"Explosive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of "Duster's" establishment was a little square parlour, where boys repaired to eat ices and drink alarming quantities of Duster's famous home-made ginger-beer—a high explosive, which always sent the cork out with a bang, and to drink two bottles of which straight off would have been a risky business for any boy to attempt without first testing the staying power of his waistcoat-buttons, and putting several bags of sand in his jacket-pockets. In this parlour ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... the wriggler disappeared in a smear of dirty green. Gunga nearly fell over backward in fright, and even Forepaugh was shaken. He was surprised that the ancient cartridge had exploded at all, though he knew powder making had reached a high level of perfection before explosive chemical weapons had yielded to the newer, lighter, and infinitely more powerful ray weapons. The gun would impede their progress. It would be of very little use against the giant Carnivora of Inra. Yet something—perhaps a sentimental attachment, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... know that every space-liner is equipped with emergency space-suits. Why pull the ship down with live men on board? That would naturally mean a fight, and we have no mean weapons, what with disintegrator ray-projectors and explosive electro-bullets." Then, again, for some reason, there were Ganymedans on board. They would very likely be whiffed out in the melee. The ship might be destroyed also, and they evidently are very careful about getting the ship down ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner
... came a ghostly beam, for an instant of time so short that before the explosive shells of the other could be trained on it, the Solarite had moved. Under that touch the mighty plane began crumbling, then it splintered beneath the driving blow of the great wing, as it shot toward the main body of the plane at several miles a second—driving ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... truism and determines to practice it, is well on her way to happiness and success. "It is the man that has a system in both life and business that wins the battles." The struggle of life has become so strenuous that most everyone's nerves are always near the explosive point,—the man who has a system in life has discovered that there is nothing to be gained by being disrespectful or discourteous, or by butting rough-shod into the affairs or interests of other people; tact, diplomacy, flattery, ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... debating. When he spoke he was even more explosive than before. "Not a cent! Not a red! Give that whelp money to run his crazy paper on? Not your father, while he ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... clanged, and the powerful machine puffed out on its flaring way through the night. Faster and faster came the big explosive breaths, until they blended in a long steady roar, and the train was sweeping northward at forty miles an hour. The clouds had broken; the night had grown colder; the gibbous moon gleamed over the vast and solitary landscape. It was a different ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... It halted, it ran on, it stopped again to consider, but always it was of Dick and incidentally of himself who didn't matter so much, but who had to be in it all. Were they at one in this epidemic of world sickness? As the great explosive forces of destruction and decay seemed to have released actual germs to attack the physical well-being of races, had the terrible crashes of spiritual destinies unsettled the very air of life, poisoned it, drugged it with madness and despair? Was there a universal ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... and reached for a bill-spindle on his desk. After a glance at one of the impaled memoranda he sat back again, chewing his cigar and staring into vacancy. A full minute elapsed before he deigned to become once more aware of my presence. Then he whirled upon me to rap out an explosive question. ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... ready to my hand,—all obtainable from natural sources close by; but the result of all my efforts (and I tried mixing the ingredients in every conceivable way) was a very coarse kind of powder with practically no explosive force, but which would go off ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... modern weapons. The most that we could do was to check their progress by distracting their attention with the flash and roar of our guns, and so to give both the natives and ourselves time to reach the steps which led to safety. But where the conical explosive bullets of the twentieth century were of no avail, the poisoned arrows of the natives, dipped in the juice of strophanthus and steeped afterwards in decayed carrion, could succeed. Such arrows were ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... The name is pronounced with an explosive initial sound, and Ad. F. Bandelier spells it ...
— Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico • John Wesley Powell
... made him feel awfully fond, somehow, of this newly discovered cousin and namesake. But, about half-way down the room, that promise of a horse, a thorough-bred, and just as big as he could straddle, swept all before it, rendering his spirits uncontrollably explosive. So he made a wild rush and flung himself headlong ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... from the sheet at each report, to see the puffs of smoke two or three miles off. The Germans have been firing salvoes of four shots over a little village where the French batteries are stationed, shrapnel that burst in little puffs of white smoke; the French reply with explosive shells that raise columns of dust over the German lines. Half of our regiment have left already for the trenches. We may go tonight. We have made a march of about 75 kilometers in four days, and are now on the front, ready to be called on at ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... the gauze is unable to arrive at the point of ignition. In the safety-lamp the little oil-lamp is placed in a circular funnel of fine gauze, which prevents the flame from passing through it to any explosive gas that may be floating about outside, but at the same time allows the rays of light to pass through readily. Sir Humphrey Davy, in introducing his lamp, cautioned the miners against exposing it to a rapid current of air, which ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... return to the battery the Turkish advance began to waver. They had been sprayed by an incessant hail of shrapnel and high explosive for over three hours, and even their fatalistic courage could not stand the strain. The Light Horse were now holding their own, and soon a monotonous voice from the O.P. chanting over the wire, told that the Turks were retreating. Slowly the range increased—2400—2600—2800—until ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... this kind of fishing. By means of a special instrument, a sort of small cannon, stationed either on board the ship or at the front of the boat, they throw either a harpoon, which draws with it the rope fastened to its end, or explosive balls, which produce great ravages in the body ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... very simple in appearance. Asano, pointing out the parts of this apparatus to him, told him that, like the gas-engine of Victorian days, it was of the explosive type, burning a small drop of a substance called "fomile" at each stroke. It consisted simply of reservoir and piston about the long fluted crank of the propeller shaft. So much Graham ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... as you manipulate it, might be a high-explosive. Have you thought of using it in ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... sniper had finished, so I touched him—and he half rolled towards me. I lifted him up and said, 'Did you catch it?' All he could do was to point to his chin. He was an awful sight. A dum-dum or explosive bullet had caught his jawbone and had blown the left lower jaw and part of the neck away. I realised at once that it was hopeless, for it took four bandages to stop the spurting. One of our fellows ran off for the stretcher-bearers. One of these came back, but he could not stop ...
— One Young Man • Sir John Ernest Hodder-Williams
... the professor showed clear for a moment. Like McGuire he was bleeding, and his breath came in short explosive gasps, but he was holding his own! The eyes of McGuire glimpsed a wildly gesticulating, shouting figure in the rear. The face, contorted with rage, was almost the color of the brilliant scarlet that the creature wore. The blood-stained man in khaki ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... who sat on a stool by the table, smiled slowly. Again he spoke in the strange tongue, and Ross merely stared stolidly back. His words were short and explosive sounding, and the man's smile faded; his annoyance grew as ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... and proceeded to adjust a serpent-like, squirming appendage to her ear. With an encouraging nod, she bade us commence, closing her eyes meanwhile with an air of expectant rapture. But the vibrating trumpet stirred our foolish souls to explosive laughter, partially smothered in a simultaneous strangled cough. Wondering at the double paroxysm and subsequent hush of shame, she unclosed her eyes, softly murmuring, "Don't be bashful nor afraid, my dears. I am very far from home, and you can make me very happy, if you ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... series of little caves, with walls of solid earth and roofs of timber and sand-bags, proof against almost anything but the plunging flight of heavy high-explosive shells. The floors of these caves were higher than the bottom of the trench, so that an ordinary rain would not flood them, and covered with straw. And they were full of men, asleep, working over this and that—from ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... want arms for? We had neither savages nor wild beasts to fear, I supposed. But my uncle seemed to believe in his arsenal as in his instruments, and more especially in a considerable quantity of gun cotton, which is unaffected by moisture, and the explosive force of which exceeds that ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... also stood there, just outside on the porch, red, explosive, determined legs planted wide apart, defying several courtly reporters, who for a month had patiently and politely appeared every hour to learn whether Mr. Carr had anything to say about the new invention, rumors of which were flying ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... if, on the 30th of November, Neb, strolling on the beach, had not found a piece of a thick iron cylinder, bearing traces of explosion. The edges of this cylinder were twisted and broken, as if they had been subjected to the action of some explosive substance. ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... a reason for this in the fact that in bad weather at Naples it is cold and dark and damp in-doors, and in fine so bright and warm and charming without that there is really no choice. Then there is the expansive temperament, which if it were shut up would probably be much more explosive than it is now. As it is, it vents itself in volleyed detonations and scattered shots which language can give ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... that Tad Butler himself came near getting into difficulties. The chief's son, having been ordered in a series of explosive guttural sounds to do something, had started away when a yellow, wolfish looking cur got in way. Afraid Of His Face gave the dog a vicious kick, then as if acting upon second thought he grabbed up the snarling dog, and twisting its front legs over on its back, dropped the yelping ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... the things to make you remember the Witch-hazel; its forked twig was used—nay, still is used—as a magic rod to show where there is running water underground; that is, where it is possible to find water by sinking a well. Its nuts are explosive, and go off with a snap, shooting the seeds that are inside, ten or twenty feet away, when the cold dry days of autumn come. Third, its curious golden-thread ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... examined, is the attitude of the conservatives of the older sections towards this movement of westward advance. President Dwight in the era of the War of 1812 was very critical of the "foresters," but saw in such a movement a safety valve to the institutions of New England by allowing the escape of the explosive advocates ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... likely—scuttling for shelter. Occasionally the Austrians would vary their rain of heavy projectiles with a sort of shell that went bang and released a fleecy cloud of smoke overhead and then dropped a parcel of high explosive that burst on the ground. It was curious to think that the guns from which these shells came were cunningly hidden away in nooks and glens on the other side of that distant range of hills, that the men serving the guns had little if any idea what ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... worm with carbolic tooth-paste and left it lying about. It lay about for days. Albert now admits his theory was wrong; the mole is a vegetarian, he says; he was confusing it with trout. He is in the throes of inventing an explosive potato for Maurice on the lines of a percussion grenade, but in the meanwhile that gentleman remains in complete mastery ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... lead-horses, and two or three shortened, sharp blows with his doubled lash to those upon the wheel; then, moistening his lip, he disengages the tin horn from its socket, and, with one more spirited "chirrup" to his team and a petulant flirt of the lines, he gives out, with tremendous explosive efforts, a series of blasts that are heard all down the street. Here and there a blind is coyly opened, and some old dame in ruffled cap peers out, or some stout wench at a back door stands gazing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... I have compared it, essentially true. There are some discrepancies in detail, but nothing that matters. The murder of M. Odent, of the other hostages, of the civilians placed in front of the German troops, and of four or five other victims; the burning out by torch and explosive of half a flourishing town, because of a discreditable mistake, the fruit of panic and passion,—these crimes are indelibly marked on the record of Germany. She has done worse elsewhere. All the same, this too she will never efface. Let us imagine such things ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to learn, however, that "Passed by Censor" was only a guarantee for the harmlessness and not for the veracity of the stories narrated; and in particular that the famous "Q"-boat ruse of the demented female with the explosive baby was a pure ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... they both could summon, was luck and the deadening hands of time. He told himself, here, that it was more than probable that he was exaggerating the proportions of the whole situation—Fanny had been angry before; her resentment faded the sooner for its swift explosive character. But this assurance was unconvincing; his presentiment, which didn't rest on reason, was not amenable to a reasonable conclusion. Of this he was certain, that Fanny never had harbored the suspicion of what, for her, would be the very worst. Did she know? If she did, he decided, it was ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... shut up nearly five weeks. Some 15,000 people or more have been living on a patch of ground roughly measuring three miles each way. On that patch of ground at the lowest estimate 3,500 cases of explosive iron have been hurled at high velocity, not counting an incalculable number of the best rifle bullets. One can conceive the effect on a Londoner's mind if a shell burst in the city. If another burst next day, the 'buses ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... reputation, Dayaks being killed here occasionally every year, but of late the government has blasted out rocks and made it more passable. However, even now it is no trifle to negotiate these rapids. Below them we halted and threw explosive Favier into the water in the hope of getting fish, and as soon as the upheaval of the water began the Kenyahs, as if by a given signal, hurried all the prahus out to the scene. With other natives than Dayaks this would have given me some anxiety, as the boats were heavily laden ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... was Mrs. Kukor's grandson, the lady was Mrs. Kukor's daughter, for "Mama!" cried the young mother; and as they met just in front of Johnnie there was an explosive outburst of talk in a strange tongue, and much of what Johnnie afterwards described to Cis as "double kissin'," that is, a kissing on both cheeks, the baby coming in for his share and weeping over ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... of upwards of seventy feet, accompanied by a loud detonation. With this the coroner and jury became convinced that whether or not the premises in Hillgate contained gunpowder, they contained elements as certainly explosive, ...
— Fires and Firemen • Anon.
... table for a most difficult surgical feat. Around him were gathered the staff of the hospital and its brilliant surgeons. Lieutenant Sage of New York had just given him the anesthetic when one of the airplanes let the bomb drop. It was a big fellow. It must have been all of 250 pounds of high explosive. ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... which gave birth to our solar system was divided into several planetary bodies instead of remaining a single mass? Were the planets struck from the sun by the chance impact of comets, as Buffon has suggested? or thrown out by explosive volcanic action, in accordance with the theory of Dr. Darwin? or do they owe their origin to some unknown law? In any event, how chanced it that all were projected in nearly the same plane ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... with pharmacists enough to know that all physicians do not avoid incompatibles in their prescriptions, and that occasionally a combination falls into the prescription clerk's hands, which, if made up as he reads it would produce a poisonous compound, or perhaps even an explosive mixture. Two heads are better than one, and if my physician ever makes a mistake of this kind I look to my pharmacist to see that it shall not reach the ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... race along the traverses. We found a machine gun and put an eleven-pound high-explosive "Stokes" under it. Three or four Germans appeared, running down communication trenches, and the bombers sent a few Millses after them. Then we came to a dug-out door—in fact, several, as Fritz, like a woodchuck, always ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... yet understand the device. The water dripped from the tank, drop by drop, to be abruptly disintegrated, made into an explosive, by being subjected to a powerful magnetic field induced in the coils by a generator in the bow of the shell. As each drop of water passed into the pipes, and was instantaneously broken up, there was a violent but controlled explosion—and the shell was kicked another hundred miles ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... offenses to honor and the like are added. These ideal values come to be regarded as more vital than material values. Hatred between groups becomes chronic and often seems to be groundless because the values concerned have thus become intangible. The chronic moods of hatred and dislike become explosive forces, ready to be excited to action whenever any difference arises. Veblen (97) says wars never occur except when questions of honor are involved, which is of course equivalent to saying that the reaction of anger is always required as an immediate cause of war. Veblen maintains ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge
... professional women, housed in a theatre building, and known as the Women's Crisis League. To their office she took her way, determined to enlist for Belgium. Mrs. Bracher was in charge of the office—a woman with a stern chin, and an explosive energy, that welcomed initiative ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... all right,' answered Ken dryly. 'A high explosive shell, my lad. Lucky that it went pretty ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... off the boxes of dynamite, and these were unscrewed, and the explosive was with great care divided into the portions as agreed upon. Two of the cases furnished just sufficient for the ammunition waggons and the two big guns, the other two for the smaller cannon and the trucks with the rifles. ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... Duchess of Snowdon, and we are not precisely congenial; besides, I had much to do in the laboratory. I'm working for that new explosive of which I told you. There's fame and fortune in it, and I'm on the way. I feel it coming"—his eyes sparkled a little. "I made it right with the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... ordered General Lozier. The plane wavered in signal to the others and swung sharply to the left. Each man knew the flaming death that was theirs if the fire of their exhaust touched that explosive mixture of hydrogen and air. The great bubble turned with them ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... trustees have still suffered to stand of that foolish royalist, Inigo Jones, in Covent Garden. Churches, play-houses, coffeehouses, all alike, are destined to be mingled, and equalized, and blended into one common rubbish,—and, well sifted, and lixiviated, to crystallize into true, democratic, explosive, insurrectionary nitre. Their Academy del Cimento, (per antiphrasin,) with Morveau and Hassenfratz at its head, have computed that the brave sans-culottes may make war on all the aristocracy of Europe for a twelvemonth out of the rubbish of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... probably far greater than suffices to resolve water into its gaseous elements—oxygen and hydrogen—and that even before this point is reached, superheated steam becomes a terrifically formidable explosive agent. Look at what it did at Ban-dai-san in Japan last year. It actually split a mountain three miles in circumference in twain, and blew one half of it right away into a valley as if it had been the mere outside wall of a house. And such was the force of the wind-shock ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... old home city, Chicago. Guided by a white-haired priest, out in the wheat we found at last a little mound with a part of a broken airplane lying thereupon. I pulled the rest of his machine upon his grave and learned that when the French boys picked him up they found that four explosive bullets had struck him while flying in the air after his victory ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... like dynamite, not only gives no warning of its explosive properties but resembles that agent of disruption in following a curiously wayward path. Curtis was piloted into an elevator by an affable negro, was conducted to 605, which, of course, lay on the sixth floor, and was plunged forthwith into the prosaic business of consigning ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... trenches grows more strenuous as the output of high explosive increases, and the daily toll of our best and bravest makes grievous reading for the elders at home, "who linger here and droop beneath the heavy burden of our years," though many of them cheerfully undertake the thankless fatigues of guarding the King's highway as specials. But letters ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... his courage. He raised himself on the cart, bent his brows, and, clenching his fist, shook it at the spectre with a ghastly look of hate and defiance. The goblin vanished with his usual tremendous and explosive laugh, and left Waldeck exhausted with this effort of ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... before, Mr. Hobart, then newly married, had every prospect of becoming prominent in his profession. He had new theories on mining and mine-explosives. He had brought to perfection a substance to destroy the explosive gas which collects ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... and demanded surrender. Of course Sir John refused, and Sir William proceeded to fix a petard to the gate, to blow it in. A military genius like Wither would have ordered his men to fire their muskets at the enemy; but all the soldiers on both sides escaped that day. The explosive was securely fastened in position, the gate was shattered, the assailants rushed at the breach, and began at once to pull down the barricade of timber erected inside by the garrison. This done, the garrison surrendered, and ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... express the numerous and clashing emotions which must necessarily agitate your venerable bosom. You surely mean more than damn. Damn is expressive and forceful, because capable of being enunciated at one explosive effort of the breath, but it is monotonous when too freely employed. To be sure, you might with some justice reply that you had qualified said adjective strongly—but the qualification was trite though blasphemous. And you limited it very nicely—but the ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... ignore the invention-date and the inventor of gunpowder, as of all old discoveries which have affected mankind at large: all we know is that the popular ideas betray great ignorance and we are led to suspect that an explosive compound, having been discovered in the earliest ages of human society, was utilised by steps so gradual that history has neglected to trace the series. According to Demmin[FN183], bullets for stuffing with some incendiary composition, in ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... before whom his English or Scotch comrade would have been dumb and gaping as an oyster; obviously brave, sincere and loyal. Perhaps something even higher. Perhaps, in essence, the very highest. The Poet-Warrior. The term struck Doggie's brain with a thud, like the explosive fusion of two elements. ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... temperature of Eisberg is a long way from red hot, but normal sealing still won't keep out hydrogen. Add to that the fact that hydrogen and methane are both colorless, odorless, and tasteless, and you have the beginnings of an explosive situation. ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... this city was called as a witness at the inquest upon the bodies of the unfortunate persons killed by the recent explosion at Bergen, N.J. The Professor having previously analyzed some of the explosive mixture, testified as follows:—"I have subjected it to chemical analysis, and find it to correspond to the formula C{6}, H{3}, O{3}, and NO{5}; it is well made nitro-glycerin; the substance freezes at ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... account of her disastrous behavior, and on this occasion she was provided with a long spar sticking out from her nose, on the end of which was one hundred pounds of powder in a copper cylinder provided with four extremely sensitive tubes of lead containing a highly explosive mixture, which would ignite upon contact with a ship's side or ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... and prosperous Springfield looked to me when I arrived there on an early spring day! How clean, orderly, leisurely, and respectable after the untidiness and explosive anarchy of New York! I made for the river, as I always do wherever a river is, and watched it flowing down in the silver-gray light and catching bits of the rain-washed blue sky. The trees had lost the brittleness and sharpness of winter's drawing and their outlines were softening into greenish ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... return within two hours with a report to obtain which would require several swift torpedo-boat destroyers and a much greater time. The question as to whether it would be practicable to bombard an enemy on land or sea with explosive bombs dropped or discharged from flying machines or airships, is one which is much discussed but hardly ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... seems to me at variance with the regulated and progressive action of nature. Developed by such a process, the thousands of bergs which throng these seas should keep the air and water in perpetual commotion— one fearful succession of explosive detonations and propagated waves. But it is only the lesser masses falling into deep waters which could justify the popular opinion. The enormous masses of the Great Glacier [of Greenland] are propelled step by step, and year by year, until, reaching water capable of supporting them, they are floated ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... this is a digression. Let us return to the "Victoria." She is now in eighty fathoms of water with her hundreds of dead. Poor fellows! theirs was a sad fate; though not more so than the fate of miners blasted or suffocated in explosive pits. We pity their dear ones—mothers, sisters, wives, and children. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of hearts are aching on their account; mourning for the dead who will never be buried under the sweet churchyard grass, though they have the whole ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... the explosion of large shots in a sand rock may be due not only to fissuring of the rock, but to temporary reversal of the pressure, the force of the explosive tending to drive the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 508, September 26, 1885 • Various
... her pretty feet, and said various explosive things under her breath, and not so far under but that they could be heard pretty well, but all this did not avail to make the saddle smaller or the new horse bigger; so at last she was obliged to mount White Eagle, and to have the mortification of seeing Peggy vault lightly on the ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... to block. So they sank the floating dock in the southern portion of the channel and moored the Koenig by bow and stern hawsers, to the shores on either side in position for sinking. Instead of flooding her they prepared an explosive bomb and timed it to go off at the fall of the tide. But the bomb failed to explode, and an ebb tide setting in, broke the stern moorings and drove her sideways on the shore. Here she lies now and the channel is still free to all our ships ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... results had not been those of an explosion. It was more as though some tremendous force had pushed outward from within. It had not been the shattering shock of high explosive, but some great thrust that had unhurriedly, but irresistibly, moved everything out ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... a glass tube, in the centre of which he had placed a ball of gun-cotton, which, as you all know, is ordinary cotton-wool, which, from having been steeped in strong acid, is converted into a substance of great explosive power. It is also soluble in alcohol and ether. One end of the glass tube was, of course, open to the external air; and at the other end of it he placed an aspirator, a contrivance for causing a current of the external air to pass through the tube. He kept this apparatus going ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... piping with a Gubernatorial second. If ever the country should be seized with another such mania pro propaganda fide, I think it would be wise to fill our bombshells with alternate copies of the Cambridge Platform and the Thirty-nine Articles, which would produce a mixture of the highest explosive power, and to wrap every one of our cannon-balls in a leaf of the New Testament, the reading of which is denied to those who sit in the darkness of Popery. Those iron evangelists would thus be able to disseminate vital religion and Gospel truth in quarters inaccessible ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... of safety precautions have been developed. Good plant housekeeping is paramount. This is essential, not only because of influence of dust and dirt on the maintenance of motors and equipment, but because of the highly explosive nature of shell dusts. The U. S. Bureau of Mines has cooperated closely with the Northern Laboratory in evaluating the explosive ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... bags had escaped, the explosive blast rising upward; and the danger being apparently at an end, the principal actors in the catastrophe roused to find officers hurrying to meet them, and men coming forward armed with pails of water to dash and ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... entanglements were miles in depth, and the great trees by the roadside were mined. This was done by cutting a groove three or four inches broad and of an equal depth and filling it with packages of explosive. I suppose the purpose was to block the road in case of retreat. Only a few of the mines ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... from this influence those solid meteors which sometimes come into collision with the earth, and afterwards grace the cabinets of the curious. These bodies may be considered microscopic planets, moving in stated orbits with planetary velocity, and bear strongly on the explosive theory of Olbers, as fully detailed ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... plains watered!—but misere! hot as—the disposition of the Cure. To-day, gentlemen, the affair becomes serious, for lo, the approach of a doubtful election, and a trifle of clerical interference, like a seed upon the balance, might well—" the sentence was appendixed by an explosive shrug. ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... think,' he broke out suddenly, in an explosive, febrile manner that startled and alarmed himself, 'that I am a stay-at-home, because I fear anything under God. God knows I am tired enough of it all; and when the time comes for a longer journey than ever you dream of, I reckon I shall find ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Symphony. The slow movement of this work opens and proceeds in the most subdued manner, and at the moment when the audience may be imagined to have comfortably settled for their nap a sudden explosive fortissimo chord is introduced. "There all the women will scream," said Haydn, with twinkling eyes. A contemporary critic read quite a different "programme" into it. "The 'Surprise,'" he wrote, ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... a mysterious explosive, of unimaginable puissance, with whose aid they set their car in motion for Mars from a point in Bergen County, N. J., just ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... labors he is largely engaged, in connection with W. J. Gordon and others, in the manufacture of the non-explosive lamp, which bids fair to be one of the most successful and extensive manufacturing enterprises ever started in ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... the public mind with respect to sassingers." I once told him of a young woman who brought in a manuscript, and said, as she placed it in my hands, "I don't know what to do with myself sometimes, I'm so filled with mammoth thoughts." A series of convulsive efforts to suppress explosive laughter followed, which ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... criticised as slow, conventional, unillumined by modern experiences. Our soldiers, it was said, were being swept out of action by an intensity and plenitude of new high-explosive shells, while we proceeded in the use of ordinary shells in ordinary quantities. We needed immensely greater numbers of shells, enormously improved shells, vast amounts of high explosive, new big guns, indeed a score of ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... a cup of coffee while it is on the simmer," he urged with hasty hospitality as if intent upon effectively bottling me up, at least for the immediate present. "She was just pouring my cup. Will you say grace before I take my first sip?" was the high explosive he further proceeded to hurl in ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... regardless of pointing to take best advantage of breaking planes. Moreover, smaller diameter and shorter holes consume less explosives per foot advanced or per ton broken. The best results in tonnage broken and explosive consumed, if measured by the foot of drill-hole necessary, can be accomplished from hand-drilling and the lighter the machine drill, assuming equal reliability, the nearer it approximates ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... sealed canisters, was placed about some workings. At the last a charge of gunpowder was fired, and the concussion exploded the dynamite. It was most successful. Those who were non-experts in high explosives expected that every pane of glass in New York would be shattered. But, in reality, the explosive did no harm outside the area intended, although sixteen acres of rock had been mined and only the supporting walls and pillars had been left intact. The whole of the rocks ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... been difficult for him to believe that it was really I who followed them, he could not very well doubt the witness of his own eyes; and so he trained their stern gun upon me with his own hands, and an instant later an explosive radium projectile whizzed perilously close above ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of his invention, a new explosive, a powder of such extraordinary force that its effects were incalculable. And he had found employment for this powder in an engine of warfare, a special cannon, hurling bombs which would assure the most overwhelming victory to the army using them. The enemy's forces would be destroyed ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... dynamite all the block beyond Van Ness Avenue. It could never jump across a strip so broad.' 'But they've forbidden any more dynamiting,' said Anderson. 'Never mind; I'd take the chance myself if we could get any explosive,' replied Lane. 'Well, there's a launch full of dynamite from Contra Costa County lying right now at Meigs's Wharf,' said Anderson. Just then Mr. and Mrs. Tom Magee arrived, driving an automobile on the wheel rims. Lane despatched them to Meigs's Wharf for ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... basement of the upper palace to the palace in the internal world. By means of machines worked by electricity we have facilities for excavating earth; and where rocks or hard substances intervene we can remove large masses by the application of explosive electricities. These paths are therefore excavated ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... has become Mayor of Cloisterham. Without mayors, and many of them, it cannot be disputed that the whole framework of society—Mr. Sapsea is confident that he invented that forcible figure—would fall to pieces. Mayors have been knighted for 'going up' with addresses: explosive machines intrepidly discharging shot and shell into the English Grammar. Mr. Sapsea may 'go up' with an address. Rise, Sir Thomas Sapsea! Of such is ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... whoop is now present. The cough is spasmodic. The child has distinct paroxysms of coughing which begin with an inspiration (in-breathing) followed by several expulsive, explosive coughs, after which there is a deep, long-drawn inspiration which is characterized by a loud crowing called the "whoop." This paroxysm may be followed by a number of similar ones. When the paroxysm is coming on the face ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... years old when my uncle presented me with a flint-lock gun. The possession of the "mysterious iron," and the explosive dirt, or "pulverized coal," as it is called, filled me with new thoughts. All the war-songs that I had ever heard from childhood came back to me with their heroes. It seemed as if I were an entirely new being—the ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... John's fears arise, though he would find it hard to give good reasons for them, since they rest only upon the words that have been let fall by the dapper little French agent who sits beside him on the box, and holds on for dear life, uttering numerous exclamations, in his explosive way, ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... camped, but as I was within 15 miles of my destination, I determined to push on. My drivers and I cut down saplings, and made a corduroy, across which we sledged the twelve tons of loading. This was rather risky, as we had a quantity of dynamite on, the explosive caps of which were inserted in 50lb. bags of flour. During our work, which took three days to complete, the other teamsters would frequently ride past and say, "That's right, boys, make a good road for us," but did ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... at the droll perplexity he read in hers, George laughed outright. An explosive frank boyish laugh. He rose with a courteous gesture. "I'm afraid it's a case of 'if the mountain won't come to Mahomet,'" he began, with gay sententiousness. ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... indicated chiefly a resolve to break away from restraints that we suspected were keeping us off the instructive knife-edges of life. Hatherleigh was a good Englishman of the premature type with a red face, a lot of hair, a deep voice and an explosive plunging manner, and it was he who said one evening—Heaven knows how we got to it—"Look here, you know, it's all Rot, this Shutting Up about Women. We OUGHT to talk about them. What are we going to do about them? It's got to come. We're all festering inside about it. Let's out ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... days—since the great Cod-Liver Oil War has been raging. The first skirmish occurred on Tuesday, and I unfortunately missed it, having accompanied four of my children on a shopping trip to the village. I returned to find the asylum teeming with hysterics. Our explosive doctor had paid us ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... of this rejuvenation was a complete change in his habits. With an extraordinary frankness, not at all in the perfumed manner of that eternal philanderer, Pierre Loti, this one-time sailor before the mast, this explosive, dissipated, hard-living Paul Gauguin became as a child, simulating as well as could an artificial civilised Parisian with sick nerves the childlike attitude toward nature that he observed in his companions, the gentle Tahitians. He married a Maori, a trial marriage, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... the latter," said Thorndyke, "it is probable that he used a compressed-air attachment, not only to diminish the noise, but also to prevent any traces of the explosive from being left on the dagger. As to the former, I think I can give you the murderer's name; but we had better take the evidence in order. You may remember," he continued, "that when Dr. Jervis stood as if winding the clock, I chalked ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... Hall, adding: "While arguing or appealing to my country's arbiters I felt I was addressing only a minority of the distinguished judges, while the thoughts of the others were far away. And when the interpreter was rendering, quickly, mechanically, and summarily, my ideas without any of the explosive passion that shot them from my heart, I felt discouraged. But suddenly it dawned on me that no judgment would be uttered on the strength of anything that I had said or left unsaid. I remembered that everything would be referred to ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... oxide as a fuel for a fuel air explosive weapon. The oxide may be used either as a pure liquid or gelled with a gelling agent such as silicon dioxide, ...
— U.S. Patent 4,293,314: Gelled Fuel-Air Explosive - October 6, 1981. • Bertram O. Stull
... more heartily. "Explosive bullets! —Good Lord, it was all we could do to get percussion caps. Do you know how we got percussion caps, seh? Three of our officers—dare-devils, seh —floated down the Mississippi on logs. One fellow made his way back with two hundred thousand. He's the pride of our Vicksburg army. Not ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Bill's words on Elizabeth was revolutionary. They crashed through her dislike, scattering it like an explosive shell. She had resented this golden young man's presence at the farm. She had thought him in the way. She had objected to his becoming aware that she did such prosaic tasks as cooking and washing-up. But now her whole attitude toward him was changed. She reflected ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... proper enough that the masses of explosive ammunition stored up in detective stories and the replete and solid sweet-stuff shops which are called sentimental novelettes should be popular with the ordinary customer. It is not difficult to realize that all of us, ignorant or cultivated, are primarily interested ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... against the British? To a certain extent, I presume you never heard tell of the Laughton-Zigler automatic two-inch field-gun, with self-feeding hopper, single oil-cylinder recoil, and ballbearing gear throughout? Or Laughtite, the new explosive? Absolutely uniform in effect, and one-ninth the bulk of any present effete charge—flake, cannonite, cordite, troisdorf, cellulose, cocoa, cord, or prism—I don't care what it is. Laughtite's immense; so's the Zigler automatic. It's me. It's fifteen years of me. You are not a gun-sharp? ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... much difficulty about quarters outside the trenches, for all the farmhouses anywhere within two miles of the enemy were shelled pretty regularly as regards quantity of explosive material devoted to them—though, as regards dates, they varied considerably. Battalion headquarters had to be dumped down in farms half shot to pieces, with all windows broken and howling icy draughts tearing through the shell-holed walls. ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... the president, "though it would, of course, suit for that. Nihil humunum alienum, eh?" and he broke into a loud, explosive laugh, while his spectacles irradiated that peculiar form of glee derived from a Latin quotation by those able to enjoy it. Dr. Boyster, walking on the other side of Mr. Tomlinson, joined in the laugh in ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... dramatic and incalculable authority. Like a blast of air that drives the furnace to new heat and turns the metal white, his mind now suddenly saw clear and sure. The effect of the incident was too explosive, however, for him to find expression. Action he found in a measure, but no words. He took Miriam passionately into his arms as they stood there in the gathering dusk upon the staircase of that haunted and terrible building, and Miriam it was who found the ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... flowers and shaded candles, she told the story of how she had written the verses in the infirmary. On her witty tongue the stubby pencil, the dull knife, and the teasing midget of an impudent freshman made a delightfully humorous tale. Even the explosive "Lila!" and its accompanying side glance of terrified joy in the daring developed into a picture that sent the seniors into tempests of laughter. Somehow she did not care to mention the letter which Ellen had dropped out of ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... explosive speech. Those beasts had got hold of Caesar. The Caterpillar stared; he had never heard John let himself ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... of rejoicing which penetrated even his single-tracked, murder-obsessed brain. He turned, purple-face and explosive, to see what the obscene ...
— Attention Saint Patrick • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... will be gathered as soon as they are ripe. One of the blessings of having an open garden is, that I do not have to watch my fruit: a dozen youngsters do that, and let it waste no time after it matures. I wish it were possible to grow a variety of grape like the explosive bullets, that should explode in the stomach: the vine would make such a nice border for the garden,—a masked battery of grape. The pears, too, are getting russet and heavy; and here and there amid the shining leaves one gleams as ruddy as the cheek of the Nutbrown Maid. The ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... conception, will be none the less very deeply disturbed. We shall have to abandon the idea so instinctively dear to us that matter is the most stable thing in the universe, and to admit, on the contrary, that all bodies whatever are a kind of explosive decomposing with extreme slowness. There is in this, whatever may have been said, nothing contrary to any of the principles on which the science of energetics rests; but an hypothesis of this nature carries ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare
... even a very extensive slave insurrection, is possible. The indispensable concert of action cannot be attained. The slaves have no means of rapid communication; nor can incendiary freemen, black or white, supply it. The explosive materials are everywhere in parcels; but there neither are, nor can be supplied, the indispensable ...
— Abraham Lincoln • George Haven Putnam
... shot took him in the shoulder. He gave an exhibition of a high and lofty somersault. Then two more started up abreast. The first Ken hit over the eye with a very small potato, which popped like an explosive bullet and flew into bits. As far as effect was concerned a Martini could not have caused a more beautiful fall. Ken landed on the second fellow in the pit of the stomach with a very large potato. There was a sound as of a suddenly struck ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... will note was the second explosive point in our conversation. I was too much concerned at the moment to take in all his words implied or to appreciate the fine dexterity with which a difficult situation was being handled. These decisive sentences were cracked off quick, sharp, emphatic, like the snapping of ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... miles away are formed by the dashing and exploding of heavy masses mixed with air upon two projecting ledges on the face of the cliff, the one on which we are standing and another about 200 feet above it. The torrent of massive comets is continuous at time of high water, while the explosive, booming notes are wildly intermittent, because, unless influenced by the wind, most of the heavier masses shoot out from the face of the precipice, and pass the ledges upon which at other times they are exploded. Occasionally the whole ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... triangle, so that the end of the case was 1 in. below the surface of the liquid. On beginning the experiment the material in the bath was heated to just above the melting point, the thermometer was inserted in it, and a minute quantity of the explosive was placed in the bottom of the cartridge case. The temperature marked by the thermometer was noted as the initial temperature, the cartridge case containing the explosive was inserted in the bath, and the temperature quickly raised until the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... ourselves, I do not think that any of us would long be able to stand by that plea, 'I am worthy.' Have you ever been on a tour of discovery, like what they go through at the Houses of Parliament on the first day of each session, down into the cellars to see what stores of explosive material, and what villains to fire it, may be lurking there? If you have once seen yourself as you are, and take into account, not only actions but base tendencies, foul, evil thoughts, imagined sins of the flesh, meannesses and basenesses that never have come to the surface, but which you know ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... few more inquiries concerning the patient, she let the doctor take his leave. Then she stood looking at the outside of Lord Dymchurch's letter, and wondering what might be its contents. Beyond a doubt, they were of an explosive nature. Whatever his excuse, Lord Dymchurch's abrupt departure would enrage Lady Ogram. Had he been refused by May? Or had something come to pass which made it impossible for him to offer marriage something connected with Lashmar's early visit this morning? That he had intended a ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... time in digging more of these shallow pits, that reminded one rather gruesomely of graves, and had barely scraped them deep enough to roll into before a hail of small high-explosive shell fell all ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... are mental creatures, and with the explosive and mechanistic aid of ideas we can pervert the whole psyche. Only, however, in a destructive degree, not ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... small explosive delights for the children—then, as the day waned, a dinner eaten outdoors, picnic-fashion on the grass, under the spreading trees, beneath the ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... Societe Grand Guignol de Cinema's busy day. On the beach at Petiteville cameras were rattling away like machine guns, orders from the producer were hissing through the air with the vicious hum of explosive bullets, and weary supers were marching and counter-marching in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920 • Various
... brusque, explosive fashion, "I like Schuyler, and I care not who knows it! Dammy! I was cool enough with him and his lady when they arrived, but he played Valentine to my Orson till I gave up; yes, I did, George, I capitulated. Says he, 'Sir Lupus, if a painful misunderstanding has ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers |
