"Explode" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with a device called the carbureter. This is really a gas machine, for it turns the liquid oil into gas, this being done by turning it into fine spray and mixing it with pure air. The gasoline vapour thus formed is highly inflammable, and if lighted in a closed space will explode. It is the explosive power that is made to do the work, and it is a series of small gun-fires that make the ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... nuisance, a stupidity, that kept Europe drilling and wasted enormous sums on unavoidable preparations; it hung up everything like a noisy argument in a drawing-room, but that human weakness and folly would ever let the mine actually explode he did not believe. He had been in France in 1911, he had seen how close things had come then to a conflict, and the fact that they had not come to a conflict had enormously strengthened his natural disposition ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... Cicely—"If genius wants to etand on its head, it must be allowed to make that exhibition of itself lest it should explode. If genius asks the lame, halt, blind and idiotic into the ancestral halls of Abbot's Manor, then the lame, halt, blind and idiotic are bound to come. If genius summons the god Pan to pipe a roundelay, pipings there shall be! Shall there ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... was not killed instantly was due, no doubt, both to the sloping character of the stairs, which made some bombs explode before they reached the bottom, and to the small size of the bombs themselves. A gas bomb finished the German side of the argument. Hunt's useful knowledge of German commenced the answer. We 'surrendered.' I went upstairs at once and saw three Germans almost at touching distance. ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... difficult before, it is doubly so now. I should certainly never be able to pick up grains of rice with a chopstick while that solemn little maid sits opposite; it would take a Cinquevalli to do it! I make a desperate attempt and explode suddenly, the maid giggles, you roar, and even Yosoji, who is somewhere in the background, begins tittering. After this the ice is broken; we entreat Yosoji to get the maid away without hurting her feelings, and when she has departed we finish the rice with our fingers. There are various other ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... not introduce her to the king! I'll explode the whole affair, and Dunkirk may go to the devil before you shall introduce Betty to the king," ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... Roger knew it had reached Tara. He slumped back in his chair. His eyes were glassy, his ears deaf to the roar of triumph from below as Loring and Mason, watching the flight of the jet boat on the control deck teleceiver screen, saw it explode. Roger couldn't move. He had fired a reactant bomb ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... blows upon the badly ignited fuse of a bomb, and makes it explode in his face, is no more terrified than was Mahiette at the effect of that name, abruptly launched into the cell of ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... the type began to blur within, I would lay aside my book and muse over wild rumors of secrets borne by this messenger between the generations. Journals and letters, it was said, were there concealed, which should change the current gossip of history, and explode many bubble-reputations that had glittered on the world. There were hints of deadly sins, committed by men high in Church and State, which their perpetrators lacked the courage to confess before their fellows, but which, in the bitterness of remorse, they had recorded ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... take them in hand; not merely one with skill, but of a spirit which their spirits would acknowledge. Unlike the colder people of the West, he could not protest the driver's inability, and dismiss him civilly; an Arab and a sheik, he had to explode, and rive the air about him ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... Hermione, is desperately in love with Andromaque. Hermione is a splendid tigress consumed by her desire for Pyrrhus; and Oreste is a melancholy, almost morbid man, whose passion for Hermione is the dominating principle of his life. These are the ingredients of the tragedy, ready to explode like gunpowder with the slightest spark. The spark is lighted when Pyrrhus declares to Andromaque that if she will not marry him he will execute her son. Andromaque consents, but decides secretly to kill herself immediately after the marriage, and ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... commander told me. "We learned it from the Blue Devils. They are the toughest set of undersized gentry that I have run into in France. They have forearms as big as three-inch shells, and as hard. Their favourite pastime is juggling hand-grenades that can't possibly explode unless they just lightly ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... staggered. Something else fell from the shelf. It was a carton of electric-light bulbs. Despite the protecting carton, they went off with crackings like gunfire. Technically, they did not explode but implode, but the hood with the revolver did not notice the difference. He leaped—and also landed in the middle of the wide streak of detergent-over-oil which might have ...
— The Ambulance Made Two Trips • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... went on, "this is the real thing, though, only a little different from the other. A dry battery gives a spark when the lid is slipped back. See, the explosive is in a steel pipe. Sliding the lid off is supposed to explode it. Why, there is enough explosive in this to ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... hour, and brought the train of seven cars to her destination at the Grand Trunk junction safely. But something occurred which was very much out of the ordinary. I was very much worried about the water, and I knew that if it got low the boiler was likely to explode. I hadn't gone twenty miles before black damp mud blew out of the stack and covered every part of the engine, including myself. I was about to awaken the fireman to find out the cause of this when it stopped. Then ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... the better of them; but at last they catch him alone, each in turn threatens him with sore visitings, and then follows the direction, "Here somebody must cast fire to Iniquity"; who probably had some fireworks about his person, to explode for the amusement of the audience, as ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... on "O! Oh! and Ah!" was originally designed for a rule of government or not, it is hardly worth any one's while to inquire. It is too lame and inaccurate every way, to deserve any notice, but that which should serve to explode it forever. Yet no few, who have since made English grammars, have copied the text literally; as they have, for the public benefit, stolen a thousand other errors from the same quarter. The reader will find ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... in a minute, Patty. Let me laugh a minute, or I'll explode. I say, Mrs. Fairfield, did you ever see anything like the lady's robe! I don't often notice costumes of the fair sex, but that was ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... and the little darkeys had made three stolen visits to the hall to peep at the dreadful thing hanging there, as if it were a trap of some kind, liable to drop a spring and catch somebody, or to explode like a mortar or torpedo. As hour after hour wore on, and Miss Vesta did not reappear, and finally rang her bell for tea, Aunt Hominy was beside ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... only talking about the metre used by Martelli. What you are thinking of must be verses of fourteen syllables; without alternative masculine and feminine rhymes. However, I confess that he thinks he has imitated the French Alexandrines, and his preface made me explode with ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... his assistance, and when they have hauled him up, and he has made sure that Leander is no longer present, he roars out in a voice of thunder: "Scapin, quick, hoop me with iron bands or I shall burst! I am in such a rage! I shall explode like a bomb! and you, treacherous blade, do YOU play me false at such a moment? Is it thus you reward me for having always tried to slake your insatiable thirst with the blood of the bravest and noblest? I don't know why I have not already broken you into a thousand ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... to try to put it out by water, for it only makes more heat. He knew that dried alum and sugar suitably mixed would burst into flame if exposed to the air; that nitric acid and oil of turpentine would take fire if mixed; that flint struck by steel would start fire enough to explode a powder magazine; and that Elijah called down from heaven a kind of fire that burned twelve "barrels" of water as easily as ordinary water puts out ordinary fire. But he had none of these ways of lighting his candle at hand—not even ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... into each barrel, and goes to the window to explode them. The sudden explosion is followed by the screams of ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... of the downfall of English ministries and Ulster. Born of Irish parents. First man to successfully explode dynamite in Parliament without being executed. Ambition: An Ulsterless Ireland, a Conservativeless England. Address: Close to the English ministry. Epitaph: The Bills Men ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... his help he was not so gracious. He disliked dealers—another of his foreign prejudices. Tender-hearted as he was he generally exploded with dynamic force—and he could explode when anything stirred him—whenever a dealer attempted to make him a party to anything that looked like fraud. He had once cut an assumed Corot into ribbons with his pocket-knife—and this since he had been home in New York, fifteen years now—and had then handed the strips back to the dealer ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... of that dreadful tragedy will remember that the explosion was precipitated by the fall of the box containing dynamite from a cart, or wheelbarrow, conveying it to the steamer. The hammer was set, by clockwork apparatus, to explode the dynamite after the departure of the steamer from England and when near mid-ocean, and Keith, confiding in the efficacy of the arrangement, was actually about to take passage in the steamer from Bremerhaven ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson
... headache, and complained to Ucatella. She told Phoebe, and they bound his brows with a wet handkerchief, and advised him to keep in-doors. He sat down in the coolest part of the house, and held his head with his hands, for it seemed as if it would explode into two great fragments. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... hand-grenade, as it was called—that is to say, a small bombshell—and, before any one of the astonished spectators could stop him, lighted a match at one of the wax-candles, and applied it to the fusee of the shell. A shower of sparks came rushing from the hand- grenade, which would explode in a minute or two or even less. The consternation of the company was frightful, and a furious and general rush was made to the doors. As the guests dashed out of the room, some just caught sight ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... prepared a number of improvised bombs, filled with powder, which could be set off by percussion. It was the plan to drop these down from the airship, into the midst of the savages. When the bomb struck the ground, or even on the bodies of the red dwarfs, it would explode. It was hoped that these would so dismay the little men that they would desert the village, and leave the way clear for a search to be made for the ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... mournfully. "Yes, yes, but I used to think it is such men who forgive one day and kill the next. You never can tell where they will explode, philosophy or ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the enemy shelling the town. Having brought up numbers of guns into the newly-formed Merville salient, they shelled Bethune daily, until on May 17th, a shell landed near enough to the base of the Church Tower to explode the charge, and the remnants of the tower disappeared with the most appalling explosion, followed by an enormous cloud of dust and debris, bricks and stones being thrown for hundreds of yards. Numerous incendiary ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... for alarm. Thomas Roch's explosive will not burn unless subjected to a special deflagrator. Neither fire nor shock will explode it." ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... this element does not burn, a certain amount of it must be present to support combustion. Thus, the most inflammable gas or liquid will not burn or explode unless oxygenized. Explosives are made by using a sufficient amount, in a concentrated form, which is added to the fuel, so that when it is ignited there is a sufficient amount of oxygen present to support combustion, hence the ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... Gummer long had set his head Upon some strange invention. "Be careful, Gus," his good wife said; "It might explode. I mention—" ...
— The Rocket Book • Peter Newell
... It was not the work of a trained public speaker. It lacked poise, phrase, and deliberation. But what it wanted in manner it made up in fire and directness, giving an emotional and loyal audience abundant opportunity to explode into long-continued cheering. Thoughtful men who were not in any sense political partisans gave careful heed to his words. He stood for achievement. He brought the great struggle nearer home, and men listened as to one with a message from the field of patriotic sacrifices. The radical ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... of my freehold by the arbitrary act of two or three committee-men; the fundamental law of England knowing no such constitution, abhorring such administrations: and that the Hon. Court would release your petitioner from the injurious effects of the said committee's act, and explode ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... the brushwood conceals a sentry-box. It overlooks the whole estancia. It conceals something else, a small barrel of gunpowder, which you are to hang to the hook yonder on the wooden lock, and explode the moment you ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... aunt. Besides, though he is to be a Lothario (in so far as we can manage it) he is not at present aware of this, and has made none of the necessary arrangements; if one of his lamps is knocked over it will certainly explode; and there cannot be a secret door without its leading into the adjoining house. (Theatres keep special kinds of architects to design their rooms.) There is indeed a little cupboard where his crockery is kept, and if Amy is careful ...
— Alice Sit-By-The-Fire • J. M. Barrie
... safely down the dangerous rapids of the Hudson; he saved Fort Edward from destruction by fire at the imminent risk of his life, working undaunted although the flames were threatening, every moment, to explode the magazine; a year later, captured by the Indians, who feared and hated him, he was bound to a stake, after some preliminary tortures, and a pile of fagots heaped about him and set on fire. The flames were searing his flesh, when a French officer happened to come up and rescued ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... The sturdy Canadians did not relish this kind of work, but there was no alternative. For an hour they searched the mine shafts and galleries around Givenchy and destroyed them. Some Germans in the depths were killed before they could explode certain mines they had prepared under British positions. About fifty prisoners of the Eleventh Bavarian Regiment were captured who had fought in Russia, at Verdun, and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... the weasel! It's popped this time with an awful bang. The papers are full of it, pages and pages, the entire paper, and not only one or two but all of them. You have probably not been permitted to hear a word of it at home, but the Chinese papers are allowed to explode all they please, to rail and rave and rant. As I said before, much good may it ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... no idea of the tortures I endure. At night I am awakened with a start by one of my own sneezes. As I go to sleep my motions bring the grains of snuff scattered over the pillow under my nose, I inhale, and explode like a mine. It seems that Armand, the wretch, is used to these surprises, and doesn't wake up. I find tobacco everywhere, and I certainly didn't ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... and was lying back against the cushion of the car-seat. After a little, he said: "Just after we saw the Italian killed last week I told you I had a notion, Ford. I've got it yet, and I've been turning it over in my mind and wondering if I'd better explode it on you. On the whole, I think I'd better not. It's a case of surgery. If the patient lives, you'll know about it. If the patient dies, you'll be no worse off than you are now. Shall we ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... pioneers. At missionary gatherings held in England the statement is often made to-day that the first Englishman to go out as a foreign missionary was William Carey, the leader of the immortal "Serampore Three." It is time to explode that fiction. For some years before William Carey was heard of a number of English Moravian Brethren had gone out from these shores as foreign missionaries. In Antigua laboured Samuel Isles, Joseph Newby, and Samuel Watson; in Jamaica, ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... concentrated their fire upon individual batteries, but it was evident that they found difficulty in getting the range. Many of the shells fell short, casting up pillars of water, or went over the forts to explode ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... might explode," Doak said. "Well, it will be triple-time. That's some consolation. Enough for a new video set—I need ...
— The Mighty Dead • William Campbell Gault
... position, where they could be got at in a moment, by simply lifting up the skin and unbuckling the strap; by this means too, all danger or risk was avoided, which usually exists when the fire-arms are put on or off the drays in a loaded state. I have myself formerly seen carbines explode more than once from the cocks catching something, in being pulled out from, or pushed in amidst the load of a dray, independently of the difficulty of getting access to them in cases of sudden emergency; a still better plan than the one I adopted, would probably be to have lockers made for ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... forefathers had suspected that their great-grandchildren would make such an infernal racket on the Fourth of July they would have waited for a snow storm on the 16th of January before signing their John Hancocks, because then it would be too cold to explode firecrackers under your neighbor's eyebrows when he least ...
— Skiddoo! • Hugh McHugh
... himself. He is preparing a bombshell of sorts. It will explode here. Goodness only knows who will ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... elderly, pleasant-faced Irishman, smooth-shaven, red-cheeked, and with white hair. Although it was July, he wore a frock coat, and carried a new high hat that glistened. As though he thought at any moment it might explode, he held it from him, and eyed it fearfully. Mrs. Farrell was of a more sophisticated type. The lines in her face and hands showed that for years she might have known hard physical work. But her dress was in the latest fashion, ...
— The Log of The "Jolly Polly" • Richard Harding Davis
... schoolmen as much as he, and in some people's opinion too much, since the liberty of embracing any opinion is allowed. They following Aristotle, who is doubtless the greatest master of arguing in the world: But it hath been a fashion of late years to explode Aristotle, and therefore this man hath fallen into it like others, for that reason, without understanding him. Aristotle's poetry, rhetoric, and politics, are admirable, and therefore, it is likely, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... reply at once, and her silent severity came to the surface of her mother's consciousness so painfully that it was rather a relief to have her explode, "Mother, I will thank you not to discuss ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... nothing happened to me, not a thing. And here now! They will not get me, they will not get me. You know how they plan now to come to me, as living bombs. Yes, they have decided on that. I can't press a friend's hand any more without the fear of seeing him explode. What do you think of that? But they won't get me. Come, drink my health. A small glass of vodka for an appetizer. You see, young man, we are going to have zakouskis here. What a marvelous panorama! You can see everything from here. If the enemy comes," he added with a singular loud ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... dream of such a thing as that?" exclaimed the latter, nearly ready to explode with laughter, yet feeling a bit angry at the same time. "What under the sun d'ye suppose he's doing such a stunt ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... grimaces were so ludicrous that the stranger could scarcely keep from laughing. He did not wish to be impolite, so he kept turning his face aside and pretending to cough. Fortunately for him, just as he thought he would surely explode with laughter, he recalled the warning the man had given him and rushed out of the house. The Man guessed what was the matter with ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... a small rug slipped on polished parquetry of the landing. P. Sybarite's heels went up and his head down with a sickening thump. He heard his pistol explode once more, and again visioned a reeling firmament fugitively coruscant ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... machines were now circling above, and the German batteries opened fire on them. It was a beautiful sight. There was not a cloud in the sky, and the sun had not yet gone. We could not hear the shells explode, but we could see little feathery white clouds suddenly appear as if some giant invisible hand had just put them there—high up in the sky. Another appeared, and another. There were several dozen little white clouds vividly outlined against the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... a match, and, with a very haughty look on his thin face, began to puff at a cigarette which he had taken from a little silver case, Vane watching him scornfully the while, but only to explode with mirth the next moment, for the young West Indian, though he came from where his father's plantations produced acres of the pungent weed, was not to the manner born, and at the third draw inhaled so much acrid smoke that he ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... of the hall, the petard was heard to explode, and he saw that it had succeeded; for the soldiers rushed, brandishing their swords and pistols, in at the postern of the turret, whose gate had been successfully forced. A thrill of exultation, but not unmingled with horror shot across the veins ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... break, the cage would fall perhaps hundreds of feet, and its occupants be killed. Then, he who descends knows that he is going into a series of subterranean caves where the gas escapes, that the slightest contact with a light will explode, burning, slaying, and destroying, and leaving behind the choke-damp, which is even more deadly ...
— Son Philip • George Manville Fenn
... to its feet as one man! It was proposed to explode a barrel of gunpowder; but in consideration of the situation of the mother, better counsels prevailed, and only a few revolvers were discharged; for whether owing to the rude surgery of the camp, or some other reason, ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... assassinate Laramie had intensified everyone's feelings, and for days only a spark on that subject was needed to fire more than one Sleepy Cat powder magazine. One afternoon rain caught Kate in at Belle's and kept her until almost dark from starting for home, and one magazine did explode. ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... bleated Aunt Agatha with round, affrighted eyes, "there's a dime in the fish! And I do beg your pardon, young man, but will you be so good as to poke the smelling salts out of the fire before they explode." ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... and he could not have resented his predicament more if he had been set in crushed ice instead of warm water. Under the remorseless hands of Nicholas he began to splutter and choke, to fizz, and finally explode with astonishment and wrath. It was quite clear Nicholas was trying to drown him. He took the treatment so to heart, that he kept on howling dismally for some time after he was taken out, and dried, and linimented and dosed by Mac, whose treachery about the amulet he seemed to forgive, since "Farva" ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... whatever. Go without eating rather than do it. Your credit is still good; but it is being slowly undermined—and the indiscretion of a friend who chanced to say: "I think Valorsay is hard up," might fire the train, and then you'd explode.'" ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... neighbouring mountains were heard the stirring sounds of the bagpipes and drums, and at short intervals a halfpenny rocket would explode in mid-air, streaking the blue sky ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... nervous chill down the spine of the driver of the wagon. It is true that old stuff, after lying around for months and months through varying degrees of temperature, may perform erratically, exploding when it shouldn't and refusing to explode when it should. The average miner refuses to take a chance with stale "giant" if he can get ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... and squeezes it with the shyness of the Englishman who responds to some display of solicitude or affection on the part of a comrade. "Don't mind my rotting like this. There are times when one must let off steam or explode." ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... intense excitement. One of the searchers had drawn a watch-like contrivance from my waistcoat pocket. It was not a watch, because it had no dial or works, but something which was quite foreign to them. First they dropped it as if fearing it might explode. Then finding that the fall brought about no ill-effects they approached it warily, picked it up gingerly, and held it to their ears. It did not tick. Then they shook it, banged it on the desk, studied it closely with a wise, old-owlish ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... was to be brought by degrees to boiling-point through the spring of 1913, and to explode at last over an incident more tragic than any one of the five or six hundred ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... voice from the darkness, 'what did that American-heiress-globe-trotter girl say last season when she was tipped out of her 'rickshaw turning a corner? Some absurd adjective that made the man who picked her up explode.' ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... the things that must be done before an economy can be advanced. It was self-preservation, I suppose. Have-not nations, not to speak of have-not races and have-not continents, have a tendency eventually to explode upon their ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... my arm, 'Neath its white-gloved and jewelled load; And wishes me some dreadful harm, Hearing the merry corks explode. ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... average modern torpedo, carefully planned, constructed with all the skill of the greatest European arsenals, but, when constructed, destined to be directed by feeble hands into a region where it must undoubtedly explode, unseen, unfeared, and unheard, into the illimitable wastes of ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford
... to the fourth. . . . We must make haste, or . . . I shall explode with impatience! Do you know who she is? You will never guess. The young wife of our old police superintendent, Yevgraf Kuzmitch, Olga Petrovna; that's who it is! She bought that ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... corrugated iron with three or four rows of sandbags piled about four feet high. On top of the earth and sandbags there is generally placed a row of broken brick to cause any shell striking the roof to explode before it penetrates. Behind the parapets are places where the men cook ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... having got a good aim, Coxen pulled the trigger. The cap refused to explode. Angrily he lowered the gun, removed the cap and examined it. It looked all right, and there was plenty of priming in the tube. He turned the cap round, and again ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... fleeing gangster. A thin pencil of dull yellow light of a peculiar density spurted from the tube toward Mapes. There was a flash of blinding flame as the light beam met the gangster's body; then Mapes' figure seemed to literally explode, as though blasted by dynamite from within. So devastating was the force of that explosion that nothing remained of Mapes' body beyond a few scattered ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells
... silence followed. Eyes sought the fire. No one spoke for several minutes. There was a faint laughter, quickly over, but containing sighs. Only Jinny stared straight into her father's face, expecting more, though prepared at any stage to explode ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... with Tabitha. Even the most flaming love of royalty and realm serves not to keep warm toes extended beyond short blankets at Christmas-tide. It is not strange that late in December, 1776, all Jersey was mined with discontent, and needed but the spark of Continental success to explode. ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... have not forgotten it, but it is a circumstance of which I do not trust myself to think. I dare not run the risk of admitting air into the hold by going down to search for the powder, and yet I know not at what moment it may explode. No; it is a matter that I can- not take at all into my reckoning; it must remain in ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... baby's wailing: he would blow into a paper bag, and then when the baby had screwed up her face, and was preparing to let out a whole volley of direful notes, he would clap his hands violently on the bag and cause it to explode, thereby absolutely frightening the poor ...
— Dickory Dock • L. T. Meade
... suggested by his question were so appalling that for some minutes the orator appeared unable to find words to go on, and his audience glared at him in dread anticipation, as though they expected him to explode like a bomb-shell, but were prepared to sit it out and take the consequences. And he did explode, after a fashion, for he suddenly raised his voice to a shout that startled even the sentinel on the ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... them horrid telegraph things, mum," she said, handling it as if she was afraid it would explode and ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... woman must have as its corner-stone self-support. The first step in this direction must be to explode the fallacy that marriage is a state of being supported. As men are most largely the gatherers of money, it is mistakenly assumed that they are most largely the creators of wealth. The man goes abroad and gives ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... brief glimpse of the pearly gates of Heaven and a few strains from the golden harps inside for the damned to hear by way of contrast. The first purpose of the preachers was to arouse a deep under-current of religious emotional excitement that at the proper moment would explode and sweep the crowd with resistless fire. Usually the fuse was timed to explode on the morning of the third day. Sometimes, when sermons of extraordinary power had followed each other in rapid succession, the fire broke out by a sort of spontaneous combustion on the ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... could be relied upon to reinforce the North Sea Fleet. But Britain's margin was ample enough, and at the battle of Jutland her weight of metal was as two to one. The Germans, however, had advantages of their own, particularly in a delaying fuse which caused their shells to explode after penetrating the enemy's armour instead of before. Their capital ships were also better armoured, and rarely sank when struck by shells or torpedoes. This was also true of the British battleships, and none were sunk on either side except the old ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... a voice. "Who is here?" And the man, a workman, though Grandon does not recognize him, rushes through in dismay, but his presence of mind saves worse disaster. The hose in the engine-room is speedily put in motion, and the hissing flames seem to explode. ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... immense variety in the brilliancy of the shooting stars, from the weak telescopic sparks that vanish like a flash of lightning, to the incandescent bolides or fire-balls that explode in ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... jay ever took of the birds, as said above, was to tease them, or put them in a flutter; as society he plainly despised them. They soon learned to regard him as a sort of infernal machine, liable at any moment to explode; and they were fully justified, for he was fond of surprising them by unexpectedly flying around the room, tail spread, feathers rustling, squawking madly in a loud voice. He usually managed in his career to sweep close ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... can perceive, and also with a hypocrisy grounded on love of peace. If that is the nature of the Bashaw, and one's sole mode of fishing knowledge from him, why not? thinks M. de Voltaire. His patience with M. de Maupertuis, first and last, was very great. But we shall find it explode at length, a dozen years ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... excite admiration in all who are capable of appreciating this aspect of the statuary's art. Michelangelo produced nothing more finished in execution, if we except the Pieta at S. Peter's. His Bacchus alone is sufficient to explode a theory favoured by some critics, that, left to work unhindered, he would still have preferred a certain vagueness, a certain want of polish in ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... quietly without waiting to learn any more, but I stayed up till far into the night preparing my final plans. My intention was to shoot her just before dinner, and arrange for the false report to explode after he had arrived and hidden himself in the old staircase, waiting for her to go to him. Then, when the report startled everybody in the dining-room, I intended to be the first to rush upstairs, and lead ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... weapon of defense is the dynamite gun, or rather, a pneumatic gun, that throws long projectiles carrying from 250 to 450 pounds of dynamite, to a distance of about two miles. The shells are arranged to explode soon after striking the water, by an ingenious battery that ignites the fuse as soon as the salt water enters it. The gun, which is known as the Zalinski gun, is some sixty feet long and fifteen inches in caliber, the compressed air being suddenly admitted to it ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... to embrace it.'[214] The most real of pleasures for him lay in speculating upon the general principles by which the 'people in power' should be guided. To construct a general chart for legislation, to hunt down sophistries, to explode mere noisy rhetoric, to classify and arrange and re-classify until his whole intellectual wealth was neatly arranged in proper pigeon-holes, was a delight for its own sake. He wished well to mankind; he detested abuses, but he hated neither the corrupted nor the corruptors; ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... Pierre, with twenty of the boys, into the worst part of the town. Each shall carry a ball of yarn dipped in turpentine, mixed with sulphur and other inflammable things. They shall also carry another ball, having but a thin coating of the yarn, and powder inside so as to explode. When the clock strikes two, we will say, each of them will smash the window of some store, light both balls, and put them in. I want the explosion of one ball to scare anyone who may be sleeping there half out of their senses, and make them rush out of the house; which will leave plenty of ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... graver suspicion crossed his mind: might not some detonating substance of a nature to explode when trodden upon, have been flung in? Hillsborough excelled in deviltries of ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... seen the deer. As quick as thought his eye passes over the ground, sees the prey is within proper distance, takes aim, pulls the trigger, that loosens a spring, which forces the flint against the steel; this produces a spark, which ignites the charcoal, and the sulphur and nitre combined, explode and force the wad, which forces the ball from the gun, and is borne thro the air till it reaches the deer, enters his body by displacing the skin and flesh, deranges the animal functions, and death ensues. The ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... man, with a very commanding presence and a fiery temper, which, as we have seen, was apt to explode at trifles. He did not hesitate to launch the most virulent abuse at the heads of those who ventured to talk whilst he was conducting, and at such times not even the presence of royalty could make him restrain his anger. But when Handel raved the Princess of Wales would ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... trine immersion and of anointing the sick; he had to prepare them for the Millennium, which, according to his calculations when he wrote his Memoirs, was to take place in twenty years from that time. But his great mission of all was to propagate Eusebianism and to explode the erroneous notions about the Trinity which were then unhappily current in the Church. His favourite theory on this subject may be found in almost all his works; but he propounded it in extenso in a work which he entitled 'Primitive Christianity ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... but unlikely as it may seem, it was. And, besides, I alone knew Kinko's secret. It certainly did seem as though it was miraculous for the locomotive to explode just on the verge of ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... d—me! I'll have no profanation neither. But go on with your interrogations." "Well then," proceeded my examiner, "how many sacraments are there?" To which I replied, "Two." "What are they?" said he. I answered, "Baptism and the Lord's Supper." "And so you would explode confirmation and marriage altogether?" said Oakum. "I thought this fellow was a rank Roman." The clerk, though he was bred under an attorney, could not refrain from blushing at this blunder, which he endeavoured ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... The nobles, in the last resort, would all stand by each other: there was now a Douglas plot of the old sort to bring back the exiles; and Darnley, with his jealous desire to murder Riccio, was but the cat's-paw to light the train and explode Mary and her Government. Ruthven, whom Mary had always distrusted, came into the conspiracy. Through Randolph all was known in England. "Bands" were drawn up, signed by Argyll (safe in his own hills), Murray, Glencairn, Rothes, Boyd, Ochiltree (the father ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... sitting in the control room of the Lancet, his glasses slightly askew on his florid face. He had climbed through the entrance lock ten minutes before, shaking snow off his cloak and wheezing like a boiler about to explode; now he faced the patrol ship's crew like a small but ominous black thundercloud. Across the room, Jack Alvarez was staring through the viewscreen at the blizzard howling across the landing field ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... overhung with portents. The air seemed charged, awaiting any tiny ignition to explode; and Mrs. Sheridan's expression, as she sat with her eyes fixed almost continually upon her husband, was that of a person engaged in prayer. Edith was pale and intent. Roscoe looked ill; Sibyl looked ill; and Sheridan looked both ill and explosive. Bibbs had more color than any of these, and ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... report had gone off near us; a brilliant light had shown up the lines of a cruiser; a shell had shrieked past us and whistled away to explode among the Turks; and a loud, and swelling murmur of amazement and admiration, rising from the Redbreast, had burst ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... and bright, happy faces. The windows were bright, which made the light appear brighter than usual; the grate was bright; the furniture was bright; the face of the clock, whose interior seemed about to explode on every occasion of striking the hour, was bright—almost to smiling; and the pot-lids, dish-covers, etcetera, were bright—so bright as to be absolutely brilliant. Joe Dashwood and his little wife were conversing near the window, but, although their faces ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne
... shells continued to shriek and explode, now near, now far, Jerry investigated the happening. As surely as the house was gone, just as surely was Nalasu gone. Upon both had descended the ultimate nothingness. All the immediate world seemed doomed to nothingness. Life promised only somewhere else, in the high hills and remote ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... safe refuge. Fort Hudson, Fort Pulaski, Fort Moultrie, Fort Sumter, Gibraltar, Sebastopol were taken. But Jesus is a castle into which the righteous runneth and is safe. No battering-ram can demolish its wall. No sappers or miners can explode its ramparts, no storm-bolt of perdition leap upon its towers. The weapons that guard this fort are omnipotent. Hell shall unlimber its great guns as death only to have them dismantled. In Christ our sins are pardoned, discomforted, blotted ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... of German militarism which the Sergeant was reproducing to the full, a sample of the preciseness of the Teuton. Keeping this elderly guard at attention till the poor fellow looked as though he would explode, he groped in the pocket in the tail of his tunic, and, producing a notebook, proceeded to extricate from it a sheet of paper on which were some typewritten lines; and then in a ponderous and somewhat menacing voice he read the orders—orders which set forth exactly and ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... chemistry of souls. Life is a laboratory where Destiny experiments with test-tubes and reagents. Powerful ingredients may be mixed without result because they hold in common no element of reaction. Other ingredients at the instant of mingling turn violet or crimson or explode or burst into flame—because they were meant to mingle to that end. Nature says so. ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... a loaded gun were about to explode in his direction. He reached the door, his arms still held stiffly above his head, but, at the sight of the masked faces, one arm dropped to his side, and the other fell across his face. He slumped against the side of the ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... were pleasant acquaintances together. Presently she should inform him better as to that. But why, oh, why, that small flinching at the sight of him, the very man she had fared into the downpour to explode, not pausing even ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... adapted to roll through a gelatinous medium from planet to planet. Sometimes, because of miscalculations, or because of stresses of various kinds, they enter this earth's atmosphere. They're likely to explode. They have to submerge in the sea. They stay in the sea awhile, revolving with relative leisureliness, until relieved, and then emerge, sometimes close to vessels. Seamen tell of what they see: their reports are interred in scientific morgues. I should say that the general route ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... Bishop of Rochester. Nothing more offensive to men of priestly principles could easily have happened: yet, as in a country of which the constitution was founded on rational and liberal grounds, and where thinking men had so recently exerted themselves to explode the prejudices attached to the persons of Kings and churchmen, it was impossible to defend the Bishop's treason but by denying it; or to condemn his condemnation, but by supposing illegalities in the process: ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole |
