"Torpedo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and the arrangements sailed in secret, and the news was known in American cities scarcely any sooner than it was in France, so careful had the military authorities been not to give the lurking German submarines a chance to torpedo the transports. ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... Bai-Jove-Judson. His type of craft looked exactly like a flat-iron with a match stuck up in the middle; it drew five feet of water or less, carried a four-inch gun forward, which was trained by the ship, and, on account of its persistent rolling, was to live in three degrees worse than a torpedo-boat. When Judson was appointed to take charge of the thing on her little trip of six or seven thousand miles southward, his first remark as he went to look her over in dock was, "Bai Jove, that topmast wants staying forward!" The topmast was a stick about ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... earthworks and apparently impregnable fortifications was in anticipation of Disraeli declaring war and ordering the fleet to bombard the Crimean ports; hence, too, in addition to the strong fortifications, torpedo mines were laid for miles along the seaboard, and every possible means and opportunity were taken to make it widely known that the Black Sea was one deadly mine-field. The Press on all sides was, as usual, brimful of reports of the most alarmist nature—these, of ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... of blowing up the Albemarle, the Confederates used every possible precaution. At the wharf in Plymouth, where she was moored, a thousand soldiers were on guard, and her crew, consisting of sixty men, were alert and vigilant. To prevent the approach of a torpedo boat, the ram was surrounded by a boom of cypress logs, placed a considerable distance from the hull, and a double line of sentries was stationed along the river. What earthly chance was there under such conditions of any possible harm coming ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... rallied, and cherished, while perfectly aware of their limitations as to beauty and to brains. Immediately behind her slipped in Mrs. Cripps. The doctor abstained, conscious of having put a match to the fuse which had exploded yesterday's astounding homiletic torpedo. The whole affair irritated him to the point of detestable ill-temper. Still, if only to throw dust in the public eye, the house of Cripps must be represented. He therefore deputed the job—like so many another ungrateful one—to his forlorn-looking and red-eyed spouse. This vote of ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Connecticut, and had never till that day seen the ocean. She was much too shy to ask questions, but she sat like one in a dream, taking in with wide-open eyes all the details of the charming view,—the shores, broken by red-roofed villas and cottages rising from clouds of leafy greenery; the Torpedo Island with its tall flag-staff and floating banner over the dwelling of the Commandant; Fort Adams, whose steep glacis seemed powdered with snow just then from the multitude of daisies in bloom upon them; the light-houses; the soft rises of hill; and beyond, the shimmering heave of the open ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... it must be on the surface, and to see them even close at hand it must at least expose its periscope. Having definitely located an object within easy range, it may wholly submerge and deliver its torpedo without seeing the target. But the chance of a hit under these conditions is remote. Normally the submarine remains on the surface until it sights an enemy. Having approached as close as seems practicable without danger ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... on the way from a leading stoker, two seaman- gunners, and an odd hand in a torpedo factory. They courteously set my feet on the right path, and that led me through the alleys of Devonport to a public-house not fifty yards from the water. We drank with the proprietor, a huge, yellowish man called Tom Wessels; and when my guides had departed, ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... look very fetching, if you are nineteen, and the right sex for the adjective. Miss Sally did, being both, and for our own part we think it was inconsiderate and thoughtless of cook. Sally was sprung upon that young man like a torpedo on a ship with no guards out, saying with fascinating geniality through a smile (as one interests oneself in a civility that means nothing) that Mr. Fenwick had just gone out, and she didn't know when he would be back. But why not ask Mrs. Prince at the school, opposite St. Satisfax, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... they carried a limp, motionless human form completely covered by a great rug of dark fur. It was taken to the boat. All embarked, and the pinnace shot away out through the little headlands. A mile out to seaward lay the long black shape of a torpedo destroyer. The pinnace ran alongside and they all went on board, two of the sailors carrying the body ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... remember with pleasure the presence in our midst of this famous Polar navigator in August, 1880, and his lady, whose kindliness of manner and elegant French, won the hearts of many. The instructive torpedo lectures of the scientific commander of the Northampton iron-clad, Capt. Fisher, will likewise retain a corner ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... Arrow A Life-Saving Crew Drilling Life-Savers at Work Biograph Pictures of a Military Hazing Developing Moving-Picture Films Building an American Bridge in Burmah Viaduct Across Canyon Diablo Beginning an American Bridge in Mid-Africa Lake's Submarine Torpedo-Boat Protector Speeding at the Rate of 102 Miles an Hour Singing Into the Telephone "Central" Telephone Operators at Work Central Making Connections The Back of a Telephone Switchboard A Few Telephone Trunk Wires The Lanston Type-Setter Keyboard Where the "Brains" are Located ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... the masts being out, it was not easy to distinguish the vessels from the hulks. The Pinola struck the third from the eastern shore and her men jumped on board. The intention was to explode two charges of powder with a slow match over the chains, and a torpedo by electricity under the bows of the hulk, a petard operator being on board. The charges were placed, and the Pinola cast off. The operator claims that he asked Bell to drop astern by a hawser, but that instead of so doing, he let go and backed the engines. Be this as it may, ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... the track of the waters looked at nighttime from daytime. Outlines seemed merged, rocks did not look the same, whirlpools had a different vortex, islands of stone had a new configuration. As they sped on, lurching, jumping, piercing a broken wall of wave and spray like a torpedo, shooting an almost sheer fall, she came to rely on a sense of intuition rather than memory, for night had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the thousands of cars in the city we knew why the streets had to be broad and straight and long. In no other way could they accommodate all that rushing traffic of the swift cars and the lean, torpedo-like trams that with a splendid service link up the heart of the town with the far outlying suburbs. And even though the streets are broad the automobile is becoming too much for them. The habit of parking cars on the slant and ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... decided him. With a crashing bellow of rage and a sweep of his powerful tail he darted at the inoffensive head. But it vanished instantly, and a sudden tremendous turmoil, developing into a wake that lengthened out with the speed of a torpedo-boat, showed him the hopelessness of pursuit. Turning abruptly, he swam back to the shore and sulkily withdrew into the thickets to seek some less ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Niccolo da Lido, where I supped at a little osteria beneath the trees, a number of gray torpedo boats rushed to and fro in the harbor entrance, restless as hunting dogs straining at the leash. That night Venice was dark, so black that one stumbled from wall to wall along the narrow lanes in the search for his own doorway. War was close at hand: the menace ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... heart-stilling roar of destruction; a hideous crash followed, a terrible rending, breaking, smashing, concatenation of noises, succeeded by frightful detonations, as through the gaping hole torn in the great battleship by the deadly torpedo, the water rushed upon the heated boilers, the explosion of which in turn ignited the magazines. By that deadly underwater thrust of the enemy the battleship was reduced in a few moments to a disjointed, disorganized, sinking mass ...
— And Thus He Came • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... a state of philosophical doubt as to animal magnetism. Von Spix, the eminent naturalist, makes no doubt of the matter, and talks coolly of giving doses of it. The torpedo affects a third or external object, by an exertion of its own will: such a power is not properly electrical; for electricity acts invariably under the same circumstances. A steady gaze will make many persons of fair complexions blush deeply. Account ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... torpedo-boat at the Havre at this moment. A telegram from me will bring her to the Needle at ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... [Footnote: Grote, part ii. ch. 68; Maurice, Ancient Philosophy, p. 119.] "from the mind its mist of fancied knowledge, and, laying bare the real ignorance, produced an immediate effect like the touch of the torpedo; the newly created consciousness of ignorance was humiliating and painful, yet it was combined with a yearning after truth never before experienced. Such intellectual quickening, which could never commence until the mind had been disabused of its original illusion of false knowledge, was ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... to do? Ram me with a new-fangled torpedo?" asked an angry voice, and a man in a gold laced uniform, who, from his importance plainly showed himself to be the captain of the ship, shook his fist ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... ten yards off and they were in the middle of the canal. The Mungana had passed it. It was in a line with Alan's head. Oh Heavens! a sudden smother of foam, a rush like that of a torpedo, and set low down between two curving waves, a flash of gold. Then a gurgling, inhuman laugh and a weight upon his back. Down went ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... thrown into the struggle in increasing numbers, represented an entirely new development, for the submarine is a vessel which can travel unseen beneath the water and, while still unseen, except for a possible momentary glimpse of a few inches of periscope, can launch a torpedo at long or short range and with deadly accuracy. In these circumstances it became imperative to organize the Admiralty administration to meet new needs, and to press into the service of the central administration a large number of officers charged with the sole duty of ...
— The Crisis of the Naval War • John Rushworth Jellicoe
... Navy Journal thinks the problem of a torpedo boat capable of firing rapidly and with certainty, has at length reached ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... first overstepped the bounds of punctilio; but the consequences were immediate. Buck Malone, of the Mulberry Hills, with a Dewey-like swiftness, got an eight-inch gun swung round from his hurricane deck. But McManus's simile must be the torpedo. He glided in under the guns and slipped a scant three inches of knife blade between the ribs of the Mulberry Hill cruiser. Meanwhile Brick Cleary, a devotee to strategy, had skimmed across the lunch counter and thrown the switch of the ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... frantic ringing of the engine-room bell showed that the officer on the bridge had seen it too. Simultaneously everyone seemed to become aware that something was wrong—and for a brief second almost a panic occurred. The ship was swinging to port, but Vane realised that it was hopeless: the torpedo must get them. And the sea-gulls circling round the boat shrieked discordantly at him. . . . He took a grip of the rail, and braced himself to meet the shock. Involuntarily he closed his eyes—the devil . . . it was worse than a crump—you could hear that coming—and this. ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... feet deep. Her motive power consisted of eight men whose duty it was to turn the crank of the propeller shaft by hand until the target had been reached. When this primitive craft was closed for diving there was only sufficient air to support life for half an hour. Since the torpedo was attached to the boat itself there was no chance of escape. The only hope was to reach and destroy the enemy vessel before the ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... of boats at this upper rail, but to let them over was a difficult problem, since they must scrape down the ship's hull and risk being capsized or smashed. Those at the lower rail were entirely out of commission—splintered by the torpedo. ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... 1917 the Austrian torpedo boat No. 11 was seized by the Slav members of her crew and brought into Ancona, but their offers of service were refused. The ringleaders showed, by refusing to accept large sums of money, that their purpose was purely patriotic. The Italians, ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... she saw Walter! He was in a beautiful, brand new little two-seater, which was shaped very much like a torpedo and came smartly close to ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... neighbours, is so often misunderstood. It should be obvious by this time that her attitude to International Law has always been one of approximate reverence. The shells with which she bombarded Rheims Cathedral were contingent shells, and the Lusitania was sunk by a relative torpedo. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 7, 1917. • Various
... Mrs. Pigg. "Whoever heard of such a thing?" but she ran out to see what it was, and at that moment the cabbage bounded right in front of the pen, hit a big stone, burst open with a noise like a torpedo, and out rolled Buddy Pigg, over and over, just like a pumpkin. But, believe me, he wasn't hurt the least mite, but he ...
— Buddy And Brighteyes Pigg - Bed Time Stories • Howard R. Garis
... stared foolishly when they saw Carr Parker and the giant Martian enter the mysterious ship which was a trespasser on their landing stage. They gazed incredulously as the gleaming torpedo-shaped vessel arose majestically from its position. There was no evidence of motive power other than a sudden radiation from its hull plates of faintly crackling streamers of silvery light. They fell back in alarm as it pointed its nose skyward and accelerated with ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... ship sailing up in the sunshine, its decks crowded with peaceful passengers, and he rose like a murderer out of his hiding-place in the bowels of the sea, what were the feelings with which he ordered the torpedo to be fired? When, having launched his bolt, he sank and then rose again, and heard the drowning cries of his victims struggling in the water, what were the emotions with which he ran away? And when he returned ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... inventor of the telegraph, was the grandson of an Irishman; Henry O'Reilly built the first telegraph line in the United States; and John W. Mackey was the president of the Commercial Cable Company. John P. Holland, the inventor of the submarine torpedo boat, was a native of Co. Clare; and McCormick, the inventor of the reaping and mowing ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... like tenpins before the ball as Ben jumped in among them and mowed them down with his powerful blows, while Jack, hovering like a torpedo boat around a battleship, sent in several of the telling blows Ted had taught him during the boxing lessons at ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... altogether, one of which was larger than the rest. The smaller ones were about eight inches long. All were torpedo-shaped, but had flattened bottoms, which enabled them to stand upright. Two of the smaller ones were empty and unstoppered, the others contained a colourless liquid, and possessed queer-looking, nozzle-like stoppers that were connected by a thin metal rod with a catch halfway down the side of the ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... the subject of naval construction. Before entering the German Secret Service, I certainly knew the difference between a torpedo and a torpedo boat destroyer, but naturally could not give an accurate description of the various types of destroyers and torpedoes. My instructor in this subject was Lieutenant Captain Kurt Steffens, torpedo expert of the Intelligence Department ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... a dream, she hears the talk Of mine, torpedo, bomb and gun— She shudders, but her thoughts are all Encradled with her ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... the torpedo boat destroyer the "Barry" was launched at the Neafie & Levy's shipyard. It was "christened" by Miss Elizabeth Adams Barnes, the great-great-grandniece of Commodore Barry and daughter of Captain John S. Barnes, U.S. Navy, retired, of New ...
— The Story of Commodore John Barry • Martin Griffin
... the last word in naval construction—a torpedo yacht. A small cruiser, with turbines up to date, oil-fuelled, and fully armed with the latest and most perfect weapons and explosives of all kinds. The fastest boat afloat to-day. Built by Thorneycroft, engined by Parsons, armoured by Armstrong, armed by Crupp. If she ever comes into ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... at the rear, the torpedo-boat destroyers were scouting vigilantly, with gunners standing by ready to fire promptly at any periscope or conning tower of an enemy craft that might ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... power of accumulating this influence in a great degree; for instanc the torpedo, and electrical eel, which will both give strong shocks; and if the circuit have a small interruption a spark may be seen, as was shown by Mr. Walsh. On dissecting these fish, Mr. Hunter found an organ very similar to the pile of Volta; it consists of numerous membranaceous columns, filled ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... in effect, a claim to torpedo at sight, without regard to the safety of the crew or passengers, any merchant vessel under any flag. As it is not in the power of the German Admiralty to maintain any surface craft in these waters, the attack can only be delivered by ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... near forgot all about it when there came news of the explosion at Bemerhaven, and people began to talk about coal torpedoes. Then I knew as in all probability I'd carried the man who managed the business, and I gave word to the police, but they never could make anything of it. You know what a coal torpedo is, don't you? Well, you see, a cove insures his ship for more than its value, and then off he goes and makes a box like a bit o'coal, and fills it chock full with dynamite, or some other cowardly stuff of the sort. He drops ...
— The Cabman's Story - The Mysteries of a London 'Growler' • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and there attacked by a submarine. Germany admits that it was a German submarine. The submarine deliberately fired a torpedo at the GREER, followed later by another torpedo attack. In spite of what Hitler's propaganda bureau has invented, and in spite of what any American obstructionist organization may prefer to believe, I tell you the blunt fact that the German submarine fired first upon this American destroyer without ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... lieutenant-commander who served in the war and was invalided out after the Battle of Jutland. He got the D.S.O. over the Falklands affair, and has now some post at the Admiralty. He was in command of a torpedo boat which sank a German cruiser, and was ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... conscience of those with whom he acts, or bears upon the interests (real or pretended), the importance, respectability, and professed objects of the society. Beyond that point the nerve is bound up, the conscience is seared, and the torpedo-touch of so much inert matter operates to deaden the best feelings and harden the heart. Laughter and tears are said to be the characteristic signs of humanity. Laughter is common enough in such places as a set-off to the mock-gravity; but who ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... that the Kaiser went to Wilhelmshafen to warn submarine commanders to be careful and that submarines will hunt in pairs, one standing ready to torpedo while the other warns. The German losses at Verdun are small as artillery fire annihilated enemy first. I think an attack will be made now in ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... seen on every hand to be its sympathetic and resourceful friend, its swift and irresistible helper in its serious need, and an indulgent minister to its lighter fancies. Be it whim or emergency, the modern laboratory is equally at the service of romance, equally ready to gratify mankind with a torpedo or a toy. ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... interesting sites, though there is some picturesqueness of costume and situation about it; and the Englishman is pleased to see many ships with the national flag, and to know that one of the great industries of the place is the Whitehead torpedo factory. The Tarsia, as the Rjeka was called, gave the name of Tarsatica to the ancient Liburnian city. The Romans built a castle on the bank of the stream to rein in the ferocious Gepids. Round this castle the ancient Tarsatica grew up. The only ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... explained, "is the signal for a flotilla of torpedo boats to enter the harbor of Port Arthur and ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... blue water, for it is there only they can learn their duties as they should be learned. The big vessels should be manoeuvred in squadrons containing not merely battle ships, but the necessary proportion of cruisers and scouts. The torpedo boats should be handled by the younger officers in such manner as will best fit the latter to take responsibility and meet the emergencies ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... "state food ships." California sent the Camino in December, 1914, and in the same month Kansas sent the Hannah loaded with flour contributed by the millers of the state. In January and March, 1915, two Massachusetts relief ships, the Harpalyce (sunk by torpedo or mine on a later relief voyage) and Lynorta, sailed. Oregon and California together sent the Cranley in January, 1915, loaded with food and clothing, and several other similar state ships were sent at later dates. A gift from the Rockefeller Foundation of a million ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg
... sailing frigate in single conflict was brought to the highest point of perfection ever reached, that this same navy should have contained the first representative of the modern war steamer, and also the torpedo—the two terrible engines which were to drive from the ocean the very whitewinged craft that had first won honor for the starry flag. The tactical skill of Hull or Decatur is now of merely archaic interest, and has but little more bearing on the manoeuvring ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... revelation. From the little we know of the structure of the human understanding, we must be convinced that an overpowering conviction of this kind, instead of tending to the improvement and moral amelioration of man, would act like the touch of a torpedo on all intellectual exertion and would almost put an end to the existence of virtue. If the scriptural denunciations of eternal punishment were brought home with the same certainty to every man's mind as that the night will follow the day, this one vast and gloomy ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... while the wave is hurried along by movements numberless. Or, to describe the nature of another kind of fish, perchance the sailors in the aforesaid ships have grown dull and torpid by the touch of the torpedo, by which such a deadly chill is struck into the right hand of him who attacks it, that even through the spear by which it is itself wounded, it gives a shock which causes the hand of the striker to remain, though still a living substance, senseless and immovable. I think some such misfortunes ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... sleep!" muttered the B.M., "that's just like the Divis—Oh!" and he sat down as a torpedo flopped into his bedroom a few doors away and made a hole ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
... with machinery that a greedy dog could have invented if it had wanted money instead of food. I know his clumsy typewriters and bungling locomotives and tedious bicycles: they are toys compared to the Maxim gun, the submarine torpedo boat. There is nothing in Man's industrial machinery but his greed and sloth: his heart is in his weapons. This marvellous force of Life of which you boast is a force of Death: Man measures his strength ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... had built at the shipyards of Mr. Normand, the celebrated Havre engineer, a torpedo boat called the Poti, which we herewith illustrate. This vessel perceptibly differs from all others of her class, at least as regards her model. Her extremities, which are strongly depressed in the upperworks, and the excessive inclination of her sides, give the boat ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... perhaps complain that Pope has taken rather too limited a view of the subject. Dulness has other avatars besides the literary. In the last and finest book, Pope attempts to complete his plan by exhibiting the influence of dulness upon theology and science. The huge torpedo benumbs every faculty of the human mind, and paralyses all the Muses, except 'mad Mathesis,' which, indeed, does not carry on so internecine a war with the general enemy. The design is commendable, and executed, so ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... descend from the sky. They had not compared notes, however, and their descriptions varied from a black pear-shaped globe which had hovered for minutes before descending behind the mountains into the lake, to detailed word pictures of a silvery, torpedo-shaped vessel of space with portholes and flaming rockets and an unknown flag ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... it. If true at all, there is no truth in heaven or earth of deeper practical importance to us; and Protestantism must have lapsed from its once generous spirit, if it persists in imposing a dogma of its own upon our hearts, the touch of which is fatal as the touch of a torpedo to any high ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... Berenice moving away up the Asia passage, so cautiously that between whiles she seemed to be drifting; but always moving, with the smoke blown level from her buff-coloured funnels, with clean white sides and clean white ensign, and here and there a sparkle of sunlight on rail or gun-breech or torpedo-tube. She was bound on a three-years' cruise; and Gilbart, who happened to know this and was besides something of a sentimentalist, detected pathos in this departure on a festival morning. It seemed to him—as she swung round her ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... at railway speed. The older boys munched steadily and easily, while Bud and Bobby pecked intermittently in short nibbles. Amarilly had the "star method," which they all vainly tried to emulate. At short and regular intervals a torpedo-like report issued from the gum as she snapped her teeth down upon it. Cory kept hers strung out elastically from her mouth, ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... to this position, in the shadow of a beautiful clump of ash trees, stood the rustic shelters of the regimental cooks. From behind the wall of trees came a terrifying crash. The war-gray, iron field kitchen, which the army slang calls a contre-torpilleur (torpedo-boat destroyer), stood in a little clearing of the wood; there was nothing beautiful to the machine, which was simply an iron box, two feet high and four feet square, mounted on big wheels, and fitted with a high oval chimney. A ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... desperately were never nearer to the reward,—they could not spend what they had earned, nor repose on their down-beds, nor strut in their chateaux,—they deserted him. Men found that his absorbing egotism was deadly to all other men. It resembled the torpedo, which inflicts a succession of shocks on any one who takes hold of it, producing spasms which contract the muscles of the hand, so that the man cannot open his fingers; and the animal inflicts new and more violent shocks, until he paralyzes and kills his victim. So, this exorbitant ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... his fingers were always discoloured with chemicals, and he would not even feign an interest in the things for which they cared. I can remember him sitting on the foot of my bed, talking me to sleep more than once with some new plan he had devised for a self-steering torpedo or an absolutely reliable flying machine. He had received the sobriquet of "Mad G.," and there was some justice in it from the opposition point of view. I had not realized, however, that he was being ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... 6, 1915, the Russian Black Sea fleet ran into the Breslau and the Hamidieh and damaged them both in a running fight. A week later Russian torpedo boats sank several ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... She carried four twenty-one-inch torpedo tubes and a battery of six twelve-pounder, rapid-fire guns; also, she carried two large searchlights and a wireless equipment of seventy miles reach, the aerials of which stretched from the truck of her short signal mast aft to a short pole ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... echo, embargo, grotto, hero, innuendo, motto, mosquito, mulatto, negro, portico (oes or os), potato, tornado, torpedo, veto, volcano. ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... children to God, with a Christian name which they trusted would be registered in heaven. They told rather of lawless lives, and a past which must be buried in oblivion or acknowledged with shame and perhaps fear. "Fighting-cock," "Torpedo," "Brimstone," and "the Slasher," were among the leaders who dubbed Blair with the title of "Mum," and so saluted him on all occasions. Blair had a very considerable sense of his own dignity, and was by no means pleased with this style of address. ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... front of his door he found a long gray torpedo touring car throbbing with impatience, and at the wheel sat a plump young lady in a vivid green bonnet and driving coat. In the tonneau sat a more slender young lady all in gray, except for the brown ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... confused the two distinct inventions of Fulton just referred to. In the latter half of 1803 he repaired to England, and later on to the United States, and after the year 1803 he seems to have had neither the will nor the opportunity to serve Napoleon. In England he offered his torpedo patent to the English Admiralty, expressing his hatred of the French Emperor as a "wild beast who ought to be hunted down." Little was done with the torpedo in England, except to blow up a vessel off Walmer as a proof of what it could do. It ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... was very courageous, he thought, and looked at Mary closely; but her eyes wandered from him to the phantom-shapes that loomed out of a pale, wintry mist: tramps thrashing their way to the North Sea: a vast, distant liner with tiers of decks one above the other: a darting torpedo-destroyer which flashed by like a ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... any place would get it it would be the Higgins place, on account of its exposed position, right in line with anything that showed up at the mouth of the harbor. Of course if she had stopped to think she would have known that a torpedo didn't come through a house at the snail's pace the stove was moving at when it ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... success—these matters were all banished from his mind. Even the war-risk of it was forgotten. He thought with envy of the men in trenches. Yet the purpose of his yacht was long since known to the Germans; the danger of the torpedo was ever present on her voyages, and the certainty that if she were sunk, and he captured, any means would be taken to force him to speak before he was shot, was altogether beyond dispute. Even at this moment he carried hidden ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... put off from the Hampshire as she sank? I tried to trace those boats. I traveled up there and interviewed people who had seen them. I got no good from it. But it kept coming to me that it was not a mine that had sunk the ship, that it was a torpedo from a German submarine, and that Kitchener was on one of the boats that put off and that he had been taken prisoner by the enemy. God knows why that thought persisted—there were reasons against it—it was a boy's theory. But it persisted; I couldn't ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... spirit into all their entertainments. He remarks, that the water of the Gambia above Barraconda has such a strong scent of musk, from the multitude of crocodiles, that infest that part of the river, as to be unfit for use. The torpedo also abounds in the river about Cassan, and at first caused not a little terror ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... to your attention the suggestions contained in this report in regard to the condition of our fortifications, especially our coast defenses, and recommend an increase of the strength of the Engineer Battalion, by which the efficiency of our torpedo system would ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... in warfare; and this passion for war and its preparations occurs frequently among these early artists. Leonardo designed scores of military engines. Francesco di Giorgio has left a whole bookful of such sketches, in one of which he anticipates the torpedo-boat.[84] So, too, Michael Angelo took his share in erecting fortifications, though he did not fritter away so much time on experiments as some of his contemporaries. Donatello and his colleagues did not even leave us plans to compensate for their ignominious failure. One ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... were launched to safety by means of a torpedo tube; and Jack sat down to await the end. But, in some unaccountable manner, the submarine had suddenly risen to the surface, and Jack, taking advantage of the single instant the vessel was above water before it took its final death plunge, flung himself ...
— The Boy Allies Under the Sea • Robert L. Drake
... me the often mooted question raised by the sentimentalists and humanitarians concerning the horrors of war. Not long after this time, the papers - the sentimentalist papers - were furious with Lord Dundonald for suggesting the adoption by the Navy of a torpedo which he himself, I think, had invented. The bare idea of such wholesale slaughter was revolting to a Christian world. He probably did not see much difference between sinking a ship with a torpedo, and firing a shell into her magazine; and likely enough had as much respect for the ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... They 've got a naval training station for boys over on the other side, and a torpedo-magazine. There 's jolly good fishing, too—rock-cod. We 'll pass to the lee of it, and make across, and anchor in the shelter of Angel Island. There 's a quarantine station there. Then when French Pete gets sober we 'll know ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... by the Department, comprise the construction of one steel cruiser of 4,500 tons, one cruiser of 3,000 tons, two heavily armed gunboats, one light cruising gunboat, one dispatch vessel armed with Hotchkiss cannon, one armored ram, and three torpedo boats. The general designs, all of which are calculated to meet the existing wants of the service, are now well advanced, and the construction of the vessels can be undertaken as soon as you shall grant ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Chester A. Arthur • Chester A. Arthur
... he said, "that I have just come from a cruise on a torpedo-boat. There was such a sea on as a rule that cooking operations were entirely suspended, and we lived ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... deck had given us some warning, but the sudden dash of the long, snaky torpedo boat from out the haze came as a decided shock. For one brief moment we of the after port stood as if turned to stone, then every man ran to his quarters and stood ready to do his duty. With a cry, our ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... are under contract or in course of construction except the armored ships, the torpedo and dynamite boats, and one cruiser. As to the last of these, the bids were in excess of the limit fixed by Congress. The production in the United States of armor and gun steel is a question which it seems necessary ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... astern of the other, and that not one of them is the old Excellent, she having been removed. Our friend invited us to accompany him on board an old frigate moored a little way up the harbour, from which we could see some interesting torpedo experiments. ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... torpedo-boat with a City of Paris siren went mad and broke her moorings and hired a friend to help her, it's just conceivable that we might be carried as we are now. ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... entire Spanish fleet, with much loss of life, in Manila Bay, May 1, 1898; seven Americans were wounded, none killed. Admiral Cervera, with the pride of the Spanish battle- ships, cruisers, and torpedo-boats, reached Cuban waters from Cape Verde Islands, and, May 19th, sailed into Santiago Harbor, where he was blockaded—"bottled up"—by Admirals Sampson and Schley's fleets. Cervera's fleet, in an attempt to escape, was totally destroyed, ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... disappeared from the Midwest. But on April 19, the same object—or else a similar one—appeared over West Virginia. Early that morning the town of Sisterville was awakened by blasts of the sawmill whistle. Those who went outside their homes saw a strange sight. From a torpedo-shaped object overhead, dazzling searchlights were pointing downward, sweeping the countryside. The thing appeared to be about two hundred feet long, some thirty feet in diameter, with stubby wings and red and green lights along the sides. For almost ten minutes the aerial ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... facilities are at this time ample for all possible naval contingencies. Three of our Government navy-yards—those at Mare Island, Cal., Norfolk, Va., and Brooklyn, N.Y.—are equipped for shipbuilding, our ordnance plant in Washington is equal to any in the world, and at the torpedo station we are successfully making the highest grades of smokeless powder. The first-class private shipyards at Newport News, Philadelphia, and San Francisco are building battle ships; eleven contractors, ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... evident security, Clif kept a sharp lookout for any of the enemy who might be prowling along like himself, or, worse still, who might be scouring those waters with one of those silent little terrors, a torpedo boat. ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... the Undaunted, sinks four German torpedo-boat destroyers off Dutch coast; allied fleets ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... long before the Canadians had livened things up. Some days we would "strafe" him with trench mortars; on others we would give him a touch of our artillery. Bill Cameron was aching to get a go at him so he picked out eighty men and four officers. It was decided to use the Bengalore torpedo to blow his wire up. The time appointed was Xmas morning. When they went to put the torpedoes underneath the wire they found it impossible as it was too bright, so there was a consultation and it was decided to crawl out, lay alongside of his wire and then make a dash into his trench as ...
— Over the top with the 25th - Chronicle of events at Vimy Ridge and Courcellette • R. Lewis
... effect on the vital powers that makes us insensible to all the virtues and graces of the proprietor of one of these life-absorbing organs. When they touch us, virtue passes out of us, and we feel as if our electricity had been drained by a powerful negative battery, carried about by an overgrown human torpedo. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... paper torpedoes in various places around the lawn. Give each child a paper bag and at a signal, which is the explosion of a torpedo, they begin to hunt for the hidden torpedoes. The one finding the most is given a small flag which the children salute by ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... and girls deal with life aboard submarine torpedo boats, and with the adventures of the young crew, and possess, in addition to the author's surpassing knack of storytelling, a great educational value ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... tired to wright ennything. i never had so much fun in my life. i only got burned 5 times. 1 snapcracker went off rite in my face and i coodent see ennything til mother washed my eyes out. Zee Smith fired a torpedo and a peace of it flew rite in the corner of my eye and made a blew spot there. i fired every one of my snapcrackers. it took ...
— The Real Diary of a Real Boy • Henry A. Shute
... know not with what authenticity, that Johnson considered Dr. Birch as a dull writer, and said of him, 'Tom Birch is as brisk as a bee in conversation; but no sooner does he take a pen in his hand, than it becomes a torpedo to him, and benumbs all his faculties[465].' That the literature of this country is much indebted to Birch's activity and diligence must certainly be acknowledged. We have seen that Johnson honoured him with a Greek Epigram[466]; and his correspondence with him, during ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... all our nerves before we are over," Brand, a breezy newspaper man from the West, observed. "What with boat drill three times a day, and lifebelt parade going on all the time on the deck, one doesn't get a chance to forget that we are liable to get a torpedo in our side at ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a Confederate ironclad ram, the Albemarle, appeared on the waters of Albemarle Sound. As no Union war ship could harm her, Commander W. B. Gushing planned an expedition to destroy her by a torpedo. On the night of October 27, with fourteen companions in a steam launch, he made his way to the ram, blew her up with the torpedo, and with one other man escaped. His adventures on the way back to the fleet read like fiction, and are told by himself in ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... up to Newport with me at five-thirty," were his first words. "Katy's all ready, and means to sit up till the boat gets in at two-thirty, keeping a little supper hot and hot for you. The Torpedo Station is in its glory just now, and there's going to be a great explosion on Thursday, which Amy ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... examining a queer specimen of purplish moss which had drawn his eye. The eternal scientist in the man could not be downed. Mado had come out armed with one of the bulky kalbite torpedo-projectors and was ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... from out of a black shed—the only sign of man's handiwork for many miles—it came—something grey at first, moving slowly as though being pushed down a slight incline, then afloat in the air, gathering speed—something between a torpedo with wings and a great prehistoric insect. Now and then it described strange circles, but mostly it came towards them as swift and as true as an arrow shot from a bow. The two men looked at one another—the shorter, to whose cheeks the Cumberland winds had brought no trace ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... man; but when the Italian had bowed himself out and his guests had sunk into their seats again, he said dryly to Fulkerson, "I reckon they didn't have to torpedo that well, or the derrick wouldn't look ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... same time came news from Spain telling that the Spanish were making ready for hostilities. An exceptionally large number of artisans were at work preparing for sea battle-ships, cruisers, and torpedo-boat destroyers. The cruisers Oquendo and Vizcaya, with the torpedo-boat destroyers Furor and Terror, were already on their way to Cuba, where were stationed the Alphonso XII., the Infanta Isabel, and the Nueva Espana, ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... annexation will necessitate a largely increased navy, and Secretary Long will ask Congress to arrange for the building of more cruisers and torpedo-boats. ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 38, July 29, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... in pencils by the lens, convey To one bright point the silver hairs of Day. 20 Then mark how two electric streams conspire To form the resinous and vitreous fire; Beneath the waves the fierce Gymnotus arm, And give Torpedo his benumbing charm; Or, through Galvanic chain-work as they pass, Convert the kindling ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... crew gets hurt it ain't my fault. If they're in the ship, that's tough. If not, then that's O.K. with me. I ain't sending them any letter telling them I'm going to blast their ship and then have them come up after me with a space torpedo!" ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... Protagoras: can virtue be taught? Meno, a general in the army of the famous Ten Thousand, attempts a definition of virtue itself, the principle that underlies specific kinds of virtues such as justice. After a cross-examination he confesses his helplessness in a famous simile: Socrates is like the torpedo-fish which benumbs all who touch it. Then the real business begins. How do we learn anything at all? Socrates says by Reminiscence, for the soul lived once in the presence of the ideal world; when it enters ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... held up there for three days, during which time I secured pictures of the steamer Dinorah, which limped into port after being torpedoed, of a sailing vessel which had struck a mine, and some interesting scenes on board French torpedo boat destroyers as they returned from ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... engine of war such an aerial ship might be, from which two men could blow up fortress after fortress and city after city when and where they chose. Armies could be annihilated, granite and steel would be as tinder before a bomb or torpedo of picric acid dropped ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... out every packet of perishable goods to be a torpedo," said Dick, "if that is to be ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with the salmon. He suffered himself to be drawn, skip-ping with pretended delight at getting to the haven where I would fain bring him. Yet no sooner did he feel shoal water under his ponderous belly than he backed like a torpedo-boat, and the snarl of the reel told me that my labor was in vain. A dozen times, at least, this happened ere the line hinted he had given up the battle and would be towed in. He was towed. The landing-net was useless for one of his size, and I would not have him gaffed. I stepped into the shallows ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... spoke. "Captain, I'm getting a very short wave transmission from a point out on the starboard bow. Does that sound like your torpedo?" ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... relics of perpetual conflict, resolving and being resolved into original elements. We talk of the strenuous life of men in cities. Go to a coral reef and see what the struggle for existence really means. The very bulwarks of limestone are honeycombed by tunnelling shells. A glossy black, torpedo-shaped creature cuts a tomb for itself in the hard lime. Though it may burrow inches deep with no readily visible inlet, cutting and grinding its cavity as it develops in size and strength, yet it is not safe. Fate follows in insignificant guise, drills a tiny hole ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... the Flying Corps. The next was also a request for assistance from a young officer, who, having recently taken a wife to his bosom, apparently considered the achievement a qualification for the command of one of H.M. torpedo-boat destroyers. ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... carry each a gun, and so they are bluff and slow. Our Admiralty declined to allow a race between these and the French launches in Paris, else, no doubt, the superior speed of the French boats would have astonished John Bull. All this has lately changed, so that launches and torpedo boats in England can steam twenty miles ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... mine, set to explode at a certain hour? Delcasse shook his head. It was absurd to suppose that a mine could be planted in a harbour as strictly guarded and policed as that of Toulon. By a torpedo, then, which could be launched some distance away? But that was even more absurd. The launching of a torpedo required a complex mechanism; as well suppose that an enemy would be able to install a cannon ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... dreadful habit of talking to himself quite rageing, was a horrible alternative. Mrs. Baerens at last directed her husband upon the General, trembling as though she watched for the operations of a fish torpedo; and other ladies shared her excessive anxiousness, for Mr. Baerens had the manner and the look of artillery, and on this occasion carried ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... further advantage of rendering it easier to put the port of Havre quickly in defense. A certain number of floating batteries, anchored behind the breakwaters and protecting the advances of torpedo boats by means of their firing, would make a formidable defense. Not having to perform any evolutions, they might without danger be invested with armor plate thicker than that of ordinary ironclads. In order to complete the system, there might be erected upon the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... constant source of uneasiness and anxiety, regained our entire confidence under Sundbeck's capable command; it hummed so that it was a pleasure to hear it. To judge from the sound of the engine-room, one would have thought the Fram was moving through the water with the speed of a torpedo-boat. If this was not the case, the engine was not to blame; possibly, the screw had a share of it. The latter ought probably to have been somewhat larger, though experts are not agreed about this; in any case, there was something radically ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... jumped from fact to theory. The torpedo craft could be an atomic jet. All right, he had been in bad shape when he fell into it by chance and the bed machine had caught him as if it had been created for just such a duty. What kind of a small plane would be equipped with a restorative apparatus? ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... the neck dose not appear— in the fish and frog, for instance— and the head simply widens out as one passes back to the body. The high resistance offered by water necessitates this tendency to a cigar or ship outline, just as it has determined the cigar shape of the ordinary fish torpedo. ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... water, and instantly, like the gentleman in The Tempest, he 'suffered a sea-change into something rich and strange.' Other men puffed, snorted, and splashed. George passed through the ocean with the silent dignity of a torpedo. Other men swallowed water, here a mouthful, there a pint, anon, maybe, a quart or so, and returned to the shore like foundering derelicts. George's mouth had all the exclusiveness of a fashionable club. His breast-stroke was a thing to see and wonder at. When he did the crawl, strong ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... was also used, varnished silk being tried as an experiment. The envelope was attached to a keel on which was mounted the engine, a 35 horse-power Anzani, driving two swivelling four-bladed propellers. From the keel was suspended a torpedo-shaped boat car in which a crew of two was accommodated. Originally a vertical fin and rudder were mounted at the stern end of the keel, but these were later replaced by fins on the ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... an improvement it would be if a house-dounga could be fitted with torpedo netting! Jane finds herself in the most embarrassing situations, while dressing in the morning, from the unwelcome pertinacity of the merchants who swarm up the river in the early hours from their lairs, and lay ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... temper. In the wooing days everyone is a lamb, and only becomes the howling wolf after marriage. Circumstances that ruffle the temper in the presence of the intended are but like the harmless squib, but would become like the explosive torpedo in his or her absence or in after-marriage. Quarreling caused by matrimonial differences is the most frequent cause of infelicity, and most of it is caused by an innate irate temper of either ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... Torpedo Destroyer behind us, and I wrapped the reins around my wrist, in case Parsifal should get uneasy and want to print horseshoes all over ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... Where would the trouble be? 4. Draw a picture to show the parts of your left ear, and name each part. 5. How do you take care of your ears? 6. Comment on doing each of these things:—firing a bean shooter at anyone; throwing gravel or sand; firing off a cap or torpedo close to some one's head; boxing a person on the ear; running a nail cleaner or pencil point into your ear; putting on the baby's cap so that the ears are folded forward; asking your teacher to repeat her question. 7. Have you tried to train your ears? How?—and why? 8. ...
— The Child's Day • Woods Hutchinson
... Lusitania left New York harbor. This conjunction was bound to appear intentional rather than fortuitous, and even to-day the majority of Americans believe that I must have known beforehand of the design to torpedo the Lusitania. ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... the vagueness hung heavily. As Dan cast his eyes gloomily into the wake of the tug, he saw a dark object shoot out of the foam and dart down upon them like a torpedo; in fact a torpedo could not have worked more serious effect upon the boat than did that ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... sir. I could creep alongside the schooner and do it to her; but that there gunboat's got heavy steel plates right round her, going ever so deep, and they'd be rather too much for my tools. They'd spoil every auger I've got. The skipper hasn't got a torpedo aboard, has he? One of them new 'uns that you winds up and sets a-going with a little screw-propeller somewheres astern, and a head full of nitro— what-d'ye-call-it, which goes ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... Northern Europe, and any number of Belgians going home to enlist. In the Straits of Dover, an hour or so out from Folkestone, we ran through a fleet of British warships guarding the narrow roadstead between France and England; and a torpedo-boat destroyer sidled up and took ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... that the conversation of Socrates has the effect of a torpedo's shock upon him. When he talks with other persons he has plenty to say about virtue; in the presence of Socrates, his thoughts desert him. Socrates replies that he is only the cause of perplexity ...
— Meno • Plato
... extremely easy to produce and it is capable of carrying a considerable load. However, it is not a good type to use for all kinds of boats. It makes a splendid little pleasure yacht or submarine-chaser, but for a torpedo-boat destroyer or a freighter it would not ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... middle-aged buildings were coming down; the streets were laid open to their entrails and men worked underground between palisades, and overhead in metal cobwebs like spiders in the sky. Trolley-cars and long interurban cars, built to split the wind like torpedo-boats, clanged and shrieked their way round swarming corners; motor-cars of every kind and shape known to man babbled frightful warnings and frantic demands; hospital ambulances clamored wildly for passage; ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... having given the enemy's battle-ship every possible advantage, the reader will allow me to bring on my little torpedo-boat. In the first place Schoolcraft mentions (A.R., I., 56) twelve persons, six of them women, who helped him collect and interpret the material of the tales united in his volumes; but he does not tell us whether all or any of these collectors acted on the principle that these stories could ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck |
