"Detonation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with them, as the march became each day more painful. It produced a sad impression to see that we were reduced to such a point of distress as to be compelled to throw our powder to the winds to keep from leaving it to the enemy. But a still sadder reflection came into our minds at each detonation,—the grand army must be rapidly hastening to dissolution when the material remaining exceeded our needs, and the number of men still left was so much short of that required to use it. On the 30th, the Emperor's headquarters were in a poor hovel which had neither doors nor ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... or his ghost who had stood behind the Nordenfeldt shields with the bullets pattering against the steel and stinging the air overhead? He or his ghost, barefoot in the sand that sopped the blood of fallen comrades, the ship shaking with the detonation of her guns, the hoarse cheering of her crew re-echoing in his half- deafened ears? A dream, yes; tragic and wonderful in the retrospect, filled with wild, bright pictures; ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... forward to take the glass which was all but slipping from his hand when Lakalatcha flamed with redoubled fury. It was as if the mountain had suddenly bared its fiery heart to the heavens, and a muffled detonation ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... torpor seemed to hang over the battle-field. Sometimes, a perpendicular column of smoke rose up, in the motionless distance, and the detonation reached us a little while afterwards, as if astray, and ashamed of outraging ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... Another fearful detonation came with startling violence to their ears, and as they stood upon the deck the report seemed to jar them all in a dull, ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... Planchet into the boat, and five minutes after they were on board. It was time; for they had scarcely sailed half a league, when d'Artagnan saw a flash and heard a detonation. It was the cannon which announced the closing of ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... had progressed but a short distance further, when suddenly a great tongue of flame shot heavenward between them and the river. An ear-splitting detonation followed, and the very earth was rocked by an enormous explosion. Both boys were thrown violently to the ground by the force of it, while showers of earth, bricks, and material of all kinds pelted down all ...
— Bob Cook and the German Spy • Tomlinson, Paul Greene
... have th' belly-ache!" cried this tall man, and, without more warning, there was a tremendous flash and detonation, a mighty flying of the clear waters just under the bows of the foremost canoes of ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... terrific explosion, and the titanic mass of the ship was rocked by the detonation of a bomb one of the men in the building had fired ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... tranquil silver surface quivered and glittered before him. He saw what he knew he would see, the black target of a man's head above it, making for the Bar. He took deliberate aim and fired. There was no echo to that sharp detonation; a distant dog barked, there was a slight whisper in the trees beside him, that was all! But the head of the man was no longer visible, and the liquid silver filmed over again, ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... crest where I stood, the whole landscape about me was illuminated with the fierce glare of the bursting shells, while the ground on which I stood quivered with the thunderous detonation of ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... dull, brutish detonation. The swimmer, swung high on the bosom of a great swell, saw a vast sheet of fire raving heavenward ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... the left, a jagged gap appeared. Suddenly, far below, toward the river, a crashing detonation shattered harsh echoes from ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... fire. The fatal touch is given. The detonation of the blast goes shrieking up to heaven. The mansions of bonanza kings are tottering to their doom; That swirling tide of fiery fate halts at the gaping tomb. Beyond the cataclysm's brink, the multitude, too dazed to think, Behold the red waves ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... the sky as a stone splits a window pane. Pulsating streaks of fire, red, green, and blue, radiated in all directions, half-blinding them with the brazen glare. And before it faded, a crackling detonation seemed to rip the very ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... detonation, the Friar and the man in green-and-russet wheeled about to find Mr. Bulmer, with his most heroical bearing, negligently replacing the discharged pistol. The woman lay absolutely still, face downward, in ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... bullets hissed over his head. The battle had begun! Another hour and the Mormon kingdom would be at the mercy of the avenging host from the mainland—and Marion would be his own for ever! He heard again the deep rumble of a heavy gun and from its sullen detonation he knew that it was fired from a ship at sea. A nearer crash of returning fire turned him into a deserted street down which he ran wildly, on past the last houses of the town, until he came to the foot of a hill up which he climbed more slowly, panting ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... They charged upon the attacking robot things. They were unguided, of necessity, but the robot bombs had to be equipped with proximity fuses. No remote control could be so accurate as to determine the best moment for detonation at 4,000 miles' distance. So the war rockets had to be devised to explode when near anything which reflected their probing radar waves. They had to be designed to be triggered by anything ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... a riven and distorted whirl burst upward in a huge geyser of annihilation, came a detonation that ripped, stunned, shattered; that sent both the defenders staggering backward ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... A faint, far-off detonation, followed swiftly by louder and fainter echoes, broke suddenly upon the rushing noises of the river. We commenced feverishly to scramble back up the cliff. Half-way to the top we heard another shot, a second later a third, and after a longer interval, as if to put ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... shouts, and shots, and groans, mingling together—the deep voice of the vengeful leader, and the wild war-cry of his followers—the crashing of timber, as doors were broken through or forced from their hinges—the clashing of swords and spears, and the quick detonation of fire-arms. Oh! it was a ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... was startled by a dull and jarring detonation from within. This was followed by a monstrous hissing and simmering as from a kettle of the bigness of St. Paul's; and at the same time from every chink of door and window spirted an ill- smelling vapour. The cat disappeared with a cry. Within the lodging-house feet pounded on the stairs; the door ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... test," I said. "At one minute short of the deadline, Joan had the divers unscrew the cap. In a real drop that would have resulted in a detonation, if the bomb was real; we'd never risk it. That we did do it in the test was a concession of failure—an admission that our usual methods didn't come through for us ...
— One-Shot • James Benjamin Blish
... to fuse substances with the acid sulphate of potash, or to oxidize them by detonation with nitrate of potash, whereby we wish to preserve the oxide produced, we generally use a little spoon of platinum, about from nine to fifteen millimetres[1] in diameter, and shaped as represented in Fig. 7. The handle of this spoon is likewise of platinum, and should fit ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... projectiles such as shells, hand grenades, and trench mortar bombs, a part or the whole of the explosive charge is replaced by a liquid which is converted into gas by the explosion. The explosive force and noise of detonation of these projectiles is less than that of the ordinary kind, and a large number of them are usually discharged into a comparatively small space. After the explosion, the irritant chemicals form a small gas cloud, though some ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... such a sound when salutes are fired or on a field-day, but I assure those who have not had a like experience, that to hear the same in actual warfare, and to know that each detonation is dealing death and destruction to human beings and property, sends a shiver down the back akin to that produced by icy cold water. I counted four or five; then there it was again and again and again, till altogether I reckoned twenty shots, followed ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... to the choice of his victim; and the soldier, who was bold enough to undertake this double murder, has not force nor courage to consummate it. He flies, carrying in his hand a useless whip, with a heavy mantle on his shoulders, in spite of the detonation of two pistols at his ears, and the rapid steps of an angry master in pursuit, which ought to have set him upon some better means of escape. And we find this man, full of youth and vigor, lying with his face to the ground, in the midst of a public road, falling ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fencing-master. All of a sudden, he would burst out laughing. A big voice, a good fellow. He had a comic foundation under a tragic exterior, he asked nothing better than to frighten you, very much like those snuff-boxes which are in the shape of a pistol. The detonation makes ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... and Dick Sand observed that these different birds did not appear to be at all wild. They approached without fearing anything. Then, had they not yet learned to fear the presence of man, and was this coast so deserted that the detonation of a firearm had never ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... to buckle and hurl themselves aft with a grinding crash of disrupted joints. Holding desperately to the precious little body within his arms, Carr was thrown off his feet. There was a detonation as if the universe had been blasted into ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... This was the detonation which had so startled Jerry and Bob, and now, with others, they looked over the top of the trench at the ruins of the truck. It was blown apart, and the wooden body and wheels were scattered about while the engine was a mere mass of ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... from a nuclear war; an important aspect of this new study was its inquiry into all possible consequences, including the effects of large-scale nuclear detonations on the ozone layer which helps protect life on earth from the sun's ultraviolet radiations. Assuming a total detonation of 10,000 megatons—a large-scale but less than total nuclear "exchange," as one would say in the dehumanizing jargon of the strategists—it was concluded that as much as 30-70 percent of the ozone might be eliminated from the northern hemisphere ...
— Worldwide Effects of Nuclear War: Some Perspectives • United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
... use of gunpowder, and toward the end of the sixteenth century they still used the arms employed in the time of Genghis. Each one of Iermak's warriors faced a crowd of the enemy. If his bullet only killed one of them, the frightful detonation of his gun put to flight twenty or thirty. In the first combat, held on the bank of the Tobol, at a place called Babassan, Iermak, under shelter of intrenchments, checked by some discharges of musketry the impetuosity of ten thousand men of Mahmetkul's cavalry, who rushed forward to crush ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... often thought how grateful I should be that such an animal was my friend and companion in the hunt and not my pursuer. How quickly the dog adjusts himself to the bow! At first he is afraid of the long stick. But he soon gets the idea and not waiting for the detonation of the gun, he accepts the hum of the bowstring and the whirr of the arrow as signals for action. Some dogs have even shown a tendency to retrieve our arrows for us, and nothing suits them better than that we go on foot, and ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... amazing detonation seemed to strike at the smalls of their backs, throwing them half out of their seats. The glass slide upon the Queen's side of the coach ran down with a crash, and one of the large gilt baubles from its roof toppled and fell into the road. At the ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... line of flashes leaped across the breast of the darkness, accompanied by a detonation truly terrible. Each gun with its echoes, in those cavernous solitudes, thundered like a whole park of artillery: what, then, was the effect of the volley? The patriots were themselves appalled by it. The mountain trembled, and a gusty roar swept through its shuddering chambers, throbbing and ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... between preparations for the Old Times Dance and the progress in the dewatering of the Blue Poppy shaft. Now and then the long hose was withdrawn, and dynamite lowered on floats to the surface of the water, far below, a copper wire trailing it. A push of the plunger, a detonation, and a wait of long moments; it accomplished nothing, and the pumping went on. If the earthly remains of Harry Harkins were below, they steadfastly refused ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... footman noticed a peasant walking slowly on the edge of the pavement with his hands in the pockets of his sheepskin coat and his shoulders hunched up to his ears under the falling snow. On being overtaken this peasant suddenly faced about and swung his arm. In an instant there was a terrible shock, a detonation muffled in the multitude of snowflakes; both horses lay dead and mangled on the ground and the coachman, with a shrill cry, had fallen off the box mortally wounded. The footman (who survived) had no time to see the face of the man in the sheepskin coat. After throwing the bomb this ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... rabbits; and I mustn't sit too near the ground, or I might get a shot in the ankles from one of the other men. I can't say it was an absolute pleasure. The seat (if seat it could be called) was anything but comfortable, and the detonation of the gun just over my head was decidedly trying; still it was a novelty, and if the other women could stand it ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... this hilarious scramble to be off to the floe, there was a flash and spit of fire, and the clap of an explosion, and the clatter of a sealing-gun on the bare floor; and in the breathless, dead little interval between the appalling detonation and a man's groan of dismay followed by a woman's choke and scream of terror, Dolly West, Bad-Weather Tom's small maid, stood swaying, wreathed in gray smoke, her little hands pressed ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... rain came down in torrents, the thunder echoed clap on clap, each detonation preceded by an awful zig-zag of fire. The tempest grew in fury, and, scarce able to ride on the shifting wind, the plaintive voices of the bells rang ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... cinders, fell without intermission. For eight weeks Krakatau blazed and thundered, the explosions being audible at Batavia, eighty miles off. As the fatal dawn of an August morning broke with lurid light, the culminating shock of an appalling detonation, described as "the very crack and crash of doom," echoed across the ocean, and was heard even in India and Australia, two thousand miles away. Gigantic tidal waves swept the Sundanese shores, destroying the adjacent villages, 36,000 people being either washed away ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... dark; Enveloping the heaven's canopy In lowering shadow and portentous gloom; In pall of ambient obscurity. The fork-ed lightnings ramify and play Upon a background of sepulchral black; The growling thunders rumble a reply Of detonation awful and profound, To every corruscation's vivid gleam; In deep crescendo and fortissimo, In quavering tremolo and stately fugue ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... 22, 1831, a violent detonation was suddenly heard in the coal mine of Bois-Monzil, belonging to M. Robinot. The waters from the old works rushed impetuously along the new galleries. "The waters, the waters!" such was the cry that resounded from the affrighted workmen throughout the mine. Only ten miners ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... Now and then a vivid zig-zag flash gored the intense darkness with its baleful blue death-light, followed by a crash, appalling as if the battlements of heaven had been shattered. Once the whole air seemed ablaze, and the simultaneous shock of the detonation was so violent, that Beryl involuntarily sank on her knees, and hid her eyes on a chair. The rain fell in torrents, that added a solemn sullen swell to the diapason of the thunder fugue, and by degrees a delicious coolness crept into the cisterns ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... and roared with laughter over his great triumph. C. and R! Poof! He would send Stolz' nephew to prison, and then roll a bomb along Wall Street whose detonation would startle the financial world clean out of its orbit! Stolz had failed to notice that Ames's schemes had so signally worked out that C. and R. was practically in his hands now! The defeated railroad ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Pontificals swerve back they uttered cries of joy. It was two o'clock. The enemy's fire slackened; something was going on which the volunteers could not make out. All at once there was a sharp unfamiliar detonation, resembling the whirring sound of a machine. The French ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... and on land made every effort to keep off the pirates. They flew banners at morn and eve and fired guns seaward, so that the enemy, understanding by the flash and the detonation that we were prepared to resist, abstained from landing. But when the pirates handled their swords skilfully, their attack was fearful. Our countrymen when they saw these swordsmen, trembled and fled. Their fear of ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... came to a stop. The building in which the show was being held shook as though a violent thunderclap had rocked the earth. This loud detonation that broke upon their hearing, however, was only too familiar to all those army aviators. ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... of the aide-de-camp's horse outside the cottage could be heard. Then, like the grating of a coffee mill in a distant kitchen when one is just waking out of a sound sleep, they heard the faint, smothered whir of machinery, a sharper metallic ring of steel against steel followed by a gigantic detonation which shook the ground upon which the cottage stood and overthrew every glass upon the table. With a roar like the fall of a skyscraper the first shell hurled itself into the night. Half terrified the officers gripped their chairs, waiting for the second ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... understand that he is expected now to do his duty.' In he went again, and planted another candle about a yard in front of the last one. Then he stopped and fired a shot from the revolver that we carried in turn for the otters, and the sound of the detonation seemed to echo in a muffled fashion from the bowels ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... trees, there was a short whizz on a high note, and then a loud crash. Smoke issued from the windows and the riddled roof, and bits of wood and debris hurtled through the air. Then there was a loud wailing noise followed by a terrific detonation. The chateau was blotted from view by a dense mass of black smoke that rose out of the ground in front of me. The spell was broken. I hesitated whether to go on or not, when I became aware of a voice behind ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... heavily covering the floors, ceiling, and walls with cement on metal lath, and otherwise protecting the openings. In it are installed apparatus for determining calorific value of explosives, pressure produced on ignition, susceptibility to ignition when dropped, rate of detonation, length and duration of flame, and kindred factors. Elsewhere on the grounds is a gallery of boiler-steel plate, 100 ft. long and more than 6 ft. in diameter, solidly attached to a mass of concrete at one end, in which is embedded a cannon from which to discharge the explosive under test, and ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • Herbert M. Wilson
... void the infernal machine sped. A sickening pause—then a deafening detonation, followed by another and another, cut the stillness, and the earth beneath was aflame with light as the high explosives and shells stored in the concealed ammunition depot were set off. Nothing escaped destruction; flesh and blood, mortar ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... unsheltered foe who was upon his feet, and to utterly fright the savages from their propriety. Beaujeu and a dozen more fell dead upon the spot, and the Indians already began to fly, their courage being unable to endure the unwonted tumult of such a portentous detonation. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... torpedo was fired at the Lusitania, which hit her starboard side below the Captain's bridge. The detonation of the torpedo was followed immediately by a further explosion of extremely strong effect. The ship quickly listed to starboard ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... necessary." And in the course of sentencing, my lord had this OBITER DICTUM: "I have been the means, under God, of haanging a great number, but never just such a disjaskit rascal as yourself." The words were strong in themselves; the light and heat and detonation of their delivery, and the savage pleasure of the speaker in his task, made them tingle in ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to do this when the leaden windows shuddered, and the house itself trembled with the sharp crash of our light cannon, followed almost immediately by the deeper detonation of the heavier guns from the citadel. The red sand in the glass began to fall again, and its liberation seemed to unfetter my paralysed limbs. Bareheaded as I was, I rushed like one frantic along the passage and down the stairs. The air was resonant with the quick-following reports ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... and it outlined it as clearly as a figure on the moving picture screen. Then suddenly there came a flash, followed by a dull detonation, and a black cloud appeared, spreading into a flower of death near the cigar, and at the edge of the black beam. The cheers grew frantic. The anti-aircraft battery in the White House grounds had grasped the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... he added the last trace of pressure. He saw a train of sparks leap from the jerking muzzle, and felt the butt jar upon his shoulder. Still, as is almost invariably the case with a man whose whole force of will is concentrated on holding the little sight on a living mark, he heard no detonation. He recognized, however, the unmistakable thud of the bullet smashing through soft flesh, and that was what ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... the action of giant-powder, had no desire to stay, and they floundered as fast as possible over the driftwood and masses of shattered rock until Nasmyth drew his companion behind a towering fir. Then there was a sharp detonation, a crash, and a shower of flying stones went smashing through the forest and into the river. One, which Gordon fancied must have weighed about two hundred pounds, drove close past them, and struck a young cedar, which snapped off beneath the impact. Then there was a ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... "that many powders are violently explosive, and some more so than others. This violence of explosion is called detonation, by which is meant the almost instantaneous conversion of the ultimate molecules of an explosive compound (i.e. the whole ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... discovered in this district, at the bottom of the Quebrada de Moroturo, a stratum of clayey earth, black, strongly soiling the fingers, emitting a powerful smell of sulphur, and inflaming spontaneously when slightly moistened and exposed for a long time to the rays of the tropical sun. The detonation of this muddy substance is very violent.) Possibly, also, the mountainous lands, near the llanos of Monai, may have a baneful influence on the surrounding plains. The south-easterly winds may convey to them the putrid exhalations that rise from the ravine of Villegas, and from La ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... flashes below the horizon whose light only is seen by us. Globe or ball lightning takes the form of globes of fire, sometimes visible for ten seconds, descending from the clouds. On reaching the earth they sometimes rebound, and sometimes explode with a loud detonation. No adequate explanation has been ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... scarcity of provisions in the camp will serve as my excuse to sportsmen for the method I employed. We used a stick of dynamite six inches long, and it raised a column of water twenty feet in the air, while the detonation sounded like a salute, rolling from peak to peak for miles around. In two hours three of us gathered 195 fish from a single pool. Most of them were big suckers; but we had also thirty-five large Gila trout. ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... to get past that door? Really, the deathlike stillness on the other side was more mysterious than would have been the detonation of some ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... boom upon their ears; duller and duller at each successive detonation, which tells that the distance between them and the frigate, instead of diminishing, increases. However sad and disheartening, they cannot help it. They dare not put the barque about, or in any way alter ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... unforeseen circumstance, viz., the detonation produced by the Columbiad, had the immediate effect of troubling the terrestrial atmosphere, by accumulating a large quantity of vapor, a phenomenon which excited universal indignation, for the moon was hidden from the eyes of the ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... during the whole of Thursday that to those not especially on the lookout the presence of aeroplanes high up above them was first made known by the bursting of the projectiles aimed at them. The puffs of smoke from the detonation shell hung in the air for minutes on end, like balls of fleece cotton, before they slowly expanded ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... Adelantado. As they approached the ship, a cannon was fired at a given signal. The sound echoed over the sea like thunder, and the air was filled with smoke. The terrified islanders trembled, believing that this detonation had shattered the terrestrial globe; but when they turned towards the Adelantado their emotion subsided. Upon approaching closer to the ship the sound of flutes, fifes, and drums was heard, charming their senses ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... A detonation behind them was like a blow on the head, making their ear-drums ring. The glass in the headlight of one of the cars tinkled to ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos
... have proved to you he does occasionally, he errs through perverseness, not through unwariness. His language often settles into clear and most beautiful prose, often takes an imperfect and incoherent shape of poetry, and often, cloud against cloud, bursts with a vehement detonation in the air. Diogenes was hated both by the vulgar and the philosophers. By the philosophers, because he exposed their ignorance, ridiculed their jealousies, and rebuked their pride: by the vulgar, because they never can endure a man apparently ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... upon a strip of fuse, and, lighting the latter, retired expeditiously towards the river. Standing behind a big cedar, he watched the train of blue vapour and thin red sparks creep on through the dusk until a blaze of yellow flame leapt up, and a stunning detonation rolled across the woods. The hillsides took up the sound, and flung it from one to another in great reverberations, while the pines, quivering in all their sprays, shook drops of water down. Alton stood still ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... down to do a little thinking as well as listen to the exchange of compliments between the warring forces—every loud detonation as a lump of coquina rock fell on the roof would be followed by its complement of rapid gunfire, just as though the man at bay was bound to keep up his side of the battle even if he had to create a shortage in his ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... major reported that they had satisfactorily performed their part of the work and escaped with but little damage. The Boche ammunition dump they were to assail had been blown into a thousand fragments, the detonation of the explosion having ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... nitro-glycerin carried about exposed cannot explode, even if you drop a coal of fire into it; if the liquid is confined, or is under pressure, then an explosion will ensue; if paper be moistened with it and put on an anvil and a smart blow given with a hammer, a sharp detonation ensues; if gunpowder or the fulminates of mercury, silver or gun-cotton be ignited in a vacuum by a galvanic battery, none of them will explode; if any gas be introduced so as to produce a gentle pressure during the decomposition, then a rapid evolution of gases will result; the results of decomposition ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... (milit.) tacxmento. Detail detalo. Details (minutes) detaleto. Detain malhelpi, deteni. Detect eltrovi. Deter malhelpi. Deteriorate difekti. Determine decidi. Determination decideco. Determined decida. Detest malami. Dethrone detroni. Detonation eksplodbruo. Detract kalumnii. Detriment malprofito, perdo. Detrimental malhelpa. Devastate dezertigi, ruinigi. Develope vastigi. Development vastigo. Deviate malrektigxi. Deviation malrektigxo. Device devizo. Devil diablo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... idea—that of getting near one another. They called out, "Bell!" "Simpson!" "This way, doctor!" "Where are you, captain?" But no answers were heard; the vapour did not conduct sound. They all fired as a sign of rallying. But if the sound of the voice appeared too weak, the detonation of the firearms was too strong, for it was echoed in all directions, and produced a confused rumble without appreciable direction. Each acted then according to his instincts. Hatteras stopped, folded ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... escort emerged. She, sitting pale and rigid, saw them mount and turn back unharmed toward the city. Her ears, eagerly set for the detonation which should shake the town and reverberate along the mountain sides, ached with the emptiness ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... which seemed to come from the very bowels of the earth, followed by a detonation like the discharge of an army's artillery, and the sides of the crater opened, and with a wild roar the pent-up torrent burst forth, and leaping into the lake, rolled, a mighty avalanche of water, toward the ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... Coming through the tangled jungle growth, it seemed as if spears of flame shot through the air, irradiating stray patches of scabrous tree-trunk with unbearable light. For an instant the illumination held. Then there was a distant, cracking detonation. The unmistakable explosion of gun-cotton split the air, and its echoes rolled and reverberated through the jungle. The light went out. Then came a thin, high yelling sound which, faint as it was, had something of the quality of hysterical glee. ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... a cartridge to make a sharp detonation but not enough to do any damage, unless, as happened here, there were two of them in a small space that ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... blow up, in extremity, themselves and the ships on which they voyaged the sea from far places. And yet on this unstable and death-terrific substance of which he was well aware Van Horn was composed, he trod heavily with his personality, daring, to the verge of detonation, to impact it with ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... a musical detonation, followed by a volley of chords and then a wild, swirling waltz; and Miss Van Arsdale jumped up and stood over her guest. "There!" she said. "That's better than letting you pamper yourself ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... again lost amid the lashing, deafening detonation, which was prolonged with the continuous ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... her, and his bullet broke her shoulder. The lioness, with a frightful howl of agony, rolled down the steps, overturning Joe in her fall. The poor fellow imagined that he could already feel the enormous paws of the savage beast in his flesh, when a second detonation resounded in the narrow passage, and Dr. Ferguson appeared at the opening above with his gun in hand, and still smoking from ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... in sheer wantonness, caught the midnight prowler's hat and with a wild sound as of the detonation of a hundred guns, tossed it to the waves below. The snow in a few moments had thrown a white pall over ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... that of having toys—such as imitation musical instruments, crackers which make an unpleasant detonation, imitations of negro minstrels, balloons, flags, and pasteboard lobsters, toads, and insects—presented to each lady. These articles are neither tasteful nor amusing, and have "no excuse for being" except that they ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... trench under heavy fire from high-explosive shells or bombs from trench mortars. You can watch these bombs lobbed up into the air. You see them slowly wobble down to earth, there to explode with a terrific detonation that sets every nerve in your body a-jangling. You can do nothing. You cannot retaliate in any way. You simply have to sit tight and hope for the best. Some men joke and smile; but their mirth is forced. Some feign stoical indifference, and sit with a paper ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... of all the great double petards of the Saint-Jean, the discharge of twenty arquebuses on supports, the detonation of that famous serpentine of the Tower of Billy, which, during the siege of Paris, on Sunday, the twenty-sixth of September, 1465, killed seven Burgundians at one blow, the explosion of all the powder ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... which marked Herr Haase's excavations; they had an instant in which to note, faint as the whirring of a fly upon a pane, the buzz of some small mechanism within the thing. Then, not louder than a heavy stroke upon a drum, came the detonation of the buried cartridges in the first hole, and the earth above them suddenly ballooned and burst like an over-inflated paper-bag and let through a spit of brief fire and a ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... worse than anything else would be the suspicion on the part of any one that Lily's engagement to George Ramsey troubled her. All the time, as she hurried along the familiar road, she realized that strange, shocked feeling, as of some tremendous detonation of spirit. She bowed mechanically to people whom she met. She did not fairly know who they were. She kept on her way only through inertia. She felt that if she stopped to think, she would scarcely know the road to the school-house. She wondered when she met a girl somewhat older than ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... tone, ever increasing in volume, until, like an express train, with an overwhelming sense of speed and power, and with an appalling roar, it crashed upon them. In the field on their left, there leaped fifty yards into the air a huge mass of earth and smoke. Then a stunning detonation. ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... the evening, by the side of the hearth where a few pieces of green wood smoked without burning, they started at each of the distant reports of the cannon. At each detonation that shook the window-panes, Mme. Favoral thought that it was, perhaps, the one that ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... beneath his sallow skin. He was about to command her angrily to mind her own business, when the air between the hedgerows, and even the road beneath his feet, shook with a dull and distant detonation. ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... there was a dull deafening roar, and then for me—oblivion. I was only stunned and when I regained consciousness looked around and saw the men slowly regaining their feet. Redway was not killed, but the shock and concussion of the detonation of the dynamite made him lose his speech and he was bleeding profusely at the nose and ears. The cowcatcher, headlight and forward trucks of the engine were blown to smithereens, but fortunately the boiler did ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... may not produce explosion, but by spreading flames almost instantly throughout the burning buildings, such burnings have practically equaled, if not excelled, explosions, which may sometimes be fire-extinguishers. In such cases detonation may be prevented by there being ample space to receive the suddenly ignited vapor, lessening the tension of it, but carrying the flames much more rapidly than otherwise to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... were broken by a sudden detonation which came out of the pale gloom ahead of them. It was like the explosion of a ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... fighting with reckless courage to save Antwerp. As a precaution, the boilers of all the German ships lying in the harbor were exploded on Sunday, in order to prevent, if possible, use of these ships as transports for German troops across the North Sea or elsewhere. The detonation of the bursting boilers, resounding through the city, set the excited Sunday crowd very near to a panic. This was accelerated by the constant fear of airship attacks, and most of the population that was not already in active flight from the city ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... With a purring noise the helicopter shot upward. Then something went off in mid-sky, miles ahead, where a faint humming noise had announced the flight of attack-planes. A lurid, crackling detonation lit up the sky. One of the ships of the night-flying squadron. From the helicopter they could see the rest of the flight limned clearly in the flash of the explosion. Instantly thereafter there was another ...
— Morale - A Story of the War of 1941-43 • Murray Leinster
... siderite, and it is on record that a loud explosion took place when the meteorite fell at Ensisheim. In this we have a characteristic feature of the phenomenon. Nearly all the descents of meteorites that have been observed seem to have been ushered in by a detonation. We do not, however, assert that this is quite an invariable feature; and it is also the case that meteors often detonate without throwing down any solid fragments that have been collected. The violence associated ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... her room, smiling affectionately on its many well-remembered and long-neglected objects, there was a sudden distant detonation. Molly looked up inquiringly, but Elizabeth directed her to place the tea things, find fresh candles, if any were left in the house, and help Cuff put them on the chandelier in the lower hall, and then get supper. As Molly left the ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... surprise, Rube was allowed ample time to reload, and our three barrels once more protruded over the shoulders of Garey's horse. Our animals still held their respective positions. Three of them were too well used to such scenes, to be startled by the detonation of a rifle; and the fourth, fastened as he was, kept his ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... perhaps for many moments thereafter, none of them knew very definitely what had happened. There was a cloud of dust, a terrific detonation, a sudden absolute darkness, as in some revulsion of nature, a stifling sensation. They were penned within the grotto by a great fragment of the beetling cliff. Doubtless it had been previously fractured by the action of continuous freezes, and the concussion of ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... surface, but is considered as very elementary in its nature, and competent to account for all the phenomena of capillarity, chemical affinity, attraction of aggregation, rarefaction, ebullition, volatilization, explosion, and other thermometric effects, as well as inflammation, detonation, &c. &c. It is considered as a form of heat to which the term native calorie is given, and is still further viewed as the principle of the two electricities ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... a long silence... silence broken only by that softly sibilant detonation which belongs most properly to the month of June, but confines itself to no season... to a long, long silence born of and blessed by the gods... until one Percival Sheridan, coming stealthily home from a late debauch at Humphrey's drug store, and mounting the steps in the tennis sneakers ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... orgasm, climax, aphrodisia^; force, brute force; outrage; coup de main; strain, shock, shog^; spasm, convulsion, throe; hysterics, passion &c (state of excitability) 825. outbreak, outburst; debacle; burst, bounce, dissilience^, discharge, volley, explosion, blow up, blast, detonation, rush, eruption, displosion^, torrent. turmoil &c (disorder) 59; ferment &c (agitation) 315; storm, tempest, rough weather; squall &c (wind) 349; earthquake, volcano, thunderstorm. berserk, berserker; fury, dragon, demon, tiger, beldame, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the German positions made observation difficult. The guns redoubled their efforts, and at about ten o'clock they stopped and again the rifle fire followed, if anything, more intense than before. The detonation of bombs, the rifle fire and cries of the combatants came to my ears distinctly now that our own guns on both sides and behind us were silent. Again I travelled over to the telephone station wondering if they had forgotten us, or if we were going to have ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... bodies being tossed about, striking violently against the partitions and bulkheads. At the same instant arose a screaming of women's voices, and one voice, and that Sir John Malyoe's, crying out as in the greatest extremity: "You villains! You damned villains!" and with the sudden detonation of a pistol fired into the close space ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... his black hair flowing over his shoulders, and with a sort of pea-coloured swaddling-cloth thrown round him. In his hand he held a long military musket, and he dashed along on the tips of his slippers with the air of a somnambulist and with the nimbleness of a tiger. At intervals a detonation could be heard. ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... as it was, had escaped detonation in the blast. He had only to stagger across the twenty yards separating him from it, then release the stud that would send it flashing out ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... at work. These, aided by ropes and scaling ladders, got down to the ledge; and from this point they and Oldham slung themselves down to the bed of the stream, by the same means. A few sappers had followed, when a box of dynamite exploded with a violent detonation, and the rest of the company ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... applied to four trains of gunpowder. The man who lighted them immediately sprang back, and hid himself behind a wall of rock. In a minute or two came the flash; a few stones were hurled into the air; and immediately afterwards was heard a loud detonation, and the shattered mass fell in fragments all around. Echo caught up the tremendous explosion, and carried it to the furthest recesses of the mine; while, to enhance the terror of the scene, one rock was hardly shivered before another crash was heard, and then a third, and immediately ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... glorious moments of my sporting life—buffaloes charging the line in all directions, burning jungle all around us, and bullets whistling on every side—I fired TWELVE shells into a large bull before I killed him. As every shell hit him, I heard the sharp detonation, and saw the tiny puff of smoke curl outward from the ghastly wound. The poor maddened brute would drop on his knees, stagger again to his feet, and, game to the last, attempt to charge my elephant. I was anxious really to ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... sterling. This we invested in flour, tea, strong boots, and other indispensables. We possessed an old gun a double-barreled fowling-piece that had once been a flint-lock. The spring driving one hammer was too weak to discharge a percussion cap, that of the other was just strong enough to cause detonation on an average twice out of three attempts. We could get no bullet mould the gun being of an unusual caliber so we used to chop off chunks of lead and roll them between flat stones until the requisite degrees of size and rotundity had been attained. By using stones with the surface ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... down, nose first. Those in the starboard boats saw her stand on end for full five minutes, screws spinning, before a muffled detonation blew the bowels out of her and sucked her down like ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... penetrated the stiff soil to a depth of five feet seven inches, and rebounded on impact with some more solid substance at the bottom so quickly that it left the mark of its penetration perfect, and only broke up on reaching the surface again. In this case there was no burst, but only a detonation of the fuse. After nine at night we were astonished to see the beams of a searchlight sweeping Observation Hill. Our foes apparently had got an engine on the railway between Surprise Hill and Thornton's Kop with an ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... missiles that scatter after firing from the gun. Grape shot: a cluster of small iron balls, which scatter upon firing. Shell: explosive missile; a hollow cast-iron ball, filled with gunpowder, with a fuze to produce detonation; a long, hollow projectile, filled with explosive and fitted with a fuze. Shot: ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... cannon were thundering—so close that it seemed each hilltop would bring them into view, and as the detonation puffed across the landscape, one even fancied one could feel the concussion in one's ear. Up from a field ahead of us an aeroplane rose and, in a wide spiral, went climbing up the sky, now almost cleared, and presently disappeared ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... the report on the deep silence of the forest, the distant foothills taking up the sound and flinging it back to the valleys in echoes that repeated the detonation far and wide. As the last sullen sound died away in the distance he leaned against one of the trees, ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... few 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; ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... he heard a sound. His heart stood suddenly still. He held his breath. It was a sound almost indistinguishable from the whisper of the air and the trees and yet it smote upon his senses like the detonation of a thunder-clap. It was more of a PRESENCE than a sound. The trail was clear. He could see to the far side of the open now, and there was no movement. He turned his head—slowly and without movement of his body, and in that instant a gasp rose to his lips, and died there. ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... In the only case I have seen of a steamship sinking there was such a sound, but I didn't dive down after her to investigate. She was not of 45,000 tons and declared unsinkable, but the sight was impressive enough. I shall never forget the muffled, mysterious detonation, the sudden agitation of the sea round the slowly raised stern, and to this day I have in my eye the propeller, seen perfectly still in its frame ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... department. For some reason or other they always presented themselves after dinner—like the coffee. The first arrival was a young cavalry officer, knocked off his horse in the preliminary encounters by what had evidently been the detonation of a well-pitched-up high-explosive, and who was still suffering from a touch of what we now know as shell-shock. He proved to be the very embodiment of effective military training, because, although he was to the ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... its rock, and the great Alps pale above on the dark sky. She condescended nevertheless to gather a great bunch of the white catchfly,—to make 'pops' with,—her friend Marie at the Giesbach having shown her how a startling detonation may be obtained, by skilful management, ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... largely to the very water's edge. Down off the docks, and an immense distance away it seems from the slope of ruin, a steamer loaded with high explosive collided with another, caught fire and blew up, and on the entire bosom of that slope can be seen what that gigantic detonation accomplished. ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... the 7th of October, when it came on to blow furiously from the westward, and the inhabitants along the river were suddenly surprised by an extraordinary roaring in the woods, resembling the crashing and detonation of loud and incessant thunder, while at the same instant the atmosphere became thick darkened ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... is impossible! Absolutely impossible, I tell you! What you are inventing now is impossible!... You forget that a shot from a gun, a shot from so powerful a weapon, makes a noise. Why, deuce take it, the detonation must be heard!" ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... force. The designers have taken this into full consideration and will see to it that the powder chamber in which the explosion takes place as well as the breech lock on which the shock is exerted is of steel so wrought and tempered as to withstand the terrific strain. At the moment of detonation the shock will be about equal to that of a heavy engine and a train of Pullman coaches running at seventy miles an hour, smashing into a stone wall. On leaving the muzzle of the gun the shell will have an energy equivalent to that of a ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... town just then was like a mountain chasm when a storm that has been gathering is about to break. In the air a deep rumble, and then a loud detonation. Blackness overhead, and things around that seemed to move ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... thin atmosphere of the planet will let the ship get right through to the surface before the tough skin could get much more than cherry red. And the ship would bury itself in the soft red soil (how deep?) before the impact sandwiched the containers of fissionable material enough for detonation proximity. ...
— Jack of No Trades • Charles Cottrell
... heard a deep-toned roaring noise to the northeast. It was unbelievably low-pitched. It rolled and reverberated beyond the horizon. The detonation of a hundred tons of high explosives or an equivalent impact can be heard for thirty miles, but at that distance it doesn't sound much like ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... behind the steel-bound door for the coming detonation. The sound of it smote him like a blow on the chest, followed by a rush of air and a sudden ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... have, as perhaps you are aware, a small creature armed and protected in much the same way. This is the bombardier-beetle, common in certain other countries, but also found in England, which if chased will discharge from its stern a puff of bluish-white smoke, accompanied by a slight detonation. It can fire many shots from its stern chasers. It is said that a highly volatile liquid is secreted by glands, which when it meets the air passes into vapour so suddenly as ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... standing with a rifle to his shoulder—his sallow cheek resting against the stock—the barrel apparently aligned upon my body—the quick detonation of a percussion-cap—a stream of red fire and smoke from the muzzle—a shock, followed by the quivering of the timbers to which I was tied, were perceptions and sensations of almost simultaneous occurrence. Twisting my head, and turning my eyes almost out of their sockets, ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... closed with a bang. A fainter detonation announced the whirlwind passage through the outer office. Footsteps died away ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse |
