"Explosion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the word "assassination" the uproar broke out again. Ernest could not make himself heard, but he remained on his feet waiting for a lull. And then it happened. From my place in the gallery I saw nothing except the flash of the explosion. The roar of it filled my ears and I saw Ernest reeling and falling in a swirl of smoke, and the soldiers rushing up all the aisles. His comrades were on their feet, wild with anger, capable of any violence. ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... and one poor fellow standing near me fell suddenly on the deck. I tried to lift him up, but not a groan did he utter. There was a round mark on his forehead. He had been shot through the brain. In another moment I thought the pirates would be aboard us. I heard a terrific explosion, a hundred times louder than the loudest thunder, I thought, and looking up I saw to my horror the masts, and spars, and sails of the schooner rising in the air, the hull seemed to rock to and fro, and directly afterwards down there came ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... violent. And moreover this phenomenon, if we consider only our senses, is rather painful than agreeable, for the nerves of our sight and those of our hearing are each in their turn painfully strained, then not less violently relaxed, by the alternations of light and darkness, of the explosion of the thunder, and silence. And in spite of all these causes of displeasure, a storm is an attractive phenomenon for whomsoever is not afraid ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... from the contact of his master's hand; and, as if anticipating an explosion, began to stammer forth his excuses. Theodora's countenance was suddenly overspread with a deadly paleness, and the timid girl wrung her hands in an attitude of despair. Her critical situation, and the duenna's alarm, at ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... beautiful; and told, with wonderful ingenuity, the story of Orpheus and Eurydice: but, at the moment of the fatal look which separated them for ever, there was such an explosion of fire, and so horrible a noise, that we all, as of one accord, jumpt hastily from the form, and ran away some paces, fearing that we were in danger of mischief, from the innumerable sparks of fire which glittered ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... speechless, as the shell burst on Schanskop Fort, on the Sunnyside hill, just beyond Harmony, with an explosion that shook ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... breccias or agglomerates without producing a mountain as lofty as that which they now constitute. But assuming that they were first horizontal, and then lifted up by a force acting most powerfully in the centre and tilting the beds on all sides, a central crater having been formed by explosion or by a chasm opening in the middle, where the continuity of the rocks was interrupted, we should have a right to expect that the chief ravines or valleys would open towards the central cavity, instead ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... fever in which the world exists have infected it, and it is like molten metal the skilled political artificer might pour into a desirable mould. But if it is not handled rightly, if any factor is ignored, there may be an explosion which would bring on us a fate as tragic as anything in our past history. Irishmen can no longer afford to remain aloof from each other, or to address each other distantly and defiantly from press ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... late—it seemed that I was born again and all made over; that I was changed in the very texture of my nature by the shock, as they say the grain of the iron cannon is sometimes changed by too violent an explosion." And this proved to be true in ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... descent from the hills the Emperor gave audience to the first ambassadors of Bajazet, and opened the hostile correspondence of complaints and menaces, which fermented two years before the final explosion. Between two jealous and haughty neighbors, the motives of quarrel will seldom be wanting. The Mongol and Ottoman conquests now touched each other in the neighborhood of Erzerum and the Euphrates; nor had the doubtful limit been ascertained by time and treaty. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... block in the course of the convulsions that resulted in the uplift of the Sierra Nevada. Galen Clark, following him, carried on his idea of an origin by force. Instead of the walls being cleft apart, however, he imagined the explosion of close-set domes of molten rock the riving power, but conceived that ice and water erosion finished the job. With Clarence King the theory of glacial origin began its long career. John Muir carried this ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... is too silly. It can't happen. For instance, a stupid vulgar man is engaged to a lovely young lady. He wants her to live in the towns, but she only cares for woods. She shocks him this way and that, but gradually he tames her, and makes her nearly as dull as he is. One day she has a last explosion—over the snobby wedding presents—and flies out of the drawing-room window, shouting, 'Freedom and truth!' Near the house is a little dell full of fir-trees, and she runs into it. He comes there the ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... gun. The simile could be pursued no further, for to those who had not yet been in action the noise going on seemed to indicate that some fierce fighting must be in progress. The dull but powerful thud of exploding hand bombs, the sharper crashing explosion of shell, the report of a discharging gun and the roar of its projectile, echoed and re-echoed, in its flight along one of the numerous ravines, induced belief that very little time must elapse before the 28th would be "in it." ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... of sacramentalists and dogmatists rapidly declines. Reason, common sentiment, the liberal air, the best and strongest tendencies of the people, are against them to day, and will be more against them in every coming day. Every successive explosion of the Second Adventist fanaticism will leave less of that element behind. Its rage in America, under the auspices of Miller, in the nineteenth century, was tame and feeble when compared with the terror awakened in Europe in the fifteenth century by Stofler's ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... At the moment the explosion took place, two people came upon the scene, one from the barn and one from the house. They were Uncle Jack and Mrs. Posset. The latter had happened to look out of the window just as the grand turn-out came round for the third time, and she had flown ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... Lavendar said. "I have a notion to try it. I don't know that I'll succeed. But suppose they met, and things shouldn't run smoothly, and there should be an explosion—would ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... fuse continued to splutter and all watched it as if fascinated, and the girls put their hands to their ears in anticipation of a fearful explosion. Then came a tiny flash, a strange clicking, and off flew the top of the cannon cracker, sending a shower of confetti of ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... and the Duhanne cells down near the small ship's keel absorb the energy which maintained it. Then Esclipus Twenty would appear in the normal universe of suns and stars with the abruptness of an explosion. She should be somewhere near the sun Tallien. She should then swim toward that sol-type sun and approach Tallien's third planet out at the less-than-light-speed rate necessary for solar-system travel. And presently she should signal down to ground and Calhoun ...
— The Hate Disease • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Even at that moment there was a terrific explosion. A stream of lurid fire seemed to leap from the corner of the house, the wall split and fell outwards. And then there came another sound, hideous, sickly, a sound Granet had heard before, the sound of a rifle bullet cutting ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of Charlie's being brought to such a state of obesity, Kinch, who, during the interview, had been in the back part of the room, making all manner of faces, was obliged to leave the apartment, to prevent a serious explosion of laughter, and after their visitor had departed he was found rolling about the floor in ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... purpose at the time I expected her, I got hold of her by surprise, and, half by persuasion, half by the rapidity of my attack, she was brought to a right position, and I lost no time in engaging in action. But at the first movement of the connection a loud explosion somewhat cooled my ardour, the more so that the young girl covered her face with her hands as if she wished to hide her shame. However, encouraging her with a loving kiss, I began again. But, a report, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... through it, while the falling of branches, cut from the trees by the furious missiles, seemed as if a tornado was in the height of its fury: every few minutes, a thunder heard above all other sounds, denoted the explosion of a caisson, sweeping into destruction, with a cataract of fire and iron, men and animals for hundreds of feet around it. The effect of such a fire of artillery is, however, much less deadly than any except those who ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... fairly took Mrs. Wesley's breath away; she glanced at the Rector; but the explosion she expected hung fire, although ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... buildings, touching the very sky—and leaping from them half a dozen columns of smoke, thick, oily, and black as night. It might have come from the center of the world, this smoke, where the fires of the ages still smolder. It came as if self-impelled, driving all before it, a perpetual explosion. It was inexhaustible; one stared, waiting to see it stop, but still the great streams rolled out. They spread in vast clouds overhead, writhing, curling; then, uniting in one giant river, they streamed away down the sky, ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... central ridge of the Wind River Mountains south 39 deg. east. The summit rock was gneiss, succeeded by sienitic gneiss. Sienite and feldspar succeeded in our descent to the snow line, where we found a feldspathic granite. I had remarked that the noise produced by the explosion of our pistols had the usual degree of loudness, but was not in the least prolonged, expiring almost instantaneously. Having now made what observations our means afforded, we proceeded to descend. We had accomplished ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... of wilderness in six weeks, and reached the log cabin village of Tuscaloosa, where Gideon built a house. But provisions were excessively dear, and his hospitality to other land seekers from Georgia soon consumed his savings. He began whipsawing lumber, but after disablement from a gunpowder explosion he found lighter employment in keeping a billiard room. He then set out westward again, breaking a road for his wagon as he went. Upon reaching the Tombigbee River he built a clapboard house in five ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... torches are extinguished and the men fall first into a swoor and soon die; or, if the air is inflammable, a little flame is seen to flicker round the lamp, which spreads and multiplies till the conflagration becomes general, is followed by an explosion, and kill all who ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... down into stubborn fighting, day and night, in which the object of General Grant was to carry out his programme of attrition. Such was the feeling in both armies when, at dawn on the 30th of July, a loud explosion, heard for thirty miles, took place on the lines near Petersburg, and a vast column of smoke, shooting upward to a great height, seemed to indicate the blowing up of an ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... Venetians enabled them continually to introduce by sea. In one sortie, a detachment of the garrison penetrated even to the tent of the serdar, who owed his safety to his personal prowess; while the outworks of the town were ruined by the constant explosion of mines, and the Ottoman standards were planted on the bastion of Martinengo, and on several of the redoubts which covered the interior defences. But in spite of their repeated assaults, the besiegers failed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... could mean nothing but the lung-testers. Eliph' Hewlitt had that secret, and Eliph' Hewlitt boarded with Doc Weaver. The attorney felt a sudden rush of anger. It was to this intermeddling book agent, then, that he owed the premature explosion of the mine that was to have blown the Citizens' Party to fragments, and to have landed the fragments in the basket ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... 'e, 'i, 'o, 'u, and their modifications are styled initially exploded vowels for want of a better appellation, there being in each case an initial explosion. These vowels are approximately or partially pectoral sounds found in the Siouan languages and also in some of the languages of western Oregon and in the language of ...
— Siouan Sociology • James Owen Dorsey
... atmosphere. Straight up into the air spurted the cloud of the explosion. Through the white smoke Bob could see the flame and four or five big logs, like upleaping, dim giants. Then he dodged back from the rain of bark ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... it. He says he would not use such a weapon in ordinary warfare; but has no scruples in resorting to any means of defense against an army of Abolitionists, invading our country for the purpose, avowed, of extermination. He tried a few shell on the Peninsula last spring, and the explosion of only four sufficed to arrest the army of invaders, and compelled them to ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... "Please do hush!" and the same moment caught his own foot in a root, placed cunningly across the path, and sprawled forward with the noise of an explosion. But he made no reference to the matter. His own noises did no harm apparently. He was perfectly honest about it, not merely putting the blame elsewhere to draw attention from himself. His uncle's size and visibility were co- ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... and his shoulder was almost healed. Now, he took command. In the meantime, Seguis's men, having secured a goodly supply of provisions, were making all speed into the forest. Fitzpatrick, dazed at the audacity of the free-traders, gave vent to an explosion of fury. ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... that followed quick upon its heels was like the explosion of a twelve-inch gun as heard in the steel-jacketed turret ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... said, "in that room only I never saw Mrs. Johnson." He helped his friend Hawkesworth in the Adventurer, a new periodical of the Rambler kind; but his main work was the Dictionary, which came out at last in 1755. Its appearance was the occasion of an explosion of wrath which marks an epoch in our literature. Johnson, as we have seen, had dedicated the Plan to Lord Chesterfield; and his language implies that they had been to some extent in personal communication. ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... feeling for romance, and cut him off for five years from the exercise of those qualities, and you get an accumulated store of foolishness only comparable to an escape of gas in a sealed room or a cellarful of dynamite. A flicker of a match, and there is an explosion. ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... left the road for the fields on the right, reared, fell, leaped against the stone side of the culvert, apparently trying to climb it, stood straight on end, whirled backward in a half-somersault, crashed over on its side, flashed with flame and explosion, and lay hidden under a cloud ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... a 'Horrid Accident in High Life. Mrs. Thaddeus Perkins's Endeavor to Maintain Discipline in the Household Results Fatally. Two Old Family Servants Instantly Killed, and Three of the Kitchen Table Legs Broken by a Domestic Explosion!'" ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... control messages! Transformed by this stroke of programming ineptitude into a monster of Frankensteinian proportions, it broke loose on the night of March 31, 1993 and proceeded to {spam} news.admin.policy with a recursive explosion of over ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... stated that rain may be brought down by the explosion of dynamite and blasting-powder attached to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... followed the explosion, but ceased almost immediately as Valensolle came down the steps, holding in his hand a dagger with a straight and pointed blade. His pistols, which he did not seem inclined to use, were ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... and to listen to the faint sounds made by the enemy's workmen. One day they were sitting on two wine kegs, watching four soldiers at work at the end of a short gallery that had been driven towards the Spaniards. Suddenly there was an explosion, the miners were blown backwards, the end of the gallery disappeared, and a crowd of Walloon soldiers almost immediately ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... helping to feed the conflagration. The savages who were already in their canoes paddled rapidly away; many must have lost their lives, as several canoes appear to have been destroyed. Numbers of the unfortunate wretches, wounded by the explosion, were swimming about, trying to get hold of their canoes or of pieces of the wreck; while others, who had escaped injury, were making for the shore. But they had watchful enemies in the sea looking for them; the ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... broke up in disorder, because Dick would not open his mouth till the Nilghai held his nose fast, and there was some trouble in forcing the nozzle of the bellows between his teeth; and even when it was there he weakly tried to puff against the force of the blast, and his cheeks blew up with a great explosion; and the enemy becoming helpless with laughter he so beat them over the head with a soft sofa cushion that that became unsewn and distributed its feathers, and Binkie, interfering in Torpenhow's interests, was bundled into the half-empty bag and advised ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... towards him. His self-control returned. "What have they blown up?" asked the man breathlessly. "That was an explosion," and before Graham could speak ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... caisson, the feared disaster had occurred. The gas had come up with a rush, almost like an explosion. In the green glare of the candles, burning sulphur and hydrogen flames instead of oxygen, the men were staggering, here and there, unable to find ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... Indeed, it is almost impossible to think about man at all except in terms of desire, impulse, purpose, action, energy. There are three things that may be done with energy: First, it may be frittered away, allowed to leak, to escape. Secondly, it may be locked up; this results usually in an explosion, a finding of destructive outlets. Finally, it may be harnessed, controlled, used in beneficent ways. Health and happiness depend upon which one of the three courses ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... The explosion came one Sunday afternoon in June. She came out on the veranda, as usual, with her tea-tray, about four, and waited for her court. Peggy came over once in awhile on Sundays, too. Logan never came. Peggy had never said any more about him since ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... of Hazlet's sallow countenance portended an explosion of orthodox spleen, but Julian gently interposed in time to save the devoted Kennedy from a ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... de Lyons, ensued, which lasted many weeks. At the conclusion only three out of the entire number were acquitted. Although nearly all the anarchists were condemned, the police of Lyons were still searching for the author of the explosion. At last, Cyvoct, a militant anarchist of Lyons, was identified as the one who had thrown the bomb. Cyvoct had first gone to Switzerland, then to Brussels, in the suburbs of which city he was finally arrested. He was given over to the French police, appeared before the court of assizes of ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... explosion of the conspiracy laid me fainting at the desk. A sort of truce followed this. I consented for a few days to ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... subject was new. No one could tell exactly how the flight of an aeroplane would be affected when the weight of the machine should be suddenly lightened by the release of a large bomb; no one could be sure that a powerful explosion on the surface of the sea would not affect the machine flying at a moderate height above it. In 1912 a dummy hundred-pound bomb was dropped from a Short pusher biplane flown by Commander Samson, who was surprised and pleased to find that the effect ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... into which half the nation eagerly poured its money. Fortunes were made in a few days—in a few HOURS. Many were enriched by merely lending their signatures. A sudden and horrible revolution amazed the entire people—like the bursting of a bomb-shell or an incendiary explosion. Six hundred thousand of the best families, who had taken PAPER on the faith of the government, lost, together with their fortunes, their offices and appointments, and were almost annihilated. Some of the stock-jobbers ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... the gate we came on the scene of the blowing up of the Tartar general. Seven shops on both sides of the street were wrecked by the explosion. The heavy fronts were partly intact, but the interiors were a mass of brick and charred timbers, for fire followed the explosion. The general had waited several months to allow the political excitement that ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... questioning.... Hurriedly he ascended to the next level, scrambled out and away from the ladder just in time to avoid the light from another torch flashed down the well. Again that call of inquiry, then a shot—the boom of the explosion loud in the ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... loose powder and ball. It is so simple in its mode of operation that there is less danger of error than with a muzzle-loader; yet the anatomical construction of the limbs and joints secures a degree of strength equal to that of a solid mass of iron. The force of the explosion causes so perfect a closing of the joint as to prevent any possible escape of gas, yet the breech may be removed by as simple a process as that of cocking the gun; and we have in the course of experiment fired the gun ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... well-worn shoes. "Oh, allow me, Alan!" she cried. "You know, they're just about to burst, both of 'em!"—for Mrs. Milo was peering at her over a handkerchief, the blue eyes bright with expectancy. "If they don't know the worst in five seconds, there'll be an explosion sure!" She laughed harshly. Then with mock ceremony, and impudently, "Mr. Balcome,—and dear Mrs. Milo, permit me to introduce myself. I am your charming clergyman's ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... of our rude affairs, by what widely different events and topics are we excited to talk! It must be some occurrence of very terrible, vile, or grotesque effect that can take our minds from our business. We discuss the ghastly particulars of a steamboat explosion, or the evidence in a trial for murder; or if the chief magistrate addresses his fellow-citizens in his colloquial, yet dignified way, we dispute whether he was not, at the time of the speech, a martyr to those life-long habits of abstinence from which he is known to have once suffered calamities ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... miners' strikes, the movements of the Boycotters and the dynamiters are only skirmishes before a general engagement, or, if you prefer it, escapes through the safety-valves of an imprisoned force which promises the explosion of society. You may pooh-pooh it; you may say that this trouble, like an angry child, will cry itself to sleep; you may belittle it by calling it Fourierism, or Socialism, or St. Simonism, or Nihilism, or Communism; but that will not hinder the fact that it is the mightiest, the ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... batting. He scratched awkwardly at three balls without hitting them. The last of the over had him in two minds. He started to play forward, changed his stroke suddenly and tried to step back, and the next moment the bails had shot up like the debris of a small explosion, and the wicket-keeper was clapping his gloved hands gently and slowly in the introspective, dreamy way wicket-keepers have ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... years old, my uncle was killed in a laboratory explosion. He had been a scientist of renown and a chemical inventor who had devoted his life to the unravelling of the secrets of the synthetic foods of Germany. For some years I had been his trusted assistant. In our Chicago laboratory ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... came the great explosion which threatened the eternal rending asunder of the Union. That the British people had but an imperfect understanding of the quarrel, we are ready to believe. That they were easily misled as to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... in this place with the force as of an explosion; just as if hungry desires had been pent up a long time, and now they had vent and opportunity to be satisfied. The church was crowded: every day, even in the week; and we were kept in the schoolroom night after night till twelve ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... chivalry. But their inadequate stock of gunpowder was wasted in the operations of each day. Their ordnance was not powerful either in size or number; and if they possessed some heavy cannon, they feared to plant them on the walls, lest the aged structure should be shaken and overthrown by the explosion. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... quickly and closed the door behind him. All the Germans stood up and waited, their faces wreathed in childlike smiles of curiosity, and as soon as the explosion shook the Chateau, they hurried ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... the propulsion of ships the common argument against it was that any machine worked by steam and having sufficient power to propel a vessel would also develop so much vibration as to pull her to pieces—to say nothing of the risk of having her hull shattered at one fell blow by the explosion of the steam boiler. These undoubtedly are dangers which have to be provided against, and probably the occasional lack of care has been the cause of many an unreported loss, as well as of recorded mishaps from ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... knowing, however, that he was doomed to perdition. And, all at once, another memory flashed upon the young priest, the terrible memory of the day when his father had died, killed in his laboratory by an accident, the explosion of a retort. He, Pierre, had then been five years old, and he remembered the slightest incidents—his mother's cry when she had found the shattered body among the remnants of the chemical appliances, then her terror, her sobs, her prayers at the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... close to Billie's, who had cheered up wonderfully by this time, and he was whispering his degraded words of endearment into her ear, when there was a sort of explosion in the doorway. ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... of mind between the quondam Windham and Miss Lorton became evident. Now he began to suspect how desperately they had been in love. A thousand little incidents occurred to his memory, and each one brought on a fresh explosion. Even his own proposal to Zillah was remembered. He wondered whether Windham had proposed also, and been rejected. This only was needed to his mind ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... Perhaps if it were directly appealed to it might do so. It could not, if only for the sake of its own imperial prestige, leave its children for ever in a state of subjection. The small spark which caused a final explosion came from the shooting of a British subject named Edgar by a Boer policeman, Jones, in Johannesburg. The action of the policeman was upheld by the authorities, and the British felt that their lives were no longer safe in the presence ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... prejudices or whimsies. One example, which I have given elsewhere, may be here referred to as showing that his rapid judgments are based upon clear insight: his OWN insight, and not that of others. On my giving him news of the destruction of the Maine at Havana, he at once asked me whether the explosion was from the outside; and from first to last, against the opinions of his admirals and captains, insisted that it must have ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... here came as a messenger of peace. But envision it, men of Earth, as a messenger of war. Unstoppable, inexorable, it may return, bearing a different Delegate from Venus—a Delegate of Death, who speaks not in words, but in the explosion of atoms. Think of thousands of such Delegates, fired from a vantage point far beyond the reach of your retaliation. This is the promise and the challenge that will hang in your night sky from this moment forward. Look at the planet Venus, men of Earth, and see a Goddess of Vengeance, poised ...
— The Delegate from Venus • Henry Slesar
... when they had got 500 feet down Priestley found that he had left a tin of exposed films on the top instead of the record. Gran said he would go back and change it. He had reached the top when there was a loud explosion: large blocks of pumice were hurled out with a big smoke cloud; probably a big bubble had burst. Gran was in the middle of it, heard it gurgle before it burst, saw "blocks of pumiceous lava, in shape like the halves of volcanic bombs, ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... I watched, late one afternoon, the young engineer officer as he connected the wires for the night—perhaps his hand trembled as he made connections, or perhaps some mistake was made. Anyway, there was an explosion. Great masses of desert sand shot into the air like a cloud, and when it fell again, the mangled body of the engineer fell with it; but the mines were laid, connections made for the night, just the same, ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... the maxim of Peter, who declared that he would cut off his left hand if it were conscious of the intentions of his right. The mine was prepared with deep and dangerous artifice; but it may be questioned, whether the instant explosion of Palermo were the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... is proverbial among foreigners, we may be thankful that India-rubber bags of explosive gases are not carried by ignorant boys through our streets, as in Newcastle, England. The practice resulted by a singular chain of mishaps in a violent explosion. The first error was in using a bag for conveying an explosive gas; the second in using a leaky bag; the third in the experimenter, who put coal gas into a bag containing oxygen; the fourth in sending a boy to deliver it. Then comes a ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... manipulated by the artillerist in the manner of an ordinary cannon. Its noiseless discharge sends the missile with great force, conveying the powerful explosive within it, which is itself discharged internally upon contact with the deck of a vessel or other object upon which it strikes, through the explosion of a percussion fuse in the point of the projectile. A great degree of accuracy has been obtained by the peculiar form of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... his chair. "You wonder what I'm getting at, eh? Well, much the same thing is happening in man's explosion into space, now that he has the ability to leave the solar system behind. Dashing off half cocked, in all directions, he's flowing out over this section of the galaxy without plan, without rhyme or reason. I take that last back, he has reasons all right—some ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... range. A mere thirteen hundred yards! His own missile carried a small atomic warhead. At that range it would present no danger to him. But what if it triggered the enemy warhead? He and the ship would be converted into vapor within microseconds. Even a partial, low-efficiency explosion might leave the ship so weakened that it could not stand the stresses of return through the atmosphere. Firing on the enemy warhead at this range was not much different from playing Russian ...
— Pushbutton War • Joseph P. Martino
... the Richard down through the enemy's main hatch. It was by this means that the Serapis had been so often set on fire. Now at an opportune moment, a hand grenade fell among a pile of cartridges strung out on the deck of the Serapis and caused a terrible explosion, killing many men. This seemed to reduce materially the fighting appetite of the British, and soon after a party of seamen from the Richard, with the dashing John Mayrant at their head, boarded the Serapis, and met with little resistance. Captain Pearson thereupon struck his colors, and ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... who took care to question Mrs. Granger's coachman in the course of conversation, in a pleasant casual manner, as to the places to which he had taken his mistress. She waited and made no sign. There was treason going on. The climax and explosion would come in ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... test the discipline of a corps in a high degree, the more so when, as in the present instance, the danger of an explosion from the proximity of the flames to ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... such operatives as refused to accept reduced wages, as persons who could find work but would not take it, and were, therefore, not deserving of relief, so compelling the acceptance of a reduction. Considerable damage was inflicted by the explosion, and all the working-men who came to view it regretted only "that the whole concern was not blown into the air." On Friday, October 6th, 1844, an attempt to set fire to the factory of Ainsworth and Crompton, at Bolton, did no damage; it was the third or fourth attempt ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... by this failure, nor by the discovery of its secret printing-press by the police, the Executive Committee next tried to attain its object by an explosion of dynamite in the Winter Palace when the Imperial family were assembled at dinner. The execution was entrusted to a certain Halturin, one of the few revolutionists of peasant origin. As an exceptionally clever carpenter ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... of fire, we gathered that a great reception had been prepared for us by my father: lamps, lights in all the rooms, torches in the hall, illuminations along the windows, stores of fireworks, such a display as only he could have dreamed of. The fire had broken out at dusk, from an explosion of fireworks at one wing and some inexplicable mismanagement at the other. But the house must have been like a mine, what with the powder, the torches, the devices in paper and muslin, and the extraordinary decorations fitted up to celebrate ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... host went through the formula. He was extremely uneasy. There was material for an explosion present in this room that would blow him sky-high if a match should be applied to it. Let Durand get to telling what he knew about Clarendon and the Whitfords would never speak to him again. They might even spread a true story that ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... things are rather tricky in inexperienced hands. [Marmaduke succeeds in pulling trigger. There is a violent explosion and a large hole ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various
... resembles metal in a state of fusion, but as it flows it carries a kind of scum, which gradually hardens into scoria and rolls like fire-balls to the bottom of the mountain. We thought ourselves pretty secure in this spot, and had no wish to retire; but shortly a most terrific explosion which launched to an inconceivable height in the air, immense fragments of burning rocks, &c. reminded us of our dangerous situation. We lost not a moment in retreating, and driven on by fear almost with miraculous speed, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... killing of Jumbo by the railway-train; to the arrival of Jenny Lind at the Battery; to the meeting of the President and Prince Henry; to the chase of a murderous maniac; to the disaster in the tunnel; to the explosion in the subway; to a remarkable dog-fight; to a village church struck by lightning. It will be said, more or less causally, by everybody in America who has seen Prince Henry do anything, or try to. The man who was absent and didn't see him ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... tremendous explosion shook the town, rattling the windows, awakening people from their beds, and calling the timid and the ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... them, you shall find, that men have been among us, who, under whatever mask of conscience or of peace, have labored to incite others to treasonable violence, and who, after arranging the elements of the mischief, have withdrawn themselves to await the explosion they had contrived, you will feel yourselves bound to present the fact to the Court,—and however distant may be the place in which the offenders may have sought refuge, we give you the pledge of the law, that its far-reaching energies shall be ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... remonstrances, she takes up a champagne bottle, but is frightened by the sudden explosion of the cork, and drops it upon the floor. There the untasted liquor effervesces. Had they quaffed it they would have experienced that brief delirium whereby, whether excited by moral or physical causes, man sought to recompense ...
— The New Adam and Eve (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was evidently warm; by the time that the launch had poured in her men, the second cutter was close under the brig's quarter—two more strokes and she was alongside; when of a sudden, a tremendous explosion took place on the deck of the vessel, and bodies and fragments were hurled up in the air. So tremendous was the explosion, that the men of the second cutter, as if transfixed, simultaneously stopped pulling, their eyes directed to the volumes of smoke which poured through the ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... an existence worth living. A dazzling display of fireworks. A sudden flashing, flaming, crackling, and detonating amid the darkness. A triumphant ascent of glittering balls and serpents, before whose splendid hues the stars of heaven pale. At every rain of fire and explosion, a rapturous, ah! and a thunder of applause from the gaping Philistines, who are in a tumult of ecstasy at the sight, and thus, without cessation, have flash follow flash, and report report, in a continual increase of magnificence, until ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... listening vaguely to Marie, noted his long, bony hand as it clung to the window strap—the hand of the most audacious man she had ever met in her life—who had made an avowal to her on the observation platform of her father's own car—and she mused at the explosion that would have followed had she ever breathed a syllable of the circumstance to her ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... this subject, remarks that in the "Memoirs of the Royal Society of Paris," 1751, there is related an account of a butcher who, opening a diseased beef, was burned by a flame which issued from the maw of the animal; there was first an explosion which rose to a height of five feet and continued to blaze several minutes with a highly offensive odor. Morton saw a flame emanate from beneath the skin of a hog at the instant of making an incision through it. Ruysch, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... Revolution and in him; that is to say, both that Real Kingship is eternally indispensable, and also that the destruction of Sham Kingship (a frightful process) is occasionally so. On the breaking-out of that formidable Explosion, and Suicide of his Century, Friedrich sank into comparative obscurity; eclipsed amid the ruins of that universal earthquake, the very dust of which darkened all the air, and made of day a disastrous ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... done had been good. The difficulty which confronted him now was to select the proper moment for his avowal, and, having made it, to escape. He foresaw difficulties. Domiloff was not a man to be made a fool of lightly. His one comforting reflection was that when the explosion did come he would be safer in Theos than in a frontier town which ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... Ned, who had just left the motor cockpit. "Runs like a charm, and hasn't missed an explosion since I ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young
... with papers; Lady Jane sat by; the children were behind the heavy red curtains that parted off the second room. There was a great silence at first, then began a little tittering, then a little chattering, then presently a stifled explosion. Lady Barbara began to betray some restlessness; she really must see what that child ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to think it necessary—feeling, I suppose, that she had met him without her father's knowledge, and not forgetting that I had had the start of her as the favored object of Mr. Armadale's good opinion—to assert herself by an explosion of virtuous indignation. She wondered how he could think of such a thing after his conduct with Miss Gwilt, and after her father had forbidden him the house! Did he want to make her feel how inexcusably she had forgotten ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... Lord!" Mr. Quayle ejaculated, softly yet with an air so humorously aghast that it could leave no doubt as to the nature of his sentiments. Then he cursed himself for a fool. His shoes indeed had made a mighty creaking! He expected an explosion of scornful wrath. He admitted he deserved it. It ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... one in the midst of an action, suspended there, frozen to stone. They waited for that poised hand to drop, for the slender fingers to clutch the butt of the gun, for the convulsive jerk that would bring out the gleaming barrel, the explosion, the spurt of smoke, and Buck Daniels lurching forward to ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... to separate them in a direct line, while they make so small a resistance to a lateral pressure. Such events, as bear little analogy to the common course of nature, are also readily confessed to be known only by experience; nor does any man imagine that the explosion of gunpowder, or the attraction of a loadstone, could ever be discovered by arguments a priori. In like manner, when an effect is supposed to depend upon an intricate machinery or secret structure of parts, we make no difficulty ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... soul! I never noticed that I called her Dexter; and so that was the spark that caused the explosion? Well, I shall not forget ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth |
