"Rocket" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Gunpowder (ante, p. 124). In the Gent. Mag. for 1749, p. 55, there is a paper on the Construction of Fireworks, which I have little doubt is his. The following passage is certainly Johnsonian:—'The excellency of a rocket consists in the largeness of the train of fire it emits, the solemnity of its motion (which should be rather slow at first, but augmenting as it rises), the straightness of its flight, and the height to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... apartment beneath us: our landlord's family returning from a pilgrimage to a far-distant temple of the Goddess of Grace. (Although Madame Prune is a Shintoist, she reveres this deity, who, scandal says, watched over her youth.) A moment after, Mdlle. Oyouki bursts into our room like a rocket, bringing, on a charming little tray, sweetmeats which have been blessed and bought at the gates of the temple yonder, on purpose for us, and which we must positively eat at once, before the virtue is gone out of them. Scarcely rousing ourselves, ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... water in it, evidently permanently supplied by the drainage of the mass of bare rocks in its vicinity. I was greatly pleased at Tommy's discovery, and after giving Reechy a thorough good drink, off he went like a rocket after the party. I wandered about, but found no other water-place; and then, thinking of the days that were long enough ago, I sat in the shade of an umbrageous acacia bush. Soon I heard the voices of the angels, native black and fallen ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... eyes; and immediately I saw, at the elevation of about 45 degrees above the horizon, a light proceeding from the south, of the breadth of three inches, which went off to the north, always spreading itself as it moved, and made itself heard by a whizzing light like that of the largest sky-rocket. I judged by the eye that this light could not be above our atmosphere, and the whizzing noise which I heard confirmed me in that notion. {38} When it came in like manner to be about 45 degrees to the north above the horizon, it stopped short, and ceased enlargeing itself: in that place it appeared ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... imagination of that imaginative race, proposes to set fire to the Horseshoe Fall, and thus get up a grand nocturnal exhibition, to which the Surrey Zoological pyrotechny would bear the same ratio as a sky-rocket to Vesuvius. ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... cabin came the rocket bearers, quite over their fright by now, and acting with the nervous steadiness which acute danger brings. One of the sailors from the regular crew of the tug moved along the rail, mounting the fire signals ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... bird and straight as a bullet. There is no Victorian writer before him to whom he even suggests a comparison, technically considered, except perhaps De Quincey; who also employed the long rich rolling sentence that, like a rocket, bursts into stars at the end. But De Quincey's sentences, as I have said, have always a dreamy and insecure sense about them, like the turret on toppling turret of some mad sultan's pagoda. Ruskin's sentence branches into brackets ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... into the parlor, deciding she really did have a headache. At times she had to come out when a rocket went off, to see if it was one of the little boys. She was exhausted by the adventures of the day, and almost thought it could not have been worse if the boys had been allowed gunpowder. The distracted lady was thankful there was likely to be but one Centennial Fourth in her lifetime, ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... got to the floor. Quickly, he looked around for a means of doing so. Near him, floating in the air, was the book he had been reading, but it was out of reach. He had taken off his boots when he started to read, so the Fuller rocket method ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... around us witnesses of that time. On every hand we are wrapped in a veil of ignorance, as with a pall of darkness, we no more distinguish the light beyond the cradle than that beyond the tomb. So far as memory is concerned, it would seem that we might be compared with a rocket such as we sometimes see flashing through the sky in the night-time, leaving behind it a line of light, this light never shows anything more than a limited portion of the way. Of like nature is memory, ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... up the remains of a campfire in Pirate's Field during the installation of equipment for the moon rocket, the first great experiment that had put the Spindrift Island scientific group in business as a research foundation headed by Rick's father, Hartson Brant. It was during this experiment that Scotty had joined the staff after rescuing Rick from an unscrupulous gang. The two boys had ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... their favourite tree), was another similar nest, containing four eggs, slightly glossy, with a salmon-pink tinge throughout, and numerous well-marked brownish-red specks and spots, most numerous towards the large end, looking vastly like Brobdingnagian specimens of the Rocket-bird's eggs. The variation in this bird's eggs is remarkable; out of more than one hundred eggs nearly one third have been pure white, and between the dead glossless purely white egg and a somewhat glossy, warm pinky grounded one, with numerous ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... ceremonious and rather affected style of the period. In 1770 she was at the climax of prosperity. "Galas, masquerades, and festivals, all equally splendid, succeeded one another throughout the season" (Clinch); but after her sky-rocket ascent came the fall: fickle Fashion deserted her, and finally the house and its contents were announced in the Gazette for sale. The Pantheon had proved too formidable a rival. In 1785 the property was in Chancery, and Mrs. Cornelys died in ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... at its height, and the great occasion less than a week away, when Peggy received news which sent her already buoyant spirits climbing like a rocket. The rural delivery had brought her several letters, and as Priscilla noticed, she pounced first on a missive in a business-like envelope, with a typewritten address. She had hardly read two lines before she interrupted herself with ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... sturdy limb Had belonged to fightin' Tim, An' scarcely had they sewed it on the socket O! When up the hatch I flew, An' dashed among the crew, An' sprang on board the Frenchman like a rocket ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... soary (and flighty) as a rocket to-day, with the unutterable joy of getting that Old Man of the Sea off my back, where he has been roosting more than a year ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... steady swiftness, up shot in the dark purple air the first rocket, bursting and scattering a rain of stars. There was an audible gasp in the surrounding homely world, a few little cries, and a big boy clutched tight hold of her arm, saying, 'I be afeard.' She was explaining away his alarms, when she heard her brother's voice, ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is due to nothing else but the evaporation of this concrete oil—to effluvia that escape from all parts and that exert upon the body whence they emanate a recoiling action exactly like that which manifests itself in an lopile mounted upon a brasier, or, better yet, in the explosion of a sky-rocket. A portion of these camphory vapors, as well as a small portion of the camphor itself, dissolves in the water and forms upon its surface an oily layer which is at first very slight, but the thickness of which may increase in time until it becomes (especially if the vessel ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... attachment of a brother. He had a great and generous heart; there was no virtue of humanity of which he did not possess a goodly portion. He was always brimful of humor, throwing off his jokes, which sparkled without burning, like the flashes of a rocket. There was no sting in his wit. You felt as full of merriment at one of his witticisms, made at your expense, as when it was played upon another. Yet he was a profound lawyer, and some of his opinions are models of style and reasoning. He ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... flourish, sprang in air to seek her; but her outraged mate was ahead of him, and with a scream she fled, leaving a tuft of feathers in her mate's beak. In turn the Cardinal struck him like a flashing rocket, and then red war waged in Rainbow Bottom. The females scattered for cover with all their might. The Cardinal worked in a kiss on one poor little bird, too frightened to escape him; then the males closed in, and serious business began. The Cardinal ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... and fall. From whence comes the vigor with which this law of growth and decay applies itself to all organized things in this lower world? Death itself, in times of scourge, has periods when it advances, slackens, sinks back, and slumbers. Our globe is perhaps only a rocket a little more continuing than the rest. History, recording the causes of the rise and fall of all things here below, could enlighten man as to the moment when he might arrest the play of all his faculties; but neither the conquerors, nor the actors, nor the women, nor the writers in the great ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... destroyed. I thought I was in his way, and left him, and came home to tell the family what was going on. After I left the fire travelled faster than ever. Huge rolls of smoke swelled up fold after fold. The under folds crimson and glowing yellow from the flames below, sparks flying up like rocket stars. A petroleum store caught, and the flames ran about in rivers, and above all the steel blue moon shone through the rents of the rolling vapour, and the stars with an intensity of brilliant ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... McClure as he bent over the depth dial. The hands of the indicator began to spin around and the Dewey, relieved of every pound of ballast, shot upward like a rocket. ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... crack beneath our feet, hearing an appalling hiss through the open trap-door, a hiss like the first sound of a rocket! ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... Mike the Angel. "A few minutes ago a bomb was set off in my apartment. I think it was a rocket, and I know it was heavily laced with hydrogen cyanide. That's Suite 5000, Timmins Building, up on 112th Street. I called you because I have a hunch it's connected with the incident at ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... flying-fish, which had been driven to frantic leaps from the sea by pursuing bonito, he begins to descend. First his coming down is like that of an aeroplane, in spirals, but a thousand feet from his prey he volplanes; he falls like a rocket, and seizing a fish in the air, he wings his way ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... through it with much credit. So far as I can remember—and it is, indeed, no stretch of imagination—the goal got by Mr. M'Callum could not have been saved by any keeper, as it came out of a scrimmage from the Celtic man's foot like a rocket. Mr. Downie is a very neat kicker-out in front, and shows fine judgment with his hands in clearing the ball away from ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... with Barby and Jan, were now on their way to Wallops Island rocket range operated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Hartson Brant had business there in connection with instruments the Spindrift group of scientists had designed for measuring solar X rays. The instruments would ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... apparatus of the newest and best type is stored in the life-boat houses placed at intervals close to the seashore. On stormy nights the watching sentinels summon by telephone the fishermen of the tiny hamlets near. At sound of a rocket the distressful cry, "A wreck, a wreck!" runs over the telephone, and immediately brave hearts and hands are putting off to the rescue, while trembling women anxiously wait their husbands' return with warm restoratives for the saved. These fishermen's wives are brave too, for ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson
... Temple in itself, there then appeared a procession of new horrors, called arbitrary characters; the most despotic characters I have ever known; who insisted, for instance, that a thing like the beginning of a cobweb, meant expectation, and that a pen-and-ink sky-rocket, stood for disadvantageous. When I had fixed these wretches in my mind, I found that they had driven everything else out of it; then, beginning again, I forgot them; while I was picking them up, I dropped the other fragments of the system; in short, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... hove her to until he should see a guiding rocket from the men-of-war which he knew were waiting. And presently one came, a blue and gold from due west, and another red and gold from the west-nor'-west, then a red and blue from north-west by west. Presently there was another, from abreast of ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... and the crash of the seas on the rocks made speech impossible. He pointed suddenly along the cliff face, and not twenty yards away, with a hiss and a roar, a furious spout of water shot up into the air a rocket of white foam, a hundred feet high, and fell with a crash over the rocks and into ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... Forces; Airborne troops, Strategic Rocket Forces, and Military Space Forces are classified as independent combat arms, not subordinate to any of ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... (who are, by the way, in great part boys only in name, like the postboys of the past and the cowboys of the present) have given laborious nights throughout the preceding October. The rouser is much larger and heavier than the ordinary squib; it is propelled through the air like a rocket by the force of its escaping sparks; and it bursts with a terrible report. In order to protect themselves from the ravages of the rouser the people in the streets wear spectacles of wire netting, while the householders board up their windows and lay damp straw on their ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... after carrying your right arm in a sling so many years.) What a hard, unjust business this is! On the 28th, if Mataafa had moved, he could have still swept Mulinuu. He waited, and I fear he is now only the stick of a rocket. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... knows what's happened to my practice," he said. "The blamed thing has gone up like a rocket. It seems to me there must be a great wave of sickness passing over New York ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... loose stone or a dangerous spot, you give the ever-ready steel-horse the rein; faster and faster whirl the glistening wheels until objects "by the road-side become indistinct phantoms as they glide instantaneously by, and to strike a hole or obstruction is to be transformed into a human sky-rocket, and, later on, into a new arrival in another world. A wild yell of warning at a blue- bloused peasant in the road ahead, shrill screams of dismay from several females at a cluster of cottages, greet the ear as you sweep past like a whirlwind, and the next moment ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... underground, burying is done in reverse, by tying a rocket to the tail of the deceased and shooting ...
— Mars Confidential • Jack Lait
... then had, that in 1833, near the date of "the first engine run on the Liverpool and Manchester railway in 1830," the American machine cut the "corn" just as perfectly, with equal "neatness and certainty" as did the "Novelty" or "Rocket" pass over the Liverpool and Manchester railway. We shall again recur to English authority. John Bull is a right honest and clever old gentleman in the main; but he is rather prone to claim what he has ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... crept out of the dark to seawards, and a faint throbbing grew into the measured beat of a steamer's screw. Then a low, shadowy hull, outlined by a glimmer of phosphorescence, came on towards the harbor mouth, and a rocket swept up in a fiery curve and burst, dropping colored lights. A harsh rattle of running chain broke out, the screw splashed noisily for a few moments and stopped, and a launch ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... more, and come up on the other side of the koodoo. I called Harry to my side, and explained to him what I thought would be our best course, when suddenly, without any delay, the koodoo saved us further trouble by suddenly starting off down the hill like a leaping rocket. I do not know what had frightened it, certainly we had not. Perhaps a hyaena or a leopard—a tiger as we call it there—had suddenly appeared; at any rate, off it went, running slightly towards us, and I never saw a buck go faster. I am afraid that forgetting Harry's presence ...
— A Tale of Three Lions • H. Rider Haggard
... lost, but the French made it so hot for them that they abandoned it, and the contested trenches now lie in No Man's Land. All that night the whole Wood was illuminated, trench light after trench light rising over the dark branches. There would be a rocket like the trail of bronze-red powder sparks hanging for an instant in the sky, then a loud Plop! and the French light would spread out its parachute and sail slowly down the sky toward the river. The German lights (fusees eclairantes), ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... day the city's multi-coloured militia regiments passed through its echoing streets; day after day Broadway resounded with the racket of their drums. Rifles, chasseurs, zouaves, foot artillery, pioneers, engineers, rocket batteries, the 79th Highlanders, dismounted lancers of the 69th and dragoons of the 8th—every heard-of and unheard-of unnecessary auxiliary to a respectable regiment of state infantry, mustered for inspection and marched away in polychromatic magnificence. Park, avenue, ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... extraordinary scene. In a moment the forks remained inactive in every hand, silence reigned, and every eye was turned to the Gars. A frightful anger showed upon his face, which turned waxen in tone. He leaned towards the guest from whom the rocket had started and said, in a voice that seemed muffled in crape, "Death of my soul! count, ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... so!" exclaimed Jack. "We can't fight a whole nation, can we? Look there! That was a rocket, and means trouble." ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... seemed preternaturally long, and when the first rocket was finally sent up, everyone watched, with almost feverish impatience, for the Burnside's return signal. One minute passed in breathless silence; another minute, during which we shivered slightly with ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... commander of the German submarine had the intention of allowing passengers and crew ample opportunity to save themselves. It was not until the Captain disregarded the order to lay to and took to flight, sending up rocket signals for help, that the German commander ordered the crew and passengers by signals and megaphone to leave the ship within ten minutes. As a matter of fact, he allowed them twenty-three minutes, and did not fire the torpedo ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... tried to make Charlie shut it up. But we'll disinter him; I'll rush in like a sky-rocket, and scatter the gentlemen ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... know. Your liquid sky would sink through it, since negative weight must in truth be lighter than no weight, while nothing else would rise through the layer. And phlogiston will quench the flame of a rocket, as your expert ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... I heard the vials of her speech unsealed abovestairs, with detonations that shook the house. I had touched off my rocket, and the stick descended—on ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the uproar was quelled, and the applause subsided. Crack, snap, bang! What was the matter? The fireworks placed underneath the scaffolding, and which were to have concluded the evening's entertainments, had by some means or other ignited. Presently a rocket with a loud roar made a sweep in a slanting direction through the canvas at the top of the canopy, to the consternation of all. Before the alarm subsided, and before anyone could make his or her escape by flight, another and another rocket rushed from ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... swordfish and had gone out in the small boat to lance it, when the huge fish dived under the craft and shot up from the bottom like a rocket, his sword going through the timbers as though they were paper and striking the boatman with such force that he was killed almost instantly. Boats used often to be sunk by the rushes of a swordfish, but nowadays the greater part of the work is done directly from ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... water. But the flames set off bombs and the rocket-nozzles cracked and were useless. A midship compartment was flooding. A forward compartment's wall caved in, and still bombs burst.... The skipper of the assassin cruiser screamed an order to fire all missiles. They were already set on target. They were pre-set for the spot where ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Holiday in the Manufacturing Districts Coaching trip to Liverpool Coventry English scenery 'The Rocket' The two Stephensons Opening of the railway William Fawcett Birkenhead Walk back to London Patricroft Manchester Edward Tootal Sharp, Roberts and Co. Manchester industry Coalbrookdale The Black Country ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... instantaneous, in fact, that Louise Taine's lips were shaped to deliver an expressive "oh" of admiration, even before the portrait was revealed. As though the painter, in drawing back the easel curtain, gave an appointed signal, that "oh" was set off with the suddenness of a sky-rocket's rush, and was accompanied in its flight by a great volume of sizzling, sputtering, glittering, adjectival sparks that—filling the air to no purpose whatever—winked out as they were born; the climax of the pyrotechnical display being reached in the explosive pop of another "oh" which released ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... you unfeeling, insensible puppy, I despise you! When I was of your age, such a description would have made me fly like a rocket! The aunt indeed! Odds life! when I ran away with your mother, I would not have touched anything old or ugly to ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... as a magnate were a great success. With my heart in my mouth I would tear open the financial editions of the evening papers, to find one day that Jaguars had soared like a rocket to 1-1/16, the next that they had dropped like a stone to 1-1/32. There was one terrible afternoon when for some reason which will never be properly explained we sank to 15/16. I think the European situation had something to do with it, though this naturally ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... inventions at his works in Sardis about the year 1946. One of his inventions was an automatic shell. This was an enormous projectile, the peculiarity of which was that its motive power was contained within itself, very much as a rocket contains the explosives which send it upward. The extraordinary piece of mechanism was of [v]cylindrical form, eighteen feet in length and fourteen feet in diameter. The forward end was [v]conical and not solid, being formed of a number of flat ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... his gallant companions had performed all their operations in darkness, the only light being the flashes of the cannon and muskets playing on them. At length ten o'clock struck—a single rocket ascended into the air. In an instant the fireship and all the trains leading to the different magazines and stores were ignited. The boats lay alongside the former, ready to take off the crew. There was ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... carrying the huge rocket with an air of deference. As they approached, Seaton shrugged one shoulder and his cigarette-case appeared in his hand. Nalboon started, and in spite of his utmost efforts at self-control, he glanced at it in surprise. ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... battalions as an advanced guard. The regiments nominated to that service were the 4th, the 85th Light Infantry, and the 95th. Rifles; and he selected Colonel Thornton of the 85th, as an officer of talent and enterprise, to command them. Attached to this corps were a party of rocket-men, with two light three-pounders— a species of gun convenient enough, where celerity of movement is alone regarded, but of very little real utility in the field. The rest of the troops were arranged, as before, into two brigades. The ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... Star Chrysanthemum, Evening Star Chrysanthemum inodorum plenissimum Chrysanthemum segetum gr. Clarkia Collinsia Coreopsis Cornflower Erysimum Eschscholtzia Gilia tricolor Godetia Iceland Poppy Larkspur, dwarf rocket Leptosiphon Limnanthes Douglasii Linaria, pink Nemophila Nigella, Miss Jekyll Papaver glaucum Phacelia tanacetifolia Poppy, Shirley Saponaria calabrica Scabious Silene Sweet Sultan Venus' Looking-glass, purple ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... had been hovering about for some time, came screaming alongside. There was a hiss from its wave-splashed deck, and a rocket with a blue light flashed up into the sky. A man who had formed one of the long line of passengers, leaning over the rail, watching the tug since it had come into sight, now turned away and walked briskly to the steps leading to the bridge. As it happened, the captain himself ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sides, but changed to ohs! and ahs! as a beautiful rocket flew through the air, and burst into ...
— Harper's Young People, July 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... sunshine to our aged eyes As when it nursed the blossoms of our spring. Such is true Love, which steals into the heart With feet as silent as the lightsome dawn That kisses smooth the rough brows of the dark, And hath its will through blissful gentleness, Not like a rocket, which, with passionate glare, Whirs suddenly up, then bursts, and leaves the night Painfully quivering on the dazed eyes; A love that gives and takes, that seeth faults, Not with flaw-seeking eyes like needle points, But loving-kindly ever ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... this. He only runs a short way. Then he slackens pace. Wraysford rushes forward in front, the pursuing host rush on behind, but every one sees how it will be. The fellow takes a deliberate drop-kick at the goal, and up flies the ball as true as a rocket, clean over the posts, as certain a goal as Saint Dominic's ever lost! It was no use crying over spilt milk, and for the rest of the game Stansfield relaxed no efforts to stay the tide of defeat. And he succeeded too, ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... nerve herself for the cruel journey to the markets in the morning. Chook would drive down in his own cart, and she would be waiting on his return with a good breakfast. They had gone up in the world like a rocket. ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... district, comprising the whole of the E. of the county. The London rocket (Sisymbrium irio) occurs only in the old towns of Hertford and Ware; the true oxlip (Primula elatior) near the head of the River Stort; a very rare broom-rape, Orobanche caerulea, at Hoddesdon, where it is parasitic on the milfoil; and an almost ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... the prosperous issue before his eyes; and that it might be communicated to him as swiftly as possible, a few cannon shots were to be fired off, and if it was dark, a rocket or ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Spey. Rocks, trees, high banks, and other impediments forbid resort to the overhead cast. The essence and value of the Spey cast lies in this—that his line must never go behind the caster; well done, the cast is like the dart from a howitzer's mouth of a safety rocket to which a line is attached. To watch it performed, strongly yet easily, by a skilled hand is a liberal education in the art of casting; the swiftness, sureness, low trajectory, and lightness of the fall of ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... always told off to watch for shells from the fort's guns. If a black speck was seen in the midst of the cannon smoke, then the sentinel shouted, and a rush was made for safety, for the shell was coming their way. At night the burning fuse could be seen like a rocket in the air; so long as it span and flew, the card-players were safe, but the moment it became stationary above their heads it was time to run, for the shell was falling upon them. The guns of the Malakoff were not the rifled guns of a later decade. ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... help," he said, in explanation of his order, "send up a rocket. They are made so that they are visible by day as well as night. In the daylight their explosion produces a dense cloud of black smoke visible at several miles. They also make a terrific report that is ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... Archie contemptuously; "they'll be sorry when I strike some real big thing and another line gets it. Now then, I've got something brand new—the rocket danger signal." ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... and having the fire at hand, sends up rockets—if you doubt—read:—"And how all the hollows of that foam burn with green fire, like so much shattering chrysoprase; and how, ever and anon, startling you with its white flash, a jet of spray leaps hissing out of the fall, like a rocket, bursting in the wind, and driven away in dust, filling the air with light; and how, through the curdling wreaths of the restless, crashing abyss below, the blue of the water, paled by the foam in its body, shows purer than the sky through white rain-cloud, while the shuddering iris stoops in tremulous ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... would make a divine Undine—moonlight, and overhanging trees. The face and figure dimly seen through a veil of water weeds.—But where is she, then?" he broke off, falling suddenly to earth like a rocket. "May one see her this afternoon? I want to hear from herself that she ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... banners fluttered and the flags whipped. At the edge of the city, the airport tightened itself. Waiting, waiting for the silver and blue rocket. The rocket of ...
— Celebrity • James McKimmey
... October, a great crowd had assembled to see an extraordinary race—a race, in fact, without any parallel or precedent whatsoever. There were four entries but one dropped out, leaving three: The Novelty, John Braithwaite and John Ericsson; The Sanspareil, Timothy Hackworth; The Rocket, George and Robert Stephenson. These were not horses; they were locomotives. The directors of the London and Manchester Railway had offered a prize of five hundred pounds for the best locomotive, and here they were to ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... who had thus appropriated me, without more ado, levelled his head like a battering ram, and began to batter in breach all who stood in his way. He first ran a tilt against Pam be Civil, and shot him like a rocket into the sea; the Monkey fared no better; the Ballahoo had to swim for it; and having thus opened a way by main force, I at length got safely moored in the stern sheets; but just as we were shoving off, Mr Callaloo, the clergyman of Port Royal, a tall ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... course of time we reached the Old Bell Inn, Holborn, where the coach stopped, and where my trunk and myself were to be handed over to the tender mercies of the coachman of the Rocket, a fast coach (I speak of the slow old days when railroads were unknown) which then ran to Helmstone, the watering-place where my future tutor, the Rev. Dr. Mildman, resided. My first impressions of London are scarcely worth recording, for the simple reason that they consisted solely of ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... the Hindus opened a desolating fire from a number of field-pieces and rocket-batteries. The left and right of the Muhammadan line were pressed back after destructive hand-to-hand fighting, many falling on both sides. At this juncture Rama Raya, thinking to encourage his men, descended ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... of the man that his first act was to wipe the grime of the stoke-hold off his face and hands. Then he drew a chart from the locker in which he had placed it two hours earlier. Mr. Boyle, who had been attending to the signals both by siren and rocket, joined him. Courtenay pointed to a ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... my grandfather, who was beginning to lose his temper; "and do you think, ma'am, that I carry a Boxer's rocket ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... even if he did not know how he got here. The L-B—if it did exist—was to the west. He had a vivid mental picture of the rocket shape, its once silvery sides dulled by exposure, canted crookedly amid trees. And he was going ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... we haven't got powder, Bertie. We have plenty of cartridges for sporting purposes, or for fighting; but a rocket is a thing that wants a lot of powder, besides saltpetre ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... lived or no use at all. 'What's the good in your talking to me?' old man Timbury was saying. 'Why afore you was born I've seen' . . . and we all started in to shout 'ships o' the line, frigates, and cavattes,' because we belong to mock him like that, when somebody called 'Hark, listen, wasn't that a rocket?' That fetched us all outside into the road where we stood listening. The wind was blowing harder than ever, and there was a parcel of sea rising. You could hear it against Shag Rock over the wind. Eddowes, he were a ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... light, and a slight explosion, interrupted the half-laughing girl, and Mulford, turning on his heel, quick as thought, saw that a rocket had shot into the air, from a point close under the bows of the brig. He was still in the act of moving toward the forecastle, when, at the distance of several leagues, he saw the explosion of another rocket high in the air. He knew enough ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... rather like a rocket; it shoots into the sky, flares, fades, and falls to the ground in dust so unnoticeable that you can hardly find its remnants, search how you may. Of course, I know that our lives don't really shoot upwards ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... was to see that Cissy didn't play wild games, and went to bed at half-past eight, but as a matter of fact the aged nurse did neither. Cissy stayed with the boys as long as they would allow her. At last the joyous moment arrived, they went on the balcony and Pickering started his first rocket. Cissy, a little frightened, clung ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... the repulsion energy once more and the Nomad shot skyward like a rocket. Through the floor port he saw Nazu's tiny ovoid scudding over the ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... the Skylark, and no knowledge of intra-atomic energy. Therefore their space-ships are of the rocket type, and for that reason they can cross only at the exact time of conjunction, or whatever you call it—no, not conjunction, exactly, either, since the two planets do not revolve around the same sun: but when they are closest together. Our solar system is so complex, ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... repaired every night. The German trenches are about 70 yards away in some places and as much as 400 in others. It is rather exciting wandering about in front of the line, as lights go up every now and then and show a bright white light in the air for a minute or two like a rocket. When one goes up you fall flat and pretend you are a sandbag or a milk-can or a rat. You may meet Fritz on the same job sometimes; I always have a bomb handy to give him a ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack
... were many deeds of heroic courage performed which merit record. A man by the name of Rocket, in the town of Wrentham, was in the woods searching for his horse. Much to his alarm, he discovered, far off in the forest, a band of forty-two Indians, in single file, silently and noiselessly passing along, apparently seeking a place of concealment. They were all thoroughly armed. Mr. Rocket ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... city, the city will sooner or later fall to pieces of its own weight. In such a way Babylon rose and fell, and Nineveh, and Thebes, and Carthage, and Rome. Mere bulk, unorganized, becomes its own destroyer. It dies of clogging and congestion. But when Stephenson's Rocket ran twenty-nine miles an hour, and Morse's telegraph clicked its signals from Washington to Baltimore, and Bell's telephone flashed the vibrations of speech between Boston and Salem, a new era began. In came the era of speed and the finely organized nations. In ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... a rocket ascending in your dream, foretells sudden and unexpected elevation, successful wooing, and faithful keeping ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... two or three high-spirited dames, defy this Czar of Gaul. Yet they and their cabal are as inconsistent on the other hand. They make epigrams, sing vaudevilles,[2] against the mistress, hand about libels against the Chancellor [Maupeou], and have no more effect than a sky-rocket; but in three months will die to go to Court, and to be invited to sup with Madame du Barri. The only real struggle is between the Chancellor [Maupeou] and the Duc d'Aiguillon. The first is false, bold, determined, and not subject to ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... used with the 12-1/2-pounder was that known as 'ballistite.' Rocket signals and limelights were carried, but ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... and tell East to come and back me," said Tom to a small School-house boy, who was off like a rocket to Harrowell's, just stopping for a moment to poke his head into the School-house hall, where the lower boys were already at tea, and sing out, "Fight! Tom ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... we shalln't do that, my lord! for this same Jeppe is one of the heaviest sleepers in the whole district. Last year they tried setting off a rocket under his head, but when the rocket went off he never ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... (internal and border troops); CIS Forces (Ground, Air, Air Defense, Strategic Rocket) Manpower availability: males 15-49, NA; NA fit for military service; NA reach military age (18) annually Defense expenditures: $NA, ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... know, my dear. The finest gift in the world is pleasure. Sometimes I think it's better to feed the soul and let the body fast. There is a time in life when one brief sky-rocket can produce more joy than ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... pieces of lunarium were fastened in like manner to screws, which passed through the top of the machine; so that by turning them in one direction, those metallic pieces would fly into the air with the velocity of a rocket. The Brahmin took with him a thermometer, two telescopes, one of which projected through the top of the machine, and the other through the bottom; a phosphoric lamp, pen, ink, and paper, and some light refreshments sufficient to supply ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... Nights' Entertainment. The phantom city over there is London, New York, Paris, according to his fancy. He's going out to dinner with his girl. All those flares are arc-lamps along boulevards; that last white rocket that went flaming across the sky, was the faery taxi which is to speed him on his happy errand. It isn't so, one has only ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... be anxious to hear from me, I sent one man back to camp to report to him, with instructions as to the course to move, also for him to throw up a rocket every mile or so, that I might know where to send my next messenger to meet him. Myself and the other four scouts started for the Indian camp, and it took two hours and a half the best we could ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... not dare use the flashlights that each of them carried, and frequently all of them would have to drop suddenly flat upon the ground as a big rocket went up from either side, lighting the whole section for ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... In heaven's name, man, cried Stubb, are you ramming home a cartridge there? —Avast! How will that help him; jamming that iron-bound bucket on top of his head? Avast, will ye! Stand clear of the tackle! cried a voice like the bursting of a rocket. Almost in the same instant, with a thunder-boom, the enormous mass dropped into the sea, like Niagara's Table-Rock into the whirlpool; the suddenly relieved hull rolled away from it, to far down her glittering copper; and all caught their breath, as half swinging ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... edge to his voice, "the thing for you to do is to tell them that's your star, and they'll have to speak English from now on, so you can understand them. Why, next thing we know, you'll be getting yourself a rocket or a space-ship and going over to that star to set yourself up ...
— McIlvaine's Star • August Derleth
... anywhere wanting. Without doubt, some Angel, whereof so many hovered round, would one day, leaving "the outskirts of AEsthetic Tea," flit higher; and, by electric Promethean glance, kindle no despicable firework. Happy, if it indeed proved a Firework, and flamed off rocket-wise, in successive beautiful bursts of splendor, each growing naturally from the other, through the several stages of a happy Youthful Love; till the whole were safely burnt out; and the young soul relieved with little damage! ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... water of prodigious circumference; it was not exactly Charybdis, or the Maelstrom, but rather more like the wave occasioned by the sudden turning of a man-of-war's boat. Being hooked, and having by this time set his nose peremptorily down the stream, he flashed and whizzed away like a rocket. My situation partook of the nature of a surprise. Being on a rocky shore, and having had a bad start, I lost ground at first considerably; but the reel sang out joyously, and yielded a liberal length of line, that saved me from the disgrace of being broke. I got on the best pace I was able, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... the gentleman, stewed! Look at the glare of the rocket! Don't get so terribly rude, Keep your hand ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... thinking, Colonel Forster, that, as we have no horses at present, if you have any rockets, they might be useful in such a case. At the distance we are from you a rocket would be seen immediately if fired at night, and I promise you, that it shall not be fired ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... just as you are when an elevator starts with a sharp jerk and there was an awful noise like the worst clap of thunder you ever heard close to your ears, then the smoke covered everything and you could hear the shot going through the air like a giant rocket— The shots they fired at us did not cut any ice except a shrapnel that broke just over the main mast and which reminded me of Greece— The other shots fell short— The best thing was to see the Captains ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... day, fortunately, was clear and calm. At noon Gissing blew the syren, fired a rocket from the bridge, and swung the engine telegraph to STOP. The ship's orchestra, by his orders, struck up a rollicking air. Quickly and without confusion, amid cries of Women and children first! the passengers filed to their allotted ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... through the shrouds like pack-thread, and rolling and wallowing off astern amid a pandemonium of shouts for aid, and frantic screams of startled women. In one minute the great steamer had vanished as suddenly as she came, and the Idaho was settling by the bows. A signal rocket tore aloft to tell the ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... was seldom absent from Aruna's side. They said little, but his presence wrapped her round with a sense of companionship more intimate than she had yet felt even in their happiest times together. While rocket after rocket soared and curved and blossomed in mid-heaven, her gaze reverted persistently to the outline of a man's head and shoulders silhouetted ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... bolting in a new baffle plate on the stationary rocket engine. It was a tedious job and took all his concentration. So he wasn't paying too much attention to what was going on in other parts of ...
— Acid Bath • Vaseleos Garson
... limited range and so far not lethal to human beings. Occasional flashes of its effects had been noted by the troops now forming a cordon about the Park, but it only produced discomfort, not paralysis. Nevertheless the troops in question have been moved back. Meanwhile rocket missiles are being moved to areas where they can deliver atom bombs on the alien ship if it should prove necessary. But the government is extremely anxious to make this contact with extra-terrestrials a friendly one, because contact with a race more advanced than ourselves could be ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... was not in a hurry to find out; I was afraid to know, afraid to stir, there was only one thing I was sure of, that I was alive. If I had only a minute left, I meant to hold on to it.... There was a rocket in the sky; I never thought what it meant, I didn't care, but the curve it made, and the light, like a bright flower.... I can't tell you how lovely it seemed. I simply drank it in.... I remembered when I was a child, one ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... on to the other phases of the matter in the whimsical vein that was natural in her, and to which he responded. They watched the lights of an east-bound steamer that was passing near. The exchange of rocket signals—that pretty and graceful parley between ships that pass in the night—interested them for a moment. Then the deck lights went out so suddenly it seemed that a dark curtain had descended and shut them ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... bloody Iran-Iraq war was quick to follow after the commencement of daily Iraqi long-range rocket bombardments of Tehran that amounted to a reign of terror. Given that both sides were exhausted at that point, a show of force could have been convincing. Strong U.S. action in response to Iran's mining of neutral waters may also have had a sobering effect on the mullahs. Not ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade |
