"Rocket" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... horn blew for breakfast, at 8.30 a whistle sounded for prayers, at 1 a flag was run up at half-mast for lunch, at 4 a gun was fired for afternoon tea, at 9 a first bell sounded for dressing, at 9.15 a second bell for going on dressing, while at 9.30 a rocket was sent up to indicate that dinner was ready. At midnight dinner was over, and at 1 a.m. the tolling of a bell summoned the domestics to ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... contained as many squibs and crackers as the seller thereof would trust with his young customers; also one rocket. ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... When the policeman nodded, he continued: "When it returns, take him to the First Level. I hope they bring up the sleep-drug with the next load. When you get him back, take him to Dhergabar by strato-rocket immediately, and make sure he gets back alive. I want him questioned under narco-hypnosis by a regular Paratime Commission psycho-technician, in the presence of Chief Tortha Karf and some responsible Commission official. This is ...
— Temple Trouble • Henry Beam Piper
... elsewhere. An excellent jest, truly, from one whose hospitality is so famous. Well, to fall in with your wishes, we will come ashore this evening, and if the Captain Delgado chances to sight the Queen's ship Crocodile before he sails, perhaps he will be so good as to signal to us with a rocket." ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... Kellett, of the Starling, while the Nemesis soon got close enough to bring her 32-pounder pivot-guns to bear; and at the same time one of the Larne's boats, under Lieutenant Harrison, made her way outside the island to cut off the junks in the rear. The first Congreve rocket fired from the Nemesis having entered a large junk near that of the admiral, she almost immediately blew up, pouring forth a blaze like the rush of fire from a volcano, and destroying all on board. This so terrified the Chinese that, after a few discharges of round-shot had ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... desert, the fresh oases, the life in camp, the glasses of absinthe, the days of rain and sun, the ostrich chases, the watch for the jackal and the races over the plain. All this, helter-skelter, in crowds, crossing, following, multiplying, like the sheaves of sparks which burst forth from a rocket. ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... do, darling. It seems but yesterday; and I have a flower now which you gathered for me there. It grew at a very giddy height upon the wall, full of cracks and places where the evening-star came through; but up you went, like a rocket or a race-horse; and what a fright I was in, until you came down safe! I think that must have made up my mind to have nobody except ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... and just as dessert appeared the whiz of a rocket announced the commencement of fire-works. As most of us had seen the splendid bouquet of rockets, which, during the fetes of July, amuse the Parisians, we entertained slender expectations of being pleased with an illumination at ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... Immediately, Sir Galahad charged. Full speed ahead, Easy Money! Mallory encephalopathed, and the rohorse took off like a rocket. ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... again met the Wolf—we had sighted her on the evening of the 4th, but it was too rough then to communicate, and, it was said, the Wolf did not recognize our rocket signals. With the Wolf's usual luck, the weather moderated next day, and the ships stopped. Just as the Germans on land always seemed to get the weather they wanted, so they were equally favoured at sea. This was noticed over and ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... for above six months," ever since Christmas last. Two hundred carpenters; and how many painters I cannot say: but they have smeared "six thousand yards of linen canvas;" which is now nailed up; hung with lamps, begirt with fire-works, no end of rocket-serpents, catherine-wheels; with cannon and field-music, near and far, to correspond;—and is now (evening of the 24th June, 1730) shining to men and gods. Pinnacles, turrets, tablatures, tipt with various fires and emblems, ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... in fact the entire scientific staff of Spindrift Island, had been in a state of excitement for the past few days because of a telegram received from Dr. John Gordon. Dr. Gordon had been on leave for some time, working on a special project at a rocket experimental station in the West. A few days before, Dr. Hartson Brant, Rick's father and head of the Spindrift Scientific Foundation, a world-famous research organization, had received word from Gordon that Rick and Scotty were needed for a special assignment. Gordon ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... Zeckler loftily, "it was so obvious I'm amazed that it didn't occur to me first thing." He settled himself down comfortably in the control cabin of the Interplanetary Rocket and grinned at the outline of Altair IV looming larger ...
— Letter of the Law • Alan Edward Nourse
... the Janitor's bad kid, Went snooping in the basement, He found a rocket snugly hid Beneath the ...
— The Rocket Book • Peter Newell
... down yonder by Lokken, the little fishing village with the red-tiled roofs—we can see it up here from the window—a ship has come ashore. It has struck, and is fast embedded in the sand; but the rocket apparatus has thrown a rope on board, and formed a bridge from the wreck to the mainland; and all on board are saved, and reach the land, and are wrapped in warm blankets; and to-day they are invited ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... moment, two musket balls in the thighs, a grape shot through the calf of my leg, a lance through my left shoulder, a piece of a shrapnel in the left deltoid, a bayonet through the cartilage of my right ribs, a cut-cut that carried away a pound of flesh from my chest, and the better part of a congreve rocket on my forehead. Pretty well, ha, ha! and all while you'd say bah! and in eight days and a half I was making a forced march, without shoes, and only one gaiter, the life and soul of my company, and as sound ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... to spring from more intense excitement and self-abandonment than the ordinary song delivered from the perch. When its joy reaches the point of rapture, the bird is literally carried off its feet, and up it goes into the air, pouring out its song as a rocket pours out its sparks. The skylark and the bobolink habitually do this, while a few others of our birds do it only on occasions. One summer, up in the Catskills, I added another name to my list of ecstatic ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... seemed days of agony had passed, suddenly a rocket rose in the horizon—so it seemed ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... were shining with excitement. "I know a way. Me and Uncle Bill talked it all over. There's a kind of rocket that would take a rope over—life-savers use 'em—and then you could hoist a rope-ladder and peg it down at the bottom and make it tight with guy-ropes on the other side. I'm going to climb that there bluff, and I've got it all ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... passed his life as an underling on some secluded farm, to an exhibition of wax figures, gorgeously attired, rolling their eyes and lifting up their arms to slow music, and you shall see him gorp. Or go with that young man to a display of fireworks, and when the first asteroid rocket sends out its glowing stars you shall see that wide-mouthed, wobbling agriculturist so gorp as to make it almost impossible for the descending stick to go ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... but I was not in a hurry to find out; I was afraid to know, afraid to stir, there was only one thing I was sure of, that I was alive. If I had only a minute left, I meant to hold on to it.... There was a rocket in the sky; I never thought what it meant, I didn't care, but the curve it made, and the light, like a bright flower.... I can't tell you how lovely it seemed. I simply drank it in.... I remembered when I was a child, ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... doctor waved the ignited wood three or four times in the air and then applied the flames to the paper tips of the combustible cones. Apparently saltpetre and sulphur had been mixed in the preparation of these. They burned fast, making a noise like the fuse of a rocket. ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Josh. "French guns proved superior to the Kaiser's, for they did some damage. That Taube is falling! Only for the skill of the two men aboard it'd be coming down right now like the stick of a spent rocket, or a meteor aiming to ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... fix the rocket apparatus. She was late in making her distress signals. But I doubt if anything could have been done. She went ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sky-rocket. Said he had a right to know, under the circumstances. I admitted it, but said I could tell him nothing—yet. He went away ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... do what you like with a reader then, if you only keep him nicely on the move. So long as you are happy your reader will be so too. But one law must be observed: an essay, like a dog that wishes to please, must have a lively tail, short but as waggish as possible. Like a rocket, an essay goes only with fizzle and sparks at the end of it. And, know, that to stop writing is the secret of writing an essay; the essay that the ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... Secretary once with the lantern so that he staggered; and then, whirling it twice round his head, sent it flying far out to sea, where it flared like a roaring rocket and fell. ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... were occupied by young Oil-beetles in greater or lesser numbers. On one head of camomile I counted forty of these tiny insects, cowering motionless in the centre of the florets. On the other hand, I could not discover any on the flowers of the poppy or of a wild rocket (Diplotaxis muralis) which grew promiscuously among the plants aforesaid. It seems to me, therefore, that it is only on the composite flowers that the Meloe-larvae ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... with judgment and truth by Ruysdael. But to paint the actual play of hue on the reflective surface, or to give the forms and fury of water when it begins to show itself; to give the flashing and rocket-like velocity of a noble cataract, or the precision and grace of the sea wave, so exquisitely modelled, though so mockingly transient, so mountainous in its form, yet so cloudlike in its motion, with ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... as a setter's mouth within, the gun fire having snuffed the old man's candle out. But we had flint and steel and tinder-box, and when the punk was alight, Jennifer found the candle under foot and gave it me. It took fire with a fizzing like a rocket fuse, and was well blackened with gunpowder. When the flint had failed to bring the firing spark, the old man had set his piece ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... James, a little ashamed of Louis having put Mansell and Beauchastel together, as he had not intended, 'that it seems they asked Bull who we were. I thought one old lady was staring hard at you, as if she meant to claim acquaintance, but you shot out of the shop like a sky-rocket.' ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Mullins said Hannah begun to wait, 'n' Hannah waited until if Hannah had waited any longer she 'd have gone off like a rocket, she was that mad again. Gran'ma Mullins said Hannah always got so red she got purple if she only was rememberin' it after. 'N' in the end she could n't stand it no longer 'n' she set off for the pond herself. She always said as she just hoped 'n' prayed as they was both on 'em ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... morning I had been trying to work out an equation to give the coefficient of discharge for the matter in combustion. You may call it gas, if you wish, for we treated it like gas at the center for convenience—as it came from the rocket tubes ...
— Houlihan's Equation • Walt Sheldon
... sort of thing. Some of these ideas didn't seem quite logical; a number of them were complete reversals of present trends, and a lot seemed to depend on arbitrary and unpredictable factors. Mind, this was before the first rocket landed on the Moon, when the whole moon-rocket and lunar-base project was a triple-top secret. But I knew, in the spring of 1970, that the first unmanned rocket would be called the Kilroy, and that it would be launched ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... of the building, where they naturally broke into groups, conversing on the incidents of the day, or of such other matters as came uppermost. Occasionally, gleams of light were thrown across them from a fire- ball; or a rocket's starry train was still seen drawn in the air, resembling the wake of a ship at night, as it wades ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... bird and straight as a bullet. There is no Victorian writer before him to whom he even suggests a comparison, technically considered, except perhaps De Quincey; who also employed the long rich rolling sentence that, like a rocket, bursts into stars at the end. But De Quincey's sentences, as I have said, have always a dreamy and insecure sense about them, like the turret on toppling turret of some mad sultan's pagoda. Ruskin's sentence branches into brackets and relative ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... doubt, 'he talked ostentatiously,' as he had at Fort George about Gunpowder (ante, p. 124). In the Gent. Mag. for 1749, p. 55, there is a paper on the Construction of Fireworks, which I have little doubt is his. The following passage is certainly Johnsonian:—'The excellency of a rocket consists in the largeness of the train of fire it emits, the solemnity of its motion (which should be rather slow at first, but augmenting as it rises), the straightness of its flight, and the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... the schooner adrift. She dropped astern, lay quietly for a few moments off the port-quarter of the Richmond, and then steamed slowly up the river, receiving broadsides from the Richmond and Preble, and throwing up a rocket. In a few moments three dim lights were seen up the river near the eastern shore. They were shortly made out to be fire-rafts. The squadron slipped their chains, the three larger vessels, by direction of the senior officer, retreating down the Southwest Pass to the sea; ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... the stream, the stamp of the horses, the occasional barking of the dog which followed the cook's wagon, the hooting of an owl; and when these failed he saw Jeff, standing on a battlement, mid the rocket's red glare, and heard him sing, "Oh, say, can you see?", It was the first time he had ever slept on ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... behind me, which made me turn back my head; and I did see a sudden fire or light running in the sky, as it were towards Cheapside ward, and it vanished very quick, which did make me bethink myself what holyday it was, and took it for some rocket, though it was much brighter than any rocket, and so thought no more of it, but it seems Mr. Hater and Gibson going home that night did meet with many clusters of people talking of it, and many people of the towns about the city did see it, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... least offending his tempestuous friend. That remarkable young lady, then still known as la petite Etoile, had succeeded in catching the King's eye, and was soaring into the political heavens like a rocket, carrying, among other incongruous objects, the genius of Voltaire in her glittering train. Voltaire must have boasted to his young friend that his fortune was made. Vauvenargues surprisingly expresses in his reply ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... of the patent secured in 1828 by Mr. Cooper for an improved steam engine, he took pains to declare the suitability of his invention as a motor for "land carriages." No doubt he had heard of Stephenson's "Rocket," if not of the engine built by Blenkinsop in 1813, the sight of which in operation caused Stephenson to resolve that he would "make a better." The famous competitive trial of the Rocket, the Novelty, the Sanspareil, and the Perseverance, on a two-mile ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... his boyhood spent in France had made him master of the colloquial forms of the court language of Europe, yet a dozen classmates who had never seen a French verb before their admission stood above him at the end of the first term. He had gone to the first section like a rocket and settled to the bottom of it like a stick. No subject in the course was really hard to him, his natural aptitude enabling him to triumph over the toughest problems. Yet he hated work, and would often face about with an empty black-board and ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... 'A huge rocket sent up from either my estancia house or Coila Villa. There may be several, but you must act when you see the first. There is fuse enough to the bomb to give you time to escape, and the bomb is big enough to burst the lock and flood the whole ditch ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... machinery set in motion by Harrington and Quarrier had begun to grind in May; and, at the first audible rumble, the aspect of things financial in the country changed. A few industrials began to rocket, nobody knew why; but the market's first tremor left it baggy and spineless, and the reaction, already overdue, became a sodden and soggy slump. Nobody ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... rocket is fixed, with more allowance for the wind; but the black curve has disappeared, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... our fathers of old— Excellent herbs to ease their pain— Alexanders and Marigold, Eyebright, Orris, and Elecampane, Basil, Rocket, Valerian, Rue, (Almost singing themselves they run) Vervain, Dittany, Call-me-to-you— Cowslip, Melilot, Rose of the Sun. Anything green that grew out of the mould Was an excellent herb to our ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... consequences of facts, draw the writer back to the falconer's lure from the giddiest heights of speculation. Here, therefore—in his "France"—if not always free from flightiness, if now and then off like a rocket for an airy wheel in the clouds, M. Michelet, with natural politeness, never forgets that he has left a large audience waiting for him on earth, and gazing upward in anxiety for his return; return, therefore, he does. But History, though clear of ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... and a half years ago. Neither Howley nor I are wondering now. According to the front page of today's Times, the first spaceship, with a crew of eighty aboard, reached Mars this morning. And, on page two, there's a small article headlined: ROCKET OBSOLETE, ...
— ...Or Your Money Back • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Tynemouth), and in that case the south-side men have nothing to do with her. But sometimes the vessel shows all her lights and rushes upon the South Pier. Then the men wait for the last lurch and that wallowing crash that they know so well. The rocket is laid, and flies out over the rigging; the brigadesmen haul on their rope, and the basket comes rocking ashore along the line. It is not child's play to stand in the open and work the rocket apparatus; sometimes a whole row of men are struck by a single sea, and have ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... now—you are always ice or gunpowder. You sit in the great leathern armchair, as quiet as a rocket hangs upon the frame in a rejoicing-night till the match be fired, and then, whizz! you are in the third heaven, beyond the reach of the human voice, eye, or brain.—When you have wearied yourself with padding to and fro across the room, will you tell me your determination, for time presses? ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... of October, a great crowd had assembled to see an extraordinary race—a race, in fact, without any parallel or precedent whatsoever. There were four entries but one dropped out, leaving three: The Novelty, John Braithwaite and John Ericsson; The Sanspareil, Timothy Hackworth; The Rocket, George and Robert Stephenson. These were not horses; they were locomotives. The directors of the London and Manchester Railway had offered a prize of five hundred pounds for the best locomotive, and here they were to try ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... part, and with serious results. Neither the prophets nor the camp-followers seemed to realize that evolution, while undoubtedly a law of life within certain limits, was inseparable from degradation which was its concomitant, that is to say, that as the rocket rises so must it fall; as man is conceived, born and matures, even so must he die. The wave rises, but falls again; the state waxes to greatness, wanes, and the map knows it no more; each epoch of human history arises out of dim beginnings, magnifies ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... exactly Charybdis, or the Maelstrom, but rather more like the wave occasioned by the sudden turning of a man-of-war's boat. Being hooked, and having by this time set his nose peremptorily down the stream, he flashed and whizzed away like a rocket. My situation partook of the nature of a surprise. Being on a rocky shore, and having had a bad start, I lost ground at first considerably; but the reel sang out joyously, and yielded a liberal length of line, that saved me from the disgrace of being broke. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... caras blancas (pale faces), and murder them. The failure of the conspiracy was, it appears, only attributable to a fortunate accident—to the circumstance, namely, that a body of the rebels mistook some rocket fired upon the occasion of a Church festival for the agreed signal, and commenced the ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... good many of us, who are now certain beyond a doubt that space travel will forever remain in the realm of the impossible, probably would, if a rocket that were shot to the moon, for instance, did arrive, and perhaps return to give proof of its safe arrival on our satellite, accept the phenomenon in a perfectly blase, twentieth century manner. Dr. Smith, that phenomenal writer of classic ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... port was not in sight. At length, at about ten, the lighthouse on the reef which stretches out in front of Honolulu, shone out in the darkness. Then began a little display of fireworks, and rockets and blue lights were exchanged between our ship and the shore. A rocket also shot up from a steamer to seaward, and she was made out to be the 'Moses Taylor,' the ship that is to take us ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... Holiday in the Manufacturing Districts Coaching trip to Liverpool Coventry English scenery 'The Rocket' The two Stephensons Opening of the railway William Fawcett Birkenhead Walk back to London Patricroft Manchester Edward Tootal Sharp, Roberts and Co. Manchester industry Coalbrookdale The Black Country Dudley Castle Wren's Nest Hill Birmingham Boulton and Watt ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... pantry roof, I mounted his window-sill. That one turn of my wrist - you know it I - and the casement was open. It was as dark as the pit, and I thought I'd won my wager, when, phewt! down went something inside, and down went somebody with it. I made one leap, and was off like a rocket. It was my poor friend in person; and if he'd caught and passed me on to the watchman under the window, I should have felt no viler rogue than I feel ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... George Colley designed to retrieve his fortunes and strike an effective blow without the aid of his second-in-command, Sir Evelyn Wood, whom he had sent to hurry up reinforcements. The scaling of the mountain at night was a fine performance. The neglect to take the rocket apparatus or mountain guns, or to fortify the position in any way, or even to acquaint the members of the force with the nature of the position which they had taken up in the dark, and the failure to use the bayonets, were the principal causes ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... correspondents. However, my boy, don't bury your face in your blanket. This Greek business looks very promising, very promising." He then began to proclaim trains and connections. " Dover, Calais, Paris, Brindisi, Corfu, Patras, Athens. That is your game. You are supposed to sky-rocket yourself over that route in the shortest possible time, but you would gain no time by starting before to-morrow, so you can cool your heels here in London until then. I ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... his four feet in the tanglefoot fly paper, then he grabbed a sheet in his mouth and rolled over in a few more sheets, and when he was entirely harmless and you couldn't tell what he was, I opened the door of the cage and he went out like a rocket, and rolled over a few times in the sawdust, and then jumped on the platform with the freaks, run over the fat woman, who was laying back in a Morris chair, and left one of the sheets of fly paper on her low neck, ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... race—on which its survival or destruction would depend. Other remodeled ships had gone out before the Niccola, and others would follow until the problem was solved. Meanwhile the Niccola's twenty-four rocket tubes and stepped-up drive and computer-type radar system equipped her for Plumie-hunting as well as any human ship could be. Still, if she'd been lured deep into the home system of the Plumies, the prospects were ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster
... my grandfather, who was beginning to lose his temper; "and do you think, ma'am, that I carry a Boxer's rocket in my trousers pocket?" ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... rocket ascending in your dream, foretells sudden and unexpected elevation, successful wooing, and faithful keeping of the ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... broadsides of massed batteries the sledges smashed down upon the bristling attackers. Under the awful impact globes and pyramids were shattered into hundreds of fragments, rocket bursts of blue and azure and violet flame, flames ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... would become entangled—involving, in a heavy sea, the certain loss of one or the other. Many of the smacks carry dogs, and it is found that these become even better watchers than their masters; for they can be relied on to call the attention of the watch, by sharp barking, to the letting up of the rocket, ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... rocket, I'm sure!" exclaimed Frank, dropping the nut-crackers, "let us go off to a window somewhere, for I am sure the ...
— Naughty Miss Bunny - A Story for Little Children • Clara Mulholland
... abruptly placed above my head, then thrown forward to see wreaths of water speeding below like ghosts. The stars jolted back and forth in wide arcs. There were explosions at the bows, and the ship trembled and hesitated. Occasionally the skipper split the darkness with a rocket, and we gazed round the night for an answer. The night had no answer to give. We were probably nearing the North Pole. About midnight, the silent helmsman put away his pipe, as a preliminary to answering a foolish question of mine, and said, "Sometimes it happens. It's bound ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... windward, and tricing up the main-tack, we now shot rocket after rocket with a sharp report high into the darkness, and, the roar of our guns booming above the loud storm, must have reached the shore. For upwards of an hour we lay to, dreading to put the cutter about, ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... The plant Rocket (Brasica eruca) has likewise been especially celebrated by the ancient poets for possessing the virtue of restoring vigour to the sexual organs, on which account it was consecrated to and sown around, the statue ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... There's a roar from the grand stand, and Tenny's ahead; At the sound of the voices that shouted, "A go!" He sprang like an arrow shot straight from the bow. I tighten the reins on Prince Charlie's great son; He is off like a rocket, the race is begun. Half-way down the furlong their heads are together, Scarce room 'twixt their noses to wedge in a feather; Past grand stand, and judges, in neck-to-neck strife, Ah, Salvator, boy, 'tis the race of your life! I press my knees closer, I coax him, I urge, I feel ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... Forces, Navy, Air Forces, Air Defense Forces, Strategic Rocket Forces, Command and General Support, ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... dead to strike our weather-beam; she rushed at us with the foam boiling over her bows; once more I chucked the schooner right up into the wind, and the steamer went past us like a rocket under our stern. I looked at her and sha'n't ever forget what I saw. There was a white-haired man, with white whiskers and bareheaded, roaring and raging at us in the grasp of three or four seamen. 'Twas like ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... he was old-fashioned, but in imagination and knowledge and resource he was as young as the latest statute. His first prominence had come when he broke the Shardwell will.* His fee for this one act was five hundred thousand dollars. From then on he had risen like a rocket. He was often called the greatest lawyer in the country—corporation lawyer, of course; and no classification of the three greatest lawyers in the United States ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... page of the spelling-book was turned. That tricksey little list of "goblin, problem, conduct, rocket, pontiff, compact, prospect, ostrich" finally left but three scholars between Ruth and Julia at the head of the class. One of these was Oliver Shortsleeves, a French Canadian lad whose parents had Anglicised ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... to see not only Goldilocks but also the Three Bears and they took a remarkable journey through the air to do so. Tommy even rode on a Rocket and met the monstrous Blue Frog. When they arrived at Goldilocks' house they found that the Three Bears had been there before them and mussed everything up, much to Goldilocks' despair. "We must drive those bears out of the country!" said Pa Flyaway. Then they journeyed ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... strengthen the idea, now and then above the trees would burst what seemed a rocket of coloured stars. The stars would drift away in a flock on the wind and be lost. They were flights of birds. All-coloured birds peopled the trees below blue, scarlet, dove-coloured, bright of eye, but voiceless. From the reef you ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... And suddenly she thought, with a pang of joy, that no longer would she need to nerve herself for the cruel journey to the markets in the morning. Chook would drive down in his own cart, and she would be waiting on his return with a good breakfast. They had gone up in the world like a rocket. ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... jar to be awakened so rudely from a trance of love, to turn suddenly from the one you care for most in all the world, and behold the one you have best reason to hate. Nevertheless, it is not in human nature to descend rocket-wise from the ethereal heights of love. I was still in an exalted state of mind when I turned and confronted Locasto. Hate was far from my heart, and when I saw the man himself was regarding me with no particular unfriendliness, I was disposed to put aside for the moment ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... schools of strict preparation for the stern work ahead. Carleton often rode through them, and out on the picket-line. Among his other studies, being a musician, he soon learned the various notes and tones of round and conical bullet, of globular and case shot, of shell and rocket, as an Indian learns the various sounds and calls of birds and beasts. Never wearing eye-glasses, until very late in life, and then only for reading, he was able, when standing behind or directly before a cannon, to see the missile moving as a black spot ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... be sorry when I strike some real big thing and another line gets it. Now then, I've got something brand new—the rocket ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... were we, that the enemy were distinctly seen loading their guns above us. After a few broadsides, we brought our starboard broadside to bear on the Fish-market, and our larboard side then looked to seaward. The rocket-boats were now throwing rockets over our ships into the mole, the effects of which, were occasionally seen on the shipping on our larboard bow. The Dutch flag was to be seen flying at the fore of the Dutch Admiral, who, with his squadron, were ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... and blindingly violet by contrast, danced out the first lightning of the gathering storm, and the thunder burst like a rocket overhead. The horse took the bit between his teeth ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... trial of a smoke rocket for testing drains, described by Mr. Cosmo Jones in the Journal of the Society of Arts, is deserving of interest. The one fixed upon is 10 in. long, 21/2 in. in diameter, and with the composition "charged rather hard," so as to burn for ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... for the game to begin, the New York, which was the flagship, sent up a rocket, warning the other vessels to be on the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 18, March 11, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... thought himself safe. Poor fellow! he was safe for a moment, but in such a trap that his only chance of getting out of it was by running on shore or giving up. For no sooner had he passed than up went a rocket from the cruiser who had seen the runner rush by, and who now moved a little further in towards the shore, so as to stop her egress by the way she went in; and the other vessels closing round by a pre-arranged ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... necessity of knocking some over, when the rest soon jumped off. However, F—- and myself declared we would go right into the quadrangle of the Castle, so we went into the middle of the road and formed a line. Soon a rocket (the signal that the Queen was at Slough) was let off, and then some Life Guards came galloping along, and one of them ran almost over me, and actually trod on F—-'s toe, which put him into dreadful pain for some time. Then came the Queen's carriage, and I thought college would have ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... twin-screw steamer, by the beat. I can't make her out, but she must be standing very close in-shore. Ah!' as the red of a rocket streaked the haze, 'she's standing in to signal ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... Ten men out of a hundred reached it in a few cases and when they arrived they sent up rocket signals to say that they were there! there! there! Two or three battalions literally disappeared into the blue. I thought that the Germans might have taken a considerable number of prisoners, but not so. Those isolated lots who went on to their objectives regardless of every other thought ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed, at the twilight's last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming; And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... the subject, it might be thought that as the comet was dashing along with enormous velocity the tail was merely streaming out behind, just as the shower of sparks from a rocket are strewn along the path which it follows. This would be an entirely erroneous analogy; the comet is moving not through an atmosphere, but through open space, where there is no medium sufficient to sweep the tail into the line of motion. Another very remarkable ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... quickly. It was a telegram that his father had taken over the phone. Rick's pulse quickened. Dr. Gordon, who had been at work on a secret rocket project in the ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... husky boy with black hair and brown eyes, was an ex-Marine who had originally joined the Spindrift group as a guard during the adventure of The Rocket's Shadow. Since then, he and Rick had become the closest of friends, and the Brants had accepted him as a full-fledged member ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... sparks burned holes in his clothes, and he would not have escaped a severe burning himself had not some one thrown a pail of water over him. It was impossible to restrain him. He struck out with hands and feet, and bit at any one who attempted to prevent him from running into the fire. Suddenly a rocket shot in an oblique direction, and dropped into the lake. When the human beast saw this he uttered a yell, and dashed into the water. He thought that the beautiful fire belonged to him because it had fallen into his ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... the aeroplanes at play, Or contemplate with secret satisfaction Your fellow-men proceeding towards the fray; Your sole solicitude when men report There is a shovel short, Or, numbering jealously your rusty store, Some mouldering rocket, some wet bomb you miss That was reserved for some ensuing war, But on no grounds to be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... the first proofs, glued on to enormous pages, posters, screens. It is now that you may shiver and feel pity. The appearance of these sheets is monstrous. From each sign, from each printed word, go pen lines, which radiate and meander like a Congreve rocket, and spread themselves out at the margin in a luminous rain of phrases, epithets, and substantives, underlined, crossed, mixed, erased, superposed: the ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... was a deep drift at the bottom, and the crust on top of it was none too hard. The sled struck on its fore-runners, and went through like a rocket. ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... say can you see by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the clouds of the fight O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming! And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there; O, say, does that Star-Spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free, and the home of ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... meantime the coastguard had fixed Board of Trade rocket-apparatus, and in a few seconds the prolonged roar of a rocket was heard. It flew straight towards the ship, rising at a high angle so as to fall beyond it. But the force of the wind took it up as it rose, and the gale increased so that it rose nearly vertically; and in this position ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... he could find the courage. The fellow isn' without public spirit, if he'd only apply it the right way. Toy tells me that he, for his part, saw it from his bedroom window—the Town Quay wasn't safe, wi' the rocket-sticks fairly rainin'—an' the show wasn' a bad show, if you looked at it horizontal; but the gentry on the yachts derived next to no enjoyment from it, bein' occupied in gettin' up ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... rough-weather clothing. Do not judge him by deceitful appearances. These are among the bravest and most skilful mariners that exist. Let a gale arise and swell into a storm, let a sea run that might appal the stoutest heart that ever beat, let the Light-boat on these dangerous sands throw up a rocket in the night, or let them hear through the angry roar the signal- guns of a ship in distress, and these men spring up into activity so dauntless, so valiant, and heroic, that the world cannot surpass it. Cavillers may object that they chiefly ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... the final event to himself [Mr. Burke] has been, that, as he rose like a rocket, he fell like ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... which Glck, said the Moniteur, "could not have made more beautiful, even if he had foreseen this occasion." Alas! the same thing had been said, in the same words, for the unhappy Marie Antoinette; but away with these gloomy presentiments! After the concert the discharge of a rocket from the palace gave the signal for the fireworks. These had been arranged for the whole length of the Avenue of the Champs lyses. The illumination brought out the impressiveness of the vast architectural lines of the Tuileries. The main avenues of the gardens were richly decorated; around ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... and while watching them I heard that a special display of fireworks had been arranged in Marie's honour, the news having got about that this was her last night at the Elysee. A swishing sound was heard; the rocket rose to its height high up in the thick sky. Then it dipped over, the star fell a little way and burst: it melted into turquoise blue, and changed to ruby red, beautiful as the colour of flowers, roses or tulips. The falling fire changed again ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... about, with an expression of exceedingly ridiculous sentimentality, now to the right, now caressingly to the left, as it ascended. The whole Corso rang again with laughter and clapping. The horse-racing at the end was not of much account. The horses start excited by the rocket let off at their tails, and by all the sharp pellets hanging around about them, to say nothing of the howling of the crowd. At six o'clock I was at home and ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... no joke to play lawn tennis after carrying your right arm in a sling so many years.) What a hard, unjust business this is! On the 28th, if Mataafa had moved, he could have still swept Mulinuu. He waited, and I fear he is now only the stick of a rocket. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... exclaimed the impulsive bachelor, going off at the hint like a rocket, "all thinking minds are, now-a-days, coming to the conclusion—one derived from an immense hereditary experience—see what Horace and others of the ancients say of servants—coming to the conclusion, I say, that boy or man, the human animal is, for most work-purposes, a losing animal. ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... saw a large well with a good body of water in it, evidently permanently supplied by the drainage of the mass of bare rocks in its vicinity. I was greatly pleased at Tommy's discovery, and after giving Reechy a thorough good drink, off he went like a rocket after the party. I wandered about, but found no other water-place; and then, thinking of the days that were long enough ago, I sat in the shade of an umbrageous acacia bush. Soon I heard the voices of the angels, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... day ven crackers bust Und fill der air mid bowder tust, Und ven you shoots your bistol off, You make a smokes vot makes you cough. A rocket goes up in der sky— Der sthick vos hit you in ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... and the crash of the seas on the rocks made speech impossible. He pointed suddenly along the cliff face, and not twenty yards away, with a hiss and a roar, a furious spout of water shot up into the air a rocket of white foam, a hundred feet high, and fell with a crash over the rocks and ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... may have encountered oxygen or hydrogen-rich atmosphere—melted your compressor blades. Try an air start on straight rocket. I want that ship back, Brandon. Repeat, I want that ...
— The Quantum Jump • Robert Wicks
... Mr. Blair, who had peeped out from the companion. "We're actually running up to the fleet, and the rocket has gone up for them to haul trawls. It looks very bad, very bad. You're not ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... and kissing won't put me together. I laughed at Lady Busshe! No wonder you went off like a rocket with a disappointing bouquet when I told you you had been successful with poor Sir Willoughby and he could not give you up. I noticed that. A woman like Lady Busshe, always prying for the lamentable, would have required no further ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and the accumulator had spurred interplanetary trade and settlement. Until it had been possible to store Sun-power for the driving of spaceships and for shipment to the outer planets, ships had been driven by rocket fuel, and the struggling colonies on the outer worlds had fought a bitter battle without the aid of ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... And as the shark, turning on his back, exposed the white of his belly, they both fired. The brute disappeared, and so did the bait, sinking like a rocket ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... water. But the flames set off bombs and the rocket-nozzles cracked and were useless. A midship compartment was flooding. A forward compartment's wall caved in, and still bombs burst.... The skipper of the assassin cruiser screamed an order to fire all missiles. They were already set on target. They were pre-set for the spot where the space-navy ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... she whispered gently, rising to her feet with great eyes. He turned away, and after fumbling a moment sent a rocket into the darkening air. It arose, shrieked, and flew up, a slim path of light, and scattering its stars abroad, dropped on the city below. She scarcely noticed it. A vision of the world had risen before her. Slowly ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... and his gallant companions had performed all their operations in darkness, the only light being the flashes of the cannon and muskets playing on them. At length ten o'clock struck—a single rocket ascended into the air. In an instant the fireship and all the trains leading to the different magazines and stores were ignited. The boats lay alongside the former, ready to take off the crew. There was ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... black eight-passenger aircars, of the same model, whizzing after us, making an obvious effort to overtake us. The chauffeur cursed and fired his auxiliary jets, then his rocket-booster. ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... repulsion energy once more and the Nomad shot skyward like a rocket. Through the floor port he saw Nazu's tiny ovoid scudding over the ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... Railway was opened, Stephenson was laughed at because he said he thought he could go thirty miles an hour, and was urged before the House of Commons not to say so, as he might be thought to be mad. This I have from person who knew the circumstances. Nevertheless, at the trial, I believe the "Rocket" did go at the rate of thirty miles an hour, to the not small astonishment of the world, and especially to the unbelievers in steam as a land agent. The stipulation made was that trains were to be conveyed at the rate ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... even if he did not know how he got here. The L-B—if it did exist—was to the west. He had a vivid mental picture of the rocket shape, its once silvery sides dulled by exposure, canted crookedly amid trees. And he was ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... of the royal equipages at night, and the passage was much the most picturesque of any I had hitherto seen. Footmen, holding flaming flambeaux, rode in pairs in front, by the side of the carriage, and in its rear; the piqueur scouring along the road in advance, like a rocket. By the way, a lady of the court told me lately that Louis XVIII. had lost some of his French by the emigration, for he did not know how to pronounce this ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... to Ontario. But there had been good years in between and finally he had begun to move up the hill. Everything in the West moved in the same direction, and now he had a big ranch and some coal mine shares, and building lots in Prairie Park where real estate was going up like a sky rocket. ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... terrible work to perform, and got through it with much credit. So far as I can remember—and it is, indeed, no stretch of imagination—the goal got by Mr. M'Callum could not have been saved by any keeper, as it came out of a scrimmage from the Celtic man's foot like a rocket. Mr. Downie is a very neat kicker-out in front, and shows fine judgment with his hands in clearing the ball away from a crowd of ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... complete around the edge. When catching the ephemeridae that play above the water, the tail is not expanded: it is reserved for times of courtship. I have seen the female sitting quietly on a branch, and two males displaying their charms in front of her. One would shoot up like a rocket, than suddenly expanding the snow-white tail like an inverted parachute, slowly descend in front of her, turning round gradually to show off both back and front. The effect was heightened by the ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... depended now upon the hairtrigger of impulse. A wind, a sketch, the perfume of a flower, and he would be off wherever the reminiscence called him. He whistled constantly. That, as Jan pointed out, was always a bad sign with Kenny. It meant that he felt perilously transient and would rocket up in the air when a spark came that pleased him. He had been much the same, Fahr remembered, the summer he embarked for Syria upon a tramp steamer—to ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... glanced down at the screen again. An orangish glow was suffusing the alien ship. A jet slipped in for a rocket shot. The glow pulsed, expanded, touched the jet, and the plane vanished into a rain of wreckage that sped towards ...
— Decision • Frank M. Robinson
... reached the signpost that pointed to Drymouth, to Clinton St. Mary, to Polchester. This was the landmark that he used to reach with his nurse on his walks. Further than this she, a stout, puffing woman, would never go. He had known that a little way on there was Rocket Wood, a place beloved by him ever since they had driven there for a picnic in the jingle, and he had found it all spotted gold under the fir-trees, thick with moss and yellow with primroses. How many fights with his nurse he had had over that! he clinging to the signpost and screaming ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... stop! And how often have I afterward recalled something strained and morbidly intent in their expressions, a glassiness of the staring eye and a starchiness in the smiling lip, that has made me suffer under my bed-cover and swear that next time I would depart like a sky-rocket! ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren |
