"Explosive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... other. His office was far down-town and far up in the air. Its windows gave an amplitudinous vision of the Harbor which Mr. Ernest Poole has made his own, but which was now a vestibule to the hell of the European war. All the adjoining land was choked far backward with a vast blockade of explosive freight-trains waiting to be unloaded into the unheard-of multitude of munition-ships waiting to run the gantlet ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... once look round as he went on his explosive way to the gulch, but Roy Beaudry crouched lower behind the cactus until the man had disappeared. Then he crawled back to the grove, slipped through it, and crept to the ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... recently admitted by myself, 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 ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... here ran the road, beyond a high cedar hedge. While he was speaking, the irregular explosive reports of a motor had sounded down the valley, unmistakable to those familiar with the testing of the stripped cars, and rapidly approaching. Now, as Emily would have answered, the roar suddenly changed in character, an appalling series of explosions mingled ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... as his substitute. It was certainly but a small force, and most raggedly equipped, that he led; but, thrown as it was into the territories of King Campbell, and with a hundred miles of Highland glens before it, all rife and explosive with hatred to the name of Campbell, it might work havoc enough. So the Parliament in Edinburgh thought. On the 16th of July, or four days after the first rumour of the invasion, the Marquis of Argyle ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... the uproar that was about us, came the wild joy of the rush past a station. It was something in the nature of a triumphal procession conducted at thrilling speed. Perhaps there was a curve of infinite grace, a sudden hollow explosive effect made by the passing of a signal-box that was close to the track, and then the deadly lunge to shave the edge of a long platform. There were always a number of people standing afar, with their eyes riveted upon this projectile, and to be on the engine was to feel their interest and ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... faults, but see very clearly those of others. The mistakes they make in their own families open their eyes to those of others, and then they are often very impatient. I know one gentleman who has excellent knowledge of the proper training of the young, but as a parent he is a total failure. He is so explosive and lacking in patience and firmness, perhaps also in love, that his knowledge has not helped him. It is not what we know, but what we ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... in her amazed him. It was as if he had suddenly touched fire to an explosive. There had been the flare, but no violence. She had not raised her voice, yet he heard in it the tremble of an emotion that was consuming her. He had seen the flame of it in her face and eyes. Something he had said, or had done, had tremendously upset her, changing in an instant ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... it," amplified Grace. "I can't, so I can't. Thank you, Winnie and Norma, for the lovely invitation, and please let me put it down to my credit account? I would like a refund," and she laughed her irresistible explosive outburst, in which the whole party joined, whether willingly or ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... laughed again, still 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 ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... have as many men as available raise the track on one side until the ties stand on end and turn the section of track so that it will fall down the embankment; or, cut out rails by a charge of dynamite or gun cotton placed against the web and covered up with mud or damp clay. Eight to twelve ounces of explosive is sufficient. Or blow in the sides of deep cuts or blow down embankments. Bridges, culverts, tunnels, etc., are never destroyed except on a ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... customary also for the airships to carry, in addition to explosive and incendiary bombs, others which on being dropped throw out a light and thereby help to indicate to the vessel above the object which it is desired to aim at. Probably some of the bombs which were thrown in Norfolk were of this character. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... last decade our Nation has withstood a series of economic shocks unprecedented in peacetime. The most dramatic of these has been the explosive increases of OPEC oil prices. But we have also faced world commodity shortages, natural disasters, agricultural shortages and major challenges to world peace and security. Our ability to deal with these shocks has been impaired because of a decrease in the growth ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Jimmy Carter • Jimmy Carter
... articulate each separate sound correctly, but connect the consonants, especially the explosive sounds, with the succeeding vowels badly, with effort as if an obstacle were to be overcome. The paths i and l are affected, and hence M is not properly excited. S, too, comes under consideration in the ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... Our road here was blasted through some fiercely solid and hostile rock. One boulder alone that stood in the way weighed (it was estimated by the engineers) from 800 to 1000 tons. Fifty cases of highly explosive powder were suitably placed all around it. Excursion steamers took hundreds of people from all parts of the Lake to see the explosion, and at the proper moment, while everybody held his breath, the fuses were fired, the blasts took effect, the rock flew down to the level beneath, shattered into ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... he left home the previous morning, was not anywhere in sight. His cheek was scratched, and every button that his vest had ever known had taken wings unto itself and flown, Bessie knew not whither. And yet, tired out as he was, dishevelled as he was, Thaddeus was not grumpy, but inclined rather to explosive laughter as ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... and of sacred history was pursued imports later ideas into an earlier time. First-rate importance on the whole cannot be claimed for the Nebiim, but occasionally there arose amongst them a man in whom the spirit which was cultivated within their circles may be said to have risen to the explosive pitch. Historical influence was exercised at no time save by these individuals, who rose above their order and even placed themselves in opposition to it, but always at the same time had their base of operations within it. The prototype of this class of exceptional prophets, whom ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... the British tanks as they waddled across the rough ground. One, suddenly, blew into a million pieces. An explosive had struck a vital spot. For the most part, however, the shells fell from the armored sides like drops of water from ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes
... opinion was ready to run wild upon the subject. The Doctor, excited, horrified, interested, read the account. The two explosions had taken place almost simultaneously, and had evidently been caused by the same kind of infernal machine, whether containing dynamite or some other explosive was not quite certain. As for the police-agent who had been killed, it was known that he had been threatened by some secret society, supposed to have lurking-places in various parts of London, he having a year ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... fire! With what speed he bolts the door and puts out the downstairs lights, lest callers catch him in the business! How briskly does he mount the stairs with fingers already on the buttons! Then with what scattering of garments he makes him ready, as though his explosive speed had blown him all to pieces and lodged ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... you," he replied. "It is something much more subtle than an explosive bullet—which would really be a rather crude appliance—admirably thought out and thoroughly well executed. We have to deal with a ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... rousing again, succeeded in amusing himself nearly half the night long; and it was not until near midnight that he thought fit, after stirring up the fire, and adding a fresh log to it, to stretch himself beside one of the juniors, and grumble himself to sleep. A few explosive and convulsive snorts, such as might have done honour to the nostrils of a war-horse, marked the gradations by which he sank to repose; then came the deep, long-drawn breath of mental annihilation, such as distinguished ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... States, I do not think a general or 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 ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... 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 servants; so don't ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... game; and the everlasting snow peaks overtopping all, as they lose themselves in the fairest of summer skies. Small boats ply to and fro between Douglas Island and Juneau, a mile or more up the inlet on the opposite shore. These ferries are paddled leisurely, and only the explosive element at Douglas Island gives token of the activity that prevails at ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... you may fire!" replied Jim. I pressed the gun button. The crash of the gun was followed by another report from outside as the radite shell burst against the Mercurian flyer. The deadly explosive did its work, and the shattered remains of the wreck fell, to be engulfed in the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... height of a man it was piled with explosive shells for field guns, cased in straw covers like wine bottles, and stacked in neat rows, with their noses all pointing one way. Our guide led us along an aisle of these deadly things, beckoned us through another ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... intolerable state of affairs that soldiers of the Queen should be knocked about by her civil servants—wrote letters to other Members of Parliament, to Government secretaries, to newspapers. Then the excitement that had been smoldering burst forth with explosive force, shaking the village, the county, ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... fallen—at the attempt upon Targai, it is true—but the victim of an accident; losing his life, not at the hands of the savage enemy, but through the unfortunate blunder of a comrade. Myra never very clearly grasped the details:—a wall to be undermined; his own patent and fearful explosive; the grim enthusiasm with which he insisted upon placing it himself, arranging to have it fired by his patent electrical plan. Then the mistaking of a signal; the fatal pressing of a button five minutes too soon; an electric flash in the mine, a terrific explosion, ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... he stepped quietly, his room where he had collected his various implements and chemicals. First of all he set out, on the floor, a two-quart copper tea-kettle; and beside this, choosing carefully, he ranged the necessary ingredients for a "making" of his secret explosive. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... exclaimed, "black gunpowder. Our absintheur was a bomb- maker, an expert perhaps. Let me see. I imagine he was making an explosive bomb, ingeniously contrived of five glass tubes. The centre one, I venture, contained sulphuric acid and chlorate of potash separated by a close-packed wad of cotton wool. Then the two tubes on each side probably contained the powder, and ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... me—I daon't want ter myke no food for pahder. Wot oh!—they said, time o' the war—ye're fightin' for yer children's 'eritage. Well; wot's the 'eritage like, now we've got it? Empty as a shell before yer put the 'igh explosive in. Wot's it like? [Warming to his theme] Like a prophecy in the pypers—not ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Algerian removed the coffee cups. When we were alone again, I reiterated my explanation. At every stage of my knowledge I was held in the bond of secrecy. Lackaday's sensitive soul dreaded, more than all the concentrated high-explosive bombardment of the whole of the late German Army, the possibility of Lady Auriol knowing him as the ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... 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 the glorious ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... and bisulphide of carbon. Hot water will get cold before it can reach the smaller roots, however efficient it may be showered on leaves. Bisulphide of carbon is very volatile, inflammable, and sometimes explosive, and must be handled with great care. It permeates the soil, and if in sufficient quantity may be effective in destroying the phylloxera; but its cost and dangerous character prevent it from ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... of which depends upon the strength of the acid, the duration of treatment, and one or two other factors. The nitrocelluloses are all highly inflammable bodies, the more highly nitrated burning with explosive force. They are produced commercially and are known as "gun cotton" or "pyroxyline". The most highly nitrated body forms the basis of the explosive variety; the least highly nitrated forms that of the soluble gun cotton used for making collodion ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... sign in town, the grocer had a large brass plate on his door, with Appleditch engraved upon it in capitals: it saved them always looking at the numbers. The boy ran on before, and assailed this door with a succession of explosive knocks. ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... most common sources of accident in mining operations is due either to carelessness or to the use of defective material in blasting. A shot misses, generally for one of two reasons; either the explosive, the cap, or the fuse (most often the latter), is inferior or defective; or the charging is incompletely performed. Sometimes the fuse is not placed properly in the detonator, or the detonator is ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... foundations,' said Lane. 'It could be stopped right here if some one would 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 dynamite. He ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... hissed and spat for a moment, then bang went the cannon, and a great cloud of smoke rolled upward, while the rousing cheers came echoing back from the surrounding forests. The helper, with the powder-horn, would spring to the anvil and pour the black explosive into the hole, while another stood ready with plug and hammer. The delicious scent of burned gunpowder filled the air, and was inhaled by all the youngsters with satisfaction, for now they realized what real war was. Thus the salutes ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... left Glen Ellen, had invented a most powerful explosive—"expedite" he called it. This was the weapon the balloons used. They were only hot-air balloons, clumsily and hastily made, but they did the work. I saw it all from the top of an office building. The first balloon missed the fortresses completely and ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... accompanied in its flight by a great volume of sizzling, sputtering, glittering, adjectival sparks that—filling the air to no purpose whatever—winked out as they were born; the climax of the pyrotechnical display being reached in the explosive pop of another "oh" which released a brilliant shower of variegated sighs and moans and ecstatic looks and inarticulate exclamations—ending, of course, in ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... laughed in an explosive breath of relief. The inflection of the laugh made Pete go red and look challengingly from face to face, with the result that all ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... 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
... slightly inclined, in a flame. Explain the explosion which follows. If 3/4 was air, what part was O? What use did the N serve? Note any danger in exploding H mixed with pure O. What proportions of O and H by volume would be most dangerously explosive? What proportion by weight? ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... Blackton began. "We put the powder and dynamite down there, and pack it over solid with rock and cement. If we didn't leave this big air-chamber above it there would be only one explosion, and probably two thirds of the explosive would not fire, and would be lost. This chamber corrects that. You heard a dozen explosions last night, and you'll hear a dozen this afternoon, and the biggest explosion of all is usually the fourth or fifth. A 'coyote' isn't like an ordinary blast or shot. It's a mighty expensive thing, and ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... life is proverbial among foreigners, we may be thankful that India-rubber bags of explosive gases are not carried by ignorant boys through our streets, as in Newcastle, England. The practice resulted by a singular chain of mishaps in a violent explosion. The first error was in using a bag for conveying an explosive gas; the second in using a leaky bag; the third ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... that we had a more beautiful word than "art" for so beautiful a thing; it is in itself a snappish explosive word, like the cry of an angry animal; and it has, too, to bear the sad burden of its own misuse by affected people. Moreover, it stands for so many things, that one is never quite sure what the people who use ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in one short harvest. That sounds as though I were getting to be a real farmer's wife with a vast knowledge of soils, doesn't it? At any rate my husband, out of his vast knowledge of me, says I have the swamp-cedar trick of flaring up into sudden and explosive attractiveness. Then, he says, I shower sparks. As I've already told him, I'm a wild woman, and will be hard to tame, for as Victor Hugo somewhere says, we ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... hunting instead of his building, which has lasted longer, and which he probably loved much more. It is easy to catalogue the questions he disputed with Anselm—leaving out the question Anselm cared most about, and which he asked with explosive simplicity, as, "Why was God a man?" All this is as simple as saying that a king died of eating lampreys, from which, however, there is little to learn nowadays, unless it be that when a modern monarch perishes of gluttony the newspapers seldom say so. But if we ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... thought in seventeenth-century England is to discuss the main currents in embryological thought at a time when those currents were both numerous and shifting. Like every other period, the seventeenth century was one of transition. It was an era of explosive growth in scientific ideas and techniques, suffused with a creative urge engendered by new philosophical insights and the excitement of discovery. During the seventeenth century, the ideas relating to the generation and development of organisms were quite diverse, ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... offered and accepted to grace the harem of his brother; a mere prisoner of state, watched by the baleful eye of jealousy, and traduced by the venal tongues of courtiers; dwelling in a torment of uncertainty as to the fate to which his brother's explosive temper and irresponsible power might devote him, hoping for no repose or safety but in his funeral-urn,—he began to grow hard and defiant, and that which, in the native freedom of his soul, should have been his noble steadfastness degenerated into ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... have expelled King Leo. He does not choose the "darkest, gloomiest forests," but prefers the thin woods, where he finds wild fruits for himself and family. His tremendous roar does not shake the jungle: it is a hollow apish cry, a loudish huhh! huhh! huhh! explosive like the puff of a steam-engine, which, in rage becomes a sharp and snappish bark — any hunter can imitate it. Doubtless, in some exceptional cases, when an aged mixture of Lablache and Dan Lambert delivers his voce di petto, the voice may be heard for some distance in the still ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... thing, but in such matters most men never learn wisdom from experience. A man of John Niel's age might have guessed that it is dangerous work playing with explosives, and that the quietest, most harmless-looking substances are sometimes the most explosive. He might have known that to set to work to cultivate the society of a woman with such tell-tale eyes as Jess's was to run the risk of catching the fire from them himself, to say nothing of setting her alight: he might ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... 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
... It has become a sensation. Every Northern Congressman has read it. A half million copies have been printed and the presses can't keep up with the demands. This book is storing powder in the souls of the masses who don't know how to think, because they've never been trained to think. This explosive emotion is the preparation for fanaticism. We only wait the coming of the fanatic—the madman who may lift a torch and hurl it into this magazine. The South is asleep. And when we don't sleep, we dance. There's ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... published depth of the canal, which was entirely insufficient to conceal so large an object. The second correspondent wrote calling attention to the bag which appeared to be the sole luggage which the travellers had brought with them, and suggesting that some novel explosive of immense and pulverizing power might have been concealed in it. The obvious absurdity, however, of supposing that the whole train might be blown to dust while the metals remained uninjured reduced any such explanation to ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the German government. By the "business at hand" they meant a new explosive and slow-burning powder that was to be used in the new type of fourteen-inch turret guns being made in Glasgow. Some of that explosive was in my possession. The fact that it was not discovered in my effects, nor was anything else incriminating found on me is because ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... 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 any moment. I am feeling fine, in my element, for I have ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... the opera houses of Munich, Berlin, Schwerin, Hanover, and London, and had made the Italian tour with Angelo Neumann's Wagner company which Seidl conducted in 1882. Earlier in life he had been an artillery officer in the German army, which fact coupled with his explosive manner of singing prompted one of Dr. von Blow's witticisms. The doctor had been conductor of the opera in Hanover when Schott was there and had conceived a violent dislike for him. Some years after the latter's New York season, conversing socially ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... discovered that this habit caused a crowd of jeering idlers to collect in front of the house, he flew into a rage, and exchanged his lodgings for others situated in a more retired spot, rather than discontinue the practice. His explosive temper has furnished many amusing anecdotes. One day his cook, who, in consideration of her master's incurable unpunctuality, must be regarded as an aggrieved personage, served up some eggs which were not to his taste, and he emphasised his displeasure by throwing the entire batch ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... Captain Moore, to hang on to the bridge. Lieut. Spitler came on with a machine gun and the position was consolidated and held in spite of heavy shelling by the Bolo armored trains and his desperate raids at night and in the morning, for the purpose of destroying the bridge. His high explosive tore up the track but did no damage to the bridge. His infantry recoiled from the Lewis gun and machine gun fire of the Americans that covered ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... hundred yards away when the canopy of the other vehicle popped open and a sheet of automatic weapons fire raked the patrol car. Only the low angle of the sedan and the nearness of the bulky patrol car saved the troopers. Explosive bullets smashed into the patrol car canopy and sent shards of plastiglass showering ...
— Code Three • Rick Raphael
... broken from time to time by fierce irregular wars called strikes. He had never known anything of a real self-governing commonwealth, and such progress as he and his kind had made was never the result of their citizenship, of their powers as voters, but grew out of the explosive and ragged upheavals, of their own half-organized societies ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... to allow emotion to get the better of me, Valeria. I don't want to run rank like some overgrown weed, and so I dread the accumulation of emotion—emotion that has never had a good explosive utterance. One has to be so discreet in these Italian gardens; no one shouts or ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... 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
... daintily out of the gasolene and began scraping her slippers, side and bottom, on the running-board of the automobile. The jelly-bean contained himself no longer. He bent double with explosive laughter and after a second she ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... squirming and rubbing against the newcomer's legs, opened his mouth and barked. It was an explosive bark, brief ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... 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 ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... different wreaths and depths of smoke, and the explosive look of the flash on the right, are, however, very wonderful and peculiarly Turneresque; the sky is also beautiful in form, and the foreground, in which we find his old regard for washerwomen has not quite deserted ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... Doctor insisted on giving up his place to her and tucking her warmly under the buffalo robe, while he took the middle seat and acted as moderator between the boys, who were in a wild state of hilarity. Spring, with explosive barks, raced first on this and then on that side of the sleigh as it flew swiftly over the smooth ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... and a number of other similar cases, I should like to suggest, from a descriptive point of view, that the epileptiform seizure is of the nature of an orgasm. An orgasm is a sudden, explosive, discharge of nervous energy, raised to the breaking point of nervous tension. I should like to generalize the idea of orgasm. Ordinarily, of course, it is confined to the sexual sphere. In the last case I reported it seems to me fairly clear that the explosive actions, convulsive-like ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... a manifesto directed against those of their countrymen who were working with Japan, under the expressive title of "explosive thunder," which breathed fury and vengeance. Groups of Koreans in the provinces issued other statements which, if not quite so picturesque, were quite forcible enough. Here ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... to him, at about the time that he fell in love with Aladdin's mother, that a certain worthless biproduct of something would, if combined with something else and steeped in water, generate a certain gas, which, though desperately explosive, would burn with a flame as white as day. Over the perfection of this invention, with a brief honeymoon for vacation, he had spent fifteen years, a small fortune,—till he had nothing left,—the most of his health, and indeed everything but his conviction that it was a beautiful invention ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... 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, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... its salamanders, the water its undines; to the day belonged its apparitions, to the night its fairies. The foul air of stagnant places assumed the visible form of daemons of abominable aspect; the explosive gases of mines took on the shape of pale-faced, malicious dwarfs, with leathery ears hanging down to their shoulders, and garments of grey cloth. Philosophical conceptions can never be disentangled from social ideas; the thoughts ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... a crash, and a shriek from Scissors, who had tripped, and plunged headlong. Paul saw a blaze of light; and he knew that the lamp had broken, depositing its dangerous fluid all around. Kerosene in these days is not the same deadly explosive it used to be in other times; still, it will catch fire under certain conditions; and he saw that unless prompt measures were taken the church ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... first place he had offered the fulgurator to France, and made known the nature of it to the commission appointed to pass upon his proposition. The fulgurator was a sort of auto-propulsive engine, of peculiar construction, charged with an explosive composed of new substances and which only produced its effect under the action of a deflagrator that was ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... which has its seat in the British Islands. Here is a people,—still youthful as we count age in our European world, for even the Celts had preceded them by nearly a thousand years,—which has successfully displayed its explosive or methodical force in the most diverse fields, military, religious, economic. From henceforth it is invited, by an allied army of terrified journalists, to expend these stupendous and irresistible energies on ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... very little of the infantry. It was hot and the mirage blurred everything. Our artillery was clearly very superior to theirs, both in quantity (quite five to one it seemed) and in the possession of high explosive shell, of which the enemy had none: but we were cruelly handicapped (a) by the fact that their men and guns were entrenched and ours exposed; and (b) by the mirage, which made the location of their trenches and ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... the Third Army were pouring in a black mass along the road, screened at the side and overhead by rushmats from the observation of the enemy. Voices and hammering under the long wooden bridge across the Isonzo at Rubbia were signs that the Italian engineers were putting in position charges of explosive to blow it up when as much material as possible had been brought over. Some of our batteries had already been withdrawn to rearward positions not far from group headquarters and were firing as fast as the guns could be reloaded. ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... especially in cotton, which is nothing but the skin of the seeds of the cotton plant. Now cotton, combined with cold nitric acid, is transformed into a substance eminently insoluble, eminently combustible, eminently explosive. Some years ago, in 1832, a French chemist, Braconnot, discovered this substance, which he called xyloidine. In 1838, another Frenchman, Pelouze, studied its different properties; and lastly, in 1846, Schonbein, professor ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... the vapour there existing, or a vacuum, and thus occasion parts of the earth's crust or shell to be forced down by the pressure of the incumbent atmosphere. Afterwards the water being suddenly raised into steam produces all the explosive effects of earthquakes. And by new accessions of water during the intervals of the explosions the repetition of the shocks is caused. These circumstances were hourly illustrated by the fountains of boiling water in Iceland, in which the surface of the water ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... Admiral Thatcher, commanding United States squadron in Mobile Bay, and had come to meet me. A bountiful luncheon was spread, of which we partook, with joyous poppings of champagne corks for accompaniment, the first agreeable explosive sounds I had heard for years. The air of "Hail Columbia," which the band in attendance struck up, was instantly changed by Canby's order to that of "Dixie"; but I insisted on the first, and expressed a hope that Columbia would ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... she dragged several things before she found what she sought. The sixth member noticed several packets labelled MAGIC, which the Stranger handled very carefully. "Frightfully explosive," she said. ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... voice hissed across the loud explosive tones. "No need to tell your business to the town. I'll bet Pros ain't thought about no options yit. He may need friends to he'p him out on such matters; and here's you and me, Buck—God knows he couldn't have ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... During the absence of the doctor and his assistant, some careless mistake had no doubt been made. It is not known how or why a communication had been established between the reservoir which contained the oxygen and that which enclosed the hydrogen. An explosive mixture had resulted from the union of these two gases, to which ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... Nova: The explosive stage into which planets may pass. According to the finest scientific thinking, a planet will either ...
— Mars Confidential • Jack Lait
... Mr. McCall had been in a state of suppressed revolution. He had smouldered, but had not dared to blaze. But this startling upheaval of his fellow-sufferer, Washy, had acted upon him like a high explosive. There was a strange gleam in his eye, a gleam of determination. ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... succession of a number of little cartridges. Yet you must be quite close to the bird in order to hear the queer canticle distinctly, and when you do hear it you will wonder why nature ever put such a song into a bird's larynx. The Harris sparrow also utters an explosive alarm-call, which expresses not a little ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... the safe they tried to open, Dad," begged Bud, when he and his cousins had ridden over to pay a week-end visit to the home ranch. "Did they try to drill it for an explosive?" ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... right," he shouted, as they neared the bank above the danger spot. He was a few yards in advance of Jack's father and "Old Mack." Then suddenly he stood stock still, gave vent to a long, explosive whistle, and yelled, "Well, I'll be gin-busted! Look a' there, boys!" And following his astounded gaze, they saw, on the brink of the river, an old grey horse, with down-hanging head, his back to the gale, and about his neck a boy's coat, from the knotted sleeves of ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... flattery, to importunity, to the ordinary variety of masculine solicitation; to the revelation of genuine feeling, too, in its various modes of expression—sentimental, explosive, ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers
... GUN-COTTON. An explosive compound, having some advantages over gunpowder, but so irregular hitherto in its action that it is at present used only for mining purposes. It consists of ordinary cotton treated with nitric and sulphuric acid and water, and has been named ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... 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 ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... the moulding, in space, of this plastic intermediary projected beyond the limits of her bodily organism. Certain it is that such a projection does at times take place, and it seems rational to suppose that "raps" may be due to the explosive expulsion of this neural energy after it has reached a certain "tension." One quite striking incident which has been narrated to me by a physician of my acquaintance tends rather to confirm this view. It is that, when ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... months before had secured a fame more lasting than enviable by his attacks on Darwin and the evolutionary theory. His first onslaught was made in a charge to his clergy. This he followed up with an article in the Quarterly Review, very explosive in its rhetoric, much like that which he had devoted in the same periodical to Darwin. The bishop declared that the work tended "toward infidelity, if not to atheism"; that the writers had been "guilty of criminal levity"; that, with the exception ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... from their rent and jagged appearance, discovered that, like the first long passage down which we had passed through the cliff before we reached the quivering spur, it had, to all appearance, been torn in the bowels of the rock by the terrific force of some explosive gas. At length this cave ended in a third passage, through which gleamed a faint glow ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... above must be added the aspirate {h} and the affricatae (i.e. an explosive a homorganic spirant) {z} (i.e. {ts}) ...
— A Middle High German Primer - Third Edition • Joseph Wright
... still insensible, on his bed in his old room, where we first met him—his professor's study. His daring attempt to grasp ideal beauty has ended, as it often does end, and as it ended in Goethe's own case, in failure of a sudden and explosive nature. He is now to have an experience of a different nature. During the years while he has been making his first trial of the outer world, his old Famulus, Wagner, now professor in Faust's place, has been devoting his whole ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... that most of these extraordinary applications of electricity have been made by American inventors. Wherever there is steam, on sea or land, there, intimately associated with American management, will be found the dynamic current and all its uses. The science of explosive destruction has almost entirely changed, and with a most extraordinary result. But one of the factors of this change has been the electric current, a something primarily having nothing to do with guns, ships or sailing. The modern ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... swarming masses came on. But suddenly the world upheaved behind the leaders. Rocks, earth, and rubble went up in clouds into the air, and with them scores of the Chinese regular troops, under whose very feet mines of the new explosive had been fired by Parker. And the howling mobs in front were held up by barbed wire, while from the despised trenches and breastworks a storm of lead swept the crowded masses of the attackers away. At that close range every bullet from ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... gunpowder into the cup, he filled it about half full of water, and setting it near the hot coals under the red hot cylinder, soon dissolved the explosive, forming an inky fluid. From the ammunition bucket he drew a small phial, which had been filled with olive oil, and pouring some hot water and a little shot into it, he soon cleaned it for the reception of the fluid, which he filtered through several thicknesses ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... had captured the sentinel, took the hatchet he had brought with him at his girdle, flung over one of the barrels on its side, knocked in the head of it, allowing the dull black powder to pour on the cobblestones. Then filling his hat with the explosive, he came out towards us, leaving a thick trail behind him. By this time we were sorely beset, and one of our men had gone down under the fire of the enemy, who shot wildly, being baffled by the darkness, otherwise all ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... back 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
... this long, explosive speech, the housekeeper proceeded in the direction of the breakfast-room to review the pack, and Fanny and the cook followed in ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... was raised to the top of a 100-foot steel tower on Saturday, July 14. During this process workers piled up mattresses beneath the gadget to cushion a possible fall. When the bomb reached the top of the tower without mishap, installation of the explosive detonators began. The 100-foot tower (a surplus Forest Service fire-watch tower) was designated Point Zero. Ground Zero was at the base of ...
— Trinity [Atomic Test] Site - The 50th Anniversary of the Atomic Bomb • The National Atomic Museum
... crushed under a weight of Barthops—father-in-law, wife and children—moulded into a thin semblance of a Marquis of Ipswich, a bastard Marquis. No one but himself knew the weakness of his character—explosive, audacious in alarums or excursions, but without the something, call it strength or hardness or stupidity, which enables the man or woman possessing it to resist constant domestic pressure—the unconscious pressure of radically opposed character. The crowd ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... Bacon blew up his first batch of gunpowder one might have supposed that men would have gone at once to the explosive engine. But they could see nothing of the sort. They were not yet beginning to think of seeing things; their metallurgy was all too poor to make such engines even had they thought of them. For a time they could not make instruments sound enough to stand this ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... many adventurers with whom Janina was filled penetrated to the pacha's presence, and offered to sell the secret of a powder whereof three grains would suffice to kill a man with a terrible explosion—explosive powder, in short. Ali heard with delight, but replied that he must see it ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... war, whether on land or at sea: the Declaration of St. Petersburg, of 1868, as to explosive bullets; the three Hague Declarations of 1899 (of which the first was repeated in 1907), as to projectiles from balloons, projectiles spreading dangerous gases, and expanding bullets; The Hague Convention, No. iii. of 1907 as to Declaration of War; all ratified by Great Britain, ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... men. The new civilisation which the world is preparing for, and which the war seems divinely ordained to hasten to us, will have little to do with tightly bound and self-contained peoples. In fact, such nations furnish in themselves an explosive force for disruption. Little more than material vision is now required to perceive most of the nations of lower Europe gathered like crones about a fire hugging the heat to their knees, ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... require precision in target cordinate identification and location. Precision does not mean "small warhead," although there is a beneficial impact as the right amount of explosive is placed on the target due the penalties imposed on the delivery vehicle required to carry the warhead long distances. All operations involving the use of firepower must also understand and evaluate the beneficial aspects of using non-destructive elements in conjunction ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... 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 as ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... they were all three in that excruciating state of rawness of the nerves, in which a man has the sensation that his brain is a violent explosive which a single jarring sound or word must ignite and blow ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... Winter for Q.M.G. and Williams for Cipher Officer. The first two had been left behind, the third was with us. The following hurried jottings by Braithwaite:—"Only 1600 rounds for the 4.5 Howitzers!!! High Explosive essential. Who is to be C.R.E.? Engineer Stores? French are to remain at Tunis until the day comes that they are required. Egyptian troops also remain in Egypt till last moment. Everything we want by 30th (it is hoped). Await arrival of 29th Division before undertaking anything ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... and silver, sat at the table gay with 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 ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... kind of a god come to inhabit the beach. It was proposed that I go against you singing a charm that should drive you away. But, as you saw, I came only at the spear's point. Do you think I was afraid? I was; but not of your godship. I had seen your tracks, I had seen the beach rise to your explosive, and I knew that as one Christian gentleman I had nothing on the lines of violence to fear from another. Your explosion was like a note, asking me when I should next call to bring fewer attendants. I was ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... cords which snapped under its explosive force was that of the powerful Methodist Episcopal Church. The next cord that snapped was that of the Baptists, one of the largest and most respectable of the denominations. That of the Presbyterian is not entirely snapped, but some of its strands have given ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... kind of high explosive Wilbraham got to try and never did," Collins returned casually. "Saw it in his office to-night and thought it was better with us than with Macartney. Don't know just how it works, so I'm treating it gingerly." He moved on into the darkness of his ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... Oceans. In all, an estimated 220,000 Department of Defense (DOD)* participants, both military and civilian, were present at the tests. Project TRINITY, the war-time effort to test-fire a nuclear explosive device, was the first ...
— Project Trinity 1945-1946 • Carl Maag and Steve Rohrer
... had mellowed for years in the cellars, was now crowded in every shelf with forbidding-looking bottles of black draughts, with packages of salt and senna, and with ill-omened piles of raking pills, perhaps not less destructive in their way than shot and shell of a more explosive sort. The butler's pantry and store rooms had their shelves and drawers and boxes filled, not with jellies and marmalades and preserves, and boxes of lemons and preserved ginger and drums of figs, and all sorts of original packages of all sorts of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... face had gone through every phase of black bewilderment for five minutes past, suddenly lifted his hand and struck the table in explosive enlightenment. ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... Leakage Heat of combustion Explosive limits Range of explosibility Solubility in liquids Toxicity Endothermic nature Polymerisation Heats of formation and combustion Colour of flame Radiant efficiency Chemical ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... with an explosive sound, at which the gray mare, unaffected by the noise and the excitement, started away at a measured gallop, her head rising and falling like the prow of a ship ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... passed. The many societies of Earth began to merge into a single superstate. But the pressure to conform, instead of lessening, grew more intense. The need was dictated by the continued explosive increase in population, and the many problems of unification across national and ethnic lines. Differences in opinion could be deadly; too many groups now had access to the supremely ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... 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 a mark on the floor where he stood. Now, standing ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... really think," says Miss Penelope, in a somewhat troubled tone, remembering how an innocent baker in Rossmoyne had had some of the explosive matter in question thrown into his kitchen the night before last,—"you don't really think that these parcels you speak of contain infernal machines?—Yes, that is what they call them, my dear Priscilla," turning to her ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... 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 one came the smell ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl |
