the place where that pretty Hungarian widow had borrowed a thousand lires from him at the Casino roulette table and never paid him back; London as a pleasing potpourri of briar pipes, smart leather gloves, music-hall revues, ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... fathers scaled the mountains in their pilgrimages far, But I feel full of energy while sitting in a car; And petrol is the perfect wine, I lick it and absorb it, So we will sing the praises of man holding the flywheel of which the ideal steering-post traverses the earth impelled itself around the circuit of its ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... upon his present state of mind, was like pouring petrol on a smouldering fire. So she had gone off with the fellow, had spent the night with him somewhere! The thing was true; there was no good trying to shut one's eyes to it any longer. A dozen tiny incidents recurred to him, each magnified a hundredfold, together ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... the big market town which has been practically burned out, German soldiers carrying straw and cans of petrol have been seen in the streets. While the mayor's house was burning, six sentinels with fixed bayonets were under orders to forbid anyone to approach and to prevent ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... excellent behavior and the best of relations between the British soldier and the French inhabitants. At the docks armies of laborers and lines of ships discharging men, horses, timber, rations, fodder, coal, coke, petrol, and the same at the ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... on the eleven-thirty, Sara," said the girl nervously, "unless you will send the motor in for him. The body of his car is being changed and it's in the shop. He must have been jesting when he said he would pay for the petrol—I should ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... us a motor by four, but added that they had no oil and very little benzine. Then growing more confidential, he took us by the buttonholes and asked us to use our best influence with the Count de Salis, and request him to tell the Admiralty to allow petrol to be brought up from Salonika, where the British had laid an embargo upon it. He promised pathetically that all the petrol ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... news," and Efficiency wiped her eyes with her Fabric and became almost cheerful. "Suppose we think about finishing it now? There will have to be an Engine and Propeller, won't there? And a body to fix them in, and tanks for oil and petrol, and a tail, and," archly, "one of those dashing ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... those aristocrats of the air, the single-seater fighting scouts. These were envied for their advantages. They were comparatively fast, they could turn, climb, and stunt better and quicker than any two-seater, and their petrol-tanks held barely enough for two hours, so that their shows were soon completed. All these varied craft had their separate functions, difficulties, and dangers. Two things only were shared by all of us—dodging Archie and striving to strafe ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... generally understood that the British were endeavouring to improve their ground or positions by sapping forward. Occasionally a naval searchlight would illuminate the area. At other times flares, made of oakum soaked in petrol and secured to wooden contrivances, would be thrown out into No-Man's Land—there, for a time, to burn merrily. Pistol flares were then only just making their appearance and very few ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... built with French capital. They have secured also the Haidar Pasha Harbour concession, thereby controlling and handling all merchandise arriving at railhead from the interior of Asia Minor.[1] Already on the Bagdad Railway the big tunnels of Taurus and Amanus are available for narrow-gauge petrol-driven motors, and the broad-gauge line will soon be complete. Meanwhile railway construction is pushed on in all directions under German control, and the Turkish Minister of Finance (August 1916) allocated a large sum ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... has not been indulged in to any great extent. On one occasion a petrol bomb was successfully exploded in a German bivouac at night, while from a diary found on a dead German cavalry soldier it has been discovered that a high explosive bomb, thrown at a cavalry column from one of our aeroplanes, struck an ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... him a cigarette and we lit two from an apparatus of flint and steel and petrol that the old ...
— Unhappy Far-Off Things • Lord Dunsany
... Russian airmen was reported officially on April 3, 1917, from Petrograd and deserves, on account of its highly adventurous nature, detailed repetition. The statement read: "On the Black Sea on March 27, 1917, during a raid by our seaplanes on Derkas, one of them was hit by the enemy. The petrol tank being punctured, the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... volcanic. The old friend is a Marquise, and my opinion is that her genius lies in finding safe harbours for incubuses (is there such a word, or should it be "incubi?"). Heaven knows what explosive thing may happen if the high-powered Angele doesn't fancy her new garage and petrol. ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... Janet. "I'm not making it up. He got that car—allowing for his trade discount—for a hundred and thirty-five pounds—cape-cart hood and all. It only costs him thirteen pounds a year in tyres—and it can do twenty-five miles to a gallon of petrol with him inside, and he reckons he's been saved five shillings a week regularly in dinners since he got it. Well, what else do you think a man buys a motor-car for if he can't afford it? Some one ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... we had brought in the tenders was almost exhausted, so that it would be necessary to procure more in order to continue the pursuit. Major Thompson, who was in command of the armored-car detachment, instructed me to take all the tenders and go back as far as was necessary to find a petrol dump from which I could draw a thousand gallons. I emptied the trucks and loaded them with such of the wounded as could stand the jolting they were bound to receive because of the speed at which I must travel. I also took a few of the more important prisoners, among them the governor ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... derived from a combination of petrol and pulverised smokeless coal, treated with liquid oxygen, which made combustion practically perfect. There was no boilers or furnaces, only combustion chambers, and this fact made the carrying of the great weight of armour ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... On one occasion they even beat him in the day's march, but were too kind or too blind to seize their advantage. As usual he was taking his obsession along with him, though, if he had but known, he might have got it to do the work by the simple formality of turning the petrol tap from OFF to ON. His was ever a curious life, from the first moment of his joining the Army in tails, a bowler hat, and a large sword wrapped in a homely newspaper. But the inward fun of it all is not for the present, Charles; our clear old ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... criticism, but those persons, including myself, who have charged him with inhuman treatment in the case of Vladimir Tomi['c], an intelligent young judge, were acting on faulty information. The tale was that Tomi['c], after being incarcerated, was soused with petrol and so badly burned that he lost his reason. As a matter of fact, this neurasthenic young man—whose imprisonment was due to his having wantonly insulted the whole Royal Family—poured the petrol on himself. ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... panted one of Winnington's own labourers who had outstripped the rest. "They're asking for you to come! They've telephoned to Latchford for the engines, and to Brownmouth and Wanchester too. They say it's burning like tow—there must be petrol in it, or summat. It's the women they say!—spite of Mr. ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and propellers next claim attention. It is the motor that makes aviation possible. It was owing in a very large measure to the introduction of the petrol motor that progress became rapid. Hitherto many had laid the blame of everything on the motor. They had said,—"give us a light and powerful engine and we will show you ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing |
