"Powder magazine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he has entirely lost the sight of one eye. This did not surprise me so much as a bon mot of his. Gumley, who you know is grown Methodist, came to tell him, that as he was on duty, a tree in Hyde Park, near the powder magazine, had been set on fire; the Duke replied, he hoped it was not by the new light. This nonsensical new light is extremely in fashion, and I shall not be surprised if we see a revival of all the folly and cant of the last age. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... instructions, and a site had been chosen for his station within a hundred yards of the south extremity of that of Abou Saood. This position was backed by a high rock, upon which I had already commenced to build a powder magazine of solid masonry. ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... lucifer matches, which had become ignited through the carelessness of the Surgeon. Cuticle, almost dead, was dragged from the suffocating atmosphere, and it was several days ere he completely recovered from its effects. This accident took place immediately over the powder magazine; but as Cuticle, during his sickness, paid dearly enough for transgressing the laws prohibiting combustibles in the gun-room, the Captain contented himself with ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... that they were half-pay officers, who were spending their last sous, and who would soon be troubled to live. I continued on my way, and hurried along under the vault of the powder magazine behind the college, thinking of all these things, but when I reached the German gate I forgot everything. The procession was just turning the corner at Bockholtz, the chants broke forth opposite the altar like trumpets, and the young priests from Nancy were running ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... have you got it? That's the question. I expect that buzzard will be flying around again over this field in a night or so,—the moon is 'most full now, and the nights are light,—and I've got to be able to signal him just how to find the powder magazine and the other munitions. Then he can swoop right over there and drop one of his little souvenirs where it will do the most good and fly away home. I advise you to keep away from that section of the ...
— The French Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... you take it that way, who is the person that a few months before Egalite's death had a secret conference with him? I wish they would reinsert in the Memoirs of La Campan the suppressed paragraphs. The death of the Dauphin appears to me equivocal. The powder magazine at Grenelle by exploding killed two thousand persons. The cause was unknown, they tell us: what nonsense!" For Pecuchet was not far from understanding it, and threw the blame for every crime on the manoeuvres of the aristocrats, gold, ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... of their countrymen. At last, when the greater part of these unfortunates had fallen, Santa Anna caused his fresh troops to advance, and the place was taken. The two last of the garrison fell by the Mexican bullets as they were rushing, torch in hand, to fire the powder magazine. The fall of the Alamo was announced to Colonel Fanning in a letter ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... on Sunday, August 30, the rebels concentrated at the village of San Juan del Monte, distant half an hour on horseback from the city gates. They endeavoured to seize the powder magazine. One Spanish artilleryman was killed and several of the defenders were badly wounded whilst engaged in dropping ammunition from window openings into a stream which runs close by. Cavalry and infantry reinforcements ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... as if whipped round by the force of the whirlwind. Here it comes, there it glides, now it is up the ragged stump of the mast, thence it lightly leaps on the provision bag, descends with a light bound, and just skims the powder magazine. Horrible! we shall be blown up; but no, the dazzling disk of mysterious light nimbly leaps aside; it approaches Hans, who fixes his blue eye upon it steadily; it threatens the head of my uncle, who falls upon his knees with ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... hordes, in flocks, like carrion-birds or ants overrunning a half-dead thing. Suddenly earth and air at Clayoquot harbour were rent with a terrific explosion, and the sea was drenched with the blood of the slaughtered savages. The only remaining white man, the wounded Lewis, had blown up the powder magazine. He perished himself in order to ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... important expedition, and they celebrated the occasion by eating and drinking, firing guns, and all manner of riotous hilarity. In the midst of the wild festivities—and nobody knew how it happened—a spark of fire got into the powder magazine, and the ship blew up, sending the lifeless bodies of three hundred English sailors, and the French prisoners, high into the air. The only persons on board who escaped were Morgan and his officers who were in the cabin ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... ever it was; some of the largest trees in it, however, have been cut down since our arrival, but they were chiefly decayed. Of the Bastille nothing remains, except a very small part of the foundations; and near it is a newly-erected powder magazine, and much of the remainder of the space ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... hour, when, to Frontenac's unutterable wrath, Valrenne appeared with his garrison. He reported that he had set fire to every thing in the fort that would burn, sunk the three vessels belonging to it, thrown the cannon into the lake, mined the walls and bastions, and left matches burning in the powder magazine; and, further, that when he and his men were five leagues on their way to Montreal a dull and distant explosion told them that the mines had sprung. It proved afterwards that the destruction was not complete; and the Iroquois ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... a philosopher. A powder magazine was once blown up by lightning in a town where Erasmus was staying, and a house of infamous character was destroyed. The inhabitants saw in what had happened the Divine anger against sin. Erasmus ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... 'a magazine is a store, and as many different things are stored in those books, they are called magazines. A powder magazine is a store of barrels of gunpowder. Now do you see why it was dangerous ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... expression passed over Dancing's face. "I didn't want to break the calm. When I see a man walking around a powder magazine I hate to do anything that ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... tenacious and avaricious men, aldermen, etc., would not permit, because their houses would have been the first." Now, however, this remedy was tried, and with greater despatch, because the fire threatened the Tower and the powder magazine it contained. And if the flames once reached this, London Bridge would assuredly be destroyed, the vessels in the river torn and sunk, and incalculable damage to life and ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... in spite of the twinge of pain it caused his wounded arm. His heart beat faster—so, too, did hers—as they gained the upper story. The touch of her was, to him, like a lighted match flung into a powder magazine; but he bit his lip, and though his face paled, then flushed, he held his voice steady as ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... a soul on board, and yet from the flying splinters left in its path cause the death of a score; its way may lie through the boilers, still touching no one, and yet the most horrible of all deaths, that by scalding steam, result. It may chance to hit the powder magazine, and sudden annihilation be the fate of both ship and crew; or, passing below the water line, bring a no less certain, though slower fate—that which met the brave little Keokuk at ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... piece of the bark immediately beneath the squirrel, and shivered it into splinters, the concussion produced by which had killed the animal, and sent it whirling through the air, as if it had been blown up by the explosion of a powder magazine. Boone kept up his firing, and before many hours had elapsed, we had procured as many squirrels as we wished; for you must know that to load a rifle requires only a moment, and that if it is wiped once after each shot, it will do duty for hours. Since that first interview with our veteran Boone, ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... in any of Milton's poems. The introduction, in Paradise Lost, of a real human child, such as Shakespeare brings into Coriolanus or Macbeth, would be like the bringing of a spark of fire into a powder magazine. None of these edifying speeches could be made in the presence of such an auditor, or such a critic. The whole system would be blown into fragments; the artificial perspective that Milton preserves with so great care ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... business and men in affairs find themselves obliged to do. They train themselves not to think of the rights and wrongs of sexual life, not to tolerate liberties even in their private imaginations. They know it is like carrying a torch into a powder magazine. They feel they cannot trust their own minds beyond the experience, tested usages, and conventions of the ages, because they know how many of those who have ventured further have been blinded by mists and clouds of rhetoric, lost in ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... from 1898 to 1914 there were incidents happening, any one of which might have started the world war. Fashoda, Algeciras, Bosnia, Agadir—each time it seemed as if only a miracle could avert the conflict. Europe was like a powder magazine. No man knew when the spark might fall that would ...
— The World War and What was Behind It - The Story of the Map of Europe • Louis P. Benezet
... You see, I can't write because I haven't any hands, but I can wheeze out a tale to a stenographer once in a while which any magazine would be glad to publish if it could get hold of it. One of my stories called Sparks blew into a powder magazine once and it made a tremendous noise in the world when ...
— Andiron Tales • John Kendrick Bangs
... assisted in this duty by the officers of the 'Direction Generale.' At nine at night a colonel gallopped up to the gate of the grating of St Dominique, where I was standing, and asked to speak to the Directeur d'Artillerie. On my being shewn to him, he immediately asked me if the powder magazine at Grenelle bad been evacuated? I replied that it had not, and that there was neither time nor horses for the purpose. Then, Sir, said he, it must be blown up. I turned pale, and trembled, not reflecting that ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... of smoke obscured the center of the little vessel, as if her powder magazine had blown up, and a deafening roar went ringing and reverberating from cliff to cliff as two of the great iron shot were sent groaning through the air and pitched right into the heart of ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... came from Richard's Fort with the news that they were quarreling, breaking up, and dispersing. So much for the whisky of the emigrants! Finding themselves unable to drink the whole, they had sold the residue to these Indians, and it needed no prophet to foretell the results; a spark dropped into a powder magazine would not have produced a quicker effect. Instantly the old jealousies and rivalries and smothered feuds that exist in an Indian village broke out into furious quarrels. They forgot the warlike enterprise that had already brought them three hundred miles. They seemed like ungoverned children ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... Pietrasanta Pig, in distress Pines, at Levanto; at Viareggio Pisa in war-time Plaster-casts, how to dispose of Plato Pliny Pollius Felix Pontine Marshes Ponza island, megalithic ruin on Portovenere, marble Potter, Major Frederick, discovers Olevano Pottery, index of national taste Powder magazine, explosion of Preccia, mountain Prehistoric races, possible reasons for their extinction Press, the daily, its disastrous functions "Prison, ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... Indians, the whole under the immediate command of Sir Roger Sheaffe. In resisting the enemy, the grenadier company of the 8th (the king's) regiment greatly distinguished themselves, losing their captain, M'Neal, and being nearly annihilated. By an explosion of the powder magazine, to which a train had been laid, 260 of the Americans were killed or wounded, including Brigadier Pike among the former; and they were thrown into such confusion, that an immediate and resolute attack would probably have ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... said Mr. Alford, "that you are playing with fire over a powder magazine. Now that I know you better, I hate to think of the risk that you are taking. It has troubled me terribly all day. I feel as if we were on the eve of a tragedy. You had better leave quietly in the morning and bring ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... Consulta after the 7th of May. Whatever they might have hoped to accomplish with their diplomacy to keep Italy neutral had been irretrievably ruined by the diplomacy of Grand Admiral von Tirpitz. The smallest match, the scratch of a boot-heel on stone, can set off a powder magazine. The Lusitania was a goodly sized match. If the King and his ministers were waiting for the country to declare itself, if they wanted the excuse of national emotion before taking the final irrevocable steps into war, they had their desire. From the hour when the news of the sinking ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... Sillon when a pretty girl came towards me with a leisurely step that seemed to say: "I have just been watching for you." She had a face like a flower, in the moonlight, and I could not resist snatching a kiss. That was all: but it acted like a match in a powder magazine. She started back with a cry. Evidently she had not been waiting for me; and before I could apologise, or take back the kiss, her lover swooped down upon ...
— Marguerite De Roberval - A Romance of the Days of Jacques Cartier • T. G. Marquis
... putting it into his musket, he shot it back into the castle. The cotton, kindled by the powder, set fire to several houses within the castle, which, being thatched with palm-leaves, took fire very easily. This fire at last reached the powder magazine, and a great explosion occurred. Owing to this accident of the arrow the pirates were eventually able to take the Castle of Chagre. This was one of the finest and bravest defences ever made by the Spaniards. Out of 314 Spanish soldiers in the castle, only thirty survived, all the rest, including ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... this order of the king's up to me," he repeated, recovering himself. And he added in a low tone, "Do you know what it is? I will tell you something about as interesting as this. 'Beware of fire near the powder magazine;' or 'Look close after such a one, who is clever at escaping.' Ah! if you only knew, monseigneur, how many times I have been suddenly awakened from the very sweetest and deepest slumber, by messengers arriving at full gallop to tell me, or rather bring me a slip of paper, containing these ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... to attack the earth; it wished only to attack the stars. For a time it stood up in the air as naturally as a tower; then it went a little wrong in its outline, like a tower that might some day fall. When it fell it was as if a powder magazine blew up. ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... cupola gun as it was finishing its movement after being loaded. The whole gun was shattered and ten men were wounded. A little while after, a shell entered the fort through the embrasure and set fire to the powder magazine. One hundred and ten artillerymen were terribly burned, fifty dying upon the spot. The 14th saw the fall of Boncelles, Liers, and Fleron. Boncelles from the 5th had offered an admirable resistance. Commandant Lefert had been wounded on the 8th, when 200 Germans, presenting ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... to us that we throw away our cigars and cigarettes. When we crossed the threshold we realized the good intention behind this advice, seeing that the room we entered, which had been a shop of sorts, was now an improvised powder magazine. ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... tragedy. Now you've had all the declaration you ever need fear. I won't break loose or explode under any provocation. I can't help my love, and you must not punish me for it, nor make yourself miserable about it, as if it were a powder magazine which a kind word or look might touch off. I want to put your heart to rest, for you have enough to bear now, Heaven knows; I want you to feel safe with me—as free from fear and annoyance as Belle is. I won't presume ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... the War Lord, Kaiser Wilhelm. Then, to the singing of 'Deutschland Ueber Alles,' the sinking, burning ship was abandoned in good order. Two of our ships near by picked up the Ariadne's crew. Presently the Ariadne disappeared under the waves after the stern powder magazine had exploded. ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... in a house where there was a military post consisting of eight men, under the command of a Spanish serjeant. It was an hospital, built by the side of a powder magazine. When Cumana, after the capture of Trinidad by the English, in 1797, was threatened with an attack, many of the inhabitants fled to Cumanacoa, and deposited whatever articles of value they possessed in sheds hastily constructed on the top of the Imposible. It was then resolved, in case ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... street, is a battered bit of arcade, another Mutiny memorial. In the early days, just at the first outbreak, when no one realised what was going to happen, the mutineers marched on Delhi. This bit of wall was part of the powder magazine, then in charge of nine men. They defended it against a swarming army of Sepoys, as the native soldiers were called, and when they found that they could not hold it in spite of their desperate defence, they calmly blew up the powder magazine, and themselves with it, to ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... a force of besiegers, both by sea and land, should have evinced so much caution and diffidence of their own immense superiority. On July 4th, the actual bombardment of the city began; the Fort de l'Empereur was taken, after the Algerines had blown up the powder magazine; and the Dey asked for terms of surrender. Safety of person and property for himself and for the inhabitants of the city was promised by the French commander, and on this condition the enemy occupied Algiers on the following day, July 5th. A week later the Dey, with his family and attendants ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... been engaged at different times in carrying powder in his boat from a powder magazine, and from this circumstance, was ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... she went up to Peggy's room at an hour which she usually spent in her own quarters mending. Long before she reached the room she became aware of sounds which acted upon her as a spark to a powder magazine, for Mammy's loving old ears lay very close to ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... was nearly completed in this month. A few carpenters were employed in laying a floor in Government House, and other repairs; but several of the public works were nearly at a stand, many of the sawyers being in the hospital. The powder magazine having been found upon examination to be in a very insecure and dangerous state, the powder was taken out and sent on board the Supply. This removal was the more necessary, as an attempt had been made to open the ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... released upon representations from the government at Washington. He rose steadily in the service, and in 1813, during the second war with England, led an assault upon Little York, now Toronto. The town was captured, but the fleeing British exploded a powder magazine, and General Pike was crushed and killed beneath the flying fragments. He died with his head on the British flag, which had been hauled down and brought ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... Bath, he went out sporting—not to shoot, but to see others shooting. One of the players who was a sportsman, was a favourite of some of the great men in the neighbourhood, and often went out shooting with them. On these occasions H. accompanied him, carried his hawking-bag, powder magazine, shot, &c. and helped to mark the birds when they sprung. Thus was generated the passion for dogs and shooting to which he was afterwards so warmly addicted, and which indeed was, in the end, the cause of ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... neighbourhood for a chance to murder Narayan Singh. It was only after the police had carried off the prisoners to jail (where they repudiated their entire confession next morning) that Grim showed us the letter which, like a spark, had fired a powder magazine—although a smaller one than ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... his chamber, seized a pen, and wrote his powerful and memorable pamphlet entitled, "What is the third Estate?" a fierce, but most forcible appeal to the vanity of the lower orders, pronouncing them the nation. This was a torch thrown into a powder magazine—all was explosion; the church, the noblesse, and the monarchy were suddenly extinguished, and France saw this man of long views and powerful passions, suddenly raised from hunger and obscurity, to the highest rank and the richest sinecurism of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... them, as to Mr. Moody, the worst of sins; and they consider the only proper thing to do with it, is to follow the advice of the Bishop of London, some years ago, and fling doubt away as you would a loaded shell. They apparently look upon Christianity as a huge powder magazine, which is likely to explode if a spark of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... and uncertainty I had the happiness of seeing the sepoys (troops in the British service) in possession of the city gates in front of our house. We soon ascertained that a party of about 250 men had in the first instance attacked the powder magazine and gun-shed, which were very near our house, but a guard of sepoys had repelled them. This was a great mercy, for had the insurgents obtained the arms and ammunition, our situation would have been most deplorable. A second party of 60 had attacked ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... was progressing; Delaunay waited for succor which did not arrive; the small garrison could not withstand that mighty mob; in the excitement of the moment the governor attempted to blow up the powder magazine, and would have done so had not one of his attendants held his ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... woods where the rebels seemed to be. When we did so, the rebels must have thought there was a million of us, for they scattered too quick, and we had a quiet life for two hours. We had got the bridge nearly completed, when there was a hissing sound in the air, a streak of smoke, and a powder magazine seemed to explode right over us. I suppose I turned pale, for I had never heard anything like it. Says I, "Jim, excuse me, but what kind of ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... intercourse with the others. The bishop, his son and his scheming chaplain were actors in a comedy of life which—in the opinion of the last—might easily end up as a tragedy. No wonder their behaviour was constrained, no wonder they avoided one another. They were as men living over a powder magazine which the least spark would explode with thunderous ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... Rouen by an English king in 1183 at Petit-Quevilly, outside the town on the south side of the Seine. The Hospital of St. Julien was placed by King Henry II. under the protection of the older Priory of Grammont, which is now a powder magazine. It was called the "Salle aux Pucelles," or "Nobles Lepreuses," because its patients were at first limited to royal or nobles families. In 1366 the "Maladrerie" appears to have outlived its original objects, and was changed into a priory, which retained ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... their chief having been seriously wounded, and giving up all hopes of a successful resistance, retired during the night to the mountains, carrying Seaforth along with them and the Spaniards next morning surrendered themselves prisoners of war. [The Spaniards kept their powder magazine and ball behind the manse, but after the battle of Glenshiel they set fire to it lest it should fall into the hands of the King's troops. These balls are still gathered up by sportsmen, and are found ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... assassin; and among all these whirling thoughts, there flashed in from time to time, and ever with a chill of fear, the thought of the confounded ingredients with which the house was stored. A powder magazine seemed a secure smoking-room alongside of ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... The cannonade and bombardment continued about six hours, eight thousand two hundred and fifty shot and shells being fired at the fort by the French. The principal injury received by the work was from the explosion of the powder magazine. But very few guns were dismounted by the fire of the French ships, and only three of these on the water front. The details of the condition of the ships and fort are given in the report of the French officer,[22] but it is unnecessary to ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... money enough to send for them. The wife's heart leaped for joy. She took her boy to New York, got on board a Pacific steamer, and sailed away to San Francisco. They had not been long at sea before the cry of "Fire! fire!" rang through the ship, and rapidly it gained on them. There was a powder magazine on board, and the captain knew the moment the fire reached the powder, every man, woman, and child must perish. They got out the life-boats, but they were too small! In a minute they were overcrowded. ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... cat-head, otherwise I should never have been able to use it. Now, I had only to cut the tackling, and it would drop of its own weight. After searching among the flags, I found the terrible black one, which I ran up to the peak. While I was doing this, a thought struck me. I went to the powder magazine, brought up a blank cartridge and loaded the big brass gun, which, it will be remembered, was unhoused when we set sail, and, as I had no means of housing it, there it had stood, bristling alike at fair weather and foul all the voyage. ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... ranchman brought in the news of the attack upon the sheep camp, and by means of it set fire to a powder magazine. The Sandersons went ramping mad for the moment. They saw red; and if they could have laid hands on their enemy, they would undoubtedly have ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... asked, "What makes the venerable towers of Westminster Abbey more poetical, as objects, than the tower for the manufactory of patent shot, surrounded by the same scenery?" I will answer—the architecture. Turn Westminster Abbey, or Saint Paul's into a powder magazine, their poetry, as objects, remains the same; the Parthenon was actually converted into one by the Turks, during Morosini's Venetian siege, and part of it destroyed in consequence. Cromwell's dragoons stalled their steeds in Worcester cathedral; was it less poetical as an ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... a bitter pang, Vincent ordered the destruction of the fort which he had so gallantly defended. When the last man had retired, with his own hand he fired the train which caused the explosion of the powder magazine. When the victorious army marched in, they found only the breached and blackened walls, the yawning gates, and dismantled ramparts of the fort. From the shattered flagstaff, where it still waved defiantly, though rent and seared by shot ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... Wine with Snow, which they get out of pits dug in the Mountain-sides. Near here, too, is a Burning Mountain they call Vesuvio. It may be mighty curious, but 'tis as great a Nuisance and Perpetual Alarm to the peaceable Inhabitants of Naples as a Powder Magazine. Very often this Vesuvio gives itself up to hideous Bellowing, causing the Windows, nay the very Houses, in Naples to Shake, and then it vomits forth vast Quantities of melted Stuff, which streams ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... silenced the guns, captured five of the vessels, and destroyed the other three. He then passed down the channel, and near Tricheri fell in with a Turkish brig-of-war, which, after some skilful fighting, he destroyed by shells that exploded her powder magazine. After that he proceeded to Kumi, where he captured a store of grain, and reached Poros within ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... The engagement was obstinate; but at length the inevitable catastrophe could be delayed no longer. The commander, an Italian named Morandi, was a brave man; any fate appeared better than that which awaited him from an enemy so malignant. He set fire to the powder magazine; the vessel blew up; Morandi perished in the Nile; and all of less nerve, who had previously reached the shore in safety, were put to death to the very last man, with cruelties the most detestable, by their inhuman enemies. For all this Napoleon cared ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... latter, Jim Laramie. Belle, stubborn but more contained, clung to her own views. Though she rarely talked back, the attempt to assassinate Laramie had intensified everyone's feelings, and for days only a spark on that subject was needed to fire more than one Sleepy Cat powder magazine. One afternoon rain caught Kate in at Belle's and kept her until almost dark from starting for home, and one ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... peaceable proprietor of a small shop, in which, by the force of prudence and economy, he has laid up something, has a voice among his fellow-citizens and some influence, but would as soon attempt to carry a blazing pine knot into a powder magazine, or "ship" for a missionary to the Tongo Islands, as to run for the Legislature and make a speech in public! Twist knows it; he guesses shrewdly at ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... after Mr. Multenius's death, and after you, Mr. Lauriston, Mr. Rubinstein, and myself called on Levendale, Levendale went off to the City in his car. He ordered the chauffeur to go through Hyde Park, by the Victoria Gate, and to stop by the Powder Magazine. At the Powder Magazine he got out of the car and walked down towards the bridge on the Serpentine. The chauffeur had him in view all the way, and saw him join a tall man, clean-shaven, much browned, who was evidently waiting for him. They remained ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... ship would swim as far as Valdivia, which was the chief point to be regarded, the capture of the fortress being my object, after which the ship might be repaired at leisure. As there was no lack of physical force on board, she was at length floated; but the powder magazine having been under water, the ammunition of every kind, except a little upon deck and in the cartouche-boxes of the troops, was rendered unserviceable; though about this I cared little, as it involved the necessity of using the bayonet in our anticipated attack; and to facing this weapon ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... not availed to destroy its lustre, but only to soften its tone. The visitor, planting himself at the western front, is in a position to gain some adequate idea of the perfection of the noble building. The interior and central parts suffered the principal injury from the explosion of the Turkish powder magazine in 1687. The western front remains nearly entire. It has been despoiled, indeed, of its movable ornaments. The statues which filled the pediment are gone, with the exception of a fragment or two. The sculptured slabs have been removed from the spaces between the triglyphs, and the gilded shields ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... difficult task to accomplish. A powder magazine with the train laid could not have needed a smaller spark to cause its explosion. Those few words elevated the young artist at once to ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... sentimentality of a woman and the credulity of a child. The German Michel has been the political Peter Pan of Europe, the boy that won't grow up. He has been the boy that has been let loose and has lit the match to the powder magazine. He has been the incurable romanticist who has continued to believe in fairy-tales in a world of stern realities. And now this child-like faith in fairy-tales has been dispelled by disaster. The vision of a holy German Empire, of the pomp ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... she'd go, sure, in spite of her fear of hurting her father and mother," he said to himself. "A mighty close squeak. I was stepping round in a powder magazine, with every word a ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... in front paused. Through the fumes of smoke they saw dimly the pile of barrels and a figure standing with a lighted torch close to one of them. A panic seized them, and believing they had made their way into a powder magazine, and that in another instant there would be a terrible explosion, they turned with shouts of "A magazine! a magazine! Fly, or we ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... also unloaded at the 35th Street pier and hauled directly to the work, the surplus being stored temporarily in the Company's cement warehouses on 32d, 33d and 35th Streets, near First Avenue, from which it was drawn as required. On the dock was located the main powder magazine, a small concrete structure. Considerable use was also made of neighboring piers for unloading ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace and Francis Mason
... Potomac below that city. Captain Gordon, the commander of this expedition, proceeded with the Sea Horse and several other vessels up the river on the 17th of August, but was unable to reach the fort till the 27th. The place being rendered untenable by the explosion of a powder magazine, the garrison spiked their guns and evacuated it next day. The populous and commercial town of Alexandria, situated higher on the river, thus lost its sole protection; and Captain Gordon, having no obstacle to oppose his progress, buoyed the channel, and placed ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... they were reached by the flame, her guns exploded—a loud and awful sound in the night above the Roads. We stood and watched that sea picture, and we watched in silence. We are seeing giant things, and ere this war is ended we shall see more. At two o'clock in the morning the fire reached her powder magazine. She blew up. A column like the Israelite's Pillar shot to the zenith; there came an earthquake sound, sullen and deep; when all cleared there was only her hull upborne by the sand and still burning. It burned until the dawn, when it smouldered and ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... dangerous. The plague—it still recurred in his thoughts like a sombre motive; these friendly people were still strangers; and for a moment now and then their talk, their smiles, the click of billiards, the cool, commonplace behavior, seemed a foolhardy unconcern, as of men smoking in a powder magazine. ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... fought like raging devils, with knives, pistols, cutlases, with their bare fists and their teeth. A few of the enemy gained the deck, but the privateersmen turned and killed them. Others leaped aboard and were gradually driving the Americans back, when the skipper ran to the hatch above the powder magazine, waving a lighted match and swearing to drop it in if his crew retreated one step further. Either way the issue seemed desperate. But again they took their skipper's word for it and rallied for a bloody struggle ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... is like throwing a match into the powder magazine. It blows up the whole arena. This is exactly what scientific philosophers do when they are driven into a corner and convicted of incoherence. They at once drag in the mind and talk of entities in the mind or out of the mind as the case may be. For natural philosophy everything ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... leaving a woman at liberty to read the books which her character of mind may prompt her to choose! This is to drop a spark in a powder magazine; it is worse than that, it is to teach your wife to separate herself from you; to live in an imaginary world, in a Paradise. For what do women read? Works of passion, the Confessions of Rousseau, romances, and all those compositions which work most powerfully on their sensibility. They like ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... speaker arose who was courageous enough to stick a match to the powder magazine which Bernard had left uncovered in all their bosoms. His first declaration was: "I am for war!" and it was cheered to the echo. It was many minutes before the applause died away. He then began an impassioned invective against the South and recited in detail horror after horror, ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... Idleness breeds vice. Industry enhances the virtues. When a man ceases to work he retrogrades; he becomes a stranger to lofty ideals and wholesome activities. The man with an ambition ever finds himself in the ascendency; while he who deplores the exercise of his powers, avoiding work as he would a powder magazine or a pest, is in the descendency toward a state of groveling and low ideals. And the difference between these two men marks the ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... for a long time in silence. "The multitude of flies" made him gurgle occasionally, as he gazed upon the schoolmaster, whose blue and yellow silk handkerchief was spread over the back of his head and tied under his chin. To quote Wordsworth then would have been like putting a match to a powder magazine. The flies were worst on the margin of a pond formed by the extension of a sluggish black stream. "Go on, Wilks, my boy, out of the pests, while I add some water plants to my collection;" but this, Wilkinson's ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... stood round the cannon, the broad expanse of the Fiord, and the distant blue mountains dissolving with the sky, a low building, like a powder magazine, arrested our attention; for numerous sentinels moved rapidly in every quarter round it, and many brass guns, ready primed, and bearing an earnest signification, flashed in the bright beams of the morning sun. In this dungeon, from which Beelzebub himself could not escape, it seems a notorious ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... opened afresh, and in the course of the forenoon hot shot set fire to Sumter's wooden barracks. The flames soon got beyond control; the powder magazine had to be closed; and the heat and smoke became so stifling that the garrison was forced, in order to avoid suffocation, to lie face downward upon the floor, each man with a wet cloth at his mouth. Powder was at last exhausted. About one o'clock ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews |
