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More "Detonation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the detonation produced by the Columbiad had the immediate effect of disturbing the terrestrial atmosphere, where an enormous quantity of vapour accumulated. This phenomenon excited general indignation, for the moon was hidden during several nights from ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... the black void the infernal machine sped. A sickening pause—then a deafening detonation, followed by another and another, cut the stillness, and the earth beneath was aflame with light as the high explosives and shells stored in the concealed ammunition depot were set off. Nothing escaped destruction; flesh and blood, mortar and brick went skyward together, and a great gash in ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... of these elastic capsules are by no means mere toys to be lightly played with by babes and sucklings. The sand-box tree of the West Indies has large round fruits, containing seeds about as big as an English horsebean; and the capsule explodes, when ripe, with a detonation like a pistol, scattering its contents with as much violence as a shot from an air-gun. It is dangerous to go too near these natural batteries during the shooting season. A blow in the eye from one would blind a man instantly. I well ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... sea and on land made every effort to keep off the pirates. They flew banners at morn and eve and fired guns seaward, so that the enemy, understanding by the flash and the detonation that we were prepared to resist, abstained from landing. But when the pirates handled their swords skilfully, their attack was fearful. Our countrymen when they saw these swordsmen, trembled and fled. Their fear of the Japanese was fear of the swords. The ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... wolves, and even alligators—are now, is no criterion of their past. Authentic history proves that their courage, at least so far as regards man, has changed altogether since they first heard the sharp detonation of the deadly rifle. Even contemporaneous history demonstrates this. In many parts of South America, both jaguar and cougar attack man, and numerous are the deadly encounters there. In Peru, on the eastern declivity of the Andes, large settlements and even villages have been abandoned ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... do his duty.' In he went again, and planted another candle about a yard in front of the last one. Then he stopped and fired a shot from the revolver that we carried in turn for the otters, and the sound of the detonation seemed to echo in a muffled fashion from the ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... and distorted whirl burst upward in a huge geyser of annihilation, came a detonation that ripped, stunned, shattered; that sent both the defenders staggering ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... had caught a single whip-like crack. A stunning crash followed a lurid glare, lighting up sky and sea. Again came the sharp detonation, but little louder than a fire-cracker. ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... used to turn up at the War Office and to find their way to my department. For some reason or other they always presented themselves after dinner—like the coffee. The first arrival was a young cavalry officer, knocked off his horse in the preliminary encounters by what had evidently been the detonation of a well-pitched-up high-explosive, and who was still suffering from a touch of what we now know as shell-shock. He proved to be the very embodiment of effective military training, because, although he was to the last degree vague ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... with lumps of earth. One of the men of the 88th Field Ambulance, just in front of us, got wounded. They began again with heavier shells—Jack Johnsons—about 5 a.m. to-day, seven falling near us, and as we lay underground we could feel the earth shake with every detonation. Last night was the first time they ever gave us such a visit. They are chary of using their big guns after dark in case they should give ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... alive with thunderclaps. Each detonation reveals together a shaft of red falling fire in what is left of the night, and a column of smoke in what has dawned of the day. Up there—so high and so far that they are heard unseen—a flight of dreadful birds goes circling up with strong and palpitating cries ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... lagoon tugging with bare arms, Jorgenson, who would be watching the entrance of the creek ever since a muffled detonation of a gun to seaward had warned him of the brig's arrival on the Shore of Refuge, would mutter to himself—"Here's Tom coming in his nutshell." And indeed she was in shape somewhat like half a nutshell and also in the colour of her dark varnished ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... of bare feet pattering on the parquet of the hall that restored his senses and as the door of the room flew open he stamped on the still burning electric bulb lying at his feet. The detonation as it flew into fragments came simultaneously with the sharp, stinging report of a small calibre pistol. The room was plunged into utter darkness in which could be heard the sound of two men breathing and the zinging of the mantelpiece brasses from the double explosion. Then silence—no movement—and ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... detonation was merging into the uproar. It came from the ships, Thurston knew, where anti-aircraft guns poured a rain of shells into the sky. About the invaders they bloomed into clusters of smoke balls. The globes shot a thousand feet into the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... many moments thereafter, none of them knew very definitely what had happened. There was a cloud of dust, a terrific detonation, a sudden absolute darkness, as in some revulsion of nature, a stifling sensation. They were penned within the grotto by a great fragment of the beetling cliff. Doubtless it had been previously fractured by the action of continuous freezes, and the concussion of the ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... stood behind the Nordenfeldt shields with the bullets pattering against the steel and stinging the air overhead? He or his ghost, barefoot in the sand that sopped the blood of fallen comrades, the ship shaking with the detonation of her guns, the hoarse cheering of her crew re-echoing in his half- deafened ears? A dream, yes; tragic and wonderful in the retrospect, filled with wild, bright ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... the fin was turning away from them. Instantly he sighted for its center, made sure of his bead, and fired. He saw the fin flutter wildly, then there was a great swirl of waters, and as the heavy detonation rang over the lagoon the black ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... theoretical knowledge of explosives, and I know of nothing that would produce such results as we have here. Perhaps Professor Carl Seigfried could give you some information on that point. The science of detonation has been his life study, and he stands head and shoulders above his fellows in ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... belching smoke; and creaking wagonettes sped backwards and forwards from the parapet. Above on the cliff stood huge sappy pines. All day the sky was grey and cloudy, and the smoke from the chimneys spread like a low pall over the earth. The dynamite exploded with a great detonation and ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... the cannon were thundering—so close that it seemed each hilltop would bring them into view, and as the detonation puffed across the landscape, one even fancied one could feel the concussion in one's ear. Up from a field ahead of us an aeroplane rose and, in a wide spiral, went climbing up the sky, now almost cleared, and presently disappeared in the north. Then, after satisfying ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... viciously aflame, it twisted and looped around the incandescent rods of destruction so thickly and starkly outlined, under perfect control; unaffected by the hideous distortion of all ether-borne signals. Through a pirate screen it went, and under the terrific blast of its detonation one entire panel of the stricken battleship vanished, crumpled and broken. It should have been out, cold—but, to the amazement of the observers, it kept on fighting with scarcely lessened power! Three more of the frightful space-bombs had to be exploded in it—it had to be reduced to junk—before ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... all the great double petards of the Saint-Jean, the discharge of twenty arquebuses on supports, the detonation of that famous serpentine of the Tower of Billy, which, during the siege of Paris, on Sunday, the twenty-sixth of September, 1465, killed seven Burgundians at one blow, the explosion of all the powder stored at the gate of the Temple, would have rent his ears less ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... about what the new comers were was solved before we reached the river, for we could hear the rapid detonation of the stock-whips loud above the lowing of the cattle; so we sat and watched them debouche from the forest into the broad river meadows in the gathering gloom: saw the scene so venerable and ancient, so seldom seen in the Old World—the patriarchs ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... marchers would come during an interval of silence to a position on the road not ten feet from a darkened, camouflaged howitzer just as it would shatter the air with a deafening crash. The suddenness and unexpectedness of the detonation would make the marchers start and jump involuntarily. Upon such occasions, the gun crews would laugh heartily and indulge in good natured ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... line of flashes leaped across the breast of the darkness, accompanied by a detonation truly terrible. Each gun with its echoes, in those cavernous solitudes, thundered like a whole park of artillery: what, then, was the effect of the volley? The patriots were themselves appalled by it. The mountain trembled, and a gusty roar swept through its ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... by us. Globe or ball lightning takes the form of globes of fire, sometimes visible for ten seconds, descending from the clouds. On reaching the earth they sometimes rebound, and sometimes explode with a loud detonation. No adequate explanation has been found ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... behind, an amazing detonation seemed to strike at the smalls of their backs, throwing them half out of their seats. The glass slide upon the Queen's side of the coach ran down with a crash, and one of the large gilt baubles from its roof toppled and fell into the road. At the same ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... may, indeed, explode, for all I know. In the only case I have seen of a steamship sinking there was such a sound, but I didn't dive down after her to investigate. She was not of 45,000 tons and declared unsinkable, but the sight was impressive enough. I shall never forget the muffled, mysterious detonation, the sudden agitation of the sea round the slowly raised stern, and to this day I have in my eye the propeller, seen perfectly still in its frame against a ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... no amount of currency will command anything Festive, except Fire. The supply of rockets is unlimited, but that of food, limited, in a quite final manner; and the whole currency in the hands of the society represents an infinite power of detonation, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... to buckle and hurl themselves aft with a grinding crash of disrupted joints. Holding desperately to the precious little body within his arms, Carr was thrown off his feet. There was a detonation as if the universe had been blasted into oblivion—then ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... candle, and often explodes with tremendous violence, killing the men and horses, and projecting much of the contents of the mine through the shafts or apertures like an enormous piece of artillery. At this time, a detonation of fire-damp occurred within a coal-mine in the north of England, so dreadful that it destroyed more than a hundred miners. A committee of the proprietors besought our chemist to provide a method of preparing for such tremendous visitations; and he did it. He tells us that he first turned ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... a deep-toned roaring noise to the northeast. It was unbelievably low-pitched. It rolled and reverberated beyond the horizon. The detonation of a hundred tons of high explosives or an equivalent impact can be heard for thirty miles, but at that distance it doesn't sound ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... a new sound echoed in our ears. It was not the shouts of men, nor the detonation of guns, nor the pealing of the thunder. It was the hoarse ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... by the side of the hearth where a few pieces of green wood smoked without burning, they started at each of the distant reports of the cannon. At each detonation that shook the window-panes, Mme. Favoral thought that it was, perhaps, the one that ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... The detonation was answered by a cry, a scream of pain, from the lighted cage. It paused on the instant, like a bird stricken a-wing, some four floors below, but at once resumed ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... had not disputed their passage; it maintained the silence and the immobility of marble; nothing but the snarl of the surging flood re-echoed from its face. But with the suddenness of a rifle-shot there came a detonation, louder, sharper than any blast of powder. The Norwegian cursed; the helmsman dropped his eyes to the white face in the bow ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... to a periscope depth, and I surveyed her from a position off her stern. She was sinking fast, but I felt so furious at being nearly trapped that I could not resist giving her a torpedo; detonation was complete, and a mass of wreckage shot into the air as the hull of the ship disappeared. As to the two boats, I left them to make the best course to land ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... torpedo was fired at the Lusitania, which hit her starboard side below the Captain's bridge. The detonation of the torpedo was followed immediately by a further explosion of extremely strong effect. The ship quickly listed to ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... 7th of October, when it came on to blow furiously from the westward, and the inhabitants along the river were suddenly surprised by an extraordinary roaring in the woods, resembling the crashing and detonation of loud and incessant thunder, while at the same instant the atmosphere became thick darkened ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... fire. Perry, with the utmost coolness, a coolness which in the circumstances was nothing less than heroism, uncoupled his engine, and leaving the trucks to their fate, steamed back to the town. Before he could reach his destination, however, the shock of an awful detonation greeted his ears. The Boers had again fired on the trucks, believing them to be full of passengers, and, as a natural consequence, the ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... Hath split black cloud, it scatters the fire-seeds, Which, so to say, have been pressed out by force Of sudden from the cloud;—and these do make The pulsing flashes of flame; thence followeth The detonation which attacks our ears More tardily than aught which comes along Unto the sight of eyeballs. This takes place— As know thou mayst—at times when clouds are dense And one upon the other piled aloft With wonderful upheavings—nor be thou Deceived because we see how broad their base ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... sky is alive with thunderclaps. Each detonation reveals together a shaft of red falling fire in what is left of the night, and a column of smoke in what has dawned of the day. Up there—so high and so far that they are heard unseen—a flight of dreadful birds goes circling ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... would burst out laughing. A big voice, a good fellow. He had a comic foundation under a tragic exterior, he asked nothing better than to frighten you, very much like those snuff-boxes which are in the shape of a pistol. The detonation makes ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... A deeper detonation was merging into the uproar. It came from the ships, Thurston knew, where anti-aircraft guns poured a rain of shells into the sky. About the invaders they bloomed into clusters of smoke balls. The globes shot a thousand feet into the air. Again the shells found them, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... obeyed. With a purring noise the helicopter shot upward. Then something went off in mid-sky, miles ahead, where a faint humming noise had announced the flight of attack-planes. A lurid, crackling detonation lit up the sky. One of the ships of the night-flying squadron. From the helicopter they could see the rest of the flight limned clearly in the flash of the explosion. Instantly thereafter there was another such flash. ...
— Morale - A Story of the War of 1941-43 • Murray Leinster
... moment, perhaps for many moments thereafter, none of them knew very definitely what had happened. There was a cloud of dust, a terrific detonation, a sudden absolute darkness, as in some revulsion of nature, a stifling sensation. They were penned within the grotto by a great fragment of the beetling cliff. Doubtless it had been previously fractured by the action of continuous freezes, and the concussion of the pistol shot in the restricted ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... aphrodisia^; force, brute force; outrage; coup de main; strain, shock, shog^; spasm, convulsion, throe; hysterics, passion &c (state of excitability) 825. outbreak, outburst; debacle; burst, bounce, dissilience^, discharge, volley, explosion, blow up, blast, detonation, rush, eruption, displosion^, torrent. turmoil &c (disorder) 59; ferment &c (agitation) 315; storm, tempest, rough weather; squall &c (wind) 349; earthquake, volcano, thunderstorm. berserk, berserker; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... men who saw it from a distance, but were not present at its ascent, took it for a meteor. "Our intention," says Watt, "was, if possible, to discover whether the reverberating sound of thunder was due to echoes or to successive explosions. The sound occasioned by the detonation of the hydrogen gas of the balloon in this experiment, does not enable us to form a definite judgment; all that we can do is to refer to those who were near the balloon, and-who affirm that the sound was like that ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... nose to tail. A violent detonation flung echoes from sea and shore; and bits of splintered wreckage spun down past the windows, to plunge into the ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... Whether the flash and detonation frightened them; whether Perdosa, still clinging to his rock, managed to turn their attention by his flanking efforts, or whether, quite simply, the wall of dead finally turned them back, I do not know, but with one accord they gave ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the steel-bound door for the coming detonation. The sound of it smote him like a blow on the chest, followed by a rush of air and a ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... came the sharp shrill notes of the fifes and the quick detonation of the drum-stick taps. The rattle of the drums came closer and closer, when two folding-doors opened, and through them stalked in grim solemnity the 'Phantom Guard,' led by the intrepid ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... yellow-haired man standing with a rifle to his shoulder—his sallow cheek resting against the stock—the barrel apparently aligned upon my body—the quick detonation of a percussion-cap—a stream of red fire and smoke from the muzzle—a shock, followed by the quivering of the timbers to which I was tied, were perceptions and sensations of almost simultaneous occurrence. Twisting my head, and turning ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... Another fearful detonation came with startling violence to their ears, and as they stood upon the deck the report seemed to jar them all in a dull, ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
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