"Explosive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... child in his arms, and she nestled to his breast as to a mother's, and clasped him in hands that were strong like vices. He felt her whole body shaken by the throes of distress, and had pity upon her beyond speech. Pity, and at the same time a bewildered fear of this explosive engine in his arms, whose works he did not understand, and yet had been tampering with. There arose from before him the curtains of boyhood, and he saw for the first time the ambiguous face of woman as she is. In vain he looked back ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seconds Agassiz stood as if himself petrified; then, without even an 'Excuse me,' he vanished by the same door. Presently he returned, flushed, gazing ruefully at the fragments in his hand, covered with mucilage or liquid glue. After a pause, during which those who knew him not awaited an explosive denunciation of gaucherie, Agassiz said quietly: 'In Natural History it is not enough to know how to study specimens; it is also necessary to know how to handle them'—and then ...
— Louis Agassiz as a Teacher • Lane Cooper
... seemed to suffer a sensation of cruel restraint from what she called our English reserve; though we thought we were very cordial with her: but we did not slap her on the shoulder, and if we consented to kiss her cheek, it was done quietly, and without any explosive smack. These omissions oppressed and depressed her considerably; still, on the whole, we got on very well. Accustomed to instruct foreign girls, who hardly ever will think and study for themselves— who have no idea of grappling ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... out to clasp the frightened girl. Hilary seemed to uncoil. His fist shot straight up with all the power of his body behind it. It crashed into the jutting jaw of the Mercutian like a charge of high explosive dynol. For all his height and massive strength, the giant toppled over, ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... goblins? Well, let's strike a match and light up: then perhaps we may. That's one good thing about these hollows,—there is no explosive gas, like there is in a coal mine. There, take this and hold it out before you," he continued, as he closed and passed the lanthorn. "Lift it up! ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... together at a little table, talking cozily; and that detective look came into his eyes which cats have when a mouse occurs to them. He laughed merrily, though, and chaffed us on making "secret plans." Dick hasn't a very nice laugh. It's too explosive and loud. (Don't you think other animals must consider the laughter of humans an odd noise, without rhyme ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... rushed out of Lysander's soul like a rocket, culminated in a loud, explosive oath, and was followed by a shower of fiery curses falling harmless on the heads ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... 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 of frying ham. The trench twisted snakelike in a general ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... the basement of the upper palace to the palace in the internal world. By means of machines worked by electricity we have facilities for excavating earth; and where rocks or hard substances intervene we can remove large masses by the application of explosive electricities. These paths are therefore excavated ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... continued. It was nothing but high explosives, high explosive shrapnel, ordinary shrapnel, trench bombs, and bullets from German machine-guns. One incessant hail of metal. Who on earth could live in it? What worried me most was that there was not sufficient light to film the scene; but, thank Heaven, ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... seventy feet, accompanied by a loud detonation. With this the coroner and jury became convinced that whether or not the premises in Hillgate contained gunpowder, they contained elements as certainly explosive, and ...
— Fires and Firemen • Anon.
... a long shot for a revolver: nevertheless it took effect. The luminous object disappeared with a faint explosive sound, followed by a shout unmistakably human. The long stems of the wild mustard swayed and parted, and out sprang a figure, which ran straight towards the ...
— The Golden Fleece • Julian Hawthorne
... occasionally, and without any warning, a fearful explosive bark, or roar, that to visitors is as startling as the report of a gun. The commonest expressions are "Wah!" and "Wah'-hoo!", and the visitor who can hear it close at hand without jumping has ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... which any nation would give millions of dollars. It's admittedly the most powerful explosive ever discovered, as well as the easiest handled. Temperature, weather, ordinary shock have absolutely no effect on it; in fire it simply chars and doesn't explode. Yet when it is exploded by the proper method, lyddite, dynamite, and all the other ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... or coerce them will bring them up "in arms" in a moment. The temper is hasty and explosive, but at the same time quickly over, and when the storm subsides they bitterly regret the outburst of passion and the cruel things they may have said in the heat of ...
— Palmistry for All • Cheiro
... of slight, simultaneous amusement. Our word now is titters. Suppose we laugh low or gently or to ourselves. We chuckle. Suppose some one laughs loudly, boisterously, even coarsely, in a manner befitting a lumber camp rather than a drawing room. That person guffaws. Suppose a man engages in explosive and immoderate ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... and shocked by the explosive violence of the man's reaction to a routine harvesting maneuver. It was a relatively young Harn, but it retained memories of its own world, where there were also nasty, violent things which killed Harn. It was not pleasant to think that it ...
— Cat and Mouse • Ralph Williams
... an explosive chuckle from the old gentleman across the chasm, and the others swarmed across like ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... latter retired at once when fired on, and the battalion advanced in perfect order, the small columns extending into line as the enemy's rifle fire grew more and more severe. The Turkish batteries now kept up a regular fire of both shrapnel and high-explosive shell, but these detonated badly, and our losses on this account were small. A rafale of shrapnel will of course destroy any infantry moving in the open, but intermittent shelling, although it appears to be terribly destructive, ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... pet toe and went away. Something horrible had happened. How we hated those Alfalfa Delts! They had stung us before, but this was a triple-expansion, double-back-action, high-explosive sting, with a dum dum point. We hurt all over; and the worst of it was, we hadn't really been stung yet and didn't know where it was going to hit us. Did you ever wait perfectly helpless while a large, taciturn wasp with a red-hot tail was looking ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... Guillaume, a chemist of great talent, like his father, but at the same time a Bohemian, addicted to revolutionary dreams, was living in a little house in the suburbs, where he devoted himself to the dangerous study of explosive substances; and folks added that he was living with a woman who had come no one knew whence. This it was which had severed the last tie between himself and his mother, all piety and propriety. For three years Pierre had not once seen Guillaume, whom in his childhood he had worshipped ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... of hysteria, though he was more temperamentally excitable and explosive than his blood-brother Jerry, while his father and mother were a sedate old couple indeed compared with him. Far more than mature Jerry, was mature Michael playful and rowdyish. His ebullient spirits were always on tap to spill over ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... 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
... first glance, such a catastrophe may appear too wildly improbable for belief, yet it was not the improbability of a world's blowing up that led to a temporary abandonment of Olbers's bold theory. The great French mathematician Lagrange investigated the explosive force "which would be necessary to detach a fragment of matter from a planet revolving at a given distance from the sun," and published the results in the ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... 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
... 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 own tunnel and came back empty-handed. "What ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... good-natured face; the rest (to my sense) merely exquisite. She comes steering into my room of a morning, like Mrs. Nickleby, with elaborate precaution; unlike her, noiseless. If I look up from my work, she is ready with an explosive smile. I generally don't, and wait to look at her as she stoops for the bellows, and trips tiptoe off again, a miracle of successful womanhood in every line. I am amused to find plain, healthy Java pass in my fancy so far before pretty young Faauma. I observed Lloyd the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 14th of January, the assassination of the French Emperor, which had been planned in England by Felice Orsini and other refugees, was attempted. On the arrival of the Imperial carriage at the Opera House in the Rue Lepelletier, explosive hand-grenades were thrown at it, and though the Emperor and Empress were unhurt, ten people were either killed outright or died of their wounds, and over one hundred and fifty were injured. Notwithstanding the scene of carnage, their Majesties ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... The explosive gentleman had just concluded a fanciful picture of what would happen to Honest John if he came into competition with the average Bermondsey ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... in the presence of wrong, but it will not be rash, violent, explosive, and selfish, as before he was sanctified, but calm and orderly, and holy, and determined, like that of God. It will be the wholesome, natural antagonism of holiness and righteousness to all ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... London was very trying on account of the cold, fog, and snow. The train ploughed its way slowly and cautiously amidst the explosive signals, which did not add to our comfort. We felt very sorry for Mr. and Mrs. Seeley, who were sitting up for us so late ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... plays very quietly, without the daring elan which distinguishes the artist from the amateur," said one; "his defect is the non- observance of the indication of accent at the beginning of musical phrases." What was then admired in Vienna was explosive accentuations and piano drumming. The article continues: "As in his playing he was like a beautiful young tree that stands free and full of fragrant blossoms and ripening fruits, so he manifested as much estimable individuality ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... indeed, Mr. Carnes knows that I have captured you. He knows the exact location of this cavern and, more important, he knows the location of the power line which feeds my device when it is in operation. He also knows that there is stored in this cavern, fifty pounds of radite, your ultra-explosive. He knows that you are chained close to the explosive and that it is rigged with a detonator, connected with the power line. In only one thing ...
— The Great Drought • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... precision and accuracy that solicitude as to what would become of the world if all its men marched off to war is in a measure assuaged. In the push and drive of the industrial world, women are handling dangerous chemicals in making flash lights, and T.N.T. for high explosive shells. The American college girl is not as yet transmuting her prowess of the athletic field into work on the anvil, as is the university woman in England, but she has demonstrated her manual strength and skill on the farm with ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... school. They are in a rage over wicked, wasteful man. Their novels are bursted notebooks—sometimes neat and orderly notebooks, like Mr. Galsworthy's or our own Ernest Poole's, sometimes haphazard ones, like those of Mr. Wells, but always explosive with reform. These gentlemen know very well what they are about, especially Mr. Wells, the lesser artist, perhaps, as compared with Galsworthy, but the shrewder and possibly the greater man. The very sentimentalists, who go to novels to exercise the idealism which they cannot use ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... woorali. To apply it to whale fishing, he makes the compound up into cartridges of thirty grammes (an ounce) each, which is enough to kill an animal of 60,000 kilogrammes weight. Each cartridge is imbedded in the gunpowder contained in an explosive shell which is fired off on the whale. In a late whaling voyage ten whales received such missiles, and all died within from four to eighteen minutes after the infliction of the wound. Out of these ten whales, six were ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... all your lard, and to-morrow the Fourth, and the store shut." From all appearances Mrs. Snooks was having something of a struggle to control her irritation at such evidences of short-sightedness. It was clear, however, that her efforts had been crowned with success, when she announced with an explosive sigh, "Well, if you haven't lard or baking-soda, I'll take a cup of granulated sugar, and a ball of darning cotton. Yes, black, I guess, though if you're out of black, 'most any ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... an explosive sigh, "but it's an awful relief not to have that secret to pack around any longer, and to feel that I've got somebody ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... and smoke; he had to hold his breath and cover his face with his hands as he pressed forward. A little child lay there in a cradle. He stumbled over to it and groped his way back to the wall. The fire, now that it had access to the air, suddenly leaped at him with an explosive force that made him stagger. He felt as though a thirsty bull had licked his cheek. It bellowed at his heels with a voice of thunder, but was silent when he slammed the door. Half choking he found his way to the window and tried to shout to those ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... I, this gentleman's going to have a fit; it's lost we are entirely this time. He rolled his head to and fro, and then buried his face into a heap of dried rubbish at the foot of a plantain stem, clasped his hands over it, and gave an explosive sneeze. The gorillas let go all, raised themselves up for a second, gave a quaint sound between a bark and a howl, and then the ladies and the young gentleman started home. The old male rose to his full height (it struck ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... kinds. The admiral, not considering it advisable to retain the city, withdrew his men, leaving only a force sufficient for the protection of the factory. This place the Chinese attempted to burn, and made every effort to destroy the fleet with fire-rafts and enormous explosive machines, some of which, it is said, contained 3000 pounds of gunpowder. They were invariably, however, towed clear of the ships. Yeh then one night sent a fleet of 23 war-junks in the hopes of surprising the fleet. Getting news of the intended attack, the admiral despatched the Barracouta ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... their most telling words given with strong emphasis, the others indistinctly; some in tones of solemn rebuke, others in those of heart-broken pathos, but most distinctly audible in detached fragments. There was one exception,—a few words uttered brokenly, with a half-explosive force, from James ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... a triangle, so that the end of the case was 1 in. below the surface of the liquid. On beginning the experiment the material in the bath was heated to just above the melting point, the thermometer was inserted in it, and a minute quantity of the explosive was placed in the bottom of the cartridge case. The temperature marked by the thermometer was noted as the initial temperature, the cartridge case containing the explosive was inserted in the bath, and the temperature quickly ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... was miscreant—a word very popular in O'Connell's day, but rather obsolete now. When the Speaker called on the member for an apology, we had won the day! These rash utterances in debate are the explosive balls that no one must use in battle; and if we only discover one in a fellow's pouch, ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... from the window. Ben gave one glance, his left hand grasping the lever; Toomey made a flying leap for the bell-cord; Geordie scrambled in after; hiss went the steam-cocks; clang went the bell, and with an explosive cough that shook her big frame almost free of the rails the Mogul heaved slowly ahead. The shortened "Time Freight" picked up its heels and came jerkily after, and with her ponderous drivers rolling swifter and swifter, and the heavy ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... 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 of us had been slaughtered. I seized ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... successful competition with that "Modern Rome," as some have termed it, 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 ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... was Mrs. Kukor's grandson, the lady was Mrs. Kukor's daughter, for "Mama!" cried the young mother; and as they met just in front of Johnnie there was an explosive outburst of talk in a strange tongue, and much of what Johnnie afterwards described to Cis as "double kissin'," that is, a kissing on both cheeks, the baby coming in for his share and weeping ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... soldiers whose deadly arrows and keen-edged swords and battle-axes won on the bloody field of Hastings, did not picture a far-off day when the opposing lines should kill each other with mighty engines hurling death from behind parapets a dozen miles away. Firearms and the explosive powder were yet unknown, hence there were no images out of which to build ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... animal's temper is anything but sweet, necessitating the habitual employment of a muzzle to prevent him from biting. Every ten or fifteen minutes, as regular almost as the movements of Father Time, the mandril's bottled discontent at being made to perform seems to reach the explosive point, and springing suddenly at his master, he buries his nose viciously among his clothing in a. determined effort to chew him up. This spasmodic rage subsides in horrible grunts of disappointment at being unable to use his teeth, and he becomes reasonably tractable ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... 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
... tower-house, from a sword-thrust in the chest, and was usually delirious, at the crash had jumped up and come to his senses, crying out: "It is treachery! It is Chamber No. 6 blowing up!" As a matter of fact, that was where the cartridges were. It was said that at Meudon traces had been found of the same explosive as had been used in bombs against the Emperor during the first days of May (a plot that had probably been hatched by the police). The perpetrator, however,—doubtless for good reasons—was ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... 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 with ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... tanklike affair of steel, one hundred feet long. Picture a few dozen of them! Picture them crammed to overflowing with tons of glyco-scarzite, the most destructive explosive the mind of man has yet conceived. An explosive that can't be hurled in a shell and can't be dropped in a bomb from a plane. A pound or so of it, man, lays waste a square mile of anything! Even our scientists are a ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... cynical, until we're almost through the door; and then—well, it's a sigh that comes out explosive. She starts as if she meant to dash after us, and then stops ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... attention which this iconoclastic declaration of faith received at the hands of critics was out of all proportion to its size. Its explosive power was amazing. As I read it over now, with the clamor of "Cubism," "Imagism" and "Futurism" in my ears, it seems a harmless and on the whole rather reasonable plea for National Spirit and the freedom of youth, but in those days all ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... the big barque purred through the water to the drone of wind thrusting in the canvas. The brooms were abaft of the galley when the outcry began which caused them to look apprehensively towards the poop without ceasing their business of washing down. First it was an oath in explosive German, the tongue which puts a cutting-edge on ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... represent an explosive sound, and are so called because the mouth organs are closed just before the sound is uttered and the ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... not trying to compliment Lassalle. The fact is, I dislike the man. His literary style is explosive; about all he seems to do is to paraphrase dear Karl Marx. Besides, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... slur of Flagg about his slack efficiency in meeting the schemes of Craig. There was the ireful consciousness that the narrow-gauge folks were giving him a raw deal on that dynamite matter. They had hauled plenty of explosive for the Comas—for Craig. To admit at the outset of his career on the Noda that he could not get what the Three C's folks were getting—to advertise his impotency by making a twenty-mile tote trip over slushy and rutted roads—was a mighty poor send-off as a boss, ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... Mr. Uhl scratched his head and said something very explosive in German. He started up the stairs, got halfway up—and came down. It had occurred to him very suddenly that three men had already gone up the stairs and had failed to return. He called a fireman and gave him some very explicit orders in German; whereupon the man disappeared in the shaft ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... of his being able to rob me by the proceeding, I could have understood it. But my business interests as far as past inventions went were safe in the hands of my lawyers, and although I had told him a certain amount about the new explosive which I had been working at, it was quite impossible for him to turn it ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... beast lashed out again, spread on the air as if it were flying, looking something like a dragon, then closing up again, inconceivably powerful and explosive. The man's body, strung to its efforts, vibrated strongly. Then a sudden sharp, white-edged wrath came up in him. Swift as lightning he drew back and brought his free hand down like a hawk on the ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... apprehension, they would like to ask so many, many questions... indeed among timid hearers, of whom there are now so many, he is henceforth said to be dangerous. With his repudiation of skepticism, it seems to them as if they heard some evil-threatening sound in the distance, as if a new kind of explosive were being tried somewhere, a dynamite of the spirit, perhaps a newly discovered Russian NIHILINE, a pessimism BONAE VOLUNTATIS, that not only denies, means denial, but—dreadful thought! PRACTISES denial. Against this ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... his vivid imagination caused the negro to give way to an explosive laugh that sent the eavesdropping monkey like a brown thunderbolt into the recesses of its native jungle, while Nigel went off to write and ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... have suspected that the question was charged with as much explosive risk as a detonating wire set to go off at the faintest jar. His eyes grew ...
— The Man the Martians Made • Frank Belknap Long
... word, explosive, intensive, had strained the limits of her vituperation. If that would not stir these men, what could? Tommy's neck ran red again, but he kept his tongue between his teeth. Dick's eyes mellowed. He had the advantage over Tommy, for ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... inspire them and to encourage them, and I stood fascinated by the thunderous noises he was making till father seized me by the hand and thrust me into the care of the train conductor. They said something to each other in the sharp, explosive way men have, and the conductor took me to a seat and told me I was his girl for the time being, and to stay right there till he came for me at ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie
... one, about four o'clock in the afternoon, Joseph discovered a dynamite cartridge containing a pound and a half of the explosive in the vestibule at the front door. The fuse of this cartridge was already alight and would have reached and exploded the percussion, or detonating cap, if Joseph, for some reason unknown, had not gone to the front door at that moment. ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... that he could hope for, which they both could summon, was luck and the deadening hands of time. He told himself, here, that it was more than probable that he was exaggerating the proportions of the whole situation—Fanny had been angry before; her resentment faded the sooner for its swift explosive character. But this assurance was unconvincing; his presentiment, which didn't rest on reason, was not amenable to a reasonable conclusion. Of this he was certain, that Fanny never had harbored the suspicion of ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... to talk about it, at that," Rand said. "The situation here seems to be very delicate, and rather explosive.... Oh, as you go out, I'd be obliged to you for sending Walters up here. I still have this work here, and I'll ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... Northmour. He had the appearance of a finished gentleman; his face bore every mark of intelligence and courage; but you had only to look at him, even in his most amiable moment, to see that he had the temper of a slaver captain. I never knew a character that was both explosive and revengeful to the same degree; he combined the vivacity of the south with the sustained and deadly hatreds of the north; and both traits were plainly written on his face, which was a sort of danger signal. In person he was tall, strong, and active; his hair and complexion very ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... subject of aerial navigation had in the United States one of its periodical revivals. Mr. Cooper, believing that a motive power developed from materials of small weight was essential to the solution of the problem, resolved to employ the explosive force of chloride of nitrogen,—one of the most dangerous compounds known to chemists. The result of his experiments in this direction was an explosion which blew his apparatus to pieces, and nearly cost the audacious inventor an eye. In fact, though the organ was saved from ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond
... anything in that explosive material that need cause you to look so wild? I thought you were ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... and stamped her pretty feet, and said various explosive things under her breath, and not so far under but that they could be heard pretty well, but all this did not avail to make the saddle smaller or the new horse bigger; so at last she was obliged to mount White Eagle, and to have the mortification of ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... Protestant theologians was not difficult. A little skilful warping of Scripture, a little skilful use of that time-honoured phrase, attributed to Cardinal Baronius, that the Bible is given to teach us, not how the heavens go, but how men go to heaven, and a free use of explosive rhetoric against the pursuing army of ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Deflagration. The explosive or violent volatilizing and dissipating of a substance by heat, violent oxidation and similar means. It may be applied among other things to the destroying of a conductor by an intense current, or the volatilization of any material by ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... uneasiness and even alarm, was an unhappy element and a disturbing influence in her life—incredible as the thing appeared! I couldn't let him go on to make himself a worry and a nuisance, drive her out from a town in which she wished to be (for whatever reason) and perhaps start some explosive scandal. And that girl Rose seemed to fear something graver even than a scandal. But if I were to explain the matter fully to H. he would simply rejoice in his heart. Nothing would please him more than to have Dona Rita driven out of Tolosa. What a relief from his anxieties (and his wife's, ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... world there are few inventors and many followers. This is evidence of the large power of imitation and adaptation and of the universal habit of borrowing. On the other hand, if one chemical laboratory should discover a high explosive which may be used in blasting rock for making the foundations for buildings, a nation might borrow the idea and use it in warfare for the ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... methodically executed human deed. From the opposite heights the poor little garden-girt town was shelled like a steel fortress; then, when the Germans entered, a fire was built in every house, and at the nicely-timed right moment one of the explosive tabloids which the fearless Teuton carries about for his land-Lusitanias was tossed on each hearth. It was all so well done that one wonders—almost apologetically for German thoroughness—that any of the human rats escaped from their holes; but some did, and were ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... arena guards threw down their shields with a sudden clatter and seized the prisoners, four to each. The crowd shivered with delicious anticipation. The doomed men neither struggled nor cried, for fatalism is an anodyne as well as an explosive. King set his teeth. Yasmini, with both hands behind her head, continued to smile down on them all as sweetly as the stars shine on ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... it stopped again to consider, but always it was of Dick and incidentally of himself who didn't matter so much, but who had to be in it all. Were they at one in this epidemic of world sickness? As the great explosive forces of destruction and decay seemed to have released actual germs to attack the physical well-being of races, had the terrible crashes of spiritual destinies unsettled the very air of life, poisoned it, drugged it with madness and despair? Was there ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... general's staff watching the course of the action by the billows of black smoke? Gone where the railroad sent the stage-coach, electricity sent the candle and horse-drawn street-cars, serum sent diphtheria, the knife sent the appendix, and rifled cannon and explosive shells sent the wooden walls of old ships of ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... cordillera, on the contrary, although much of the present form of the land is due to erosion, a vast amount is due directly to so-called "tectonic" activities such as the breaking of the crust, the pouring out of molten lavas, and the bursting forth of explosive eruptions. ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... diazo-hippuramide in dilute soda, warm the solution to ensure the formation of the sodium salt, and distil the resulting liquid with dilute sulphuric acid. The pure acid may be obtained by fractional distillation as a colourless liquid of very unpleasant smell, boiling at 30deg C., and extremely explosive. It is soluble in water, and the solution dissolves many metals (zinc, iron, &c.) with liberation of hydrogen and formation of salts (azoimides, azides or hydrazoates). All the salts are explosive and readily interact with the alkyl iodides. In its properties ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... getting quite the reputation of a Doctor Faustus in the popular mind. Even educated people in this very place shake their heads and pity my daughter there for living with an alchemical parent, within easy smelling-distance of an explosive laboratory. Excessively absurd, is ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... lamp, and indeed of all that have since been invented, is that flame will not pass through a close wire-gauze. The lamp is surrounded with this gauze, and although, should the air be filled with gas to an explosive point, it will ignite if it comes in contact with flame, the gauze prevents the light of the lamp from exploding the gas-charged air outside. When the air is of a very explosive character even the Davy-lamps have to be extinguished, as the heat caused by the frequent ignitions ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... explosive was certainly known to the Chinese in very remote ages, and the Phoenicians, whose galleys traversed the most distant seas to the east, may have acquired ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... the clock should not be interfered with before it stopped—nearly a year hence, sir. I understand the liquid is something stronger than water, but whether explosive or poisonous, ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... to the surprise of his physicians, did not die, but he hovered on the brink of it for many thin weeks and his son gave up his entire vacation to be with him. The letters he sent Honor were brief bulletins of his father's condition, explosive regrets at having to give up his summer with her, but Jimsy was not a letter writer. In order properly to fill up more than a page it was necessary for him to be able to say, "Had a bully practice to-day," or, "Saw old Duffy last night and he told me all about—" He was not good at producing ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... stood awestruck, fascinated at the astounding sight, he also saw what looked like a falling star shoot down from one of the Zeppelins, and again there fell on his ears that strange explosive thud. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... would turn away. Between the two impulses he was presently pacing the room; and since there was no one who appeared to have any interest in what he might say, he began muttering to himself. I would catch a phrase: "The fate of woman!" And again: "The price of life!" I would hear the terrible, explosive wail: "O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oh!" And it would wring a cry out of the depths of Carpenter's soul: "Oh, ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... by others as characteristic of Goethe at this period, could not fail to irritate one like Herder, naturally grave, sobered by hard experience, and then suffering from a painful and serious ailment. Equally distasteful to Herder were Goethe's explosive outbursts in general conversation and his liking for practical jokes at the expense of his friends. To Herder as to everyone else Goethe aired his opinions with the "frank confidingness" which he notes as a trait of his own character, and which gave Herder frequent opportunities for ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... supply at Mafeking, unless you call the ordinary Martini-Henry an expanding bullet. I would not have used them on humane principles, and moreover, an Army order had been issued against the use of dum-dum bullets in this campaign. On the other hand, explosive bullets are expressly forbidden in the Convention, and these the Boers used freely against us in Mafeking, especially ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... say this to the dwellers upon the slope of the mountain, and if there comes hereafter a catastrophe which makes the world to shudder, am I responsible for that catastrophe? I did not build the mountain, or fill it with explosive materials. I merely warned the men that were in danger. So, now, it is not I that am stimulating men to the violent pursuit of ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... between the kings of Cappadocia on the one hand and of Pontus on the other has been referred to a select combat of two hundred men a side. Artamene, of course, obtains the command of the Cappadocians, to the despair of his explosive but not ungenerous rival, "Philip Dastus." After a very beautiful interview with Mandane (where, once more, the most elegant compliments pass between these gentlefolkliest of all heroes and heroines) and divers preliminaries, the fight comes off.][162] They began to advance with heads lowered, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... which drain the water away, the fluid acquires a considerable increase of temperature, on the average about one degree Fahrenheit for each eighty feet of descent. It may, indeed, become so heated that if it were at the earth's surface it would not only burst into steam with a vast explosive energy, but would actually shine in the manner of heated solids. As the temperature of water rises, and as the pressure on it increases, it acquires a solvent power, and takes in rocky matter in a measure unapproached at the earth's surface. ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... uncomfortable. It is difficult to concentrate the mind; the same remark may be automatically repeated; the eyes search restlessly, and there is a tendency to count surrounding objects or patterns. When the extreme degree of tension is reached it is only by executing a kind of dance that the explosive contraction ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... said, gravely approaching his ball, "so adds distance to my drive as a good explosive ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the British? To a certain extent, I presume you never heard tell of the Laughton-Zigler automatic two-inch field-gun, with self-feeding hopper, single oil-cylinder recoil, and ballbearing gear throughout? Or Laughtite, the new explosive? Absolutely uniform in effect, and one-ninth the bulk of any present effete charge—flake, cannonite, cordite, troisdorf, cellulose, cocoa, cord, or prism—I don't care what it is. Laughtite's immense; ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... course prepared for any amount of explosive gas you may shower down upon their uncombed crowns, as the cool and perfectly-at-home manner they descend your steps to mount those of your next-door neighbor plainly ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... Inter-Solar. We'll make you an offer—" That was Kallee's contribution, made probably because his commanding officer couldn't find words explosive enough. ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... 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. It is understood that all ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... and then he and Slippery, each carrying a heavy satchel filled with the tools Slippery had so carefully looked after, followed by Joe, around whose left leg they had bandaged, despite his most vehement protests, the small bottle containing the deadly explosive, left the flat. They took a street car to the railroad station, where Boston Frank purchased tickets to Dixon, one of the prettiest and most hustling cities in western Illinois. Soon they were rolling out of the railroad yards and across the fertile plains and ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston) |
