"Parachute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fruits and seeds are therefore grouped in respect of this as hydrophilous, anemophilous and zooidiophilous. The needs for these are obvious—buoyancy in water and resistance to wetting for the first, some form of parachute for the second, and some attaching mechanism or attractive structure for the third. The methods in which these are provided are of infinite variety, and any and every part of the flower and of the inflorescence may be called ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... at the nylon chute again. Another thought ran through his mind. Suppose they don't spot me in the dark. When the sun—Sirius, I mean—comes up, there's a good chance they'll spot the parachute ...
— The Quantum Jump • Robert Wicks
... the Devil tried to entice Him to do a thing of that sort, by quoting Scripture to Him—'He shall give His angels charge concerning Thee, to keep Thee in all Thy ways. Cast Thyself down. Trust to the promise as a kind of parachute to keep Thee from falling bruised on the stones of the Temple-court.' Christ's answer was: 'Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.' You will not get God's protection in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... a little dandelion," said the sprout. "I was in mother's head, with a heap of brothers and sisters. Each of us had a little parachute. 'Fly away now, darlings,' said mother. 'The farther away you go, the better. I can do no more for you than I have done; and I won't deny that I am a little concerned about all the children that I have brought into the world. But that can't be helped either; and I hope you will ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... close affinity to the flying squirrels of the American woodlands. It has just the same general outline, just the same bushy tail, just the same rough arrangement of colours, and just the same expanded parachute-like membrane stretching between the fore and hind limbs. Why should this be so? Clearly because both animals have independently adapted themselves to the same mode of life under the same general circumstances. Natural selection, acting upon unlike original types, but in like conditions, ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... Julian Ewell of the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, reaching Bastogne, Belgium, on the night of December 18, 1944, with only his lead battalion at hand, insisted that he be given orders, even though higher headquarters could tell him almost ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... Montgolfier (hot-air balloon). Associated words: parachute, inflate, inflation, deflate, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Bosch birds come over disguised as clouds and spit mouthfuls of red-hot tracer-bullets at it, and then the observers hop out. One of them "hopped out" into my horse-lines last week. That is to say his parachute caught in a tree and he hung swinging, like a giant pendulum, over my horses' backs until we lifted him down. He came into "Mon Repos" to have bits of tree picked out of him. This was the sixth plunge overboard he had done in ten days, he told us. Sometimes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... At 153d, the beautiful cemetery of Trinity Parish, leafy paths lying peaceful in the strong glow. At 166th Street is an open area now called Mitchel Square, with an outcrop of rock polished by the rearward breeks of many sliding urchins. Some children were playing on that small summit with a toy parachute made of light paper and a pebble attached by threads. On 168th Street alongside the big armoury of the Twenty-second Engineers boys were playing baseball, with a rubber ball, pitching it so that the batter received it on the ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... Serrai—he had been interviewed there until dawn—he knew what action had been taken. Army planes had flown northward in the darkness, moved by the Mayor's, and Coburn's, and Janice's tale of Bulgarian soldiers on Greek soil, sleeping soundly. They had released parachute flares and located the village of Naousa. Parachutists with field radios had jumped, while other flares burned to light them to the ground. That was that. Judging by the placards, their reports had borne out the story Coburn had brought ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... gad-about members of his flock. This one sways himself over the edge of his frame, making signals of distress in all directions, and with that and his windy flights of oratory suggests twenty minutes in a balloon-car, till he comes down to earth at the finish with the Doxology for a parachute. His shepherd's crook is one long note of interrogation, with which he tries to hook down the heavens to the understanding of his hearers, and his hearers up to an understanding of himself. All his arguments are put interrogatively, and few of them are worth answering. Well, well, I shall be ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... comes down very gently when the gas gives out." said the man. "It's almost like a parachute. Your children will come down like feathers. We'll get up a searching party and go after them." He knew there was great danger but he did not want to add to ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the County Fair • Laura Lee Hope
... elapsed when there fluttered from the tiny monoplane a paper parachute. It dropped for several hundred feet before it spread to the air pressure and floated more gently toward the earth and a moment later there burst from its basket a puff of white smoke. Two more parachutes followed the first and two more puffs of smoke. Then the machine ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... harm in a fountain," said a Brown Pelican that had come sailing into Cuthbert Rookery with her wings sloped downward like a parachute. "It was the gold-seekers who filled the islands with the thunder of their guns and ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... Bangs and his guests enjoyed every minute of it. They inspected the various exhibits, witnessed the horse races and the baseball game, saw the balloon ascension, and thrilled with the rest of the great crowd at the "parachute drop." It was six o'clock when they left the Fair grounds and Thankful began to worry about the condition of affairs ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... attempts it would seem that the principle of the parachute was to some extent at least brought into play. If also circumstantial accounts can be credited, it would appear that a working model of a flying machine was publicly exhibited by one John Muller before the Emperor Charles V. at Nuremberg. Whatever exaggeration or embellishment ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... expected to take refuge, if the ship was about to sink, so the upper decks of these air-vessels are supplied with parachutes, from which are suspended boats; and in case of accident two sailors and ten passengers are assigned to each parachute; and long practice has taught the bold craftsmen to descend gently and alight in the sea, even in stormy weather, with as much adroitness as a sea-gull. In fact, a whole population of air-sailors has grown up to manage these ships, never dreamed of by our ancestors. The speed ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... "I'm too badly scared for tears. Mr. Miller, you seem to be in charge of this expedition—couldn't you do something? Throw out ballast, or let the boy down in a parachute? Or I've read of a shipwreck where the survivors, in an open boat, joined in a cry, and attracted the notice of a vessel that was going to pass them. We might ...
— The Elevator • William D. Howells
... a few feet below the level from which they started. This feat they are enabled to perform by means of a broad membrane that extends from the skin of their fore-legs to that of their thighs, and which, when stretched out, endows them with the properties of a parachute. Their bodies, too, have a flattened shape like the bats; and this also helps to sustain them ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... grenade and not a parachute? Some remnant rather of the ancient folly, Some touch of times before the Big Dispute? I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... Commandant Renard, the eminent superintendent of the French Aeronautical Department, exhibited at the Paris Exposition of that year, an apparatus experimented with some years before, which he termed a "dirigible parachute." It consisted of an oviform body to which were pivoted two upright slats carrying above the body nine long superposed flat blades spaced about one-third of their width apart. When this apparatus was properly set at ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... constructed balloon, the valve of which was too large and would not shut; Harris fell, and was killed! Sadler, deprived of ballast by his long sojourn in the air, was dragged over the town of Boston and dashed against the chimneys; Sadler fell, and was killed! Cokling descended with a convex parachute which he pretended to have perfected; Cokling fell, and was killed! Well, I love them, these victims of their own imprudence, and I shall die as ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... kite-balloons, with their occupants busily observing, sketching, mapping, or reporting the enemy's movements. Each of these is a target for the attacking aeroplanes and the occupants must be ready, at a moment's notice, to leap into a parachute when they are shot down. High above these balloons a score of British planes are darting about or dashing over the enemy's lines, acting as the eyes of the huge guns hidden away behind us. We are looking at one ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... compared to their environment, all far larger than those of the little town. The island was perhaps a mile in length. Between it and the mainland a boat was coming toward us. It was a dark blob of hull on the shining water, and above it a queerly shaped circular sail was puffed out, like a balloon parachute, by the wind. ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... plotted which were checked against the theoretical predictions of what the pressures would be. A further check was afforded from the readings obtained by the measuring instruments which were dropped by parachute at each atomic attack. The peak pressure figures gave a direct clue to the equivalent T.N.T. tonnage of the atomic bombs, since the pressures developed by any given amount of T.N.T. can ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States
... trouble about flying comes when you want to alight. That holds as true to-day with the most perfect airplanes, as in boyhood days when one jumped from the barn in perfect confidence that the family umbrella would serve as a parachute. To alight with an airplane the pilot—supposing his descent to be voluntary and not compelled by accident or otherwise—surveys the country about him for a level field, big and clear enough for the machine to run ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... we're in the moving picture business we will have to learn to take chances. I read in the paper the other day how a couple leaped from the Brooklyn Bridge with a parachute—a man and woman." ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope
... a parachute device. He was taken up in a balloon to make a test of the apparatus. Arrived at a height of a thousand feet, he climbed over the edge of the basket, and dropped out. He had fallen two hundred yards when he remarked to himself, in a tone ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... "Bless my parachute, I'd like nothing better than to make the trip!" he said a trifle wistfully. "To tell you the truth, though," his voice sank to a whisper, "between the doctors and Mrs. Damon I'll be lucky if I'm allowed to walk around the block alone for some ...
— Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope • Victor Appleton
... were diamond doors of her true soul, And with their silken latches softly closed, When, couched beneath his poppy parachute, Inactive Sleep came by. Her glances seemed Like gold-winged angels sent from heavenly doors. Yet she was often sad when I was near. Once, tarrying late, I told her of my life, And of the monster I had come to find; But now, lo! ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... of the Umbrella, it would not be right to omit mentioning another, and far from legitimate use in which it has been employed by notoriety-hunting artistes—we allude to the Parachute; and a short narration of its origin and progress may not be ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... marked by a long line of graceful tamarisks, whose vivid green looked doubly bright set off by tawny stubble and amethyst-blue sky. These freshets are the Edens of Adel. The banks are charmingly wooded with acacias of many varieties, some thorned like the fabled Zakkum, others parachute-shaped, and planted in impenetrable thickets: huge white creepers, snake-shaped, enclasp giant trees, or connect with their cordage the higher boughs, or depend like cables from the lower branches to the ground. Luxuriant parasites abound: here they form domes of flashing green, ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... his fellows, and met the challenge of the blasts of heaven, and drunk of the wines of the dews of an immortal youth, and dieted on the ambrosial ether of gods, and sent his seedling offspring sailing ten thousand airy seas with the wind for master pilot and never a craft but the gypsy parachute of a seed with wings shaken out from the cones purpling ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... article on the importance of dressing up some one to look like HINDENBURG and dropping him at night by parachute from an aeroplane into the German lines near Head-Quarters. It would have to be a biggish man who can speak German well—Mr. CHESTERTON perhaps, but I have never met Mr. CHESTERTON, as he seems never to lunch or dine at the Ritz; or even ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various
... or a flake of snow came drifting down on the icy breeze. And then, falling like a snowflake, a little figure, a little man-insect, clinging to a parachute, drove down very swiftly towards the central ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... the Red-squirrel flicking his tail like a whip-lash, and the word "Squirrel," from the Latin "Sciurus" and Greek "Skia-oura" means "shady tail." Thus all of its names seem to note the wonderful banner that serves the animal in turn as sun-shade, signal-flag, coverlet, and parachute. ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... see a thing open out like a parachute, while below it trailed something that might have been the stick of the rocket. Eagerly Kennedy followed the parachute as the wind wafted it along and it sank slowly to the earth. When, at last, he recovered it I saw that between the parachute ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... in his fall because of a parachute which had been so arranged, unknown to him, to save him in ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... drive heavily laden ships. From these instances, and the reasons given, a man with wings large enough and duly connected might learn to overcome the resistance of the air, and by conquering it, succeed in subjugating it and rising above it. [Footnote: A parachute is here sketched, with an explanatory remark. It is reproduced on Tav. XVI in the Saggio, and in: Leonardo da Vinci als Ingenieur etc., Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Technik und der induktiven Wissenschaften, von Dr. Hermann Grothe, Berlin 1874, ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... aeries and floated groundwards. As the boys watched they saw distinctly that each man, from his wrist to his side, was possessed of a sort of leathery fiber like that of bat's swing, and that as their arms were of unusual length this fiber supported them in their downward flights like a parachute. ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... Cortaplumas (penknife) Chupaflores (humming-bird) Destripaterrones (navvy) Lavamanos (wash-hand stand) Limpiabotas (boot-black) Matamoros (boaster) Mondadientes (toothpick) Papahueros (ninny) Papamoscas (ninny) Papanatas (ninny) Paracaidas (parachute) Paraguas (umbrella) Pelagatos (ragamuffin) Pintamonas (slap-dasher or bad partner) Sacacorchos (corkscrew) Salvavidas ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... We had all fallen from heaven—one may mean many things by heaven—and landed with more or less severity, according to the resources of padding with which Nature furnished us. To Varvilliers' case, indeed, the metaphor is inadequate; he had a parachute, sailed to earth gaily with never a bruise, and was ready to mount again had any of us offered to bear him company. His invitation, given with a heartiness that mocked his bidden companions, found no acceptance. We were all for our own planet in the morning. It was abundantly ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... genuine flight, being merely able to sustain themselves in the air through the extensive leaps which they take from tree to tree, the wing-like expansions of the skin simply exercising the mechanical function of a parachute. The apparatus of flight in the "Pterosaurs" is of the most remarkable character, and most resembles the "wing" of a Bat, though very different in some important particulars. The "wing" of the Pterosaurs is like that ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... occasion when he might put these wings to good use, for if he spread them in the air and then leaped over the side of the basket they would act in the same way a parachute does, and bear him ...
— The Woggle-Bug Book • L. Frank Baum
... smaller steamer for the twenty-mile trip across to Catalina Island, and on the way over they saw a whole "school" of whales and a flight of flying-fishes. Yes, really and truly, these little fish fly or sail through the air, for their fins balance them like a parachute. They skim along ten or twelve feet above the waves, and then drop in the water to rest, taking another flight whenever their enemies, ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... the broad national road between Arras and Bethune has been won except Souchez, and last night another quarter mile of trenches in the Souchez web was torn away. The attack was made under parachute rocket lights, the French burning bluish white and the Germans greenish white, covering the scene of the desperate conflict with a ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... morning bright and fair, Eddying round and round they sink Softly, slowly: one might think From the motions that are made, Every little leaf conveyed Sylph or fairy hither tending, To this lower world descending, Each invisible and mute, In his wavering parachute. But the kitten, how she starts, Crouches, stretches, paws and darts! First at one and then its fellow, Just as light and just as yellow; There are many now—now one— Now they stop and there are none: What intenseness ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... unless you provide yourself with a parachute! An aeroplane could make a good start up here. Do you ever get any guillemots' ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... grimly, touched a button on his desk. "Get me Air Force Chief of Staff Burns," he said, and, a moment later: "Bernie? Chuck here. We need a plane. A jet-transport to go you-know-where. Cargo? One man, in a parachute. Can you manage it? Immediately, if not sooner. Good boy, Bernie. No ... no, I'm sorry, I can't tell you a thing about it." The Secretary cut ...
— Summer Snow Storm • Adam Chase
... J.H. Johnson patented a balloon and parachute dingus which worked on the principle of a duck's foot in the mud. I use scientific terms because I am unable to express myself in the common language of the vulgar herd. This machine had a tail which, under ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... part in a debate or two and then off to the North Pole in a balloon. Managed to see a good deal of snow and ice, and fancy we caught a sight of the Pole itself. Sent home (by parachute) to one of my Magazines, "How I got within ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 31, 1892 • Various
... perched quietly within reach of my hand, and watched me in my work of manumission. This, owing to the fluttering terror of the prisoners, was an affair of some delicacy; but ere long I was rewarded by seeing one of them fly away to a neighboring tree, while the cripple, making a parachute of his wings, came lightly to the ground, and hopped off as well as he could with one leg, obsequiously waited on by his elders. A week later I had the satisfaction of meeting him in the pine-walk, in good spirits, and already so far recovered as to be able to balance himself with ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... disfigured with white tumors, its roots spreading out like accipitrine claws grasping the ground. A chilly wind circled round them, upon whose currents the seeds of a neighboring lime-tree, supported parachute-wise by the wing attached, flew out of the boughs downward like fledglings from their nest. The vale was wrapped in a dim atmosphere of unnaturalness, and the east was like a livid curtain edged with pink. There was no sign nor sound ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... Skimming System the fermentation from start to finish takes place in wooden vessels (termed "squares" or "rounds"), fitted with an attemperator and a parachute or other similar skimming device for removing or "skimming" the yeast at the end of the fermentation (fig. 4). The principle of (b) the Dropping System is that the beer undergoes only the main fermentation in the "round" or "square," and is then dropped down into a second vessel or vessels, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... inquires the Baron—Seven Summers, An Eton Medley, by the Editors of the Parachute and Present Etonian. Now, Heaven forgive my ignorance, but I have never seen the Parachute nor the Present Etonian, so without prejudice I dip into this book, and am at once much interested and amused by a paper "On Getting Up." Not "getting up" linen, or "getting up lessons," ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... delaying us, Captain Robers," replied Winford coldly. "I am in a hurry to be on my way. Kindly move down the ladder and join your men. Your hand weapons and food supplies will be dropped by parachute as we leave. I might add that in a short time I expect to be in a position to broadcast an S O S message for you which should bring rescue ships here to Callisto ...
— The Space Rover • Edwin K. Sloat
... couple of parachute lights fired from "Little Archibald," as we called the special gun used for these larger flares, revealed nothing, so I gave up in disgust, woke the only two men who had not been disturbed all night, tied a couple of sandbags around each knee, and once ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... not quite with the speed of an arrow. A moment later, tired of his flight, he sprawls his eight webbed legs out in every direction, breaking them seemingly into a thousand joints, and settles back like an animated parachute awreck. Then perchance he perches on a rock knowingly, with the appearance of owl-like wisdom, albeit his head looks surprisingly like a frog's. Anon he holds his head erect and stretches out his long arms in what ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... strafing infantrymen wasn't half as much fun as knocking down balloons. They went up with such a glorious bang! And it was delicious to watch the frightened observer tumble over the side of the basket in an effort to escape by parachute. That last one had somehow gotten fouled in the rigging and had been clawing frantically when the bag exploded. As for that, Yancey had been sorry; not for the man, but because he had wanted to see the parachute ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... was now full of black wings and angry cries, as the crows from neighboring nests flocked to the help of their fellow citizen. But the little red robber was brave and kept his head. Spreading his legs wide and flat, he made a sort of parachute of himself, and, instead of falling like a stone, he glided down to another branch. Those beating wings and terrible jabbing beaks were all about him, but they got in each other's way. And he was a wonder at dodging, I can tell you, now that he was among the bigger branches, and, though ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the heavens, yet there are certain periods at which they appear in large numbers, and have been observed to radiate from certain well-defined parts of the sky. When the radiant point is overhead, the falling stars spread out and resemble a parachute of fire; but when it is below the horizon, the stars ascend upwards like rockets into the sky. The radiant point is fixed among the stars, so that at the commencement of a shower it may be overhead, and before the termination of the ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... a slight breeze outside. The floating cable has snapped and the creature has gone off, borne on its parachute. I see it drifting away, showing, like a spot of light, against the dark foliage of the near cypresses, some forty feet distant. It rises higher, it crosses over the cypress-screen, it disappears. Others follow, some higher, ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... they were still falling, but not so fast. The top of the buggy caught the air like a parachute or an umbrella filled with wind, and held them back so that they floated downward with a gentle motion that was not so very disagreeable to bear. The worst thing was their terror of reaching the bottom of this great crack in the earth, and the natural fear that sudden ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... our attention. In several groups of animals of strictly arboreal habits, nature has gone beyond the ordinary limits of agility afforded by muscular limbs alone, and has supplemented those limbs with elastic membranes which act like a parachute when the animal takes a leap into space, and gives it a gradual and easy descent. Amongst the lemurs the Galeopithecus, the Pteromys in the squirrels, and the Anomalurus in another family ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... placed well to the front to be set off by trip wires close to the ground. The best light devised is one that can be fired well to the front from a small mortar and then hung suspended from an open parachute above the enemy. Bonfires can be laid ready for lighting when no other means is at hand. Whatever form of illumination is adopted, it should withstand bad ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... the nineteen-thousand-foot level, which was about midday, the wind was so severe that I looked with some anxiety to the stays of my wings, expecting momentarily to see them snap or slacken. I even cast loose the parachute behind me, and fastened its hook into the ring of my leathern belt, so as to be ready for the worst. Now was the time when a bit of scamped work by the mechanic is paid for by the life of the aeronaut. But she held together bravely. Every cord ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... within these few years, have assumed a character more distinguished than any ever seen under the old regime. These modern Olympics consist of chariot-races and wrestling, horse and foot races, ascensions of balloons, carrying three or four persons, descents from them by means of a parachute, mock-fights and aquatic tilting. After the sports of the day, come splendid illuminations, grand fire-works, pantomimes represented by two or three hundred performers, and concerts, which, aided by splendid decorations, are not deficient in point of effect: ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... These attempts, which were continued with steady perseverance, showed an astonishing deficiency of judgment, the animal endeavoring to do much more than was in its power to accomplish. All its endeavors, therefore, were unsuccessful, though made without doing itself any hurt—thanks to the parachute with which Nature had provided it. Had the kaguang not been in the habit of relying so entirely on this convenient contrivance, it probably would have exercised its judgment to a greater extent, and formed ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... practice as a physician. It would be impossible without the aid of diagrams, and I do not remember sufficient, to explain his mechanical contrivances; but the general principle was, to suspend the man under a kind of flat parachute of extremely thin feather-edge boards, with a power of adjusting the angle at which it was placed, and allowing the man the full use of his arms and legs to work any machinery placed beneath; the area of the parachute being ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 46, Saturday, September 14, 1850 • Various
... tree should break," he exclaimed, in a frightened whisper, "it would be the last of a fellow! No one could drop down there, and save his neck without a parachute. I guess the best thing I can do is to get over as soon as ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... nor was he at all sure that he would go there. A distant day had been named, before that exciting interview in the square, on which the Houghtons were to dine in Munster Court. The Mildmays were also to be there, and Mrs. Montacute Jones, and old Lord Parachute, Lord George's uncle. That would be a party, and there would be no danger of a scene then. He had almost determined that, in spite of his promise, he would not go to Berkeley Square before the dinner. But ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... the forest, a box of beetles or grasshoppers—or even bits of chopped meat—offers the possibility of a new and neglected sport, in effect the inversion of baiting a school of fish. Toss a grasshopper into the air and he has only time to spread his wings for a parachute to earth, when a bat swoops past so quickly that the eyes refuse to see any single effort—but the grasshopper has vanished. As for the piece of meat, it is drawn like a magnet to the fierce little face. Once I tried the experiment of a bit of blunted bent wire on ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... "tread the primrose path of dalliance"—it shrinks back from it as from a precipice, and keeps in the iron rail-way of the understanding. Irish oratory, on the contrary, is a sort of aeronaut: it is always going up in a balloon, and breaking its neck, or coming down in the parachute. It is filled full with gaseous matter, with whim and fancy, with alliteration and antithesis, with heated passion and bloated metaphors, that burst the slender, silken covering of sense; and the airy pageant, that glittered in empty space and rose in all the ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... grave a single one of those simple tributes which blighted youths and maidens offer to her memory, but I am sorry enough that I have not time and opportunity to write four or five volumes of my opinion of her friend the founder of the Parachute, or the Paraclete, or whatever ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... all the time, and studies up ways to make 'em better, and has got no more idea of business outside of that than a rabbit. We all went to the livery stable and overhauled that balloon. It was an awful job, too. But they wasn't a rip in her, and the parachute was jest ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... like antennae, and serving to balance the posterior part of the body and the filaments of the abdomen during flight. On reaching a certain height they allow themselves to descend, stretching out while doing so their long wings and tail, which then serve as a parachute. Then a rapid working of these organs suddenly changes the direction of the motion, and they begin to ascend again. Coupling takes place during these aerial dances. Soon afterward the females approach the surface of the water and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... shelf was nearly all rock, against some fragments of which the stick was propped. There was no failure then. There came up a faint rasping sound as of wood over stone, as the cord tightened, and then very slowly the umbrella began, parachute-like, to rise in the air, higher and higher, as it was hauled up hand over hand till the spike touched the lower twigs ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... exclaimed the odd man, as he looked at the aeroplane, for there had been much work done on it since he had last seen it. "Bless my parachute, Tom! But it looks as though you could blow ...
— Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton
... displays take a new and finer form. He sits perched on a stalk above the grass, and at intervals soars up forty or fifty yards high; rising, he utters a series of long melodious notes; then he descends in a graceful spiral, the set of the motionless wings giving him the appearance of a slowly-falling parachute; the voice then also falls, the notes coming lower, sweeter, and more expressive until he reaches the surface. After alighting the song continues, the strains becoming longer, thinner, and clearer, until they dwindle to the ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... and which he might break his shins over at any moment. It might be here, it might be there, it might come at any hour of the day. The next post might bring it. It might be in yonder Parcel Delivery van,—nothing more probable. Or at any moment it might fall from heaven in a parachute, or be at that second passing through the dock-gates, wearily home from the Islands of Sugar and Spice. ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... quarantined, and daily the quarantine was extended. No plane could land and take off again. No ship could enter and leave. An airlift of supplies dropped by parachute was ...
— Prologue to an Analogue • Leigh Richmond
... not be certain of what damage I accomplished, although I saw flames spurt up from several places. Then the enemy sent up two long rows of rockets, making an avenue of light so that I could have read by it. These infernal things parachute when they get to a certain height and, with the fire hanging from them, stay stationary, leaving but one exit. If I had run the machine into the rockets it would have been ablaze in no time. These fireworks stay in the ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... of her dress, spreading as a parachute, lessened the velocity of the descent. This still extended, hinders her from sinking. As she knows not how to swim, it will not sustain her long; itself becoming weighted ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... story and enclosed it in one of several leather cylinders he had provided for this purpose. Each one had a sort of miniature parachute connected to it, and a flag to attract attention as it ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... round the lake A little clock-work steamer paddling plied And shook the lilies: perched about the knolls A dozen angry models jetted steam: A petty railway ran: a fire-balloon Rose gem-like up before the dusky groves And dropt a fairy parachute and past: And there through twenty posts of telegraph They flashed a saucy message to and fro Between the mimic stations; so that sport Went hand in hand with Science; otherwhere Pure sport; a herd of boys with clamour bowled ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... upon the forehead, but before she had time to suffer from a new fear her eye caught the glitter of a flake of snow in its parachute descent across the path of her lamps. "They hate snow...." she whispered, not knowing whether it was true. She tried to picture them as a band of workmen, who, content with their little pillage, were now far from her on ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... to a point on the planet's orbit, mathematically fixed in advance, and wait there until it comes up. The atmosphere of the approaching planet would act as a kind of buffer, and the fall of the car could be further checked by our means of recoil, and also by a large parachute. We should probably be able to descend quite slowly to the surface in this way without damage; but in case of peril, we could have small parachutes in readiness as life-buoys, and leap from the car when it was nearing ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... supply, he judged he could get to the middle of the channel. He had no parachute and no life belt or Mae West suit to float him. The chill water of the channel would soon drag him down. He had to locate a patrol boat or a British ship of some other class. And he had to watch ...
— A Yankee Flier Over Berlin • Al Avery
... Indian's arrow, his head bent downward, his wings partly folded, and his tail perked upward at precisely the proper angle to make a rudder, all the various organs so finely adjusted as to convert him into a perfectly dirigible parachute. Swift as his descent was, he alighted on the ground as lightly as a tuft of down. It was the poetry of motion. One or two writers have insisted that the horned lark's empyrean song compares favorably ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... descindin' fr'm th' roof in a parachute. Ye know Bertillon. Ye don't? Iv coorse ye do, Hinnissy. He's th' la-ad that invinted th' system iv ditictive wurruk med aisy that they use down in th' Cintral Polis Station. I mind wanst, afther ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... use, among which he notes: grand-jury, grand-juror, eulogist, consignee, consignor, mammoth, maltreatment, iceberg, parachute, malpractice, fracas, entailment, perfectibility, glacier, fire-warden, safety-valve, savings-bank, gaseous, lithographic, peninsular, repealable, retaliatory, dyspeptic, missionary, nervine, meteoric, mineralogical, reimbursable; to quarantine, revolutionize, retort, patent, ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... my plan that each in turn shall descend as in a parachute, and the balloon be drawn back by means which I shall have no difficulty in perfecting. If it will support the weight of one and let him gently down, it will have done all that is required of it. I will now show you its ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... besieged in Kut, there came to him by aeroplane not only food (in quantities sadly insufficient for his needs), but salt, saccharine, opium, drugs and surgical dressings, mails, spare parts for wireless plant, money, and a millstone weighing seventy pounds, which was dropped by means of a parachute. In the actual operations of the war the uses of aircraft, and especially of the aeroplane, were very rapidly extended and multiplied. The earliest and most obvious use was reconnaissance. To the Commander-in-Chief a detailed knowledge of the enemy's dispositions ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... air grows mute, As her pearly parachute Cometh slowly down from heaven, softly floating to and fro; And the earth emits no sound, As lightly on the ground Leaps the silvery-footed Spirit of ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... of the dandelion are next examined, the tiny seeds are found standing on tiptoe on a raised platform, each grasping a tiny parachute and waiting for a puff of wind to start them off. A pupil is permitted to give the puff. Seeds are distributed, and the means of flight is compared with that of the milkweed. The shape of the seeds is observed and also the tiny anchor ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... very tall, of less than a foot in diameter, and rising in a straight shaft to the height of nearly a hundred feet. On the top is a splendid head of leaves like gigantic ostrich plumes, that gracefully curve over on all sides, forming a shape like a parachute. Each leaf is full five yards in length, and of the kind called pinnate—that is divided into numerous leaflets, each of which is itself more than a foot and a half long, shaped like the blade of a rapier. Under the shadow of this graceful plumage the fruit is produced, ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... elicited another missive, neatly folded and addressed in the same hand to Miss Jane Harding. Cuthbert gave this privately to me, but its contents must forever be unknown, for it went, unread, into Cookie's fire. I had no mind to find Aunt Jane, with her umbrella as a parachute, vanishing over the cliffs to seek the arms of ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... to a closely allied subgenus, is known as the "Flying Squirrel,"[1] from its being assisted in its prodigious leaps from tree to tree, by the parachute formed by the skin of the flanks, which on the extension of the limbs front and rear, is laterally expanded from foot to foot. Thus buoyed up in its descent, the spring which it is enabled to make from one lofty tree to another resembles the flight ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... others, as Sir J. Richardson has remarked, with the posterior part of their bodies rather wide and with the skin on their flanks rather full, to the so-called flying squirrels; and flying squirrels have their limbs and even the base of the tail united by a broad expanse of skin, which serves as a parachute and allows them to glide through the air to an astonishing distance from tree to tree. We cannot doubt that each structure is of use to each kind of squirrel in its own country, by enabling it to escape birds or beasts of prey, or to collect food more quickly, or, as there is reason to believe, to ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... to whether, in this case, the mother conveys her ducklings to the water in her bill, but this has not actually been witnessed. In cases where, as is often observed, the nest overhangs the water, it has been suggested that the young birds may simply be pushed over the edge and allowed to parachute down to the surface, as they ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo
... Cousin John, who concludes I take an unusual interest in his speculations; and forthwith we proceed to criticize the three animals brought to the post, and to agree that Captain Lovell's Parachute is far the best-looking of the lot; or, as Sir Guy Scapegrace says to the well-pleased owner, "If make and shape go for anything, Frank, she ought to beat them, as far as they ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... apprehended was from accidental and rapid descents. To countervail this danger, and enable the adventurer, in cases of alarm, to desert his balloon, and descend to the ground uninjured, Blanchard invented the parachute, or guard for falling, as the word signifies in French, an apparatus very much resembling an umbrella, but of much larger dimensions. The design is to break the fall; and, to effect this, it is necessary that the parachute present a surface sufficiently large to experience from the air such ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... into space and trusting one's parachute to do its business properly. I felt a sudden tightening inside me as I thought of that dive into the void, but I ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... frantically. In spite of the hard hitting the game was closely contested, the All-Americas finally bearing off the honors by a score of 15 to 13. Following the game Prof. Bartholomew gave his first balloon ascension and parachute drop in Australia, a performance that was new to the Australians, and that they watched with almost ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... he looked, he saw a package drop over the side of the cabin. It fell straight downward, with tremendous velocity. But there came a sudden check. It was attached to a parachute. The parachute had opened. Its course was now marked by a little down-rush, then a pause, ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... my eyes to every side, and gaze upon a flora to me strange and interesting. I behold the tall stems of the palma real, rising one hundred feet without leaf or branch, and supporting a parachute of feathery fronds that wave to the slightest impulse of the breeze. Beside it I see its constant companion, the Indian cane—a small palm-tree, whose slender trunk and low stature contrast oddly with the colossal proportions of its lordly protector. I behold the corozo—of the same genus ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... There is a lightning express on the Irish Air Service at half-past sixteen. They will drop you by a parachute in the bay. The dip will do you good. I will pick you up and dry you and ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... over a century millions of men had felt that same longing to know. Aviators, landing by accident or intent within the lines, had either returned with nothing to report, or they had not returned. Daring journalists, with baskets of carrier pigeons, had on foggy nights dropped by parachute to the roof of the city; but neither they nor the birds had brought back a single word of what lay beneath the armed ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... the real danger area is 'No-Man's-Land,' for it is on that mighty graveyard stretching from Switzerland to the sea that the enemy's eyes are bent. The regiments used to get various kinds of flares to experiment with. We used to laugh over an incident that occurred when a new type, a species of parachute, had been served out. The Second-in-command, who fired it, miscalculated the strength of the wind, which was blowing from the enemy's trench, and the flare was carried in a stately curve backwards until it was directly over battalion headquarters. ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... crowd of a county fair at a parachute act. For the next puff may get him. Who knows this better than the aviator? He is, likely, an old hand at the game; or, if he is not, he has all the experience of other veterans to go by. His ruse is ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... caustically that to imprison a sub-Freshman would be to ruin his reputation, break his spirit and disgrace the school—that one world's record was worth fifty points, and that, if allowed to, I would pole-vault so high the next day that I would have to come down in a parachute. The result was the council broke up in one big row and Martha Scroggs spent ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... drawn into the shape of an umbrella top, or an inverted parachute, by thongs of deer-skin, with which both the labourers were well provided. A few light sticks served to keep the parts from collapsing, or falling in. When this simple and natural expedient was arranged, it was placed on the water, the Indian making a sign that it was ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... a lever and the machine glided down towards the valley, falling all the while with the effortless grace a parachute. The shed from which his machine had issued was midway down a slope, with a short length of rails which ran, apparently, through it. The machine seemed to hover for several moments above the building, then descended slowly on to ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Eddying round and round they sink Softly, slowly: one might think, 10 From the motions that are made, Every little leaf convey'd Sylph or Faery hither tending, To this lower world descending, Each invisible and mute, In his wavering parachute. —But the Kitten, how she starts, Crouches, stretches, paws, and darts; First at one and then it's fellow Just as light and just as yellow; 20 There are many now—now one— Now they stop; and there are none— What intenseness of ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... own it can be, humdrum, I protest, is everlastingly so. By-the-by, I should have told you that Captain Beauchamp was one hundred and ninety below Captain Baskelett when the state of the poll was handed to me. The gentleman driving with your father compared the Liberals to a parachute cut away from the balloon. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... curious shrews[3], and an orange-coloured ichneumon[4], before unknown. There are also two descriptions of squirrels[5] that have not as yet been discovered elsewhere, one of them belonging to those equipped with a parachute[6], as well as some local varieties of the palm ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... up to the lowest tree branches. The sudden severing of all his life's ties had brought him a free, thrilling, almost joyous elation. He felt precisely the sensation of the aeronaut when he cuts loose his parachute and lets his balloon ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... voyages which were made in balloons in our own country and in foreign lands about this period we shall say nothing, but, before describing the most interesting of recent ascents, give a short account of the parachute. ...
— Up in the Clouds - Balloon Voyages • R.M. Ballantyne
... fingers and along the sides of the body. It has teeth. It suckles its young. In all these respects it differs from birds. It differs from mammals only in its wings. But we remember that flying squirrels have a membrane stretching along the sides of the body and serving as a parachute, though not as wings. We naturally consider the wings as a sort of after-thought superinduced on the mammalian structure. We do not hesitate ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... perhaps a mile in length. Between it and the mainland a boat was coming toward us. It was a dark blob of hull on the shining water, and above it a queerly shaped circular sail was puffed out like a balloon-parachute by ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... when he wants to take a picture of his enemies on the open field. The flares prepared by our Government for the war consist of a sheet iron cylinder, four feet long and six inches thick, containing a stick of magnesium attached to a tightly rolled silk parachute twenty feet in diameter when expanded. The whole weighed 32 pounds. On being dropped from the plane by pressing a button, the rush of air set spinning a pinwheel at the bottom which ignited the magnesium ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... a hundred feet high. They no longer needed their legs for the purpose of walking, but it was necessary for them to move quickly from branch to branch. And so they changed a part of their skin into a sort of parachute, which stretched between the sides of their bodies and the small toes of their fore-feet, and gradually they covered this skinny parachute with feathers and made their tails into a steering gear and flew from tree to tree and ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... last season. Let me reckon them up. There were the horse, the bull, the parachute, - and the tumbler hanging on - chiefly by his toes, I believe - below the car. Very wrong, indeed, and decidedly to be stopped. But, in connexion with these and similar dangerous exhibitions, it strikes me that that portion of the public whom they entertain, ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... so bold and reckless in leaping through the trees is that, if they miss their hold and fall, they sustain no injury. Every species of tree-squirrel seems to be capable of a sort of rudimentary flying,—at least of making itself into a parachute, so as to ease or break a fall or a leap from a great height. The so-called flying squirrel does this the most perfectly. It opens its furry vestments, leaps into the air, and sails down the steep incline from the top of one tree to the foot of the next as lightly as a bird. But other ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... trapeze acts, and your parachute drops, I guess I know all the sensations. And let me tell you I don't hanker after any more of the same kind. Now, what's all this row about your black box, Will?" cried Jerry, as he felt of his various joints to make ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... sixty feet, and a range of from fifty to seventy-five yards. When they hit the ground they explode, throwing out a strong calcium light which lights up the ground in a circle of a radius of between ten to fifteen yards. They also have a parachute star shell which, after reaching a height of about sixty feet, explodes. A parachute unfolds and slowly floats to the ground, lighting up a large circle in No Man's Land. The official name of the star shell is a "Very-light." Very-lights are used to prevent night surprise attacks on the ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... among princesses, that you will permit the supposition, an all but impossible supposition I quite wish to believe.——Well, suppose that he goes, what will become of you without a husband? Keep well with your husband as you take care of your beauty; for beauty, after all, is a woman's parachute, and a husband also stands between you and worse. I am supposing that you are happy and loved to the end, and I am leaving unpleasant or unfortunate events altogether out of the reckoning. This being so, fortunately or unfortunately, you may have children. What are they ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... and leave him dangling to one of the pieces. For a consideration which the citizens of Binghamton, New York, sensibly declined to give he offered to ascend to the height of a mile in a paper balloon, there set fire to it and descend in a parachute. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... whole of the rope is immersed in the water. Along this rope are suspended at equal intervals a number of parachutes made of sail cloth. The rope passes through the center of each of these, and to it are attached a series of strings, the other ends of which are connected to the outside edge of the parachute. Thus they act like the spokes of an umbrella to prevent the parachute from opening too far under the pressure of the current. The parachutes must be placed so far apart that the current may act fairly on each, and the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... ground is at least defensible; for what chance of attraction would there be for the winking Virgin in competition with him who could "make a young lady ascend to the ceiling, and come slowly down like a parachute!"—a spiritual fact I have heard from witnesses who really, so far as character went, might challenge ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... extent the umbrella acted like a parachute, and, assisted by the girl's clothing, served to check ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... went up, from the other side of the river. We had a fine view of it from the roof of our house. Two men were in it, and when they had risen so high that the balloon appeared quite small, they threw out a little machine, called a parachute. It looked something like an umbrella, and had a dog to it. The balloon sailed a great distance through the air, and ...
— The Summer Holidays - A Story for Children • Amerel
... will follow, if linnets are minded, As blows the white-feather parachute; And ships will reel by the tempest blinded— Aye, ships and shiploads of men to boot! How deep whole fleets ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... found him he was sleeping heavily, exhausted, in a canebrake. He hadn't even bothered to disengage his parachute harness ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... water, the tail is not expanded: it is reserved for times of courtship. I have seen the female sitting quietly on a branch, and two males displaying their charms in front of her. One would shoot up like a rocket, then suddenly expanding the snow-white tail like an inverted parachute, slowly descend in front of her, turning round gradually to show off both back and front. The effect was heightened by the wings being invisible from a distance of a few yards, both from their great velocity of movement and ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... told Fran reflectively, "that at night, and with the kind of disorganization that seems to be increasing, you can get away with talking to the kids again. Nobody'll try a parachute drop in these mountains in the darkness." They were then a hundred miles south of Denver. "They couldn't get organized before daybreak, and I doubt that they could block the highways. See if you can make contact, eh? And find out ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... as a word-weaving trimmer, between whose utterances and thoughts there is no organic nexus, who declines to take the initiative unless he sees adequate forces behind him ready to his to his support, who lacks the moral courage that serves as a parachute for a fall from popularity, but possesses in abundance that of taking at the flood the rising tide which balloon-like lifts its possessor high above his fellows. But judging him in the light of the historic events in which he played a prominent part, one cannot ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... illuminated, trench light after trench light rising over the dark branches. There would be a rocket like the trail of bronze-red powder sparks hanging for an instant in the sky, then a loud Plop! and the French light would spread out its parachute and sail slowly down the sky toward the river. The German lights (fusees eclairantes), cartridges of magnesium fired from a gun resembling a shotgun, burned only during their dazzling trajectory. At midnight the sky darkened with low, black rain clouds, ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... that is what our lives are made up of mostly in the Flying Corps," the officer said grimly, with a shrug. "Any day may see our end; but like the men who drop from balloons with a parachute, we get so accustomed to peril that it never bothers us. Constant rubbing up against it makes a man callous, just as working with the hands ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Flying Squadron • Robert Shaler
... know where to stand it among the litter, she puts it on the floor and crouches to regulate the wick. There rises from the medley of the old lady, vividly variegated with vermilion and night, a jet of black smoke, which returns in parachute form. Mame sighs, but she cannot ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... pulled the trigger the report of a gun resounded from the bottom of the valley. A white smoke rose from between two masses of basalt, and the condor, shot in the head, gradually turned over and began to fall, supported by his great wings spread out like a parachute. He had not let go his prey, but gently sank down with it on the ground, about ten paces from ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... idea that he could fly by the aid of this ingenious machinery. You will see that his wings are arranged so that they are moved by his legs, and also by cords attached to his arms. The umbrella over his head is not intended to ward off the rain or the sun, but is to act as a sort of parachute, to keep him from falling while he is making his strokes. The basket, which hangs down low enough to be out of the way of his feet, is filled with provisions, which he expects to need in the ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... joy-rider into the parachute harness for such emergencies and over the side, then himself, both descending safely on the right side of the British trenches—which was rather "smart work," as the British would say, but all to the taste of the one-armed ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... had made in his spare time, each adapted to a particular method of escape from the Skylark. The one he selected was of heavy canvas, braced with steel netting, equipped with helmet and air-tanks, and attached to a strong, heavy parachute. He put it on, tested all its parts, and made his way unobserved to one of the doors in the lower part of the vessel. Thus, when the chance for escape came, he was ready for it. As the Skylark paused over the Isthmus, ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby |
