"Torpedo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... same time came news from Spain telling that the Spanish were making ready for hostilities. An exceptionally large number of artisans were at work preparing for sea battle-ships, cruisers, and torpedo-boat destroyers. The cruisers Oquendo and Vizcaya, with the torpedo-boat destroyers Furor and Terror, were already on their way to Cuba, where were stationed the Alphonso XII., the Infanta Isabel, and the Nueva Espana, together with twelve gunboats of about three hundred tons ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... and the entire convoy, guarded by United States torpedo destroyers, were steaming ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... brightening, 'a torpedo in the Thames! Superb, dear fellow! I recognise in you the marks of ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... should have given the enemy matter for reflection. Although allowed an hour's time for consideration, the soldiers refused to surrender, and opened fire with their rifles on the battleships. Then, before the Kinshu Maru was blown in two by a torpedo, a number of the Japanese officers and men performed harakiri.... This strong display of the fierce old feudal spirit suggests how dearly a ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... Roland, laughing at what seemed to him to be a solemn farce. "I never got a chance to deliver it. It is in my pocket at this moment. But I reckon it better not stay there, to rise up in judgment against us," he added, sotto voce, as he arose, went to the fire, drew the white paper torpedo from his vest pocket and dropped it into the flames, where it ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... that is over and done with for me: and yet I too feel that this can't last. We sit here talking, and leave everything to Mangan and to chance and to the devil. Think of the powers of destruction that Mangan and his mutual admiration gang wield! It's madness: it's like giving a torpedo to a badly brought up child to play ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... means certain that the well would be opened that night, owing to the vigilance of the owners of the torpedo patent, George made preparations to remain away from Farmer Kenniston's all night, taking blankets, food, fishing-tackle and rifles, as if their excursion was to be one simply of a ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... this be possible, I hear it replied, in that land where every officer clacks his heels together with a report like an exploding torpedo, ducks his head from his rigid vertebrae, and then bends to kiss the lady's hand; and where every civilian of any standing does the same? I am not writing of the nobility and of the corps of officers in this connection. No doubt there ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... for firing at torpedo-boats or any hostile craft which might be discovered close to a vessel, were now brought to bear upon the crab, and ball after ball was hurled at her. Some of these struck, but glanced off ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... gondolas, without a visible connection, although it is highly probable that such communication is provided for within the outer envelope. Each gondola carries six machine guns and, in addition, two quick-firing guns, as well as an aerial torpedo-launching device, which was first used in the extensive air raids on England in ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... were all in the vegetable garden, and the audience under cover of straw hats and parasols were slowly assembling on the benches above. The cannon was loaded at the top of an earthwork commanding the asparagus-bed, torpedo ammunition was stored in a box half way down the hill, and fire-crackers were everywhere, provided by the combatants who had clubbed their spending-money for the purpose. A hole had been made in the roof of the underground shanty through which Putnam was to be let down by a rope, and ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... cutter, their owners wondering where she had popped up from. And so we passed her particularly Britannic Majesty's ships Anson, Rodney, Camperdown, Curlew, and Howe, and dropped our kedge overboard (at the end of the main halliards) close inside the torpedo-catcher Speedwell. ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... vessels—blockade runners and others. Had the electrical appliances of the Confederacy been at that time more highly developed, this narrow gap would doubtless also have been filled with mines, whose explosion depended upon operators ashore. As it was, the torpedo system employed at Mobile, with some few possible exceptions, was solely mechanical; the explosion depended upon contact by the passing vessel with the mine. To insure this, the line was triple; those in the second and third rows not being in the ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... served in the war and was invalided out after the Battle of Jutland. He got the D.S.O. over the Falklands affair, and has now some post at the Admiralty. He was in command of a torpedo boat which sank a German cruiser, ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... one of which was larger than the rest. The smaller ones were about eight inches long. All were torpedo-shaped, but had flattened bottoms, which enabled them to stand upright. Two of the smaller ones were empty and unstoppered, the others contained a colourless liquid, and possessed queer-looking, nozzle-like stoppers that were connected by a thin metal rod with a ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... pressed home, "if we admit that the plotters have conspired to sink a British battleship at Malta, the easiest way in war-time, when unidentified strangers cannot get aboard a warship, would be to effect the sinking by means of a submarine's torpedo. And, if this be the plan of the plotters, then the crime is likely to be attempted only when there are British and American war craft, and none others, in the Grand ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... best they know how to do in the way of a town, I don't care a heap about their ideas of boats. And—but I beg your pardon, Mr. Holt. My tongue's running a bit ahead of my manners, I guess. So this is where that famous submarine torpedo boat is being built? And she's a diving boat, ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... could creep alongside the schooner and do it to her; but that there gunboat's got heavy steel plates right round her, going ever so deep, and they'd be rather too much for my tools. They'd spoil every auger I've got. The skipper hasn't got a torpedo aboard, has he? One of them new 'uns that you winds up and sets a-going with a little screw-propeller somewheres astern, and a head full of nitro— what-d'ye-call-it, which goes off when ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... hundreds of yards from its goal, the protective mirror was punctured and the freight of high explosive let go, with a silent, but nevertheless terrific, detonation. But now another torpedo was on its way, and another, and another; boring on ruthlessly toward the smaller sphere. Fighting simultaneously three torpedos and the giant globe, the enemy began dodging, darting hither and thither with a stupendous acceleration; but the tiny pursuers could not be shaken off. At every dodge ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... trifling thing after all. I was bicycling very pleasantly down a country road to-day, when one of those small pungent beetles, a tiny thing, in black plate-armour, for all the world like a minute torpedo, sailed straight into my eye. The eyelid, quicker even than my own thought, shut itself down, but too late. The little fellow was engulphed in what Walt Whitman would call the liquid rims. These small, hard creatures are tenacious of life, and they have, moreover, the power of exuding a noxious ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... appeared that dozens of men had seen the thing descend from the sky. They had not compared notes, however, and their descriptions varied from a black pear-shaped globe which had hovered for minutes before descending behind the mountains into the lake, to detailed word pictures of a silvery, torpedo-shaped vessel of space with portholes and flaming rockets and an unknown flag ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... employed as a submarine commander about to torpedo the Ark, was distinctly annoyed at being reduced to a mere small boy, and ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... flank and at the rear, the torpedo-boat destroyers were scouting vigilantly, with gunners standing by ready to fire promptly at any periscope or conning tower of an enemy craft ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys with Pershing's Troops - Dick Prescott at Grips with the Boche • H. Irving Hancock
... in the grounds. He was just thinking sorrowfully, as he listened to the music, how like his own position was to that of the hero of Tennyson's Maud—a poem to which he was greatly addicted, when Mr Pickering's 'Hi!' came out of nowhere and hit him like a torpedo. ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... had fallen into a well of silence and was not to be extracted by any hydraulic power, though she smiled like the June sky over her head. Di's peculiarities were out in full force, and she looked as if she would go off like a torpedo, at a touch; but through all her moods there was a half-triumphant, half-remorseful expression in the glance she fixed on John. And Laura, once so silent, now sang like a blackbird, as she flitted to and fro; but her fitful song was always, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... with pleasure the presence in our midst of this famous Polar navigator in August, 1880, and his lady, whose kindliness of manner and elegant French, won the hearts of many. The instructive torpedo lectures of the scientific commander of the Northampton iron-clad, Capt. Fisher, will likewise retain a corner in the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... at the bridge surpassed in heroism young Osmond Kelly Ingram, who threw overboard the explosives on the American destroyer Cassin in order that the German submarine's torpedo should not detonate them and destroy his ship—and gave his life for his comrades and his country in doing so. Ingram sought danger instead of fleeing it. He might have saved his life without discredit. But he did not think of his life—or if he thought of it, he knew ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... bed without luminous corruscations. Such may have been the case of those people, who have been related to have taken fire spontaneously, and to have been reduced to ashes. The electric concussion from the gymnotus electricus, and torpedo, are other instances of the power of the animal system to accumulate electricity, as in these it is used as a weapon of defence, or for the purpose of ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... International Airways stared foolishly when they saw Carr Parker and the giant Martian enter the mysterious ship which was a trespasser on their landing stage. They gazed incredulously as the gleaming torpedo-shaped vessel arose majestically from its position. There was no evidence of motive power other than a sudden radiation from its hull plates of faintly crackling streamers of silvery light. They fell back in alarm as it pointed ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... claim to torpedo at sight, without regard to the safety of the crew or passengers, any merchant vessel under any flag. As it is not in the power of the German Admiralty to maintain any surface craft in these waters, the attack can only be delivered ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... there must be homologous organs both near the head and tail in other non-electric fish. He set to work, and, by Jove, he has found them! ('On an organ in the Skate, which appears to be the homologue of the electrical organ of the Torpedo,' by R. McDonnell, 'Nat. Hist. Review,' 1861, page 57.) so that some of the difficulty is removed; and is it not satisfactory that my hypothetical notions should have led to pretty discoveries? McDonnell seems very cautious; he says, years must pass before he will venture to call himself a believer ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... After two or three days in bed Fulton went to his foundry to inspect the battery's machinery causing a relapse from which he died. This resulted in some delay in completing the machinery and stopped work on the Mute, an 80-foot, manually propelled, torpedo boat that Fulton was having built in ...
— Fulton's "Steam Battery": Blockship and Catamaran • Howard I. Chapelle
... infliction appeared to bear with it a torpedo-like power. The first blow, abrupt and stunning, had paralysed. Afterwards, it seemed to carry with it a benumbing faculty, which repressed external display. We say seemed; for there were not wanting indications, ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... structure of the human understanding, we must be convinced that an overpowering conviction of this kind, instead of tending to the improvement and moral amelioration of man, would act like the touch of a torpedo on all intellectual exertion and would almost put an end to the existence of virtue. If the scriptural denunciations of eternal punishment were brought home with the same certainty to every man's mind as that the night will follow the day, this one vast ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... dates back to 600 years B. C. Thales of Miletus was the first to describe the properties of amber, which, when rubbed, attracted and repelled light bodies. The ancients also described what was probably tourmaline, a mineral which has the same qualities. The torpedo, a fish which has the power of emitting electric impulses, was ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... as I wanted to," she said. She had known all along that if any place would get it it would be the Higgins place, on account of its exposed position, right in line with anything that showed up at the mouth of the harbor. Of course if she had stopped to think she would have known that a torpedo didn't come through a house at the snail's pace the stove was moving at when it ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... and the arrangements sailed in secret, and the news was known in American cities scarcely any sooner than it was in France, so careful had the military authorities been not to give the lurking German submarines a chance to torpedo the transports. ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... from the sale of subsistence stores from being covered into the Treasury; the use of appropriations for the purchase of subsistence stores without waiting for the beginning of the fiscal year for which the appropriation is made; for additional appropriations for the collection of torpedo material; for increased appropriations for the manufacture of arms; for relieving the various States from indebtedness for arms charged to them during the rebellion; for dropping officers from the rolls of the Army without trial ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... sea-boots Were greased with blood. They swept the seas For England; and—we reap the fruits Of their heroic deviltries! Our creed is in the cold machine, The inhuman devildoms of brain, The bolt that splits the midnight main, Loosed at a lever's touch; the lean Torpedo; "Twenty Miles of Power"; The steel-clad Dreadnoughts' dark array! Yet ... we that keep the conning tower Are not so strong as they ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... the pale-green, translucent surface of the harbor were scattered a dozen or more war-ships of the North Atlantic Squadron, ranging in size from the huge, double-turreted monitor Puritan to the diminutive but dangerous-looking torpedo-boat Dupont. All were in their war-paint of dirty leaden gray, which, although it might add to their effectiveness, certainly did not seem to me to improve their appearance as component parts of an otherwise ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... each of you has been given a complete chart and assigned a certain area which he is to explore. Remember, gentlemen, that this first major expedition is to be purely one of exploration; the one of conquest will set out after you have returned with complete information. You will each report by torpedo every tenth of the year. We do not anticipate any serious difficulty, as we are of course the highest type of life in the Universe; nevertheless, in the unlikely event of trouble, report it. We shall do the rest. In conclusion, ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... Stanley and his advisers to admit anything, yet universally suspected of being the cause of all the trouble. He, too, wishes to cancel his engagements for the graduating ball, and thinks something ought to be done to those young idiots of yearlings who set off the torpedo. "Nothing could have gone wrong but for them," says he; but the wise heads of the class promptly snub him into silence. "You've simply got to do as we say in this matter, Billy. You've done enough mischief ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... of the Committee somewhat after the manner of a submarine torpedo. They had everything in readiness for Monday, and the newspapers, which had also got wind of their intentions, had already announced to the public unequivocally that a restricted bond market would be started on that day. With such limited time to act in there was nothing to resort to but postponement ...
— The New York Stock Exchange in the Crisis of 1914 • Henry George Stebbins Noble
... saw Walter! He was in a beautiful, brand new little two-seater, which was shaped very much like a torpedo and came smartly ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... that Madame le Claire sat wild-eyed and excited, and flew fearfully to Judge Blodgett and the professor, when Mr. Brassfield went free, with Alderson at heel. And all the time, as the crew of a ship carry on the routine of drill while the torpedo is speeding for her hull, these social amenities went on all unconscious of the explosion ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... gazed intently, and turned to his wife, as he said: "I am afraid that is a torpedo ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... before the orthodox Cambridge dons! I like Lubbock's paper very much: how well he writes. (119/3. Sir John Lubbock's paper was a review of Leydig on the Daphniidae. M'Donnell's was "On the Homologies of the Electric Organ of the Torpedo," afterwards used in the "Origin" (see Edition VI., page 150).) M'Donnell, of course, pleases me greatly. But I am very curious to know who wrote the Protozoa article: I shall hear, if it be not a secret, from Lubbock. ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... of the question, the designer must reduce the size. But now the City of Paris will no longer serve as a model, he must look elsewhere for a vessel of high speed, and smaller scale, and naturally he picks out a torpedo boat at the other end of the scale. A speed of 24 knots—and it is claimed even of 25, 26, and 27 knots—has been attained on the mile by a torpedo boat. But such a performance is useless for our mode of comparison, as sufficient fuel at this high speed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... mirror to reflect the generous confidence he felt within himself; and perhaps the man never yet existed, who could maintain his enthusiasm to its full vigour, in the midst of this kind of solitariness. He is touched with the torpedo of mediocrity. I believe that nothing which Mary produced during this period, is marked with those daring flights, which exhibit themselves in the little fiction she composed just before its commencement. Among effusions ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... course! There's a torpedo-boat at the Havre at this moment. A telegram from me will bring her to the ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... over the ocean; saw a big passenger liner the victim of torpedo fire; saw babies tossed into the water by distracted mothers who jumped in after them to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... I rode along, I found the column turned out of the main road, marching through the fields. Close by, in the corner of a fence, was a group of men standing around a handsome young officer, whose foot had been blown to pieces by a torpedo planted in the road. He was waiting for a surgeon to amputate his leg, and told me that he was riding along with the rest of his brigade-staff of the Seventeenth Corps, when a torpedo trodden on by his horse had exploded, killing the horse and literally blowing off ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... evenness of temper. In the wooing days everyone is a lamb, and only becomes the howling wolf after marriage. Circumstances that ruffle the temper in the presence of the intended are but like the harmless squib, but would become like the explosive torpedo in his or her absence or in after-marriage. Quarreling caused by matrimonial differences is the most frequent cause of infelicity, and most of it is caused by an innate irate temper of either husband ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... 99.31416. As Mr. Wilson had requested that no fuss should be made over his visit, things was kept down as much as possible, so that, on leaving Calais, the President's boat was escorted by only ten torpedo-boat destroyers, a couple battle-ships, three cruisers, and eight-twelfths of a dozen assorted submarines. There was also a simple and informal escort of about fifty airy-oplanes, the six dirigible balloons having been cut out of the program in accordance from the President's wishes. ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... not know that as he went after gas his step was springier than it had been for a long, long while. He did not know why it was that he whistled while he filled the torpedo-shaped tank—indeed, Johnny did not even know that he whistled, nor that it was the first time since he had worked over his plane down at Sinkhole Camp when all his dreams were bright, and bad luck had not knocked at his ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... a great hovering bird, and how safe we felt; and as we cheered and cheered the swirling, glowing, beautiful thing, we knew how badly frightened we really had been. With danger gone, the tension lifted and we read the fear in our hearts. A torpedo boat destroyer came lumbering across the sky line. It also was to convoy us, but it had a most undramatic entrance; and besides we had sighted land. The deck cheered easily, so we cheered the land. And everyone ran about exclaiming to everyone else about the wonder ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... England on a third. It has also been played in Italy long ago. The voices would be taken for ventriloquists, whilst scenes heard would be considered to be perceived in catalepsy by a person in good health, and in full possession of his faculties, if not a doctor. At Fiume is the Whitehead torpedo manufactory, but as the hammering and other noises connected with it would prevent the chief persons in charge of the factory from being got at, the hypnotists were doubtless foiled there. Of course they may have got some information ...
— Inferences from Haunted Houses and Haunted Men • John Harris
... Belgians going home to enlist. In the Straits of Dover, an hour or so out from Folkestone, we ran through a fleet of British warships guarding the narrow roadstead between France and England; and a torpedo-boat destroyer sidled up and took a look ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... scenes, keeps to the text and the impersonations which right principle and pure taste assign him. His grimaces are not for the church. He may not sing his catches when penitent souls are listening to the "Miserere," drop his torpedo-puns when life's mystery and solemnity are pressed heavily upon the soul,—be irreverent, profane, or vulgar. He must know and keep his place. But he should have his place, and have it confessed; and that place is not quite at the end of the procession of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... branching nerve-cell, or "soul-cell," from the brain of an electric fish (Torpedo), magnified 600 times. In the middle of the cell is the large transparent round nucleus, one nucleolus, and, within the latter again, a nucleolinus. The protoplasm of the cell is split into innumerable ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... hundred men have been sent to Cuba recently as reinforcements to the Spanish army, and Spain is putting forth the greatest efforts to stop the revolution before the rainy season sets in. Five torpedo-boats are to be towed from Madrid to Havana. It will be unfortunate for Spain if she has no better luck towing these boats than she had with her immense dry-dock, which we told ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 11, March 17, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... drew nearer the harbour we began to meet the sharp-nosed destroyers and torpedo boats that guard the harbour, and as we neared the entrance we were delighted with the view of a vast park and grounds with a castle peeping out from the trees. This park is known as Mount Edgecombe, the seat of Earl Edgecombe. The park is one of the most beautiful ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... increased, the Anglo-German element, pale-faced and dejected, assembled amidships, and forming a small, huddled group, hastily commenced to put on their cork jackets and life-belts, evidently preparing for the expected impact of the dreaded torpedo. Just then, as the look-out, attracted by some specks of foam emerging from the grey, misty horizon, signalled that a number of ships were fast approaching, they could stand the strain no longer, so, breaking into a weird German chant, ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... difficulties that presented themselves, Robert Fulton was living in Paris with Joel Barlow. He was in Paris when Napoleon became first consul. At that time he was experimenting with his diving boat and submarine torpedo. Napoleon was so much interested in this work that he gave Fulton ten thousand francs to carry it on. The inventor was in France in 1803 when Napoleon organized his army for the invasion of England. He was surrounded by influential friends, and ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... the thrill of exquisite emotion which pervaded my inmost being as I stepped on board in mid-ocean. Everything was in apple-pie order. Bulkheads, girders, and beams shone like glass in the noonday sun. The agile torpedo-catchers had been practising their sports, and I could not resist a feeling of intense pride when I learnt that only fifty of these heroic fellows had that morning perished owing to the accidental explosion ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... and both Dick and Murray were enjoying temporary rank as commanders of torpedo-boats during the winter manoeuvres of 1891-92, when suddenly, without any warning, Fate turned her face away from one of the chums and plunged him from the pinnacle of light-hearted happiness to the depths ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... remember, perhaps, that four boats were seen to put off from the Hampshire as she sank? I tried to trace those boats. I traveled up there and interviewed people who had seen them. I got no good from it. But it kept coming to me that it was not a mine that had sunk the ship, that it was a torpedo from a German submarine, and that Kitchener was on one of the boats that put off and that he had been taken prisoner by the enemy. God knows why that thought persisted—there were reasons against it—it was a boy's theory. But it persisted; ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... the very next day; the friend gave him an introduction to a member of a great firm of torpedo-boat builders on the Thames, and this gentleman very kindly gave the matter ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... with an automatic sprinkler. He made encouraging calculations as to the infrequency of collisions on the Sound, and scoffed at himself, "Why, the most shipping there could be at night would be a couple of schooners, maybe a torpedo-boat." But dread of the unknown ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... shore Good is a gentle, mild-mannered man, and given to jocosity; but, as we found to our cost, Good in a boat was a perfect demon. To begin with, he knew all about it, and we didn't. On all nautical subjects, from the torpedo fittings of a man-of-war down to the best way of handling the paddle of an African canoe, he was a perfect mine of information, which, to say the least of it, we were not. Also his ideas of discipline were of the sternest, and, in short, he came the royal naval officer over us pretty considerably, ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... and saw a silvery torpedo come whistling through the air and settle in the landing-rack of the platform; it looked like a jet-powered vessel of some kind. A line formed, and Hawkes stuffed a ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... helmet over my head and dropped into the Exec's chair. A quick check showed the crew at their stations, the torpedo hatches clear, the antiradiation shields up and the ship in fighting trim. I stole a quick glance at Chase. Sweat stood out on his gray forehead. His lips were drawn back into a thin line, showing his teeth. His face was tense, ...
— A Question of Courage • Jesse Franklin Bone
... weapons and methods were introduced which caused a revolution greater even than that which divided the sailing-ship from the galley. The use of steam, the casing of ships in iron armor, and the employment of the torpedo, the ram, and the gun of high power, produced such radically new types that the old ships of the line became at one stroke as antiquated as the galleys of Hamilcar or Alcibiades. Some of these new engines of destruction were invented, and all were for the first time tried in actual combat, ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... anything like a positive statement as to the heights achieved by some of the monsters, but it really appeared to me that a few of them rose nearly, if not quite, five and twenty feet into the air, descending again with a splash which reminded me of some of the torpedo experiments I had witnessed when staying for ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... explained. It was because Greece had joined the Germans, and Italy had made a prize of her. Ten minutes later, he said Greece had joined the Allies, and the Italians were holding our ship until they could obtain a convoy of torpedo-boats. Then it was because two submarines were waiting for us outside the harbor. Later, it was because the Allies had blockaded Greece, and our Greek captain would not proceed, not because he was detained by Italians, ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... a naval training station for boys over on the other side, and a torpedo-magazine. There 's jolly good fishing, too—rock-cod. We 'll pass to the lee of it, and make across, and anchor in the shelter of Angel Island. There 's a quarantine station there. Then when French Pete gets sober we 'll know where he wants to ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... attention to warfare, and has in general disdained to develop inventions for the destruction of life and property. Some years ago, however, he became the joint inventor of the Edison-Sims torpedo, with Mr. W. Scott Sims, who sought his co-operation. This is a dirigible submarine torpedo operated by electricity. In the torpedo proper, which is suspended from a long float so as to be submerged a few feet under water, ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... lying two great submarines, waiting to take you off—not U-boats, but two of our powerful, wonderful new X-boats, big enough to destroy any of their little cruisers that are patrolling the coast, fast enough to escape any of their torpedo boats. How important the war office judges your work you may realize from this—it is the first mission on which these new X-boats have been dispatched. They are out there now. We have had a wireless from them. They are waiting to convey six heroes back to the Fatherland, where the highest ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... cotton factories and the like, with machinery that a greedy dog could have invented if it had wanted money instead of food. I know his clumsy typewriters and bungling locomotives and tedious bicycles: they are toys compared to the Maxim gun, the submarine torpedo boat. There is nothing in Man's industrial machinery but his greed and sloth: his heart is in his weapons. This marvellous force of Life of which you boast is a force of Death: Man measures his strength ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... having waited the thirty seconds which brought no response, "let's see you make good! Will you fire a torpedo, or ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... had hitherto been but potter's clay in her hands, and she had no misgivings now; but she felt that the love of Le Gardeur was a thing she could not tread on without a shock to herself like the counter-stroke of a torpedo to the naked foot of an Indian who rashly steps upon it as it ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... long nose into all the nooks and corners, as though with it he were ferreting out all the mysteries of the stage. She ceased her chatter, knitted her eyebrows, then raised them, opened her lips and with the vivacity of a Parisienne left her admirers to hurl herself like a torpedo ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... frightful, heart-stilling roar of destruction; a hideous crash followed, a terrible rending, breaking, smashing, concatenation of noises, succeeded by frightful detonations, as through the gaping hole torn in the great battleship by the deadly torpedo, the water rushed upon the heated boilers, the explosion of which in turn ignited the magazines. By that deadly underwater thrust of the enemy the battleship was reduced in a few moments to a disjointed, disorganized, sinking mass of shapeless, formless, ...
— And Thus He Came • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... lot of small paper torpedoes in various places around the lawn. Give each child a paper bag and at a signal, which is the explosion of a torpedo, they begin to hunt for the hidden torpedoes. The one finding the most is given a small flag which the children salute by firing off ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... to 100 deg. C. decomposes slowly, and sunlight causes it to undergo a slow decomposition. It can, however, be preserved for years without undergoing any alteration. It is very susceptible to explosions by influence. For instance, a torpedo, even placed at a long distance, may explode a line of torpedoes charged with gun-cotton. The velocity of the propagation of the explosion in metallic tubes filled with pulverised gun-cotton has been found to be from ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... France answered. France held Tunis, France held Bizerta. Tunis and Bizerta would shield temporarily the remains of Serbia. From the end of November, 1915, the smaller French ships, torpedo boats, trawlers and transports made the trip from Durazzo to San Giovanni di Medua to embark the Serbian Army. Great steamers, such as the Natal, Sinai, and Armenie, and a flotilla of armored cruisers followed them. Thirteen thousand men ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... need not remind me of that, mother. I have hardly ever opened a newspaper in my life without seeing our name in it. The Undershaft torpedo! The Undershaft quick firers! The Undershaft ten inch! the Undershaft disappearing rampart gun! the Undershaft submarine! and now the Undershaft aerial battleship! At Harrow they called me the Woolwich Infant. ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... up to Newport with me at five-thirty," were his first words. "Katy's all ready, and means to sit up till the boat gets in at two-thirty, keeping a little supper hot and hot for you. The Torpedo Station is in its glory just now, and there's going to be a great explosion on ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... with gentlest indifference, to tread such a one out of sight, as an insignificancy and worm, start ceiling-high (balkenhock), and thence fall shattered and supine, to be borne home on shutters, not without indignation, when he proved electric and a torpedo!" ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... applies to the subject of naval construction. Before entering the German Secret Service, I certainly knew the difference between a torpedo and a torpedo boat destroyer, but naturally could not give an accurate description of the various types of destroyers and torpedoes. My instructor in this subject was Lieutenant Captain Kurt Steffens, torpedo expert of the Intelligence Department of the Imperial Navy. After a month of tutelage ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... mines were for the defence of the Golden Gate. Any one of these mines was capable of destroying a dozen battleships, and there were over a hundred mines. The destruction was terrific, but it was only Gluck's overture. He played his flashes down the Mare Island shore, blowing up five torpedo boats, the torpedo station, and the great magazine at the eastern end of the island. Returning westward again, and scooping in occasional isolated magazines on the high ground back from the shore, he blew up three cruisers and the battleships Oregon, Delaware, New Hampshire, ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... muttered the B.M., "that's just like the Divis—Oh!" and he sat down as a torpedo flopped into his bedroom a few doors away and made a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
... doubtlessly he had in him, deeply established, a trim of rebellion against education that seemed ever on the alert, and which repulsed even its portended approach with a vigour resembling the electric energy of the torpedo. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... a dozen giant craft, torpedo-shaped and steel-incased, the scarlet fire of their gas blasts holding them poised steady in their fifty-mile-long line. From curious swellings that broke the clean lines of their under-bodies black spheres were dropping in steady streams. Allan knew then whence came the crash that had rocked his ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... and Lexington, was the return of Mr. Perkins to his home. A piece of burning punk lay in the road, and presently he stepped on that. The fleeing forces had doubled on their tracks, also, and a fire-cracker exploded near him. Then a torpedo. And there was no enemy in sight to take revenge on. Mr. Perkins hastened his steps and was soon, himself, ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... and the intervening spaces of tossing, blue-grey water, for the sight of a sinister periscope, or for the smudge of a friendly cruiser, and when night fell, a thousand pairs of ears listened with strained intentness for the impact of the deadly torpedo or for the signal ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... the Southland incident was duplicated in almost every particular on the Ballarat in April, 1917. This story was enacted in the waters of the English Channel, and there were no casualties, for the work of rescue by torpedo-boats was made easy as each man calmly waited his turn and enlivened the monotony meanwhile with ragtime, and again and again did the strains of "Australia Will Be There!" ring out over the waters. As they sang "So Long, Letty," many substituted ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... he thought, and looked at Mary closely; but her eyes wandered from him to the phantom-shapes that loomed out of a pale, wintry mist: tramps thrashing their way to the North Sea: a vast, distant liner with tiers of decks one above the other: a darting torpedo-destroyer which flashed by like a ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... rot," said Priscilla. "You've read 'The Riddle of the Sands,' I suppose. You must have. Well, that's exactly what he's at, mapping out mud-banks and things so as to be able to run a masked flotilla of torpedo boats in and out when the time comes. There was one of the same lot caught the other day sketching a fortification in Lough Swilly. Father read it to me out ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... is greater than to destroy it, so is the true savior of the seas the Fisheries craft, not the battleship; so is the hatchery mightier than the fortress, the net or the microscope a more powerful weapon for good than the torpedo or the Nordenfeldt. ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... said Algy. He produced a cigar-case, and extracted a formidable torpedo-shaped Havana. He was feeling delightfully at his ease, and couldn't understand why Freddie had made such a fuss about meeting this nice old lady. "Don't mind if I smoke, do you? Air's a bit raw today. ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... clothes, drape him in a bathing-suit, and insert him in the water, and instantly, like the gentleman in The Tempest, he 'suffered a sea-change into something rich and strange.' Other men puffed, snorted, and splashed. George passed through the ocean with the silent dignity of a torpedo. Other men swallowed water, here a mouthful, there a pint, anon, maybe, a quart or so, and returned to the shore like foundering derelicts. George's mouth had all the exclusiveness of a fashionable club. His breast-stroke was a thing to see and wonder at. When he did the crawl, strong men ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... further advantage of rendering it easier to put the port of Havre quickly in defense. A certain number of floating batteries, anchored behind the breakwaters and protecting the advances of torpedo boats by means of their firing, would make a formidable defense. Not having to perform any evolutions, they might without danger be invested with armor plate thicker than that of ordinary ironclads. In order to complete ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... monoplane, to carry off the prize of L1000 offered by the proprietors of the Daily Mail. On the first occasion he fell in mid-Channel, owing to the failure of his motor, and was rescued by a torpedo-boat. His machine was so badly damaged during the salving operations that another had to be sent from Paris, and with this he made a second attempt, which was also unsuccessful. Meanwhile M. Bleriot had arrived on the scene; and on 25th July he crossed the Channel from Calais to ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... that "a naval architect named DUNKIN claims to have constructed a new style of vessel, impervious to rams, shell, or shot." Now, then, where is our friend, Captain ERICSSON? The Captain has a torpedo which he is anxious to explode, near a strong vessel belonging to somebody else. He says it will blow up anything. DUNIN says nothing can blow up his vessel. A contest between these very positive inventors would be a positive ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... his watches to keep at sea and his picket boat to run in harbour, while his spare time was fully employed in mastering the subtleties of gunnery, torpedo work, and electricity, and in rubbing up his rapidly dwindling knowledge of engineering and x and y. It was well that he did so, for at some distant period when the war ceased he would have to pass certain ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... enemy's battle-ship every possible advantage, the reader will allow me to bring on my little torpedo-boat. In the first place Schoolcraft mentions (A.R., I., 56) twelve persons, six of them women, who helped him collect and interpret the material of the tales united in his volumes; but he does not tell us whether all or any of these collectors acted on the principle that these stories ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... cropped black hair, the predatory eyes that looked like two blaster muzzles. They were all familiar to Pop. Kane was all steel and meanness. The kind of carrion bird that took what others had worked for. Not big time, you understand. In another age he'd have been a torpedo—a hireling killer. But out among the stars he was working for himself. And ...
— Turnover Point • Alfred Coppel
... been circulated, I know not with what authenticity, that Johnson considered Dr. Birch as a dull writer, and said of him, 'Tom Birch is as brisk as a bee in conversation; but no sooner does he take a pen in his hand, than it becomes a torpedo to him, and benumbs all his faculties[465].' That the literature of this country is much indebted to Birch's activity and diligence must certainly be acknowledged. We have seen that Johnson honoured ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... "is the signal for a flotilla of torpedo boats to enter the harbor of Port Arthur and blow up ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... implying that she had been deluded with a false vision of happiness in marrying him. As to saying that he was master, it was not the fact. The very resolution to which he had wrought himself by dint of logic and honorable pride was beginning to relax under her torpedo contact. He swallowed half his cup of coffee, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... to theory. The torpedo craft could be an atomic jet. All right, he had been in bad shape when he fell into it by chance and the bed machine had caught him as if it had been created for just such a duty. What kind of a small plane would be equipped with a restorative apparatus? Only one intended to handle emergencies, ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... billions of indirect expense. The colossal European war just beginning as these pages go to press bids fair to cost immeasurably more aintenance of armies upon a peace-footing-the feeding and clothing of the men, the building and maintenance of barracks and forts, of battleships and torpedo boats, of guns and ammunition, automobiles, aeroplanes, and the increasing list of expensive modern military appurtenances. Europe spends nearly two billion dollars a year in times of peace on its armies and navies-money enough to build four or five Panama canals annually. ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... the above rhymes are purely accidental and contrary to my principles. We shall wipe the floor of the mill-pond with the scalps of able-bodied British tars! I see Professor Edison about to arrange for us a torpedo-hose on wheels, likewise an infernal electro-semaphore; I see Henry Irving dead-sick and declining to play Corporal Brewster; Cornell, ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... giant capable of juggling with the planets. He is irresistible strength; he is also law and justice. He knows of our battles, our butcheries, our farm-burnings, our town-burnings, our brutal triumphs; he knows our explosives, our shells, our torpedo-boats, our ironclads and all our cunning engines of destruction; he knows as well the appalling extent of the appetites among all creatures, down to the very lowest. Well, if that just and mighty one held the earth under his thumb, would he hesitate ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... that four of the contestants were undoubtedly animals. Here indeed was a new kind of animal, an animal able to fight on even terms with a first-class battleship! Frightful aerial monsters they were. Each had an enormous, torpedo-shaped body, with scores of prodigiously long tentacles like those of a devil-fish and a dozen or more great, soaring wings. Even at that distance they could see the row of protruding eyes along the side of each monstrous body and the terrible, prow-like beaks tearing through ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... Mexico before it is executed. It is the same with coded communications to Foreign Powers. The movements of our fleet are known to foreign naval attaches even before the maneuvers are carried out. The whereabouts of the smallest torpedo boat and submarine is no secret—to any but the ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... What you are and what he is are both mere footnotes to a philosophy. All history is a footnote to it—or at best a marginal illustration. There is no such thing as communing with Meakins unless you use (as I do) a torpedo or battering-ram as a starter. If you let him have his way he sits in his chair and in his deep, beautiful voice addresses a row of remarks to The Future in General—the only thing big enough or worth while to talk to. He sits perfectly motionless (except the whites of his eyes) and talks deeply ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... Navy Journal thinks the problem of a torpedo boat capable of firing rapidly and with certainty, has at length reached ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... searchlight. He wondered how many pairs of lovers it had discovered along the shores of Pelham Bay, how many mint-juleps it had seen drunk on the veranda of the country club, how many kisses it had interrupted; and whether it would rather pry into people's private affairs or look for torpedo-boats and night attacks in time of war. But most of all he wondered why it spent so much of its light on space, sweeping the heavens like a fiery broom with indefatigable zeal. There were no lovers or torpedo-boats up there. ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... a hundred million meteorites enter our atmosphere and are cremated, every day. Most of them weigh only an ounce or two, and are invisible. Some of them weigh a ton or more, but even against these large masses the air acts as a kind of "torpedo-net." They generally burst into fragments and fall ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... as they stampeded for their life-belts, though there was no panic. Nobs rose with a low growl. I rose, also, and over the ship's side, I saw not two hundred yards distant the periscope of a submarine, while racing toward the liner the wake of a torpedo was distinctly visible. We were aboard an American ship—which, of course, was not armed. We were entirely defenseless; yet without warning, ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the enemy made it one of their chief targets, sweeping its decks until the great ship became a veritable shambles. Admiral Rojestvensky, wounded and his ship slowly settling under him, was transferred in haste to a torpedo-boat destroyer, and as evening came on the huge ship, still fighting desperately, turned turtle and vanished beneath the waves. As for the admiral, the destroyer which bore him was taken and he fell ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... and deflected on a beam of alternating-current magnetism that repelled it. It did not come nearer than half a mile to the ship. The third they turned their deflecting beam on—and something went strangely wrong with the beam. It pulled that torpedo toward the ship with a sickening acceleration—and the torpedo exploded ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... follows: "A queer thing has happened here. A cruiser which had come in for repair was due to go out this morning. She was ready for sea the night before, the officers and crew had all come back from short leave, and the working parties had cleared out. Then in the middle watch, when the torpedo lieutenant was testing the circuits, it was discovered that all the cables leading to the guns had been cut. Dawson has been called in, and bids me say that, if you can come down, now is the chance of your life. I will put ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... loved, sheltered, rallied, and cherished, while perfectly aware of their limitations as to beauty and to brains. Immediately behind her slipped in Mrs. Cripps. The doctor abstained, conscious of having put a match to the fuse which had exploded yesterday's astounding homiletic torpedo. The whole affair irritated him to the point of detestable ill-temper. Still, if only to throw dust in the public eye, the house of Cripps must be represented. He therefore deputed the job—like so many another ungrateful one—to his forlorn-looking and red-eyed ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... cause is the acquisition by the flotilla of battle power. It is a feature of naval warfare that is entirely new.[10] For all practical purposes it was unknown until the full development of the mobile torpedo. It is true that the fireship as originally conceived was regarded as having something of the same power. During the Dutch wars—the heyday of its vogue—its assigned power was on some occasions actually ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... trees on the heath. Yet all this while the land was full of garrisons, the embayed waters full of fleets. With the impunity of a Levanter, Paul skimmed his craft in the land-locked heart of the supreme naval power of earth; a torpedo-eel, unknowingly swallowed by Britain in a draught of old ocean, and making sad ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... terrible engine of war such an aerial ship might be, from which two men could blow up fortress after fortress and city after city when and where they chose. Armies could be annihilated, granite and steel would be as tinder before a bomb or torpedo of picric acid dropped ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... and a Plaice side by side, and it is plain that they live in very different ways. One is made to dart like an arrow, the other to lie flat. One is the shape of a torpedo, the other is flat like a raft. The shape and colour of the Plaice tell their own story of a life on the sandy, pebbly bed of the sea. And look at the eyes! Both are on the upper side of the head! What could be better for a fish that lies flat on ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... should think so! Why, Rupert, our woods were full of squirrels. Such dear little things!—you never saw such pretty squirrels. One of them got so tamed that he used to eat out of my hand. His name was Torpedo. I named him myself. Then there was Beppo, the dearest dog! I wish you knew him. We used to run races and have the greatest fun. And Aunty and I had nice times going down ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... the effect that, next to the Zeppelin air ship, M. Santos Dumont's balloon was probably attracting most of the attention of experts. The account given of this air vessel by the Daily Express was somewhat startling. The balloon proper was compared to a large torpedo. Three feet beneath this hangs the gasoline motor which is to supply the power. The propeller is 12 feet in diameter, and is revolved so rapidly by the motor that the engine frequently gets red hot. The only accommodation for the traveller ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... there attacked by a submarine. Germany admits that it was a German submarine. The submarine deliberately fired a torpedo at the GREER, followed later by another torpedo attack. In spite of what Hitler's propaganda bureau has invented, and in spite of what any American obstructionist organization may prefer to believe, I tell you the blunt fact that the German submarine ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... oil consumption; I have had her up to 180 miles. Her steaming radius is about 50,000 miles, depending upon the speed. She carries twelve 16-inch guns, twenty-two 6-inch guns, sixteen 4-inch anti-aircraft guns, eight 3-pounders, four rapid-fire guns, six aerial torpedo tubes, and six bomb droppers, which can simultaneously discharge tons of explosives. She has a complement of 1400 officers and men. She required three years and eight months to build at a cost of $10,000,000. In action her entire ship's company is protected by at least six feet of steel, and there ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... so cautiously that between whiles she seemed to be drifting; but always moving, with the smoke blown level from her buff-coloured funnels, with clean white sides and clean white ensign, and here and there a sparkle of sunlight on rail or gun-breech or torpedo-tube. She was bound on a three-years' cruise; and Gilbart, who happened to know this and was besides something of a sentimentalist, detected pathos in this departure on a festival morning. It seemed to him—as she swung round her stern and his quick ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and it was said that her activity in running up earthworks and apparently impregnable fortifications was in anticipation of Disraeli declaring war and ordering the fleet to bombard the Crimean ports; hence, too, in addition to the strong fortifications, torpedo mines were laid for miles along the seaboard, and every possible means and opportunity were taken to make it widely known that the Black Sea was one deadly mine-field. The Press on all sides was, as usual, brimful of reports of the most alarmist nature—these, of course, for the most part extravagant ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman |
