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More "Concussion" Quotes from Famous Books



... allusion to the earthquakes which have made it famous. In the Statistical Account of Scotland, published in the year 1794, the Rev. Mr M'Diarmid, minister of the parish, gives an account of the first recorded earthquake in the district. During the autumn of 1789 loud noises, unaccompanied by any concussion, were heard by the inhabitants of Glenlednock; but on the 5th of November of that year they were alarmed by a loud rumbling noise, accompanied with a severe shock of earthquake, which was felt over a tract of country of more than twenty miles in extent. The Rev. Mr Mackenzie, ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... lower shaft whilst two fuses were fired in an upper. The anticipation of the shock was worse than the realisation. Each of us carried a candle, and the concussion blew them all out; but beyond that, the smell of gunpowder, and smoke, we experienced no harm, and as we had matches and the candles were soon relit, we had not to grope our ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall

... duration with that of the world: he showed, that its gradual diminution gave it such stability, as defeated all the common attacks of the elements, and could scarcely be overthrown by earthquakes themselves, the least resistible of natural violence. A concussion that should shatter the pyramid, would threaten the dissolution of ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... the brass buckle in his belt on the spine. The blow was so severe that the buckle was bent in two. It cut through his coat and shirt, and inflicted a slight wound two inches in length. But the blow on the spine had produced a concussion or disorganisation of the brain, which proved, after years of suffering, the cause of his death. At first he was quite senseless, but as he came to, and I asked him anxiously if he was hurt, he replied ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... test has proved that several of the most popular of recent rag-time tunes were originally scored by the brain of a patient who had met with a severe concussion while attempting to escape over the high wall of an Asylum for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 • Various

... down in the arm-chair where the infant prodigy had been left by the careless nurse, had crushed under the ample and heavy developement of his various femoral muscles, the hope of French literature! The concussion would have despoiled us of a hundred volumes, and Heaven can witness what volumes! History in romances; morality in proverbs; and religion in comedies. This is what the world of letters would have lost,—society would have lost a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 478, Saturday, February 26, 1831 • Various

... skiff, to a narrow dark aperture upon the rocky coast, and which appears the darker from its contrast with the white surf that is dashing about it. He is told to lie down on his back in the boat, to protect his head from a concussion against ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... not long have lain unconscious. No bones were broken, no severe concussion sustained in the rapid drag over the sandy surface, and the awful sense of the calamity that had befallen him and the dread and doubt as to the fate of his beloved ones seemed to rally his stunned and bewildered faculties and bring him face to face with the horror of ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King

... over, low above the cables, and the grinding concussion of a bomb lifted the ship, hurled it down with the stern end twisted to uselessness. ...
— A World is Born • Leigh Douglass Brackett

... violent concussion between a human hat and his office door, was apprised, by the usual means of communication, that somebody had come to call upon him, and giving that somebody admission, observed that it was ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens

... which had trembled from stem to stern under the tremendous concussion was floating now as quietly as a toy balloon, while the wind was rolling up and pushing before it a great cloud of smoke which obscured the sky. On all sides there was perfect stillness, broken only now and again by the last explosion of gas caught in the cylinders of the Taubes ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... with the Philadelphia Friend, who said to his wife on the introduction of gun-cotton, "What comfort can thee take, even when sitting in thy easy chair, when thee knows not but the very cushion underneath thee is an enormous bomb-shell, ready upon the slightest concussion to blow thee to ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague

... the door-jamb, Jan opened his jaws and—barked. But the novelty of the performance, superimposed upon the concussion and the exertion involved, was too much for his stability, and with one prolonged but unsuccessful effort to hold on to his dignity Jan rolled over on the side farthest from the door-jamb. It was not to be denied, however, that he had barked; and the strange sound—it ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson

... effect, was the Reformation, which had just then taken place. This event gave a mighty impulse and increased activity to thought and inquiry, and agitated the inert mass of accumulated prejudices throughout Europe. The effect of the concussion was general; but the shock was greatest in this country. It toppled down the full-grown, intolerable abuses of centuries at a blow; heaved the ground from under the feet of bigotted faith and slavish obedience; and the roar and dashing of opinions, loosened ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... became silent, listening. There was heavy thud, a concussion that made their seat shiver. The passers-by stopped, shouted to one another. The old man was full of questions; he shouted to a man who passed near. Graham, emboldened by his example, got up and accosted others. None knew what ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells

... after his little concussion Sir Barnes Newcome came home, not much hurt in body, but woefully afflicted in temper, and venting his wrath upon everybody round about him in that strong language which he employed when displeased; and under which his valet, his housekeeper, his butler, his farm-bailiff, his ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... a concussion shell blew in a part of the trench, filling it up to the parapet. That afternoon we cleared up the mess and put down a flooring of bricks in a newly opened corner. When night came we went back to the village in the rear. "The Town of the Last Woman" ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill

... silently relieved. The rain fell at intervals in heavy showers, and we stood drenched through and blinded by the flashes, which broke the Egyptian darkness with a brightness which seemed almost malignant; while the thunder rolled in peals, the concussion of which appeared to shake the very ocean. A ship is not often injured by lightning, for the electricity is separated by the great number of points she presents, and the quantity of iron which she has scattered in various parts. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... indissoluble union between body and soul. Indissoluble, one calls it, and yet nothing is more patent than the fact that it is a union which is invariably and inevitably dissolved in death; while on the other hand, one sees in certain physical catastrophes, such as paralysis, brain- concussion, senile decay, insanity, the soul apparently reduced to the condition of a sleeping partner, or so far deranged as to be unable to express anything but some one dominant emotion; or, more bewildering still, one sees the moral sense seemingly suspended by a physical ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson

... under the back of his head, and stared at the ceiling. The Count sat upon the edge of his board, crossing one knee over the other and looking at his nails, or trying to look at them in the insufficient light. In some distant part of the building a door was occasionally opened and shut, and the slight concussion sent long echoes down the stone passages. The Count ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford

... solid line of blazing fire right from the muzzles of the Yankee guns being poured right into our very faces, singeing our hair and clothes, the hot blood of our dead and wounded spurting on us, the blinding smoke and stifling atmosphere filling our eyes and mouths, and the awful concussion causing the blood to gush out of our noses and ears, and above all, the roar of battle, made it a perfect pandemonium. Afterward I heard a soldier express himself by saying that he thought "Hell had broke loose in ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins

... though a gigantic scythe had swept across them. The storm was now at its height. The lightning filled the defile, and the thunderclaps had become one continued peal. The ground, struck by the concussion, trembled as though the whole Ural chain ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne

... for her to use, to manifest more fortitude. Under such circumstances Spike did not deem it expedient to utter that which was uppermost in his mind, but, turning short upon Tier, he directed a tremendous blow directly between his eyes. Jack saw the danger and dodged, falling backward to avoid a concussion which he knew would otherwise be fearful, coming as it would from one of the best forecastle boxers of his time. The full force of the blow was avoided, though Jack got enough of it to knock him down, and to give him a pair of black eyes. Spike ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... measures already taken; Uncle Geoffrey himself feeling convinced that his approval was genuine, and not merely assumed for courtesy's sake. He gave them, too, more confident hope of the patient than Philip, in his diffidence, had ventured to do, saying that though there certainly was concussion of the brain, he thought there was great probability that the patient would do well, provided that they could combat the feverish symptoms which had begun to appear. He consulted with Philip Carey, the future treatment was agreed upon, and he left them with cheered and renewed spirits ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the Doctor said. "Abel will tell me about it. Slight concussion of the brain. Can't remember very well for an hour or two,—will ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... pounded granite, Then the miner lighted the fuse and hastened away, giving the usual signal, "Fire!" The others followed him to a safe distance, and awaited the result. In a few minutes there was a loud report, a bright blinding flash, and a concussion of the air which extinguished two of the candles. Immediately a crash followed, as the heavy mass of rock was torn from its bed and hurled to ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne

... a pointed rock; High o'er the billows flew the massy load, And near the ship came thundering on the flood. It almost brush'd the helm, and fell before: The whole sea shook, and refluent beat the shore, The strong concussion on the heaving tide Roll'd back the vessel to the island's side: Again I shoved her off: our fate to fly, Each nerve we stretch, and every oar we ply. Just 'scaped impending death, when now again We twice as far had ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... Peggy Doharty. She has fallen from her horse and has concussion of the brain. I must go to her at once. Oh, alannah, alannah! ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... attendants turn away Brennan's suggestion with hard-headed medical opinion. Brennan could hardly argue with the fact that an accident victim would be better off in a hospital under close observation. Shock demanded it, and there was the hidden possibility of internal injury or concussion to consider. ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith

... poor, and when the third girl was born he was discharged from the road because of his disability, yet he was still able to put children into the world. When the oldest child was twelve years old the father died of concussion of the brain while the youngest child was born ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger

... of one of these affrays, which has brought us still better acquainted with these singular people. A quarrel originating in jealousy had produced results of the most serious nature. A blow on the head with a tent-pole had evidently produced concussion of the brain if not fracture, and the victim was lying on his straw bed in a state of profound coma. The tent was tripartite, being formed of three main tops meeting in a centre: one was sacred to the women—the gynekeion of the Greeks, the anderoon of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various

... up, up, up through a deep warm ocean, nearer and nearer to full light and stirring air. Or like the return to consciousness after concussion of the brain. I was once thrown from a horse while on a visit to a wild mountainous country quite new to me, and I can clearly remember the mental experience of coming back to life, through lifting veils of dream. When I first dimly heard the voices ...
— Herland • Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman

... to which the bandages are attached has a projection from every point, on which the child, in case of accident, can possibly fall, and he is thus effectually protected; for, as the projection allows of his falling only slightly out of the perpendicular, the concussion is but slight, and the young one is only pressed gently ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)

... at the door jamb and swung herself toward the ceiling. At the same time the armed man fired. The discharge missed her and washed against the transmission machinery. Blue fire exploded from the room. The three men screamed in agony. Concussion threw Mryna helplessly toward ...
— The Guardians • Irving Cox

... and she retired. The physician ordered that I should be kept quiet, and seemed to think I was in danger. I asked what was the matter with me? and the surgeon, with a very grave face, informed me that I had an ugly contusion on my head. I had heard of a concussion of the brain; but I did not know distinctly what it was, and my fears were increased by my ignorance. The life which, but a few hours before, I had been on the point of voluntarily destroying, because it was insupportably burdensome, I was now, the moment it was in danger, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... affair it was—when they were startled by someone blaspheming in a way that made their flesh creep. Even Tim blanched; for in the voice he recognized the timbre of insanity. He had seen this happen in the trenches, when men driven mad by concussion or gas or horrors ran amuck among their fellows. The one who now swam toward them was evidently a stoker—a powerful creature. His face was grimed with coal dirt, his eyes were red, and his blasphemies were interspersed with hilarity at the prospect of cutting ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris

... felt the plane quiver, as if released from the power of the force that had held it. It nosed down and crashed, rolled over amid the wreckage of a shattered wing. The concussion shot Dick from the cockpit ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... aside to see whether he could not light the remaining lamp of the car, which did not appear to have been broken, and had possibly only gone out through the sudden concussion, ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes

... 2623. CONCUSSION OF BRAIN—STUNNING.—This may be caused by a blow or a fall.—Symptoms. Cold skin; weak pulse; almost total insensibility; slow, weak breathing; pupil of eye sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller, than natural; inability to move; unwillingness to answer when spoken to. These symptoms come on directly ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton

... elephants, gall them with missiles, cut their girths, and so precipitate their riders to the ground. Relieved from this danger, the Arab horse succeeded in repulsing the Persians, who as evening approached retired in good order to their camp. The chief loss on this, the "day of concussion," was suffered by the Arabs, who admit that they had 500 killed, and must have had a ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson

... an immense concussion, the chateau literally threw itself into the air, bursting into flaming fragments as it rose, and then tumbling back upon itself in a smoking pile that lay projecting half into the water of the lake. There was no fire—what smoke there was drifted off mingling with the sunshine, and ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... rarefied and broken the air, that birds flying over have fallen down, the air not being able to support them; and it is believed by some that great ringing of bells in populous cities hath chased away thunder, and also dissipated pestilent air. All which may be also from the concussion of the air, and not from ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various

... must have amounted to concussion of the brain, for though he was able to return to the Dragon in a couple of days, and the cut over his eye was healing fast, he was weak and shaken, and did not for several weeks recover ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the guests were by this time fixed on Gibbie. What could be the matter with the curious creature? they wondered. His gentle merriment and quiet delight in waiting upon them, had given a pleasant concussion to the spirits of the party, which had at first threatened to be rather a stiff and dull one; and there now was the boy all at once looking as if he had received a blow, or some cutting insult which he did not ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... philosophical minds to oppose, is shown by the fact that both Descartes and Francis Bacon speak of it with respect, admitting the fact, and suggesting very mildly that the bells may accomplish this purpose by the concussion of the air.(246) ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... rise in full view, within sixty yards of the cannon-mouths, the batteries fire, with a concussion that shakes the hill itself. Their shot punch holes through the front ranks of the cuirassiers, and horse and riders fall in heaps. But they are not stopped, hardly checked, galloping up to the mouths of the guns, passing between the pieces, and plunging among the Allied infantry behind ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... early forenoon, and again, less distinctly, about noontime. Thereafter, for a while, there had been a lull in the firing; but now it was constant—a steady, sustained boom- boom-boom, so far away that it fell on the eardrums as a gentle concussion; as a throb of air, rather than as a real sound. For three days now we had been following that distant voice of the cannon, trying to catch up with it as it advanced, always southward, toward the French frontier. Therefore we flogged the belly of our tired ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... undiscovered hearts of men and women young and old. The half-clad lovely were protected from the satyrs in the audience by an impalpable screen made of light and of ascending music in which strings, brass, and concussion exemplified the naive sensuality of lyrical niggers. The guffaw which, occasionally leaping sharply out of the dim, mysterious auditorium, surged round the silhouetted conductor and drove like a cyclone between ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... further, we fired off our muskets, which awoke echoes in that silent place the like of which had never been heard before. Had we exploded a barrel of gunpowder, the sound of it would not have been louder nor the concussion greater, than was caused by the discharge of our firearms. Huge masses of stalactites fell from the roof, while the air space around us became filled with bats, and flying creatures with heads like foxes, disturbed from their slumbers by the ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes

... know. Such a blow might easily fracture the skull, possibly bring about a concussion of the brain. Regard, likewise, his laborious breathing. I most assuredly advise ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... deeply read in this kind of judicial combats, can imagine the encounter of the graceless nephew and the stranger knight. He sees their concussion, man to man, and horse to horse, in mid career, and Sir Graceless hurled to the ground and slain. He will not wonder that the assailants of the brawny uncles were less successful in their rude encounter; but he will picture to himself the stout stranger spurring to their rescue, in the very ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... throat and turned to the captain. "Yes, my report is good on the whole," he said. "None of the men are seriously injured, thanks to your prompt rescue measures. Captain Larpent is still unconscious; he is suffering from concussion. But I believe he will recover. And—and—" he hesitated, looking again at Saltash—"the—the ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell

... under her bottom, comparatively slight damage was done her. The articles in her store-room, directly over the spot where the machine struck her, were thrown about in every direction, showing the force of the concussion. Admiral Dundas and several officers with him had, however, a narrow escape, one of the machines exploding while they stood around it examining ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston

... again, insomuch as if it were to last long, (ver. 22.) "no flesh could be saved; but for the elects sake those days shall be shortened" (made fewer). But that tribulation is not yet come; for it is to be followed immediately (ver. 29.) by a darkening of the Sun and Moon, a falling of the Stars, a concussion of the Heavens, and the glorious coming again of our Saviour, in the cloudes. And therefore The Antichrist is not yet come; whereas, many Popes are both come and gone. It is true, the Pope in taking upon him to give Laws ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... has been reduced by the wearing of helmets to about one half per cent. While the helmet does not afford complete protection against rifle and shrapnel fire, it has been found that hits result only in severe concussion, where before fatal wound resulted. These ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss

... every one was energetic in the discharge of his duty. Mr. Ambleton was fully alive to the peril of the moment, and he was careful to make his aim sure with the great gun. It had been loaded before with a solid shot, and presently the steamer was shaken to her keel by the concussion ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... would have thought he had no reason to die, but alas! fate had its eye on him. . . . The poor fellow fell a victim to his habits of observation. On one occasion, when he was listening at a keyhole, he got such a bang on the head from the door that he sustained concussion of the brain (he had a brain), and died. And here, under this tombstone, lies a man who from his cradle detested verses and epigrams. . . . As though to mock him his whole tombstone is adorned with verses. . . . ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... embroidered nightshirt, and his bare feet projected from his trousers. His head was horribly injured, and the whole room bore witness to the savage ferocity of the blow which had struck him down. Beside him lay the heavy poker, bent into a curve by the concussion. Holmes examined both it and the indescribable wreck which it ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,

... undergone this operation, having been seized by a wounded elephant but rescued from its fury, described to me his sufferings as he was thus flung back and forward between the hind and fore feet of the animal, which ineffectually attempted to trample him at each concussion, and abandoned him ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... of the mysterious explosion. Their prisoner, helpless as he had seemed, had proved too much for them. Slipping and stumbling along in the darkness, the masked lads had but one thought—to get away before they saw more of that blue fire, and the force of the concussion. ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton

... her where he thought he might be most needed. One of his patients in the after-cabin was muttering uneasily, for there was some feverishness; the other man had come down with a crash on the icy deck, and the shock had apparently caused concussion of the spine, for he could not move, and he was fed as if he were a child. Lewis bent over the helpless seaman, and spoke kindly. The man sighed, "Thank God I am where I am, sir. That long plaister begins to burn a bit, but I a'most like it. There's little ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman

... sudden upheaval of timbers and roof. A colossal burst of smoke. A long time later the concussion of a vast explosion. There was nothing left where the warehouse ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various

... a tremendous concussion, the stone giving him a violent blow, and as the sky above seemed to blaze there was a roar like thunder, then a perceptible pause, another roar, again a pause, ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn

... might of his giant strength. Seth and the Agent, and Nevil and the minister were his chief supporters. And there was a light in the cleric's eyes, such as had never been seen there before by any of his flock, and a devilish joy in his heart as he felt the concussion of his blows upon heads that ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum

... There were constant bursts of fiery projectiles, shooting to an immense height into the black column of smoke, and tinging it with a lurid red colour. The fearful roaring and thundering never ceased for one moment, and the house shook with the concussion of the air. One stream of lava flowed towards Torre del Greco, but luckily stopped before it reached the cultivated fields; others, and the most dangerous ones, since some of them came from the new craters, ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville

... — N. impulse, impulsion, impetus; momentum; push, pulsion^, thrust, shove, jog, jolt, brunt, booming, boost [U.S.], throw; explosion &c (violence) 173; propulsion &c 284. percussion, concussion, collision, occursion^, clash, encounter, cannon, carambole^, appulse^, shock, crash, bump; impact; elan; charge &c (attack) 716; beating &c (punishment) 972. blow, dint, stroke, knock, tap, rap, slap, smack, pat, dab; fillip; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... physicians said there was concussion of the brain, and that the man would die. All the medical skill that the officer could procure was employed in the hope of saving the life of the man. His conscience smote him for having, as he believed, taken the life of a fellow-creature, and he ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure

... entrapped brute put into that spring that it carried the log attached to the chain along with him, and his sharp, glittering fang-like teeth snapped together within a few inches of Oowikapun's throat, and such was the force of the concussion that he was hurled backward, and ere he could assume the aggressive, the sharp teeth of the wolf had seized his left arm, which he threw up for defence, and seemed to cut down to the very bone, causing intense ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young

... her own impression the next morning, had no sleep during that night. The striking of the hall clock could not be heard in the bedroom with the door closed, but it could be felt as a faint, distinct concussion; and she had thus noted every hour, except four o'clock, when daylight had come and the street lamp had been put out. She had deliberately feigned sleep as Louis entered the room, and had maintained the soft, regular breathing ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... hundred mortars and the simultaneous booming of an enormous cannon—that far-famed gun whose wayward tricks had cost the lives of hundreds of its loaders in the days of the Good Duke—might have passed for an earthquake of the first magnitude, so far as noise and concussion were concerned. The island rocked to its foundations. It was the signal for the festival of the ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... behind it, and sank back into a gray encompassing cloud. The dust thrown up by a column of passing horse poured over the wall in one long wave, and whitened the garden with its ashes. Throughout the dim empty house one no longer heard the sound of cannon, only a dull intermittent concussion was felt, silently bringing flakes of plaster from the walls, or sliding fragments of glass from the shattered windows. A shell, lifted from the ominous distance, hung uncertain in the air and then descended swiftly through the roof; the whole house dilated ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... brazen tongue, Its wide vibrations, wafted by the gale, To each far listener tell a different tale. The sexton, stooping to the quivering floor Till the great caldron spills its brassy roar, Whirls the hot axle, counting, one by one, Each dull concussion, till his task is done. Toil's patient daughter, when the welcome note Clangs through the silence from the steeple's throat, Streams, a white unit, to the checkered street, Demure, but guessing whom she soon shall meet; The bell, responsive to her secret flame, With every note repeats ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... of others. When I went with my father to America, my mother remained in England, and my aunt came with us, to take care of me. She died in consequence of the overturning of a carriage (in which we were travelling), from which she received a concussion of the spine; and her last words to me, after a night of angelic endurance of restless fever and suffering, were, "Open the window; let in the blessed light"—almost the same as Goethe's, with a characteristic difference. It was with the hope of giving her the proceeds of its publication, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... say that if a gun is fired with the muzzle held just through the ice of a frozen pool, the concussion will so stun the fish beneath that they will float up to the under side of the ice. Willis was afraid that this would burst his gun, but the trout looked so alluring that at last he ventured the experiment. John cut a small hole with the axe, and then Willis, lying down, thrust the ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten

... my love," Nan said, calmly. "I don't want concussion of the brain, from being hit by a ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells

... out, receiving some of the concussion of the exploding rocket. When his eyes snapped open he was floating like a feather in open, airless space. His rubberoid space suit, living up to its rigid tests, had inflated to its elastic limit. But it held and within its automatic units began ...
— Shipwreck in the Sky • Eando Binder

... in a remote part of the enclosure, screaming with terror. At the boy's feet lay, face downwards, the dead body of a man, with his head horribly beaten in. His watch was under him, hanging out of his pocket by the chain. It had stopped—evidently in consequence of the concussion of its owner's fall on it—at half-past eight. The body was still warm. All the other valuables, like the watch, were left on it. The farm-bailiff instantly recognized the man as the carpenter ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins

... then the closing of the inner door; and finally the outer one closed with a concussion which shook ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce

... bed, and the nurses were always telling me not to talk. I was in a hospital. I knew that; but I didn't know why I was there. One day I thought I should like to know why, and so I asked. I was feeling much better now. They told me by degrees that I had had concussion of the brain. I had been brought there unconscious, and had remained unconscious for forty-eight hours. I had been in an accident—a railway-accident. This seemed to me odd. I had arrived quite safely at ...
— A. V. Laider • Max Beerbohm

... spectacles, who had cut off eighty-seven legs and arms to his own share, after the battle of Eylau, having retired with his sword and his saw, his laurels and his sticking-plaster to this, his native town, was called in, and rather thought the gallant Colonel's skull was fractured; at all events, there was concussion of the seat of thought, and quite enough work for his remarkable self-healing powers to occupy ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... had been much interested in his case. He had expected to find some signs of his having received accidentally or otherwise a blow upon the head, but on examination he found no scar or wound. The condition he was in was frequently the result of concussion of the brain, sometimes of prolonged nervous strain or harrowing mental shock. Such cases occurred not infrequently. Quiet and entire freedom from excitement would do more for such a condition than anything else. If he was afraid of strangers, by all ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... retorted, and persisted in their superior pretensions. Then there was such shopping in the county town! It was so boundless that the credit of the Hall was finally exhausted, and the old Squire was driven to remark that "Och, and to be sure it was a dreadful and tirrabell concussion, to be put upon the equipment of seven daughters all at the same moment, as if the young gentleman could marry them all! Och, then, poor dear shoul, he would be after finding that one was sufficient, if not one too many. ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various

... King George in consideration of his provocation; for was he not, like Wat Tyler, the girl's father? She remembered what she accounted that man's only weakness—his dwelling with joy on the sound of the hammer-stroke of his swift, retributive justice—the concussion of the remorseless wrought iron on the split skull of a human beast. She remembered his words with a shudder:—"Ay, mistress, I can shut my eyes and listen for it now. And many was the time it gave ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... arms about her, that the sculptor was enabled to save her from a severe blow. The vase fell crashing to the floor, breaking into heavy shards, rattling the windows and the casts upon the wall by the concussion. ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates

... Shanghai, that trip when the second officer brought from home had delayed the ship three hours in port by contriving (in some manner Captain MacWhirr could never understand) to fall overboard into an empty coal-lighter lying alongside, and had to be sent ashore to the hospital with concussion of the brain and ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad

... History Pathology Changes in the Bursa Changes in the Cartilage Changes in the Tendon Changes in the Bone Causes Heredity Compression Concussion A Weak Navicular Bone An Irregular Blood-supply to the Bone Senile Decay Symptoms and Diagnosis Differential ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks

... individual halted before a solitary tree, and regarded it as intently as he could, with the result that he saw two trees. His attempt to pass between these resulted in a near-concussion of the brain. He reeled back, but presently sighted carefully, and tried again, with the like result. When this had happened a half-dozen times, the unhappy man lifted up his voice ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous

... any luck," said Quimbleton, "we would have blown him into a concussion. But anyway, that's a bonny scheme. We'll grant him a truce. Bleak, you're a newspaper man, just get hold of the United Press and let them ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley

... Syrene. Capt. Davis, of the Rose, having witnessed the firing of the Turkish vessel, went in one of his boats to assist that of the Dartmouth; and the crew of these two boats were in the act of climbing up the sides of the fireship, when she instantly exploded with a tremendous concussion, blowing the men into the water, and killing and disabling several in the boats close alongside. Just about this time, and before the men had descended from the yards, an Egyptian double-banked frigate poured a broadside into our ship. The captain gave instant orders to fire away; and the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 356, Saturday, February 14, 1829 • Various

... long train left New Brunswick, there was another attack, this one on the town they had just left. The last two cars of the train were blown from the track by the initial concussion, and the remainder of the train brought to a grinding, jerking stop that threw the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various

... a strong arm and dashed the point with my utmost force against the solid granite: my arm was numbed to the shoulder from the violence of the concussion, and continued so for nearly a week, but the sword appeared not to be at all blunted, or to have suffered in ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... excellence in comparison with the rest of human kind, swoln with self-sufficiency, float like empty bubbles on the water's surface, and who seem as if they would break and be dissolved by contact with a vulgar touch. They contrive to swim by means of their air-blown vanity until they come into concussion with some material object, and are at once reduced to their proper level, and for ever annihilated. Their country is London; their domicile Regent-street; thence they would never travel, had they their wills,—not but they would like to see ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various

... white hand to the heavy braids which it was then the fashion to pile high on the head and have hanging down in two rows to the nape of the neck behind, as if she expected them to be disarranged by the concussion. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... passengers had been a good deal mixed up, in the concussion, but soon began to emerge seriatim from the side door which in the fall came uppermost—only one of them much hurt, and he by a bruise or gash on the head nowise dangerous. Each, as his or her head protruded ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... Ship was injured, was filling, would quickly sink. Wild consternation prevailed. There was but one boat, and that small. Fitzstephen, sobered by the concussion, hastily lowered it, crowded into it the prince and a few nobles, and bade them hastily to push off and row ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... may change, "Each time she moves, those passages of air; "These caverns close, and others open throw. "Or whether wind, confin'd in those deep caves, "Hurls rocks on rocks, and what the seeds of fire "Contain; and flames from the concussion burst; "The winds appeas'd, cold will the caves be left. "Or if the flame be by bitumen caught, "Or by pale sulphur, fiercely will it burn "To the last particle; but when the earth "Fuel and oily nutriment no more "The flame shall give; a tedious length of years "Its force exhausting, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... swooped out of the blackness above and against which there was no defence. They fled only to witness another and greater light behind them by which they saw themselves running, falling, grovelling. This time they were hurled from their balance by a concussion which dwarfed the two preceding ones. Some few stood still, staring at the rolling smoke-bank as it was revealed by the explosion, their eyes gleaming white, while others buried their faces in their hollowed arms as if to shut out the hellish glare, or to shield ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach

... purple finch. The little tragedy was easily read. The blackbird had pursued the finch with such murderous violence that the latter, in its desperate efforts to escape, had sought refuge in the Treasury. The force of the concussion against the heavy plateglass of the window had killed the poor thing instantly. The pursuer, no doubt astonished at the sudden and novel termination of the career of its victim, hovered for a moment, as if to be sure of what had ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... been pent up in the small bay just noticed, have in their efforts to escape undermined the land and rocks at this place, and forced a subterraneous passage, which by wearing, aided by some violent concussion, has caused the rocks to fall in, when the earth being washed away by the rapidity of the current, has left the present passage open, and that the split-rock and the bed of the channel is part of ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher

... impulse, impulsion, impetus; momentum; push, pulsion^, thrust, shove, jog, jolt, brunt, booming, boost [U.S.], throw; explosion &c (violence) 173; propulsion &c 284. percussion, concussion, collision, occursion^, clash, encounter, cannon, carambole^, appulse^, shock, crash, bump; impact; elan; charge &c (attack) 716; beating &c (punishment) 972. blow, dint, stroke, knock, tap, rap, slap, smack, pat, dab; fillip; slam, bang; hit, whack, thwack; cuff &c 972; squash, dowse, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... water with a splash and concussion that nearly knocked the breath from his body, and promptly sank. As the water closed over his head, he struck out with hands and feet in an effort to climb again to light and air. His head broke the surface, and he flailed the water in an effort to keep his nose in air. The ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole

... sudden formation or destruction of an elastic fluid. In the first case, when either a solid or liquid is instantaneously converted into an elastic fluid, the prodigious and sudden expansion of the body strikes the air with great violence, and this concussion ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet

... with a large berg that was doing no particular harm to us, but against which he seemed suddenly to have conceived a violent spite. Luckily a considerable quantity of snow overlaid the ice, which, acting as a buffer, in some measure mitigated the violence of the concussion; while the very fragility of her build diminishing the momentum, proved in the end the little schooner's greatest security. Nevertheless, I must confess that more than once, while leaning forward in expectation ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... showed, that its gradual diminution gave it such stability, as defeated all the common attacks of the elements, and could scarcely be overthrown by earthquakes themselves, the least resistible of natural violence. A concussion that should shatter the pyramid, would threaten the ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... arches of stone that held up the roof had fallen in from the concussion of the gases of the shell. Three feet of solid stones covered the floor. Men and women were being carried out. Silk hats, canes, shoes, hats, baby clothes, an expensive fur, lay buried in the stone ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger

... but ineffectually. For the mule had bolted and was winged. They fortunately came into contact with nothing except a large barrow of carrots, turnips, and cabbages which an old woman was wheeling up Longshaw Road. The concussion upset the barrow, half filled the victoria with vegetables, and for a second stayed the mule; but no real harm seemed to have been done, and the mule proceeded with vigour. Then the Countess noticed that Denry was not using his right arm, which ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... breath—I felt the vessel rise. She was swung up with the giddy velocity of a hunter clearing a tall gate; she sank again, and there was a mighty concussion forward, then a pause of steadiness whilst you might have counted five, then a wild upward heave, a sort of sharp floating fall, a harsh grating along her keel and sides, as though she was being smartly warped over rocks, followed by an unmistakable free pitching ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell

... waste no time, but to go through the rooms as hastily as possible and get back to bed; and at the speed I travelled I might have bumped into a burglar in the dark and knocked him over, and his head might have struck some hard object, causing concussion of the brain; and as a burglar has a small brain a small amount of concussion might have ruined it entirely. But as I am a slight man it might have been my brain that got concussed. A father of a family has to ...
— The Water Goats and Other Troubles • Ellis Parker Butler

... appearing above the surface. Most of them, however, were in motion, swimming to and fro, or darting rapidly from point to point, as if in pursuit of prey. Now and then their huge tails could be seen curling high up in air, and then striking down upon the water, causing a concussion that echoed far through the forest. At intervals a shining object, flung upward by their tails, could be seen for a moment in the air, amidst the showery spray that was raised along with it. It was easy to see that the glittering forms thus ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid

... rest, and she retired. The physician ordered that I should be kept quiet, and seemed to think I was in danger. I asked what was the matter with me? and the surgeon, with a very grave face, informed me that I had an ugly contusion on my head. I had heard of a concussion of the brain; but I did not know distinctly what it was, and my fears were increased by my ignorance. The life which, but a few hours before, I had been on the point of voluntarily destroying, because ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... six dead; and when he'd finished, and two visitors were fumbling in their pockets, I took him by the collar and lifted him clean through the kitchen and down the yard into the street. I nearly knocked Swift over, or rather I nearly fell myself, from concussion with his burly person, but he was the very man I wanted. I said, 'Mr. Swift, may I ask you to do me a favor? This boy—whose father was a respectable man—has been begging— BEGGING! in a public room. His excuse is that his mother is starving. ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... been sealed. But, ere half that time had elapsed, there burst from her such a blaze of cannon and musketry that the night was illumined as though by a flash of lightning. The schooner trembled to her keel with the concussion. The advancing canoes were so torn and riddled, by the hail of grape and bullets, that several of them sank, a score of their occupants were killed, many more were wounded, and the survivors fled in consternation to the shore. From there, behind a breastwork of logs, they opened a harmless fire ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... further experiments which tend to put to the proof any more of these allowed opinions which contribute so much to the public tranquillity. In effect, we suffer as much at home by this loosening of all ties, and this concussion of all established opinions, as we do abroad; for in order to prove that the Americans have no right to their liberties, we are every day endeavoring to subvert the maxims which preserve the whole spirit of our own. To prove that the Americans ...
— Standard Selections • Various

... and the world around Hetty erupted in a roaring inferno of purple-red fire and ear-shattering sound. The rolling concussion swept Hetty from her feet and tumbled her into a drywash gully at the base of the hill. The gully saved her life as the sky-splitting shock wave rolled over her. Stunned and deafened, she flattened ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael

... them addressed to a Prussian guard, Mr. Lavender clung closer to the objects, but finding them wriggle in his clasp let go, and, bolting forward like a rabbit on his hands and knees, came into contact with the Major's head. The sound of the concussion, the Major's oaths, Mr. Lavender's moans, Blink's barking, and the peals of laughter from Aurora made up a noise which might have been heard in Portugal. The situation was not eased until Mr. Lavender crawled out, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... concussion, and a roar as the air blasted out of the ship. It did not take us long to discover that the enemy were dead. Their terrible, bloated corpses lay everywhere in the ship. Most of the men we were able to recognize, ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell

... guns being poured right into our very faces, singeing our hair and clothes, the hot blood of our dead and wounded spurting on us, the blinding smoke and stifling atmosphere filling our eyes and mouths, and the awful concussion causing the blood to gush out of our noses and ears, and above all, the roar of battle, made it a perfect pandemonium. Afterward I heard a soldier express himself by saying that he thought "Hell had broke loose in Georgia, ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins

... was such a splendid shot that he had often "barked" squirrels, as was a noted practice of the old pioneer. I had to explain to Takahashi that this practice consisted of shooting a bullet to hit the bark right under the squirrel, and the concussion would so stun it that it would fall ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... air-holes, chilled and wetted as I already was, kept me awake against my will. I had also another misfortune to endure. As often as I attempted to sit upright on my luxurious couch, my head would receive a severe concussion. I had forgotten the poles which are fixed across each of these antechambers, for the purpose of hanging up fish to dry, &c. Unfortunately I could not bear this arrangement in mind until after I had received half a dozen ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer

... I widened the crack in one of them and gouged out a space in the rubber. In this I put the heads of three matches, teed the ball on the beach, called to Powers what I had done and told him to keep his eye on the ball. I hit it clean and fair, but a trail of smoke told that the concussion had ignited the matches. The ball fell in the underbrush a few yards from Powers, and he almost cried when he took out ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams

... awake in my apartment, heard the officer of the deck give the order for tacking ship—"Ready about"—and after the boatswain's pipe to "Stations." "Ready, ready," when she received a shock, as from the concussion of a heavy sea, then another, and another, which soon convinced me that the ship was ashore. This was certainly unpleasant, as I had no doubt but that we were at that time twenty miles from land, and the ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay

... waist and flung the girl against the wall of the cabin, protecting her with his body. The avalanche was upon them, splitting great trees to kindling-wood in the fury of its rush. The concussion of the wind shattered every window to fragments, almost tore the cabin from its foundations. Only the extreme tail of the slide touched them, yet they were buried deep ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine

... of that terrible day for French Rule, the 13th September, calling to see her, finds her a corpse just ready for interment. Fortunately for the heroine, a bombshell forgotten in the yard, all at once and in the nick of time igniting, explodes, shattering the tenement in fragments. The concussion recalls Mdlle. de Rochebrune to life; a happy marriage soon after ensues. The chief character in the novel, the Intendant sails shortly after for France, where he was imprisoned, as history states, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... Turkish vessel, went in one of his boats to assist that of the Dartmouth; and the crew of these two boats were in the act of climbing up the sides of the fireship, when she instantly exploded with a tremendous concussion, blowing the men into the water, and killing and disabling several in the boats close alongside. Just about this time, and before the men had descended from the yards, an Egyptian double-banked frigate poured a broadside into our ship. The captain gave instant orders ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 356, Saturday, February 14, 1829 • Various

... the surface is not so continually chilled by the passing and the melting of ice as in this sea; and I should strongly recommend a strict hourly attention to the thermometrical state of the water at the surface, in all parts where ships are exposed to the dangerous concussion of sailing icebergs, as ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin

... unmitigated terror. Indeed, I now perceived that I had entirely overdone the business, and that the main consequences of the shock were yet to be experienced. Accordingly, in less than a second, I felt all the blood in my body rushing to my temples, and immediately thereupon, a concussion, which I shall never forget, burst abruptly through the night and seemed to rip the very firmament asunder. When I afterward had time for reflection, I did not fail to attribute the extreme violence of the explosion, as regarded myself, to its proper cause—my situation directly above it, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... against the hot lower sky, marked some colliery where they raise the iridescent coal of the place. Nearer at hand was the broad stretch of railway, and half-invisible trains shunted—a steady puffing and rumbling, with every run a ringing concussion and a rhymthic series of impacts, and a passage of intermittent puffs of white steam across the further view. And to the left, between the railway and the dark mass of the low hill beyond, dominating the whole view, colossal, inky-black, and crowned with smoke and fitful flames, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... "Lovey Mary was so well pleased with her boardin'-house, she drummed it up among her friends. This here lady has been at the hospittal. She got knocked over by a wagon out there near the factory, an' it run into celebrated concussion. The nurse told Lovey Mary this mornin' it was somethin' like information of the brain. What we're all goin' to do is to try to get her well. I'm a-goin' home now to git her a nice dinner, an' I jes bet some of you'll see to it that she gits a good supper. You kin jes bank ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice

... along with him; the last object that crossed my sight, as I lay bruised and motionless, being the captain as he took the wall in a flying leap, and disappeared at the other side. After a few scrambling efforts to rise, Badger regained his legs and stood beside me; but such was the shock and concussion of my fall that all the objects around seemed wavering and floating before me, while showers of bright sparks fell in myriads before my eyes. I tried to rise, but fell back helpless. Cold perspiration broke over my forehead, and I ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... of transition. Madame de Stael and Chateaubriand announce the future; the writers of an inferior rank represent with declining power the past, and give some faint presentiment of things to come. The great political concussion was not favourable to art. Abstract ideas united with the passions of the hour produced poetry which was of the nature of a declamatory pamphlet. Innumerable pieces were presented on the stage, but their ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... with soft alluvium, adorns it with velvet verdure, enriches it with fruits and grains, glorifies it with the beauty of blooms. In the struggle all seems to be chaos and destruction; but after each shock the elevation is greater. Perhaps it is that always the concussion of the shock impresses, while the soft, slow, silent constancy accustoms us and is unheeded; but I think there is another cause. In any church you are not sure of sincerity, of earnestness. Church building and church organization are the ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... There was concussion of the brain, shock to the system, and a long confinement to bed. The doctor was badly puzzled, not by the symptoms, but by a request which Humphreys made to him as soon as he was able to say anything. 'I wish you would open the ball in the maze.' 'Hardly room enough there, I should have thought,' ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James

... holding it at arm's length. When the tiny messenger touched earth soon after leaving his hand, he continued his downward progress. Once, no sound followed for some seconds, and then it was only a distant concussion far down beside the sea. With an involuntary shudder, the climber turned and made his way upwards and sideways again, before venturing to ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman

... impact or by a radio signal. It was, however, deflected markedly from its course by the force of the blast, so that instead of striking the Forlorn Hope in direct central impact, its head merely touched the apex of the mirror-plated wedge. That touch was enough. There was another appalling concussion, another blinding glare, and the entire front quarter of the terrestrial vessel had gone ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... upon to risk their lives on the battlefield. The accounts all closed with the information that the wounded had been carried to Jervis Street Hospital, and were under treatment suitable to their injuries. Hyacinth had suffered a slight concussion of the brain and a flesh wound. Other sufferers were in the same ward, Mr. Shea himself occupying a bed, so that Hyacinth had the satisfaction of seeing him stretched out, a melancholy figure, with a bandage concealing most of his red hair. After the surgeon had finished his rounds ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... our expression that sometimes the icicles themselves have fallen, as if by concussion, or as if something had swept against the under side of an aerial ice floe, detaching ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... had better come away." But inspiration could hardly have served him better. Lydgate had not before seen that Fred was present, and his sudden appearance with an announcement of Mr. Farebrother had the effect of a sharp concussion. ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... "'Twas the concussion of the air! A'm not hurt, not a feather o' my head hurt! A've seen it before in the Rockies! ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... be a fracture, but I believe it is not that bad. Concussion is the word. She must have struck hard, and it is a wonder she did not break her neck. You see how the neck is swollen. Her pulse is getting stronger, and I think she will be out of her faint in a ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower

... perfect ease, while the little kind of basin into which you run on either side, being formed of strong piles fastened only at the bottom, yields to the vessel as she strikes, and entirely does away with any concussion. I may here add, that during my whole travels in the States, I found nothing more perfect in construction and arrangement than the ferries and their boats, the charges for which are most moderate, varying according to distances, and ranging ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... three-quarters of a mile wingspread—titanic monoplanes, whose droning thunder seemed to roar through all space. Then suddenly they were above him, and from each there spurted a great stream of dazzling brilliance, an intense glow that reached down, and touched the city. An awful concussion blasted his ears. All the world about him erupted in unimaginable brilliance; then ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell

... the greater the agitation; and the loose contexture of the one foundation, making less resistance than the solidity of the other, subjects the building to less violence. Ships at anchor in the road, though several miles distant from the shore, are strongly sensible of the concussion. ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... different specific gravity become arranged in distinct concentric cylindrical strata in the basket, and must be conducted away separately. In creamers the particles of cream must not be broken or subjected to any concussion, as partial churning is caused and the cream will, in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various

... Tennyson of being insular—to say that he is merely "the poet of England." Had he been more he would have been less. World-poets have usually been revolutionists, and dangerous men who exploded at an unknown extent of concussion. None of them has been a safe man—none respectable. Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Hugo ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... a skating party, he appeared with some "sodomites" threatening to chuck me under the ice, and they might have succeeded but for two of my friends who, when the enemy were close upon my heels, suddenly stretched a rope across their path which tripped them up, nearly breaking their heads in the concussion with the ice. ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... both arms around Jenny's neck, and kissed her half a dozen times with a concussion like that of ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic

... unassailable enemy, which had nothing to do but drop torpedoes, loaded with high explosives, on her decks and down her funnels until her very vitals were torn to pieces, her ammunition exploded, and her crew stunned by concussion or ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith

... armies were like two doors swinging towards one another on the same hinge; but they were not wooden or rigid, and the banging together began at the hinge near La Basse and extended northwards to the coast in a concussion spread over several days. On 11 October Smith-Dorrien's 2nd Corps reached the La Basse Canal between Aire and Bthune, while Gough's cavalry was clearing the German patrols out of the forest of Nieppe. On the 12th he attempted a frontal attack on La Basse, but found ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard

... slowly backwards, followed by the old man with his fiery eyes fixed upon his face, till at last concussion against the trunk of a great tree prevented further retreat. Here he stood for about thirty seconds, writhing under the glance that seemed to pierce him through and through, till at last he could stand it no longer, but flung himself on ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... had shouted to his companion, as deafened by the tremendous concussion, and dazed and half-asphyxiated by the poisonous fumes, he strove for mastery with his maddened horse. This regained, he looked for the figure in the black habit and white coif, and knew a shock of horror in seeing ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... doctor had come and said, "A slight concussion,—nothing serious, I expect," and the boy had revived somewhat, Conny departed alone in the motor, Isabelle having decided to stay with Margaret over the night. Falkner helped the doctor carry the patient upstairs, and then started to leave. ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... her brain with a thrill of concussion like hail against a roof. It was as if he were calling to her, pleading with her, ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs

... afforded by the waxen Agnus Dei. How strong this current was, and how difficult even for philosophical minds to oppose, is shown by the fact that both Descartes and Francis Bacon speak of it with respect, admitting the fact, and suggesting very mildly that the bells may accomplish this purpose by the concussion of the air.(246) ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... agent, and he had lost a hundred and ten dollars that did not belong to him. He had chanced to have his name marked on his shirt, otherwise he would not have been identified yet. His assailant had hit him too hard, and he was suffering from concussion of the brain; and also he had been half-frozen when found, and would lose three fingers on his right hand. The enterprising newspaper reporter had taken all this information to his family, and told ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... the short-time projectile he had in his piece, but that did not prevent him from obeying orders. The canvas covering was torn off and cast aside, the gun trained, and the lock-string pulled. The privateer trembled all over with the force of the concussion; the howitzer bounded from its place and recoiled as far as its breeching would permit it to go, and the shrapnel went shrieking on its way. But it did not go more than a quarter of the distance that intervened ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon

... again, and the bat with a louder cry than before, darted through the hole in the roof made by the falling stones, which had been loosened by the concussion ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood

... they were in terrible earnest. Now they backed from each other—as rams usually do—and anon they would dash forward until their heads met with a crash, as though the skulls of both had been splintered by the concussion. Sometimes two fought by themselves, and at other times three or four of them would come together, as if it mattered little which was the antagonist. They all appeared to be equally the enemies of one another. Strange to say, the ewes did not seem to trouble themselves ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... 'Jimmy' Forsyth came to the rectory with the latest details respecting Maryllia's condition,—though for weeks there was no change to report. She was suffering from violent concussion of the brain, and was otherwise seriously injured, but Forsyth would not as yet state how serious the injuries were. For he guessed Walden's secret, and was deeply touched by the quiet patience and restrained sorrow of the apparently calm, self-contained man who, ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... but admit themselves by means of false keys made from wax impressions of the genuine keys. Once inside, their mode of operation is rapid and systematic. They lower the windows from the top about an inch. This is usually sufficient to prevent the breaking of the glass by the concussion of the air in the room, and not enough to attract attention from without. The safe is then wrapped in wet blankets, to smother the noise of the explosion. Holes are then drilled in the door of the safe near the lock, these are filled with powder, which is fired by a fuse, and the safe is blown open. ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... yell. The crowd, that but now waited the joyous greetings of friends, was battered by the bruises of the earth and hurried by fright into a contagious state of mania. The bodies and faces of the people changed almost beyond recognition. Maddened with fear, stunned by the last concussion, they stampeded. ...
— A Lost Hero • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward and Herbert D. Ward

... exclaimed Mr. Philander, half aloud. "Concussion of the brain, superinducing total mental aberration. How very sad indeed! and for one still ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... the dead men too near to the trench, and to attach too many wires to one of them. It is important to sink the stakes at least one foot below the bottom of the trench. By digging holes for them instead of driving them in directly, the sides of the trench need not be disturbed by the concussion of driving the stakes. This is especially important in sandy soils. Stakes should be placed about two feet apart. Dead men should be buried deeply enough to prevent cutting ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker

... Those who witnessed the progressive advances of this mournful condition were prepared for the event by successive changes, but with my anterior impressions, if in his present state I were to be abruptly presented to Robert Southey, and met the vacant and cold glance of indifference, the concussion to my feelings would so overwhelm, that—merciful indeed would be the power which shielded me ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... and, of course, concussion of the brain—probably contusion, too, I expect we shall find presently. Not so over serious for a healthy man, but I'm afraid he's an old soaker—the sort that crumple up at a touch. Nobody knows him, and there's nothing to identify him in the pockets—a few coppers, an old ...
— The Red Triangle - Being Some Further Chronicles of Martin Hewitt, Investigator • Arthur Morrison

... weather of it—the Vesoovius bein' a powerful wet tub, an' a slug at the best o' times. 'Tisn' her fault, you understand: aboard a bombship everything's got to be heavy—timbers, scantling, everything about her—to stand the concussion. What with this an' her mortars, she sits pretty low; but to make up for it, what with all this dead weight, and bein' short-sparred, she can carry all sail in a breeze that would surprise you. Well, sir, ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... restored with its pleasures and its benefits. Of this state all felt the happiness, and all implored the continuance; but what continuance of happiness can be expected, when the whole system of European empire can be in danger of a new concussion, by a contention for a few spots of earth, which, in the deserts of the ocean, had almost escaped human notice, and which, if they had not happened to make a seamark, had, perhaps, never had ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... in the church, filled, as it appeared, with persons of different views, hopes, wishes, and expectations, resembled one of those solemn pauses which often take place before a strife of the elements, and are well understood to be the forerunners of some dreadful concussion of nature. All animals, according to their various nature, express their sense of the approaching tempest; the cattle, the deer, and other inhabitants of the walks of the forest, withdraw to the inmost recesses of their pastures; the sheep crowd into their fold; and the dull stupor of universal ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... vehicles slackened their speed to turn into the vaulted passage, under the marquise, which conducted to the stairway newly constructed for the use of the sovereign, and at this instant a bomb fell in the midst of the cortege and exploded. All the lights were extinguished by the concussion, the glass of the marquise of the theatre and that of the windows of the neighboring houses, from the cellars to the mansards, flew in splinters, the street was covered with the dead and wounded, and the terrified horses of the lancers, ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton

... deep sleep, and still suffering from the concussion that took place in the morning. He gathered from the little he did say, that Sedgwick must rely upon himself, and not upon the main body for deliverance, ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday

... wharf. On the opposite side, however, the masses to which we looked for security were themselves rather terrific objects, as they leaned over so much towards the ship as to give the appearance of their being in the act of falling upon her deck; and as a very trifling concussion often produces the fall of much heavier masses of ice, when in appearance very firmly fixed to the ground, I gave orders that no guns should be fired near the ship during her continuance in this situation. The ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry

... were shooting at the trucks. Splinters sprang up from the wood-block floor. Then, abruptly, one of the trucks vanished in a monstrous, actinic flash of blue-white flame and a roar so horrible that it was not sound but pure concussion. The other truck keeled over and crashed from the blast, but did not explode. Men jumped from it. There must have been screamed orders, but Joe could hear nothing at all. He only saw men waving their arms, and others seized things from the toppled load and rushed toward him, and he ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster

... was rent with acclamations; the crowd rose as if by a single impulse; trumpets sounded in the seven porches of the amphitheatre; again the plaudits shook the air like the concussion of enthusiasm, and the deputation in the arena prostrated themselves in the dust. Balsamo saw, at once, the reason of this rejoicing; he saw the tetrarch of Judea seated upon a throne of ivory. The crown of Agrippa glittered ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... I'm afraid," said she, in a low voice. "It's more like stupor. It wasn't the water that did it, it was a blow on the head. You saw the mark. I'm afraid it's concussion of the brain." ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden

... just succeeded in interviewing the owner of the motor-car, a Mr. James Bradshaw, of 379, Maida Vale. His companion was Mr. Gainsborough Roberts, of 200, Clapham Common. Mr. Roberts is suffering from severe concussion, and has not regained consciousness; but fortunately Mr. Bradshaw's injuries, though painful, are not dangerous, and he has been good enough to give me a full account of his unique adventure. It seems the two gentlemen had been touring in the west ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster

... are in any way damaged except by violence or shock, or that caused by continual ordinary wear and tear caused by such constant rubbing as will wear away the surface of the japan. But japan coats applied with a priming coat crack and fly off in flakes at the slightest concussion, at any knock or fall, more especially at the edges. Those Birmingham manufacturers who were the first to practise japanning only on metals on which there was no need for a priming coat did not of course adopt such a practice. Moreover, they found ...
— Handbook on Japanning: 2nd Edition - For Ironware, Tinware, Wood, Etc. With Sections on Tinplating and - Galvanizing • William N. Brown

... fire of both armies. On one occasion, in fact, the operator who was turning the mechanism—he sat on a bicycle frame, the sprocket of which was connected by a chain with the interior machinery—during a battle, was knocked from his place by the concussion of a shell that exploded nearby; nevertheless, the film was saved, and the same man rode on horseback nearly seventy-five miles across country to the nearest railroad point so that the precious photographic record might be sent to London and shown ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday

... boats swept round and headed for the Berwick Castle, and a couple of minutes later we were alongside and swarming up her lofty sides. I was in the act of swinging in over her rail, in the wake of her main rigging, when a terrific concussion shook the vessel from stem to stern, a loud boom, like the explosion of a pent volcano, rent the air, and, looking in the direction of the sound, we saw a vast sheet of flame and smoke suddenly burst from the schooner; her masts, guns, and a ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... that they were truly of the monikin family, retaining much of the ingenuity and many of the spiritual notions of their origin, but with their intellects sadly blunted, and perhaps their improvable qualities annihilated, by the concussion of the elements that had scattered them abroad upon the face of the earth, houseless, hopeless, regionless wanderers. The vicissitudes of climate, and a great alteration of habits, had certainly wrought some physical changes; ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper

... the pavement, the fugitive hurriedly passed the two lighted windows of the dining-room; they rattled with a concussion—the outburst of suddenly released voices beginning what was to be a protracted wake over the remains of his reputation as a gentleman. He fled, flinging on his overcoat as he went. In his pockets were portions of the manuscript ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington

... know whether the noise and concussion of the cars excite the same sort of dreams in every one's cranium as they do in mine, but they almost invariably produce in my brain mental phenomena of a pugnacious character, which are nothing modified ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... prepared, and awaited but the command to charge, when the brigade guns on the right commenced firing, for the purpose of previously disturbing and breaking the order of the enemy's advance. The concussion seemed instantly to rebound through the still atmosphere, and communicate, as an electric spark, with the heavily charged mass above. A most awfully loud thunder-clap burst forth, immediately succeeded by a rain which has never, probably, been exceeded in violence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... times since they had been in Europe; and the bright-eyed, pale-faced boy who lay huddled up in the chair which he and Guiseppi carried between them must be their Cousin Dave, of whom they had heard so much. Poor Dave! he had fallen from a tree last summer, and struck his back, and the concussion had caused paralysis of the lower part of the spine, so that he could not walk a step, and might not for years, though the doctors gave hope that he would eventually recover the use of his legs. The children gazed at him with the deepest interest and sympathy, and they ...
— The Children's Portion • Various

... woman ran to his assistance, and finding she could do nothing for him, hurried to the town for help. His friend, who was the first surgeon in the place, flew to the spot, and had him carried to his house. It was a severe case of concussion of the brain. ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald

... shook to the thunder of the Fiala's eight-inch gun, and a blinding spurt of flame leaped from the cruiser's bows. With a whining shriek a shell rose toward the moon. There was a quick flash followed by a dull concussion. The shell had not reached a tenth of the ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train

... mail, the spectators realized that the curtain was rolling up before their eyes upon the first act of a prodigious drama, and their rising hopes were expressed in an enthusiasm that increased with each moment, until at last one seemed to even physically feel the concussion of the huzzas as well as hear them. Far down the street we heard the softened strains of wind-blown music, and saw a cloud of lancers moving, the sun glowing with a subdued light upon the massed armor, but striking bright upon the soaring lance-heads—a vaguely luminous nebula, ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain

... is that? A collision, by thunder!" exclaimed he, as he picked himself up from the opposite seat on which he had been thrown by the violence of the shock. The door, fortunately, had been forced open by the concussion. Our two travellers jumped out on to the track. Here a scene of confusion met their view. They had run into a freight train which was coming from an opposite direction. Women and children were shrieking ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest

... such a man as the factor long to recover from a moral concussion. By the time he came in sight of the cabin his mind was again at work on physical things—on the necessities of the situation. The appalling thing, after all, was not that both Pierrot and Nepeese ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood

... the submarine ship was pointed straight at the Daedalus, and the professor touched a knob. At the same instant—so it appeared, so rapid was the discharge—there was a blinding flash of light on board the wreck, a terrific concussion, but no sound, and the wreck vanished; that is the only word which adequately describes the suddenness and completeness of her destruction. The concussion was so violent that it jarred the Flying ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... and accommodating man. Meanwhile George and Fred shake hands with Flora, and express their "delight, their pleasure, etcetera, at this unexpected meeting which, etcetera, etcetera." Their eyes meet, too, as Lucy's and Flora's had met a minute before. Whether the concussion of that meeting is too severe, we cannot say, but the result is, that the three pair of eyes drop to the ground, and their owners blush. George even goes the length of stammering something incoherent ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne

... cleared his throat and turned to the captain. "Yes, my report is good on the whole," he said. "None of the men are seriously injured, thanks to your prompt rescue measures. Captain Larpent is still unconscious; he is suffering from concussion. But I believe he will recover. And—and—" he hesitated, looking again at Saltash—"the—the person ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell

... moves, those passages of air; "These caverns close, and others open throw. "Or whether wind, confin'd in those deep caves, "Hurls rocks on rocks, and what the seeds of fire "Contain; and flames from the concussion burst; "The winds appeas'd, cold will the caves be left. "Or if the flame be by bitumen caught, "Or by pale sulphur, fiercely will it burn "To the last particle; but when the earth "Fuel and oily nutriment no more "The flame shall ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... disappeared, as though dropped down a hatchway. A few seconds passed,—seconds that seemed like hours. Then there shot up into the sky a dazzling jet of fire. A roar like that of a huge volcano shook earth and sea. The vessels trembled at their moorings. The concussion of the air threw men upon the decks. Then the mast of the ketch, with its sail blazing, was seen to rise straight into the air, and fall back. Bombs with burning fuses flew in every direction. The distant sound of heavy bodies falling into the water and on the ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... impulse was given in the year 1333, which in uninterrupted succession for six and twenty years shook the surface of the earth, even to the western shores of Europe. From the very beginning the air partook of the terrestrial concussion, atmospherical waters overflowed the land, or its plants and animals perished under the scorching heat. The insect tribe was wonderfully called into life, as if animated beings were destined to complete the destruction which astral and telluric powers had begun. Thus did ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker

... fastened a covering of stout leather; and when I had fitted it with a wrist-strap it looked a really serviceable tool. Its purpose is obvious. It was an improved form of that very crude appliance, the sand-bag, which footpads use to produce concussion of the brain without fracturing the skull. I may ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman

... and, when they were all ready, Woodford gently put the helm up; the schooner gradually fell off from the wind, and presently there was a deafening explosion, accompanied by a jarring concussion which shook the schooner from stem to stern; and as the smoke drove away to leeward we saw a jet of spray a dozen feet high shoot into the air as the ball struck the crest of a wave, and in another instant a white patch of naked wood appeared ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood

... into a gray encompassing cloud. The dust thrown up by a column of passing horse poured over the wall in one long wave, and whitened the garden with its ashes. Throughout the dim empty house one no longer heard the sound of cannon, only a dull intermittent concussion was felt, silently bringing flakes of plaster from the walls, or sliding fragments of glass from the shattered windows. A shell, lifted from the ominous distance, hung uncertain in the air and then descended swiftly through the roof; the whole house dilated with flame for ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... shaft whilst two fuses were fired in an upper. The anticipation of the shock was worse than the realisation. Each of us carried a candle, and the concussion blew them all out; but beyond that, the smell of gunpowder, and smoke, we experienced no harm, and as we had matches and the candles were soon relit, we had not to grope our way back ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall

... and then the rat at the lung; but of shock, something also. But I think it was not concussion, as the doctors said, but soul-shock. It has left me, Father, like Mohammed's coffin, suspended. I think I have lost my grip on the world—and not found my ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... if she were afraid to move, while Clara crossed her bedroom, stopped, went on and closed the outer door behind her. And even after that soft little concussion she stood still, burning, choking, struggling with the overwhelming force of an affront whose import she did not yet realize. Out in her sunny dressing-room all the outraged furniture stood meek and in order, frauding the eye to believe that nothing had happened! She felt she ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain

... when I heard a shell hurtling in my direction. Knowing that if I moved I might as likely run into it as not, I remained where I was, still operating my camera, when an explosion occurred just behind me, which sounded as if the earth itself had cracked. The concussion threw me with terrific force head over heels into the sand. The explosion seemed to cause a vacuum in the air for some distance around, for try as I would I could not get my breath. I lay gasping and struggling like a drowning man for what seemed ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins

... struck a concealed rock immediately at the foot of a fall, which whirled her over in an instant. Three of my men could not swim, and my first feeling was to assist them, and save some of our effects; but a sharp concussion or two convinced me that I had not yet saved myself. A few strokes brought me into an eddy, and I landed on a pile of rocks on the left side. Looking around, I saw that Mr. Preuss had gained the shore on the same side, about twenty yards below; and a little climbing and swimming ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont

... observation. This confused but fierce rally lasted less than a minute, however; when, Hurry, furious at having his strength baffled by the agility and nakedness of his foe, made a desperate effort, which sent the Huron from him, hurling his body violently against the logs of the hut. The concussion was so great as momentarily to confuse the latter's faculties. The pain, too, extorted a deep groan; an unusual concession to agony to escape a red man in the heat of battle. Still he rushed forward again to meet his enemy, conscious that his ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... he looked about him for his hat, caught it up, bowed angrily to the count, and without a word or a glance for me walked out of the room, slamming the outer door so noisily that the whole house shook with the concussion. ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray

... was set on fire Captain Mitchel and his officers left her and came on board the Centurion, and we immediately stood from the wreck, not without some apprehensions (as we had now only a light breeze) that, if she blew up soon, the concussion of the air might damage our rigging; but she fortunately burned, though very fiercel, the whole night, her guns firing successively as the flames reached them. And it was six in the morning, when ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter

... It seemed to me that the falling stones were meeting with an earlier resistance, and that the concussion gave a more ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... die, but alas! fate had its eye on him. . . . The poor fellow fell a victim to his habits of observation. On one occasion, when he was listening at a keyhole, he got such a bang on the head from the door that he sustained concussion of the brain (he had a brain), and died. And here, under this tombstone, lies a man who from his cradle detested verses and epigrams. . . . As though to mock him his whole tombstone is adorned with verses. . . . ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... waist, with distracted gestures; even the two men at the wheel forsook their post to run in dazed terror to the taffrail. Before the mate could restore order to this chaos, the Excelsior had drifted, with a scarcely perceptible concussion, against the counter of the strange vessel. In an instant a dozen figures appeared on its bulwarks, and dropped unimpeded upon the Excelsior's deck. As the foremost one approached the mate, the latter shrank ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte

... pair. Frost was "pony built" but sturdy, and Nita seemed like a fairy—indeed as unsubstantial as a wisp of vapor, as she came down the aisle on his arm. They were so far to the south on this honeymoon trip as almost to feel the shock and concussion when the Maine was blown to a mass of wreckage. They were in Washington when Congress determined on full satisfaction from Spain, and Colonel Frost was told his leave was cut short—that he must return to his station at once. Going first ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King

... with his arms struggling wildly and his fists clenched, his face purple, and his eyes distorted so that little was seen but the whites the next moment his teeth gnashed loudly together, and he fell headlong on the floor with a concussion so momentous that the windows rattled and the room shook violently; the dust rose in ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... the wheels of the railway carriage in which you are sitting seem always to be rattling out some carefully studied tune, to which the jolts of the vehicle beat a concerted bass; while, the slackening of the coupling chains, in combination with the concussion of the buffers as they hitch up suddenly again, sounds a regular obbligato accompaniment—the scream of the steam whistle, and the thundering whish and whirr of the train through a deep cutting or tunnel, or over a bridge with water below, coming in occasionally ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson

... her effort to reach a bottle of medicine on the top shelf of her cupboard, her rickety support gave way and let her down with cruel celerity. Her poor old bones were brittle and snapped with the concussion. When she tried to raise herself, after her momentary groans and exclamations, she found it impossible, for the left femur was broken. She wavered for a time between spells of semi-consciousness, and rousings to fresh shrieks and wails, the pain growing momently more agonizing and the floor ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry

... the surgeon examined the battered head. "Escaped concussion by a hair, you might say. Probably had his cap on. That black eye, though, is an older affair. ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath

... tremendous thunder and felt the concussion of big guns; the steady raining rattle of musketry, the bark of howitzers, the sharp, clean crack of rifled field guns dismayed them. Sometimes, far away, they could distinguish the full deep cheering of a Union regiment; ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers

... the vast corpulence of his dignity, and kitten-like, he plays on the ocean as if it were a hearth. But still you see his power in his play. The broad palms of his tail are flirted high into the air; then smiting the surface, the thunderous concussion resounds for miles. You would almost think a great gun had been discharged; and if you noticed the light wreath of vapor from the spiracle at his other extremity, you would think that that was the smoke from the touch-hole. Fifth: As in the ordinary ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... of 1914-1918, thousands of cases of functional disorders of the nervous came to be grouped under "Shell Shock." The psychic phenomena in the wake of concussion of the brain due to explosives suggested the term, and its application to affections of self-control, or dissociations of the personality, with paralysis, blindness, speechlessness, loss of hearing and so on. The War neurosis (including those arising in home service) is still ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... hearing the carriage drive up, extended a cordial welcome. His hand was on the knob of the front door, which stood half open, when the sky above the steel mills suddenly became illuminated and deafening reports of explosions followed. The door, held by Harris, was slammed by the concussion against the wall, the glass in the windows rattled on the floor, the ground trembled, Harris seized George's arm for support, and Gertrude's face was blanched with fear. Fire and smoke in great volumes were now seen rising above the ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton

... would have related to him the history of a poor dear young engine-driver, who had once lodged with her, and who went out, after eating a hearty dinner, in the best of spirits, to meet with his death from the concussion of an express and a luggage train; but Robert put on his hat again, and walked straight out of the house before the honest Irishwoman could ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... wheel was silently relieved. The rain fell at intervals in heavy showers, and we stood drenched through and blinded by the flashes, which broke the Egyptian darkness with a brightness which seemed almost malignant; while the thunder rolled in peals, the concussion of which appeared to shake the very ocean. A ship is not often injured by lightning, for the electricity is separated by the great number of points she presents, and the quantity of iron which she has scattered in various ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... said there was concussion of the brain, and that the man would die. All the medical skill that the officer could procure was employed in the hope of saving the life of the man. His conscience smote him for having, as he believed, taken the life of a fellow-creature, ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure

... explained, "by the concussion of the brain. The shoulder is also badly contused and the collar-bone broken, but if brain fever does not set in the man will live. The treatment so far as it has ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland

... would have been in Homer's hands! How trivial, to the author of the book of Job, would have seemed the noise of the captains and the shouting! We cannot, indeed, quite suppress the fancy that some mightier counter-concussion must have filled the air at Thrasimene, when "an earthquake reeled unheededly away:" Nemo pugnantium senserit, avers Livy. But nothing is said of it. The old heroes died in silence, like the wolf "biting hard among the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... report resounded through the woods, and along the hills, in repeated echoes. Judge of my surprise, when I perceived that the ball had hit the piece of bark immediately underneath the squirrel, and shivered it into splinters; the concussion produced by which had killed the animal, and sent it whirling through the air, as if it had been blown up by the explosion of a powder magazine, Boone kept up his firing, and before many hours had elapsed, we had procured as many squirrels as we wished. Since that ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott

... thump, reflecting as I did so how very near I had been to being thumped instead of thumping. He never stirred; certainly he was dead, though to this day I do not know if it was my random shot that killed him, or if he died from concussion of the brain consequent upon the tremendous shock of his contact with the tree. Anyhow, there he was. Cold and beautiful he lay, or rather knelt, as the poet nearly puts it. Indeed, I do not think that I have ever seen a sight more imposing in its way than that of the mighty ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard

... foolhardiness costly. In his mind's eye he could foresee the broncho's action. He had escaped down the track once, and would do the same again after a few desperate bounds—nevertheless Mose dreaded the terrible concussion of those stiff-legged leapings. ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland

... appeared to be perfectly calm and self-possessed. Lauriston, as soon as he saw me, came to my box, and told me that the First Consul, on his way to the opera, had narrowly escaped being assassinated in the Rue St. Nicaise by the explosion of a barrel of gunpowder, the concussion of which had shattered the windows of his carriage. "Within ten seconds after our escape," added Lauriston, "the coachman having turned the corner of the Rue St Honore, stopped to take the First Consul's orders; and he coolly said, 'To ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... cannonade, I could HEAR the shots fired, and I felt the pang in my breast of a man struck. It was sometimes so distressing, so instant, that I lay in the heather on the top of the island, with my face hid, kicking my heels for agony. And now, when I can hear the actual concussion of the air and hills, when I KNOW personally the people who stand exposed to it, I am able to go on TANT BIEN QUE MAL with a letter to James Payn! The blessings of age, though mighty small, are tangible. I have heard a great ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... heard the guns being fired?" was their first anxious question. Indeed I had. It appears that to make sure that I should hear them a double charge of powder was placed in the first gun. When it was let off in the very small court of the citadel the concussion had most disastrous effects upon the mud walls all round, as well as upon some of the spectators who were close at hand and who were nearly stunned ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... and the fragments of ice, detached by the commotion of the air, fell suddenly into the sea. The simple concussion had been enough. ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... across with some of it. You remember the freckled lad at Soissons who got fuzzy-headed from too much concussion? Well, he saw children around everywhere, too! It's a sure sign, Jack!" But now he laughed, adding: "Oh, I suppose our little Roumanian's ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... The old man struck on his head; it was concussion of the brain that killed him. The exterior wound was only a scalp wound. There was no blood on his clothes, as the wound was on the head only. No, sir, there is no mistake; those are the clothes the old man wore on the day he was killed, ...
— Two Wonderful Detectives - Jack and Gil's Marvelous Skill • Harlan Page Halsey

... me as if nothing remained above the mouth; but, after repeated applications of all my fingers and thumbs to the doubtful parts, I, at length, proved to myself, satisfactorily, that it had rather increased than diminished by the concussion; and, jumping on my legs, and hearing, by the whistling of the balls from both sides, that the rascals who had got me into the scrape had been driven back and left me there, I snatched my cap, which had saved my life, and which had been spun off my head to ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid

... of the casualties in trench warfare, the percentage has been reduced by the wearing of helmets to about one half per cent. While the helmet does not afford complete protection against rifle and shrapnel fire, it has been found that hits result only in severe concussion, where before fatal wound resulted. These helmets are painted ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss

... removed, when they fall at once to pieces! But the separate flints or nodules in the body of the chalk strata are not so: which led the late Sir H. Englefield to conjecture, that the phenomenon was caused in the moment of the immense concussion which subverted the whole mass of strata, and placed them in ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon

... comparable to the sudden loss of two millions of bales of cotton annually. From the deserts of Africa to the Siberian wilds—from Greenland to the Chinese wall,—there is not a spot of earth but would feel the sensation. The factories of Europe would fall with a concussion that would shake down castles, palaces, and even thrones; while the "purse-proud, elbowing insolence" of our Northern monopolist would soon disappear forever under the smooth speech of the pedlar, scourging our frontiers for a livelihood, or the bluff vulgarity of the South ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... nitro-glycerin should be used in the most careful hands; do not think I would put it in the hands of a common laborer for blasting purposes; it is less dangerous in a frozen than a liquid state; I think concussion would explode frozen nitro-glycerin. ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various

... spoke of, and the driver has accounted satisfactorily for his time that night. The absence of any conveyance is the strange part of it; and, moreover, the sentries, although pacing outside the walls of this building, heard nothing of the concussion beyond a low rumble, and those who thought of the matter at all imagined an explosion had occurred in some distant ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr

... which had just then taken place. This event gave a mighty impulse and increased activity to thought and inquiry, and agitated the inert mass of accumulated prejudices throughout Europe. The effect of the concussion was general; but the shock was greatest in this country. It toppled down the full-grown, intolerable abuses of centuries at a blow; heaved the ground from under the feet of bigotted faith and slavish obedience; and the roar and dashing of opinions, loosened from ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... before the vessel was shaken by the force of a mighty concussion. A gigantic wave tossed the craft up and forward with a heave that threw ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson

... ineffectual. Their heat-rays boiled the water for hundreds of yards before them and their torpedoes were exploding against the Nevian defenses in one appallingly continuous concussion. But most potent of all was a weapon unknown to Triplanetary warfare. From a fortress there would shoot out, with the speed of a meteor, a long, jointed, telescopic rod, tipped with a tiny, brilliantly shining ball. Whenever this glowing tip encountered any obstacle, ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith

... hand to his hair, where the bullet had struck, and, taking it away, looked anxiously at it. There was no blood upon either palm or finger, and then he realized, with great thankfulness, that he was merely suffering a brief weakness from the concussion caused by a heavy bullet passing so close to his skull. He heard a hasty footstep, and Mynheer Huysman, breathing heavily and anxious, stood before him. Other and lighter footsteps indicated that Peter also was ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler

... describe it? Bill's strength was adequate, but no human power could save the pudding. Even as Bill put his strength on to the ladle, the wooden cover of the kettle split with a sharp concussion in the middle, the kettle was upset, and poor Bill, covered with ashes and pursued by a cloud of steam, shot out of the door and ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray

... the art of organ-building one cannot fail to be struck by the fact that almost all the great steps in advance have been due to Englishmen: the compound horizontal bellows, the concussion bellows, the swell box, the pneumatic lever, the tubular-pneumatic action, the electro-pneumatic action, the Universal air chest, the leathered lip, the clothed flue, the diaphone, smooth reed tone, imitative string ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller

... speaks of the drama as "one of the most perfectly conceived and perfectly executed tragedies in the language." In the instance of Luria, that second Othello, suicide has all the impressiveness of a plenary act of absolution: the death of Anael seems as inevitable as the flash of lightning after the concussion of thunder-clouds. But Thorold's suicide is mere weakness, scarce a perverted courage; and Mildred's broken heart was an ill not beyond the healing of a morally robust physician. "Colombe's Birthday" has a certain remoteness of interest, really due to the reader's more or less acute perception ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... a physical basis in the vibrations of bodies, either solid, liquid, or gaseous, may be brought home to one in various ways. Concussion or shaking of some kind is essential to start these vibrations. The air is made up of its particles, and one being moved sets up, inevitably, movements in neighboring particles on all sides, hence vibrations travel in all directions; which explains why a sound in the ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills

... its lower half and slatted so as to permit the escape of water and impurities in the upper half, the apples are thoroughly cleansed from all earthy or extraneous matter. Such is the friction caused by the concussion of the fall, the rolling and rubbing of the apples together, and the pouring of the water, that decayed sections of the fruit are ground off and the rotten pulp passes away with other impurities. From this tank the apples are hoisted ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various

... quick turn. As he did so, the pudgy man's rotund little body was seen to rise from the ground and describe an aerial semi-circle. He came crashing to the ground with a thud, his thick neck almost driven into his shoulders by the force of the concussion. ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering

... calm him down until Napier came and gave him a sedative. The doctor seemed as sick about Hal's inability to remember as I was, though he indicated it was normal enough in concussion cases. "So is the hallucination," he added. ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey

... having retired with his sword and his saw, his laurels and his sticking-plaster to this, his native town, was called in, and rather thought the gallant Colonel's skull was fractured; at all events, there was concussion of the seat of thought, and quite enough work for his remarkable self-healing powers to occupy him for ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... dislocated right shoulder. On his right arm he had a permanent scar as a memento of the landing. A metal projection had given him a bad wound and cut an artery. He had lost considerable blood by the time the first-aid team was able to get him out and apply a tourniquet. He had also suffered concussion. ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin









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