"Projectile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... speaker and made a blind clutch. The tips of my fingers seemed to touch a surface as smooth as glass, that glided suddenly from under them. A sharp, angry hiss sounded through the gloom, followed by a whirring noise, as if some projectile passed rapidly by, and the next moment I felt instinctively that I ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... but a short swing in the other; while the long swing to the right invariably means the long swing to the left. An object hurled upward to a certain height has an equal distance to traverse on its return. The force with which a projectile is sent upward a mile is reproduced when the projectile returns to the earth on its return journey. This Law is constant on the Physical Plane, as reference to the standard ...
— The Kybalion - A Study of The Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece • Three Initiates
... and Plate XVII, 1) is a most peculiar looking object like a projectile, and gives one the impression of being ready to shoot off on the smallest provocation. The eight spikes, reversed funnels, coming to a point, are probably responsible for this warlike appearance. The remainder of the body is occupied by ...
— Occult Chemistry - Clairvoyant Observations on the Chemical Elements • Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater
... carpenter are merely practical men; but the gunner, sir, is, or ought to be, scientific. Gunnery, sir, is a science—we have our own disparts and our lines of sight—our windage, and our parabolas, and projectile forces—and our point blank, and our reduction of powder upon a graduated scale. Now, sir, there's no excuse for a gunner not being a navigator; for knowing his duty as a gunner, he has the same mathematical tools to work with." Upon this principle, Mr Tallboys had added John ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... gaps), O Zeus, where is now your resplendent lightning, where your deep-toned thunder, where the glowing, white- hot, direful bolt? we know now 'tis all fudge and poetic moonshine— barring what value may attach to the rattle of the names. That renowned projectile of yours, which ranged so far and was so ready to your hand, has gone dead and cold, it seems; never a spark left in it to ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... Chen Yuen, by her movements and gun practice, protected the Ting Yuen, and, in fact, while she could not prevent the heavy loss the fleet encountered, preserved it from annihilation. During the fight this ship was almost continuously on fire, and was struck by every kind of projectile, from the thirteen-inch Canet shells to a rifle bullet, four hundred times. McGiffin himself was so badly wounded, so beaten about by concussions, so burned, and so bruised by steel splinters, that his health ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... 276; ejaculate; ejection &c. 297; throw, fling, toss, shot, discharge, shy; launch, release. [Science of propulsion] projectiles, ballistics, archery. [devices to give propulsion] propeller, screw, twin screws, turbine, jet engine. [objects propelled] missile, projectile, ball, discus, quoit, brickbat, shot; [weapons which propel] arrow, gun, ballista &c. (arms) 727[obs3]. [preparation for propulsion] countdown, windup. shooter; shot; archer, toxophilite[obs3]; bowman, rifleman, marksman; good shot, crack shot; sharpshooter ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... some difficulty in loading the piece, especially in getting the projectile home. It was supposed that this not being done properly ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... you, Le Bret! I soon shall reach the moon. To-night, alone, with no projectile's aid!. ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... velocity gun, with a flat projectory, like our 18-pounder, has two disadvantages in mountain warfare. When the gun is firing from behind a steep hill, the shell, on leaving the gun, is liable to strike the hill in front instead of clearing the crest. When the projectile reaches the distant ridge (behind which the enemy are presumably taking cover), the angle of descent is not sufficiently steep to cause damage. More satisfactory results were obtainable with howitzers, whose high angle fire could both clear the forward crests and search ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... fireman stooped and seized a big lump of coal. Ralph could hardly hope to dodge the missile, hemmed in as he was. It was poised for a vicious fling. Just as Fogg's hand went backwards to aim the projectile, it was seized, the missile was wrested from his grasp, and a strange voice drawled out ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... in a short walk to the market or the post-office, or to do a little shopping, wonder how it is that their pedestrian friends can compass so many weary miles and not fall down from sheer exhaustion; ignorant of the fact that the walker is a kind of projectile that drops far or near according to the expansive force of the motive that set it in motion, and that it is easy enough to regulate the charge according to the distance to be traversed. If I am loaded to carry ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... highest that can be produced on earth. If the German gun that bombarded Paris were loaded with a solid steel projectile of suitable dimensions, a muzzle velocity of 6,000 feet per second could be reached. Suppose this to be fired into a tapered hole in a great block of steel. The instantaneous pressure, according to Cook, would be about 7,000 tons per square ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... in columns of squads. While yet several miles from the enemy's position the troops may come under artillery fire. On green men entering upon their fight, the sound of the projectile whistling through the air, the noise, flash, and smoke on the burst of the shrapnel, and the hum of the various pieces thereafter, all produce a very terrifying effect, but old soldiers soon learn to pay little attention to this, as the ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... indiscriminately all over the country by whites, a wommerah. It is in the form of a flat ellipse, elongated to a sort of tail at the holding end, and short-pointed at the projecting end; a kangaroo's claw or wild dog's tooth is firmly fixed by gum and gut-strings. The projectile force of this implement is enormous, and these spears can be thrown with the greatest precision for more than a hundred yards. They also had narrow shields, three to four feet long, to protect themselves from hostile spears, with a handle cut out in the centre. These two ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... causality are of such a kind as to agree with a comparative notion of freedom. According to this, that is sometimes called a free effect, the determining physical cause of which lies within the acting thing itself, e.g., that which a projectile performs when it is in free motion, in which case we use the word freedom, because while it is in flight it is not urged by anything external; or as we call the motion of a clock a free motion, because it moves ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... the war, begotten by the war; for Lady Queenie had said that if she was to do war-work without disaster to her sanity she must have the right environment. Thus the putting together of Lady Queenie's nest had proceeded concurrently with the building of national projectile factories and of square miles of offices for the girl clerks of ministries ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... Would I get out to watch it? I hesitated. Yes, of course. But it was only another gun, a giant tube of steel painted in frog patches to hide it from aerial observation; only another gun, though it sent a two-thousand-pound projectile to a target ten miles away, which a man from a sausage balloon said ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... its silent, secret, undemonstrative way, the Japanese army had been making preparations of an important character, among which were included the construction of concrete emplacements for eighteen 11-inch howitzers, from which great things were expected. They fired a 500-pound projectile charged with high explosive, and had a range which enabled them to command the entire area of the fortress, ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... in Kensington Gardens. An enormous dimple had been made by the impact of the projectile, which lay almost buried in the earth. Two or three trees, broken by its fall, sprawled on the turf. Among this debris was the missile; resembling nothing so much as a huge crinoline. At the moment we reached the spot P.C. A581 was ordering it off; ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... A fulgurator ten million times more powerful than anything hitherto invented! Ten millions for an autopropulsive projectile which, when it explodes, destroys everything in sight within a radius of over twelve thousand square yards! Ten millions for the only deflagrator that can provoke its explosion! Why, all the wealth of the world wouldn't suffice to ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... cruiser "Atlanta" has two guns of eight-inch bore, 24 feet long, sending out a projectile of 300 pounds which explodes on striking,—firing correctly five miles. It costs ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... the earthworks, and again a slight modification in the range was made. Now missiles began to descend in and around the distant redoubt, and each as it exploded dealt out shattering destruction to the dummy men which represented an enemy. One projectile smashed against the side of Oke Tor, and sent back the ringing ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... It centred about the life saving crew, whose mortar was being loaded. A stove-in lifeboat mutely attested the failure of other efforts. The men worked busily, ramming home the powder sack, placing the projectile with the light line attached, attending that the reel ran freely. Their chief watched the seas and winds through his glasses. When the preparations were finished, he adjusted the mortar, and pulled the string. Carroll had seen this done in practice. Now, with ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... however, within the minute. One of his cylinders was missing. His trained ear caught at the change of the "tune," and he felt his speed decreasing. He glanced back briefly, where the dusty lump of steel, like a red-hot projectile, ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... fresh batch of opponents, and, having carefully studied the characteristics of the newcomers, prescribed and administered an exemplary dose of frightfulness. He began by tickling up the Stickybacks with an unpleasant engine called the Minenwerfer, which despatches a large sausage-shaped projectile in a series of ridiculous somersaults, high over No Man's Land into the enemy's front-line trench, where it explodes and annihilates everything in that particular bay. Upon these occasions one's only chance of salvation ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... trail, stopping again to gaze at the shadowed valley below while I mused on the centuries it had seen and the brief moment of a man's life. Standing thus, I was like to lose my own, for suddenly I heard a whirr like that of a shrapnel shell on its murderous errand, and at my feet fell a projectile. ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... determines the course of a shell from a mortar. The amount of impression it makes is not to be determined so exactly. Sometimes, in an impressible nature, the idea works havoc, but there are, no less, natures so robustly protected, that this sort of projectile falls flat and harmless on skulls of triple brass, as cannon-shot against solid masonry; then there are flaccid and spongy-fibred natures into which ideas from without sink like spent bullets into the earthworks of a redoubt. Rastignac's head was something of the powder-magazine order; the least ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... training a quarter-deck gun on the Trekroner battery his hat was blown from his head and he was knocked down by the rush of wind from a grapeshot. Seeing this, Brock exclaimed, "Ah, poor Savery! He is indeed dead." But, to use his own words, it was only "the hot air from the projectile that had 'floored' him." Previous to this he had driven Isaac almost demented by stating his intention of joining the storming party and sharing his brother's danger. "Is it not enough that one brother should be killed or drowned?" said Isaac. But Savery persisted until, at Isaac's request, ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... there in the driving rain, hatless and shivering, hanging to the tiller and letting the sloop drive. Letting her drive! why, there wasn't a thing I could do to change her course. She was rushing on through the foaming seas like a projectile shot from some huge gun, and every moment the ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... excruciating—but it did not break that lock-hold on the outlaw's hand and gun. Shooting from his knees like a projectile, Merryfield flung his whole weight at the door. Big as Drake was, he could not hold it. It gave, and once more the two men hung at grips, ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... von Hindenburg, and he glanced at a gun crew who were loading a half-ton projectile into an 11.1-inch siege-gun that stood on the pavement. "Which is the Woolworth Building?" he asked, pointing across ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... the Hans next sent out, were harder to handle. Rising to immense heights behind the city's disintegrator wall, these tiny, projectile-like craft slipped through the rifts in the cylinder of destruction, and then turning off their repeller rays, dropped at terrific speed until their small vanes were sufficient to support them as they volplaned in great circles, ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... Nature. Is it not by gravity that the water rises to the top stories of our houses? Is it not by gravity that the aeroplane soars to the clouds? When the mammoth guns hurl a ton of iron twenty miles they pit the greater weight against the lesser. The lighter projectile goes, and the heavier gun stays. So the athlete hurls the hammer ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... law—so openly stated as restrictions by Mr. Ricardo—are brought forward by Mr. Malthus as so many objections of his own to upset that law. The logic, as usual, is worthy of notice; for it is as if, in a question about the force of any projectile, a man should urge the resistance of the air, not as a limitation of that force, but as a capital objection to it. What I here insist on, however, is its extreme disingenuousness. But this is a subject which it is unpleasant to pursue; and the course of our ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... the Army bill for the procurement of pneumatic dynamite guns, the necessary specifications are now being prepared, and advertisements for proposals will issue early in December. The guns will probably be of 15 inches caliber and fire a projectile that will carry a charge each of about 500 pounds of explosive gelatine with full-caliber projectiles. The guns will probably be delivered in from six to ten months from the date of the contract, so that all the guns of this class that can be procured under the provisions of the law will be ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... Ahead or astern, on one side or the other, at intervals long or short, fled the long sparkling streak, and there was to be heard the whirroo of the dark fin. The speed and power of the thing was greatly to be admired. It cut the water like a gigantic and keen projectile. ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... let fly. The arrow sang a moment through the air, and then it stood out, buried to the feathers in the body of the lion. The wounded beast uttered a scream so fierce that all three shuddered and drew a little closer together, and then launched itself through the air like a projectile. It struck in the snow somewhere, disappeared from their sight, and they heard terrible ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... invention was ninety-five centimetres in diameter, and was itself a rifled mortar, which in full flight, twenty miles from the gun and at the top of its trajectory, exploded in mid-air, hurling forward its contained projectile with an additional velocity of three thousand feet per second. This process repeated itself, the final or core bomb, weighing over three hundred pounds and filled with lyddite, reaching its mark one minute and thirty-five seconds after the firing of the gun. This ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... Mr. Roumann again. "I have studied it all out, and I think the projectile, shaped somewhat like a great shell, such as they use in warfare, or, more properly speaking, built like a cigar or a torpedo, is the only feasible means of reaching Mars. We shall go in a projectile, two hundred feet long, and ten feet in diameter at the largest point. That ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood
... a car!" she snapped; and for further answer she threw the speed lever into the intermediate gear and released the clutch. Like a projectile hurled from a catapult, the swift little roadster shot away down the cottonwood avenue, and with a jerk of the lever into the "high" the second race ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... of course. In that case, I set my flitter into a projectile trajectory like this, whose objective is the center of the vortex, there. See? Ten seconds or so away, at about this point, I take my instantaneous readings, solve the equations at that particular warped surface for ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... she was so far from anywhere the underwriters would have abandoned her, even had she not been a prize of war, since there are no appliances in Papeete for salving a vessel of her size; that she could be raised if one cared to spend a little money on doing it; that one projectile probably had not ruined her beyond repair; that she was a menace to navigation in Papeete Harbor and hence would have to be gotten out of the way, either by dynamite or auction; that—well, any number of thats should have occurred to Cappy ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... we used to play upon the surface of the earth; sometimes "in the big ring," where each combatant fired at the marbles grouped in the centre, from any point upon the external orbit; sometimes "in the little ring," where the shot was made from the place where the projectile lodged last; sometimes "at chasings," where the players fired alternately, each at the marble of his adversary. Concerning this last game, I remember the following terms: "ebs," which, seasonably vociferated, that is, when it is the speaker's turn ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... inch iron—on the side of the ports, nine—set on end so as to break joints, and firmly bolted together, making a hollow cylinder eight inches thick. It rests on a metal ring on a vertical shaft, which is revolved by power from the boilers. If a projectile struck the turret at an acute angle, it was expected to glance off without doing damage. But what would happen if it was fired in a straight line to the center of the turret, which in that case would receive the whole force of the blow? ...
— The Monitor and the Merrimac - Both sides of the story • J. L. Worden et al.
... her down, swaying her thin masts. In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop, would go one of the six-inch guns; a small flame would dart and vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech—and nothing happened. Nothing could happen. There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the sight; and it was not dissipated by somebody on board assuring me earnestly ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... armed with several Gatling and Nordenfeldt guns, three 12- pounder breech-loaders, six 3-pounders, and one 8-inch breech-loading Armstrong gun, throwing a projectile weighing 170 pounds, which was mounted forward; and, immediately upon Jim's command her whole broadside crashed out, raking the foolhardy steamer from end to end, and making her fairly reel under the impact of the iron shower. Away forward, Manuel, the first lieutenant, had observed ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... instinct of the swimmer, she closed her lips tightly and held her breath. Her little body flashed through a thick growth of bushes that hung over the chute at one point. She had seen the bushes coming at her like a projectile and instinctively lowered her head before reaching them. But she quickly raised her head again, uttering an exclamation, as the skin was neatly peeled from the bridge ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... shells, with their exceedingly mournful and groaning sound, seemed to have a more terrifying effect than the swift Mauser bullet, which always rendered the same salutation, "Bi-Yi." The midern shrapnel shell is better known as the man-killing projectile, and may be regarded as the most dangerous of all projectiles designed for taking human life. It is a shell filled with 200 or 300 bullets, and having a bursting charge, which is ignited by a time fuse, only sufficient to break ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... after four bells, or two o'clock, the strange monster was close enough for us to make out her plating and ports; and we tried her with a solid shot from one of our stern-guns, the projectile glancing off her forward casemate like a drop of water from a duck's back. This opened our eyes. Instantly she threw aside the screen from one of her forward ports, and answered us with grape, killing and wounding quite a number. She then passed us, receiving our broadside and giving one in return, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... of Newton's error, and the discovery that a projectile would move in an elliptical orbit when under the influence of a force varying in the inverse ratio of the square of the distance, led Newton, as he himself informs us in his letter to Halley, to discover "the theorem by which he afterward examined ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... as our men fell back, and I was almost in their midst, thus protected to a considerable extent from the lightning projectile, against which alone I had no defence. Hand to hand I was a match for more than one or two of my assailants, though on this occasion I wore no defensive armour, and they were clad in shirts of woven ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... so later we found the interplanetary projectile which had sought to escape. Amid its wreckage lay the single, broken form of Tao—that leader who, plotting the devastation of two worlds for his own personal gain, had at the very last deserted his comrades and ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... the threatening head of some great gliding serpent. Suddenly there came a sharp puff of lighter smoke that seemed like a forked tongue, and then a hollow report, and we could see a great black projectile hurled into the air, and falling a quarter of a mile away from us, in the woods. I did not at once learn that this first shot killed two of the Maine men, and wounded two more. This was fired wide, but the numerous shots which followed ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... boats and other craft of the Allies hurried to the rescue, but they were successful in saving only a few men. Besides having been struck by a mine, the Bouvet was severely damaged above the water line by shell fire. One projectile struck her forward deck. A mast also was shot away and hung overboard. It could be seen that the Bouvet when she sank was endeavoring to gain the mouth of the strait. This, however, was difficult, owing, apparently, to the fact that her machinery ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... a sudden swoosh somewhere on his right. A projectile, Tom realized! Turning, his eyes widened in horror as he ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... and Tommy prepared his message-carrying projectile. He found snapshots and included them. He tore out a photograph of Evelyn and her father, which had been framed above a work bench in the laboratory. He labored, racking his brain for a means of conveying the information that the globe was of any other world.... ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... passed clear over the Lurline, and plunged into the water and burst, throwing a cloud of spray high into the air. Then came one from the torpedo-boat, but she was still too far off for her light gun to do any damage, and the projectile fell spent into the sea nearly ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... surface—say from air on to glass or water—the velocity of the light-particles, when they came close to the surface, is, according to Newton, also accelerated. Approaching such a surface obliquely, he supposed the particles, when close to it, to be drawn down upon it, as a projectile is deflected by gravity to the surface of the earth. This deflection was, according to Newton, the refraction seen in our last lecture (fig. 4). Finally, it was supposed that differences of colour might be due to differences in the 'bigness' of ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... passing the bandstand the educated mule, with Teddy Tucker on its back, bolted through the curtains like a projectile. The mule nearly ran over Phil, then brought up suddenly to launch both heels at him. But the Circus Boy had seen this same mule in action before, and this time Phil had discreetly ducked under ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... Hallock—it was unmistakably Hallock this time—spring from the shadow of a baggage-truck and whip up to the step of the smoker, and a scant half-second later he saw Judson race across the wide platform and throw himself like a self-propelled projectile against and through the closing doors of the vestibule at the forward end of ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... no fish for breakfast, and not much of anything else. Mr. Cruncher was out of spirits, and out of temper, and kept an iron pot-lid by him as a projectile for the correction of Mrs. Cruncher, in case he should observe any symptoms of her saying Grace. He was brushed and washed at the usual hour, and set off with his son to pursue ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... fired from either of the Benbow's heavy gun weighs 1,800 lb., and is capable of penetrating 35 in. of unbacked wrought iron at a distance of 1,000 yards. The projectile fired from the 67 ton guns of the Empress of India will have much less penetrating power, being only equal to 27 in. of wrought iron with a full charge of 520 lb. of prismatic brown powder, the missile weighing 1,250 lb. or about one-half less than the weight of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... not so much a plan of campaign as a preliminary defiance. Life is a doubtful boon while one is never safe from assault, from hitting and shoving, from poking with umbrellas, being sat upon, and used as a target for projectile nephews and nieces. I warn her—possibly with a certain quaver in my voice—that I am in revolt. If she hits me again——I will not say the precise thing I will do, but I warn her, very solemnly and deliberately, that she had better not hit ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... I twist in figures of eight, I fight my way by inches against the wind, and, turning, I shoot back upon its current with the speed of a projectile. I am shaken and buffeted until I gasp for breath. I swerve, I dance, I caracole—I pirouette on a wing tip, catching my side slips on the rudder as one plays cup and ball. I dangle myself at the end of a single wire on the brink of eternity, crying ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... We can hear the soft whine of scores of shells hurrying all together through the air. Every five minutes or so a certain howitzer, tucked into some hiding-place, vents its periodical growl, and we can hear the huge projectile climbing slowly, up his steep gradient with a hiss like that of water from a fire-hose. There is some other heavy shell which passes us also, somewhere in the middle of his flight. We cannot distinguish the report of the gun, and we do not hear the shell burst; but at regular ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... Thus charged, no material thing could penetrate them. The greatest meteor would be crushed to drifting dust without so much as scarring that wall of mighty force ... meteors traveling with a speed and penetrative power that no gun-hurled projectile could ever ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... unfathom'd retrospect! The teeming gulf—the sleepers and the shadows! The past—the infinite greatness of the past! For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past? (As a projectile form'd, impell'd, passing a certain line, still keeps on, So the present, utterly form'd, impell'd by ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... then a bullet would have a hoarse sound—that meant that it had ricochetted. At intervals of three or four minutes a huge, old-fashioned projectile would labour through the air, visible all the time, and crash harmlessly into the woods. The Americans called it the "long yellow feller," and sometimes a negro trooper would turn and with a yell shoot ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... milled like sheep, hampering the work of the boat-crews at the davits. Ship's officers raged among them, endeavouring to restore order. Half a mile or so dead ahead a tiny tongue of flame spat viciously in the murk. A projectile shrieked overhead, and dropped into the sea astern. ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... line y cx, the machine draws the parabola y cx / 2. This is the path of a projectile, as the space fallen is as the area of the triangle between the inclined line, the axis of x, and the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... Formerly these disputes were settled by physical contact of the disputants, with such simple arguments as the rudimentary logic of the times could supply—the sword, the spear, and so forth. With the growth of prudence in military affairs the projectile came more and more into favor, and is now held in high esteem by the most courageous. Its capital defect is that it requires personal attendance at ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... now building at the Washington gun factory an experimental 6-inch rapid-fire gun, different from the rapid-fire guns we have now in service, which are supplied with what is termed fixed ammunition. The powder and projectile to be used in the experimental gun will be separate, and two operations consequently will have to be employed in loading. This can be done so quickly that it is expected that a very rapid ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... own. This knowledge may one day prove of no little importance. As has already been stated, the Mills No. 5 is the standard among hand grenades of the Allies. It conforms to the general description of hand grenades; i.e., it is an egg-shaped projectile, more or less hollow, and loaded with a charge of explosive. Besides this it has an apparatus for setting off the bursting charge. It weighs 1 pound 5 ounces approximately, and 4 ounces of this is high explosive. The shell being of serrated cast-iron, an explosion will scatter a sort of shrapnel ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... also have an enormous range. In fact, as regards practical effect, the transit described by the ball ought to be as extended as possible, and this tension could only be obtained under the condition that the projectile should be impelled with a very great ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... Then pausing to see the effect of his speech, He saw nought but the thief still at work at the breach; And, being opposed to thieves visiting attics, Combined with those vile anti-ladder fanatics, And sent a projectile which left the thief where Thieves and traitors should all be, suspended in air, Except that he lacked what was due to his calling, A hempen attachment to keep him ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... in partnership with a brother scientist, Professor Santell Roumann, projected and carried through a marvelous campaign with the aid of Jack and Mark, which is narrated in our fourth volume, entitled, "Through Space to Mars." In this book is told how the projectile, Annihilator, was built and, the projectile being driven by the Etherium motor, the party was transported to ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... with observations on projectiles, regarding which Galileo was the first to entertain correct notions. According to the current idea, a projectile fired, for example, from a cannon, moved in a straight horizontal line until the propulsive force was exhausted, and then fell to the ground in a perpendicular line. Galileo taught that the projectile begins to fall at once on leaving the mouth of the cannon and traverses a ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... when or Why he came to call it tenor, But the fact remains he sang With a subtle nasal twang Just because he liked to do so (He was Carr, but not CARUSO), And with such a force of lung That, whatever tune he sung, It was like a projectile With a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various
... small-bore with the immense advantage of low trajectory, I am decidedly opposed to the hollow expanding bullet for heavy, thick-skinned game. I have so frequently experienced disappointment by the use of the hollow bullet that I should always adhere to the slightly hardened and solid projectile that will preserve its original shape after striking the thick hide of a ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... struck the ship; the canvas was torn in several places; a number of port lights were broken, and the open decks fore and aft, as well as the spar deck, were littered with stones. He picked up some of these missiles, man's earliest and latest projectile. They were round and heavy; a few bore the red streaks of oxidized iron; some appeared to be veritable lumps of ore, though the action of water had made them "smooth stones out of the brook." He showed one to Tollemache, who seemed to possess a good deal of out-of-the-way knowledge, and the latter ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... subject from the first to a steady and accurate shelling, for we were all but in sight, as were the German trenches about 2000 yards to our front. At times the fire would come in salvos quickly repeated. Bursts of fire would be made for ten or fifteen minutes at a time. We got all varieties of projectile, from 3 inch to 8 inch, or perhaps 10 inch; the small ones usually as air bursts, the larger percussion and air, and the heaviest ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... Me, describing how a busy clergyman found an Irishman who looked so much like himself that he trained him to pass as his duplicate, and sent him to do duty in his stead at public meetings, dinners, etc., thereby escaping bores and getting time for real work; the Brick Moon, a story of a projectile built and launched into space, to revolve in a fixed meridian about the earth and serve mariners as a mark of longitude; the Rag Man and Rag Woman, a tale of an impoverished couple who made a competence by saving the pamphlets, advertisements, wedding-cards, etc., that came to them through the ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... indigenous to China. Ancient writers on foods mention the radish as used by the early Greeks and Romans, who fancied that at the end of three years its seed would produce cabbages. They had also the singular custom of making the radish the ignominious projectile with which in times of tumult the mob pursued persons whose political opinions had made them obnoxious. When quiet was restored, the disgraced vegetable was boiled and eaten with oil and vinegar. Common garden radishes are of ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... strength of the "sword." It strikes with the accumulated force of fifteen double-handed hammers; its velocity is equal to that of a swivel-shot, and it is as dangerous in its effects as a heavy artillery projectile would be. ...
— Harper's Young People, February 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... same moment. Could it have come from there? Looking down upon the window-ledge, there lay the mysterious missile—a little misshapen ball. He opened the window and took it up. It was a small handkerchief tied into a soft knot, and dampened with water to give it the necessary weight as a projectile. ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... but their range is short and penetrative power small. A bulwarked vessel was, so to say, armored against canister; for it makes no difference whether the protection is six inches of wood or ten of iron, provided it keeps out the projectile. The American schooners were ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... second; the horses reared, threw themselves over, fell upon their backs, and struggled with their feet in the air, piling up and overturning their riders; no power to retreat; the whole column was nothing but a projectile. The force acquired to crush the English crusht the French. The inexorable ravine could not yield until it was filled; riders and horses rolled in together pell-mell, grinding each other, making common ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... who seem to live in advance of their age. He had thought out, and carried out in a rough-and-ready manner, ideas which have since been scientifically reduced to practice. Being well aware that any projectile is drawn downward in its flight by the law of gravitation, and that if you want to hit a distant point you must aim considerably above it, he had, by careful experiment, found out how high above an object at a given distance ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... time he got back, it faded away, and all he remembered was the excitement. But each time he went through it, it was worse. Just standing and waiting in the silence, praying they weren't spotted—staring at the unmoving firmament and knowing he was a projectile hurtling two miles each second straight at a clump of metal and flesh that was the enemy. Knowing the odds were twenty to one against their scoring a kill ... ...
— Slingshot • Irving W. Lande
... would go on and, after I had left it behind, discover the dynamite capable of blasting it. 'Twas a tiny grain at first, an insignificant ball rolling and increasing as it went. From one slope to the other of the theorems, it grew to a heavy mass; and the mass became a mighty projectile which, flung backwards and retracing its course, split the darkness and spread it into ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... or, more accurately speaking, a barrel for discharge of the projectile and a chamber for the explosive ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... up and kicked Manuel in the shins; the poor boy saw stars. He gave a cry of pain and then, furious, seized a plate and sent it flying at the agent's head; the latter ducked and the projectile crossed the dining-room, crashed through a window pane and fell into the courtyard, where it smashed with a racket. The salesman grabbed one of the coffee-pots that was filled with coffee and milk and hurled it at Manuel with such good aim that it struck the boy in ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... numerous and more zealous in view of the prizes held out to them; star-maps were diligently constructed, and the sidereal multitude strewn along the great zodiacal belt acquired a fresh interest when it was perceived that its least conspicuous member might be a planetary shred or projectile in the dignified disguise of a distant sun. Harding's "Celestial Atlas," designed for the special purpose of facilitating asteroidal research, was the first systematic attempt to represent to the eye the telescopic aspect of the heavens. It was while ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... rifle takes a charge of one hundred and ten pounds of Dupont smokeless powder and a projectile weighing five hundred and seventy-five pounds," Captain Heath was explaining, as they stopped in front of ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... we continued to carry on most pleasantly, Mrs. Dalrymple, I could perceive, did not entirely sympathize with our projects of amusement. As an experienced engineer might feel when watching the course of some storming projectile—some brilliant congreve—flying over a besieged fortress, yet never touching the walls nor harming the inhabitants, so she looked on at all these demonstrations of attack with no small impatience, and wondered when would the breach be reported ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... miles and to be able to penetrate anything with equanimity and joy. The gun, as a matter of fact, had once been induced to go off when it had hurled itself passionately upon its back, incidentally breaking its inventor's leg. The projectile had wandered some four hundred yards seaward, where it dug a hole in the water which was really a menace to navigation. Since then there had been nothing tangible save the inventor, in splints and out of splints, as the fortunes of science decreed. In short, this office boy ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... of it bore some scar of the war, now trivial, now gigantic—always awesome in the power and volition it revealed. One passed from the sight of a brown puddle, scooped in the surface of the street by an exploding shell, to a view of a magnificent ash tree splintered by some projectile. It is a very rare thing to see a sinister landscape, but this whole road was sinister. I used to discuss this sinister quality with a distinguished French artist who as a poilu was the infirmier, or medical service man, attached to a squad ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... making a strange threatening sound as she ran, such as one would use in driving ducks out of a garden—"B-r-r-r-r-r—!" and pawing with black-gloved hands. The policemen were closing in from the sides to intervene. The little old lady struck like a projectile upon the resounding chest of the foremost of these, and then Ann Veronica had got past and was ascending ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... not answered: the officer in command at that exposed part of the line had evidently no desire to provoke a cannonade. For the forbearance Captain Graffenreid was conscious of a sense of gratitude. He had not known that the flight of a projectile was a phenomenon of so appalling character. His conception of war had already undergone a profound change, and he was conscious that his new feeling was manifesting itself in visible perturbation. His blood was boiling in his veins; he had a choking sensation and felt that if he had a command ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... a proprietor of collieries at Newcastle-on-Tyne, conceived the idea that if a bullet were made to receive the projectile force in the interior of the bullet, but beyond the centre of gravity, it would continue its flight without deviation. Having satisfied himself of the truth of this theory, he sent the mould to the Board of Ordnance ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... Platform to be gotten aloft. And there was plenty of work to do. There were two small rips in the plating, caused by fragments of the exploded truck. There were some bullet holes. The Platform could resist small meteorites at forty-five miles a second, but a high-velocity small-arm projectile could puncture it. Those scars of battle had to be welded shut. The rest of the scaffolding had to come down and the rest of the rocket tubes had to be affixed. And there was ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... and never had a single accident from explosion. As a very small number of hot shot can be heated at once, and as an iron ball of eight inches diameter loses its spherical form if kept for any length of time red hot, this projectile could only be used in particular circumstances. It happened more than once on board the Karteria, that shot which had remained for some time in the engine fires, had so lost their form as not to enter the muzzle of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various |
