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More "Parachute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... (penknife) Chupaflores (humming-bird) Destripaterrones (navvy) Lavamanos (wash-hand stand) Limpiabotas (boot-black) Matamoros (boaster) Mondadientes (toothpick) Papahueros (ninny) Papamoscas (ninny) Papanatas (ninny) Paracaidas (parachute) Paraguas (umbrella) Pelagatos (ragamuffin) Pintamonas (slap-dasher or bad partner) Sacacorchos (corkscrew) Salvavidas (life-boats) Sepancuantos (slap ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... reserved for times of courtship. I have seen the female sitting quietly on a branch, and two males displaying their charms in front of her. One would shoot up like a rocket, then suddenly expanding the snow-white tail like an inverted parachute, slowly descend in front of her, turning round gradually to show off both back and front. The effect was heightened by the wings being invisible from a distance of a few yards, both from their great velocity of movement and from not having the metallic ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... eminent superintendent of the French Aeronautical Department, exhibited at the Paris Exposition of that year, an apparatus experimented with some years before, which he termed a "dirigible parachute." It consisted of an oviform body to which were pivoted two upright slats carrying above the body nine long superposed flat blades spaced about one-third of their width apart. When this apparatus was properly ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... bad jolt the instant he emerged through the 'chute opening. Captain Forrester was leaning against a parachute rack gasping for breath, his ...
— The Sky Trap • Frank Belknap Long
... a button on his desk. "Get me Air Force Chief of Staff Burns," he said, and, a moment later: "Bernie? Chuck here. We need a plane. A jet-transport to go you-know-where. Cargo? One man, in a parachute. Can you manage it? Immediately, if not sooner. Good boy, Bernie. No ... no, I'm sorry, I can't tell you a thing about it." The Secretary cut the ...
— Summer Snow Storm • Adam Chase
... stretched out like antenn, and serving to balance the posterior part of the body and the filaments of the abdomen during flight. On reaching a certain height they allow themselves to descend, stretching out while doing so their long wings and tail, which then serve as a parachute. Then a rapid working of these organs suddenly changes the direction of the motion, and they begin to ascend again. Coupling takes place during these aerial dances. Soon afterward the females approach the surface of the water and lay therein their eggs, spreading them out ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... me how they took the order, so I tell you without waiting. I saw a few pale faces—but it was only for a moment. A group of them stood in front of me in the library. I had just received from the front, by post, the silk parachute of a fusee volante, on which was written: "A Miss Mildred Aldrich Ramasse sur le champ de bataille a 20 metres des lignes Boches. Souvenir de la patrouille de Fevrier 22, 1917," and the signature of the Aspirant, and that was the only way I knew he had ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... account of the Umbrella, it would not be right to omit mentioning another, and far from legitimate use in which it has been employed by notoriety-hunting artistes—we allude to the Parachute; and a short narration of its origin and progress may not be uninteresting to ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... air Of this morning bright and fair, Eddying round and round they sink Softly, slowly: one might think, 10 From the motions that are made, Every little leaf conveyed Sylph or Faery hither tending,— To this lower world descending, Each invisible and mute, 15 In his wavering parachute. ——But the Kitten, how she starts, Crouches, stretches, paws, and darts! [3] First at one, and then its fellow Just as light and just as yellow; 20 There are many now—now one— Now they stop and there are none: What intenseness of desire In her upward eye of fire! ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... scared for tears. Mr. Miller, you seem to be in charge of this expedition—couldn't you do something? Throw out ballast, or let the boy down in a parachute? Or I've read of a shipwreck where the survivors, in an open boat, joined in a cry, and attracted the notice of a vessel that was going to pass them. We ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... up, from the other side of the river. We had a fine view of it from the roof of our house. Two men were in it, and when they had risen so high that the balloon appeared quite small, they threw out a little machine, called a parachute. It looked something like an umbrella, and had a dog to it. The balloon sailed a great distance through the ...
— The Summer Holidays - A Story for Children • Amerel
... and just then Scowl grabbed the leg of the male bird, that was planted in his breast while it removed tufts of his wool with its hooked beak, and leapt boldly from the nest, which had become too hot to hold him. The eagle's outspread wings broke his fall, for they acted as a parachute; and so did Umbezi, upon whom he chanced to land. Springing from the prostrate shape of the chief, who now had a bruise in front to match that behind, Scowl, covered with pecks and scratches, ran like a lamp-lighter, leaving me to ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... round the lake A little clock-work steamer paddling plied And shook the lilies: perched about the knolls A dozen angry models jetted steam: A petty railway ran: a fire-balloon Rose gem-like up before the dusky groves And dropt a fairy parachute and past: And there through twenty posts of telegraph They flashed a saucy message to and fro Between the mimic stations; so that sport Went hand in hand with Science; otherwhere Pure sport; a herd ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... on the importance of dressing up some one to look like HINDENBURG and dropping him at night by parachute from an aeroplane into the German lines near Head-Quarters. It would have to be a biggish man who can speak German well—Mr. CHESTERTON perhaps, but I have never met Mr. CHESTERTON, as he seems never to lunch or dine at the Ritz; or even Lord HALDANE. Once safely landed ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various
... litter, she puts it on the floor and crouches to regulate the wick. There rises from the medley of the old lady, vividly variegated with vermilion and night, a jet of black smoke, which returns in parachute form. Mame sighs, but she cannot check ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... than a few feet below the level from which they started. This feat they are enabled to perform by means of a broad membrane that extends from the skin of their fore-legs to that of their thighs, and which, when stretched out, endows them with the properties of a parachute. Their bodies, too, have a flattened shape like the bats; and this also helps to sustain them in ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... front as grenades, fired as rockets, shot from small mortars, or placed well to the front to be set off by trip wires close to the ground. The best light devised is one that can be fired well to the front from a small mortar and then hung suspended from an open parachute above the enemy. Bonfires can be laid ready for lighting when no other means is at hand. Whatever form of illumination is adopted, it should withstand bad ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... recalcitrant buckle. He had motioned the relief pilot to take the controls, and now the bulk of a parachute pack hung ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... of last season. Let me reckon them up. There were the horse, the bull, the parachute, - and the tumbler hanging on - chiefly by his toes, I believe - below the car. Very wrong, indeed, and decidedly to be stopped. But, in connexion with these and similar dangerous exhibitions, it strikes me that that portion of the public whom they entertain, is unjustly reproached. Their pleasure ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... full of black wings and angry cries, as the crows from neighboring nests flocked to the help of their fellow citizen. But the little red robber was brave and kept his head. Spreading his legs wide and flat, he made a sort of parachute of himself, and, instead of falling like a stone, he glided down to another branch. Those beating wings and terrible jabbing beaks were all about him, but they got in each other's way. And he was a wonder at dodging, I can tell you, now that he was among the bigger branches, and, though ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... a parachute device. He was taken up in a balloon to make a test of the apparatus. Arrived at a height of a thousand feet, he climbed over the edge of the basket, and dropped out. He had fallen two hundred yards when he remarked to himself, in a tone ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... nylon chute again. Another thought ran through his mind. Suppose they don't spot me in the dark. When the sun—Sirius, I mean—comes up, there's a good chance they'll spot the parachute and search ...
— The Quantum Jump • Robert Wicks
... increasing discomfort in his tail. It was not the first time, however, that he had realized that a long, tapering tail has its disadvantages as well as its uses. As a controllable balancing-pole, there is probably nothing to equal it. As a parachute, it serves its purpose in a precipitate leap. As a decoy, it frequently disturbs the enemy's aim. But, when once it is firmly jammed, it is liable to congestion, and this ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... drawn into the shape of an umbrella top, or an inverted parachute, by thongs of deer-skin, with which both the labourers were well provided. A few light sticks served to keep the parts from collapsing, or falling in. When this simple and natural expedient was arranged, it was placed on the water, ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... exclaimed the odd man, as he looked at the aeroplane, for there had been much work done on it since he had last seen it. "Bless my parachute, Tom! But it looks as though you could ...
— Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton
... Archipelago, possess, on the other hand, no power of genuine flight, being merely able to sustain themselves in the air through the extensive leaps which they take from tree to tree, the wing-like expansions of the skin simply exercising the mechanical function of a parachute. The apparatus of flight in the "Pterosaurs" is of the most remarkable character, and most resembles the "wing" of a Bat, though very different in some important particulars. The "wing" of the Pterosaurs is like that of Bats, namely, in consisting ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... single one of those simple tributes which blighted youths and maidens offer to her memory, but I am sorry enough that I have not time and opportunity to write four or five volumes of my opinion of her friend the founder of the Parachute, or the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... fair, Eddying round and round they sink Softly, slowly: one might think From the motions that are made, Every little leaf conveyed Sylph or fairy hither tending, To this lower world descending, Each invisible and mute, In his wavering parachute. But the kitten, how she starts, Crouches, stretches, paws and darts! First at one and then its fellow, Just as light and just as yellow; There are many now—now one— Now they stop and there are none: What intenseness of desire In her upward eye of fire! With a tiger-leap, half-way, ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... his right arm; she felt his muscles tauten as he clasped her to him. Useless now, he knew, any further struggles with the aeroplane. Its speed, its plummetlike drop checked only by the huge sweep of its parachute wings, Stern knew now it must fall clear to the bottom of the abyss—if bottom there were. And if ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... At 153d, the beautiful cemetery of Trinity Parish, leafy paths lying peaceful in the strong glow. At 166th Street is an open area now called Mitchel Square, with an outcrop of rock polished by the rearward breeks of many sliding urchins. Some children were playing on that small summit with a toy parachute made of light paper and a pebble attached by threads. On 168th Street alongside the big armoury of the Twenty-second Engineers boys were playing baseball, with a rubber ball, pitching it so that ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... jumping into space and trusting one's parachute to do its business properly. I felt a sudden tightening inside me as I thought of that dive into the void, but I ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... is better established, by experiment and calculation, than that the air is highly resistant. A circumference of only a yard in diameter in the shape of a parachute can not only impede descent in air, but can render it isochronous. ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... opened, and the jerk was terrific, the more so as he had counted not the customary ten, but fifteen before pulling out the ring. But very suddenly he seemed to be floating down with an amazing gentleness, with the ruddy blossom of a parachute swaying against a background of lustrous stars very far indeed over his head. Below him were masses of smoke and at least one huge dancing mass of flame, where the storage tank for airplane gas had exploded. It was unlikely in the extreme, he saw now, that anyone under that canopy of smoke ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... flying dragons; not such as Saint George fought with, but small lizards known as the Draco volans. They were provided with broad folds in the skin, along each side of the body, which enabled them not really to fly, but, as a parachute would do, to sustain them in the air while they leap ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... to Catalina Island, and on the way over they saw a whole "school" of whales and a flight of flying-fishes. Yes, really and truly, these little fish fly or sail through the air, for their fins balance them like a parachute. They skim along ten or twelve feet above the waves, and then drop in the water to rest, taking another flight whenever their enemies, the porpoises, ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... the Bosch birds come over disguised as clouds and spit mouthfuls of red-hot tracer-bullets at it, and then the observers hop out. One of them "hopped out" into my horse-lines last week. That is to say his parachute caught in a tree and he hung swinging, like a giant pendulum, over my horses' backs until we lifted him down. He came into "Mon Repos" to have bits of tree picked out of him. This was the sixth plunge overboard he had done in ten days, he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... of arrival and departure of trains at the German railhead at Achiet, for the smoke from the engines could be distinctly observed. Night after night our planes droned heavily over to the accompaniment of wonderful displays of "flaming onions," parachute flares, searchlights, and anti-aircraft gun-fire, and bombed these back areas with demoralising effect. Further along the enemy ridge to the right, and closer in, was what the trench maps grimly described as "Serre (site of)." If you want testimony of the complete ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... over the edge of his frame, making signals of distress in all directions, and with that and his windy flights of oratory suggests twenty minutes in a balloon-car, till he comes down to earth at the finish with the Doxology for a parachute. His shepherd's crook is one long note of interrogation, with which he tries to hook down the heavens to the understanding of his hearers, and his hearers up to an understanding of himself. All his arguments are put interrogatively, and few of them are ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... how people try And fail to hit that head so high.) I'll buy a little parachute (A common parachute with wings), I'll fill it full of arrowroot And other necessary things, And I will slay this fearful brute With stones and sticks and ...
— Bad Child's Book of Beasts • Hilaire Belloc
... doors of her true soul, And with their silken latches softly closed, When, couched beneath his poppy parachute, Inactive Sleep came by. Her glances seemed Like gold-winged angels sent from heavenly doors. Yet she was often sad when I was near. Once, tarrying late, I told her of my life, And of the monster I had come to find; But now, lo! she around my heart had wound The ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... into the parachute harness for such emergencies and over the side, then himself, both descending safely on the right side of the British trenches—which was rather "smart work," as the British would say, but all to the taste of the one-armed pilot who was looking for adventures. I have ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... sink Softly, slowly: one might think, 10 From the motions that are made, Every little leaf convey'd Sylph or Faery hither tending, To this lower world descending, Each invisible and mute, In his wavering parachute. —But the Kitten, how she starts, Crouches, stretches, paws, and darts; First at one and then it's fellow Just as light and just as yellow; 20 There are many now—now one— Now they stop; and there are none— What intenseness of desire In her upward eye of fire! With a tiger-leap half way Now ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... out. Took part in a debate or two and then off to the North Pole in a balloon. Managed to see a good deal of snow and ice, and fancy we caught a sight of the Pole itself. Sent home (by parachute) to one of my Magazines, "How I got within Measurable Distance of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 31, 1892 • Various
... in a fountain," said a Brown Pelican that had come sailing into Cuthbert Rookery with her wings sloped downward like a parachute. "It was the gold-seekers who filled the islands with the thunder of their guns and the ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... nearly all rock, against some fragments of which the stick was propped. There was no failure then. There came up a faint rasping sound as of wood over stone, as the cord tightened, and then very slowly the umbrella began, parachute-like, to rise in the air, higher and higher, as it was hauled up hand over hand till the spike touched the lower twigs ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... not quite with the speed of an arrow. A moment later, tired of his flight, he sprawls his eight webbed legs out in every direction, breaking them seemingly into a thousand joints, and settles back like an animated parachute awreck. Then perchance he perches on a rock knowingly, with the appearance of owl-like wisdom, albeit his head looks surprisingly like a frog's. Anon he holds his head erect and stretches out his long arms in what is most palpably a yawn. Then, for pure diversion, he may hold himself half ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... as a philosopher rather than an advocate, he took more rational ground, and compared the action of France to that of a parachute which retarded the fall of gold. The maximum effect of the enormous gold inflation of 1848-65 was to create a disturbance of less than five per cent. in value of the metals in countries outside of France. During all the years that the law of 1803 ...
— If Not Silver, What? • John W. Bookwalter
... four suits which he had made in his spare time, each adapted to a particular method of escape from the Skylark. The one he selected was of heavy canvas, braced with steel netting, equipped with helmet and air-tanks, and attached to a strong, heavy parachute. He put it on, tested all its parts, and made his way unobserved to one of the doors in the lower part of the vessel. Thus, when the chance for escape came, he was ready for it. As the Skylark paused over the Isthmus, his lips parted in a sardonic smile. He opened ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... naturalist would ever for a moment dream of doubting its close affinity to the flying squirrels of the American woodlands. It has just the same general outline, just the same bushy tail, just the same rough arrangement of colours, and just the same expanded parachute-like membrane stretching between the fore and hind limbs. Why should this be so? Clearly because both animals have independently adapted themselves to the same mode of life under the same general circumstances. Natural selection, acting upon unlike original types, but in like ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... would seem that the principle of the parachute was to some extent at least brought into play. If also circumstantial accounts can be credited, it would appear that a working model of a flying machine was publicly exhibited by one John Muller before the Emperor Charles V. at Nuremberg. ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... the largest, belonging to a closely allied subgenus, is known as the "Flying Squirrel,"[1] from its being assisted in its prodigious leaps from tree to tree, by the parachute formed by the skin of the flanks, which on the extension of the limbs front and rear, is laterally expanded from foot to foot. Thus buoyed up in its descent, the spring which it is enabled to make from one lofty tree to another resembles the flight of a bird rather than the bound ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... had a really successful balloon ascent: the balloon ran out four miles of thread before it was released, and the instrument fell without a parachute. The searchers followed the clue about 2 1/2 miles to the north, when it turned and came back parallel to itself, and only about 30 yards distant from it. The instrument was found undamaged and with ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... us, Captain Robers," replied Winford coldly. "I am in a hurry to be on my way. Kindly move down the ladder and join your men. Your hand weapons and food supplies will be dropped by parachute as we leave. I might add that in a short time I expect to be in a position to broadcast an S O S message for you which should bring rescue ships here to ...
— The Space Rover • Edwin K. Sloat
... said the sprout. "I was in mother's head, with a heap of brothers and sisters. Each of us had a little parachute. 'Fly away now, darlings,' said mother. 'The farther away you go, the better. I can do no more for you than I have done; and I won't deny that I am a little concerned about all the children that I ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... wondering air grows mute, As her pearly parachute Cometh slowly down from heaven, softly floating to and fro; And the earth emits no sound, As lightly on the ground Leaps the silvery-footed Spirit of ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... nodded grimly, touched a button on his desk. "Get me Air Force Chief of Staff Burns," he said, and, a moment later: "Bernie? Chuck here. We need a plane. A jet-transport to go you-know-where. Cargo? One man, in a parachute. Can you manage it? Immediately, if not sooner. Good boy, Bernie. No ... no, I'm sorry, I can't tell you a thing about it." The Secretary cut the connection, ...
— Summer Snow Storm • Adam Chase
... been killed in his fall because of a parachute which had been so arranged, unknown to him, to save him in ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... descindin' fr'm th' roof in a parachute. Ye know Bertillon. Ye don't? Iv coorse ye do, Hinnissy. He's th' la-ad that invinted th' system iv ditictive wurruk med aisy that they use down in th' Cintral Polis Station. I mind wanst, afther 'twas inthrojooced, th' loot says to Andy Rohan,—he's a sergeant now, be hivins!—he ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... in seeing any cheerful, light-hearted animal reduced to silence and depression. To watch a barking, worrying, jovial puppy suddenly desist from parachute expeditions on unsteady legs, and from shaking imaginary rats, and creep, tail close at home, overcome by affliction, into obscurity, is a sad sight. Mr. Alwynn felt much the same kind of pity for Dare as he glanced at him, resignedly blighted, handsomely forlorn, who but a short time ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... publication, during his life would injure his practice as a physician. It would be impossible without the aid of diagrams, and I do not remember sufficient, to explain his mechanical contrivances; but the general principle was, to suspend the man under a kind of flat parachute of extremely thin feather-edge boards, with a power of adjusting the angle at which it was placed, and allowing the man the full use of his arms and legs to work any machinery placed beneath; the area of the parachute being proportioned, as in birds to the weight ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 46, Saturday, September 14, 1850 • Various
... half as much fun as knocking down balloons. They went up with such a glorious bang! And it was delicious to watch the frightened observer tumble over the side of the basket in an effort to escape by parachute. That last one had somehow gotten fouled in the rigging and had been clawing frantically when the bag exploded. As for that, Yancey had been sorry; not for the man, but because he had wanted to see the parachute poof-op! into ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... of my plan that each in turn shall descend as in a parachute, and the balloon be drawn back by means which I shall have no difficulty in perfecting. If it will support the weight of one and let him gently down, it will have done all that is required of it. I will now show you its capacity ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... tall, of less than a foot in diameter, and rising in a straight shaft to the height of nearly a hundred feet. On the top is a splendid head of leaves like gigantic ostrich plumes, that gracefully curve over on all sides, forming a shape like a parachute. Each leaf is full five yards in length, and of the kind called pinnate—that is divided into numerous leaflets, each of which is itself more than a foot and a half long, shaped like the blade of a rapier. Under the shadow of this graceful plumage ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... perfected a parachute device. He was taken up in a balloon to make a test of the apparatus. Arrived at a height of a thousand feet, he climbed over the edge of the basket, and dropped out. He had fallen two hundred yards when he remarked to himself, in ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... was besieged in Kut, there came to him by aeroplane not only food (in quantities sadly insufficient for his needs), but salt, saccharine, opium, drugs and surgical dressings, mails, spare parts for wireless plant, money, and a millstone weighing seventy pounds, which was dropped by means of a parachute. In the actual operations of the war the uses of aircraft, and especially of the aeroplane, were very rapidly extended and multiplied. The earliest and most obvious use was reconnaissance. To the Commander-in-Chief a detailed knowledge of the enemy's dispositions and movements is ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... "Squirrel," from the Latin "Sciurus" and Greek "Skia-oura" means "shady tail." Thus all of its names seem to note the wonderful banner that serves the animal in turn as sun-shade, signal-flag, coverlet, and parachute. ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... hundred feet high are half a dozen huge fixed kite-balloons, with their occupants busily observing, sketching, mapping, or reporting the enemy's movements. Each of these is a target for the attacking aeroplanes and the occupants must be ready, at a moment's notice, to leap into a parachute when they are shot down. High above these balloons a score of British planes are darting about or dashing over the enemy's lines, acting as the eyes of the huge guns hidden away behind us. We are looking ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... was losing elevation and was pursuing a very erratic course. Before we could reach it it lost flying speed and fell into a spinning nose dive and headed for the ground. I watched, expecting every minute to see the crew make parachute jumps, but they didn't and the plane hit the ground with ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... out like antenn, and serving to balance the posterior part of the body and the filaments of the abdomen during flight. On reaching a certain height they allow themselves to descend, stretching out while doing so their long wings and tail, which then serve as a parachute. Then a rapid working of these organs suddenly changes the direction of the motion, and they begin to ascend again. Coupling takes place during these aerial dances. Soon afterward the females approach the surface of the water and lay ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... on, destroying it utterly before the scout had a chance to turn from the path of the titanic ship. But even as the plane spun downward, the pilot had managed to release a magnesium flare, a blindingly brilliant light that floated down on a parachute, and in the blaze of the white light it gave off, the other scouts at a few miles distance had seen the mighty bulk of the Kaxorian plane. At once they had dropped to the ground and then, by telephone lines, had sent their ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... and drunk of the wines of the dews of an immortal youth, and dieted on the ambrosial ether of gods, and sent his seedling offspring sailing ten thousand airy seas with the wind for master pilot and never a craft but the gypsy parachute of a seed with wings shaken out from the cones purpling to the ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... retains the stain longer than the larger one. The spindle in prophase (fig. 68) is much elongated and the 8 chromosomes are often spread out upon it so as to be easily counted. In the early metaphase the parachute-like heterochromosome group is always nearer one pole of the spindle (plate X, figs. 69 and 70). The equatorial plate often shows both the larger component of the pair and the plasmosome (fig. 71). Figures 72-74 show the metakinesis of the heterochromosome ...
— Studies in Spermatogenesis - Part II • Nettie Maria Stevens
... the nylon chute again. Another thought ran through his mind. Suppose they don't spot me in the dark. When the sun—Sirius, I mean—comes up, there's a good chance they'll spot the parachute and search ...
— The Quantum Jump • Robert Wicks
... up forty or fifty yards high; rising, he utters a series of long melodious notes; then he descends in a graceful spiral, the set of the motionless wings giving him the appearance of a slowly-falling parachute; the voice then also falls, the notes coming lower, sweeter, and more expressive until he reaches the surface. After alighting the song continues, the strains becoming longer, thinner, and clearer, until they dwindle to the finest threads ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... articulate and gad-about members of his flock. This one sways himself over the edge of his frame, making signals of distress in all directions, and with that and his windy flights of oratory suggests twenty minutes in a balloon-car, till he comes down to earth at the finish with the Doxology for a parachute. His shepherd's crook is one long note of interrogation, with which he tries to hook down the heavens to the understanding of his hearers, and his hearers up to an understanding of himself. All his arguments are put interrogatively, and few of them are worth answering. ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... territory the impious hordes which are overrunning it." These missionaries would, I presume, go to their posts in balloons. It never seems to occur to anyone here that the authority of a Parisian dropping down from the clouds in a parachute in any province would be contested. The right of Paris to rule France is a dictum so unquestioned in the minds of the Parisians, that their newspapers are now urging the Government to send new men to Tours to oust those who were sent there before the commencement of the ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... natural smartness," Captain Shadrach declared. "Natural smartness and nothin' else. She ain't had a mite of advantages, but up she goes just the same. Why, Teacher told me she considered her a reg'lar parachute." ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... he exclaimed, in a frightened whisper, "it would be the last of a fellow! No one could drop down there, and save his neck without a parachute. I guess the best thing I can do is to get over as ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... into space and trusting one's parachute to do its business properly. I felt a sudden tightening inside me as I thought of that dive into the void, but I asked ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... little town. The island was perhaps a mile in length. Between it and the mainland a boat was coming toward us. It was a dark blob of hull on the shining water, and above it a queerly shaped circular sail was puffed out, like a balloon parachute, by the wind. ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... diverting work. The Second Edition (1657) has various cuts amongst which is a frontispiece, that occurs again at page 29 of the little volume, depicting Gonsales being drawn up to the lunar world in a machine, not unlike a primitive parachute, to which are harnessed his 'gansas ... 25 in number, a covey that carried him ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... Even a couple of parachute lights fired from "Little Archibald," as we called the special gun used for these larger flares, revealed nothing, so I gave up in disgust, woke the only two men who had not been disturbed all night, tied a couple of sandbags around ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... the front as grenades, fired as rockets, shot from small mortars, or placed well to the front to be set off by trip wires close to the ground. The best light devised is one that can be fired well to the front from a small mortar and then hung suspended from an open parachute above the enemy. Bonfires can be laid ready for lighting when no other means is at hand. Whatever form of illumination is adopted, it should withstand bad ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... up and crack this suit and let some air in. But I can't. I fell fifty miles without a parachute. I'm dead so I can't ...
— Accidental Death • Peter Baily
... in his fall because of a parachute which had been so arranged, unknown to him, to save ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... area was quarantined, and daily the quarantine was extended. No plane could land and take off again. No ship could enter and leave. An airlift of supplies dropped by parachute was being organized. ...
— Prologue to an Analogue • Leigh Richmond
... of which he had cogitated when reclining in a state of supine repletion to aid digestion, stimulated by his appreciation of the importance of inventions now common but once revolutionary, for example, the aeronautic parachute, the reflecting telescope, the spiral corkscrew, the safety pin, the mineral water siphon, the canal lock with winch ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... army reached a high peak looking into a deep valley, only to be reached over an inaccessible precipice, all the army would have to do would be to spread out your superb invention and use it as a parachute. The sight of the army of France gradually floating down into the valley would be so terrifying to the nations of Europe, that I imagine no enemy would wait for a gun to be fired. De Plonville, your invention will immortalize you, and ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... trade? If so, their ground is at least defensible; for what chance of attraction would there be for the winking Virgin in competition with him who could "make a young lady ascend to the ceiling, and come slowly down like a parachute!"—a spiritual fact I have heard from witnesses who really, so far as character ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... half-dead oak, hollow, and disfigured with white tumors, its roots spreading out like accipitrine claws grasping the ground. A chilly wind circled round them, upon whose currents the seeds of a neighboring lime-tree, supported parachute-wise by the wing attached, flew out of the boughs downward like fledglings from their nest. The vale was wrapped in a dim atmosphere of unnaturalness, and the east was like a livid curtain edged with pink. There was no sign nor sound ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... observation balloon being brought down to its anchorage. One of many similar balloons used to direct the fire of artillery and observe the movements of the enemy, a service of considerable danger as the balloonists are constantly exposed to airplane attack. Each observer is harnessed to a parachute and jumps when the balloon is attacked and in danger of destruction. (Copyright by C. P. I., ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... straight toward the earth; then, like a parachute opening, the wings spread gracefully, the descent slackened, and Hawkins floated down, down, down—until he landed in the center of the yard ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... again the Bosch birds come over disguised as clouds and spit mouthfuls of red-hot tracer-bullets at it, and then the observers hop out. One of them "hopped out" into my horse-lines last week. That is to say his parachute caught in a tree and he hung swinging, like a giant pendulum, over my horses' backs until we lifted him down. He came into "Mon Repos" to have bits of tree picked out of him. This was the sixth ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... protest, is everlastingly so. By-the-by, I should have told you that Captain Beauchamp was one hundred and ninety below Captain Baskelett when the state of the poll was handed to me. The gentleman driving with your father compared the Liberals to a parachute cut away from the balloon. Is he army ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... calm and frosty air Of this morning bright and fair, Eddying round and round they sink Softly, slowly: one might think, 10 From the motions that are made, Every little leaf convey'd Sylph or Faery hither tending, To this lower world descending, Each invisible and mute, In his wavering parachute. —But the Kitten, how she starts, Crouches, stretches, paws, and darts; First at one and then it's fellow Just as light and just as yellow; 20 There are many now—now one— Now they stop; and there are none— What intenseness of desire ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... can take up a balloon a long ways, but it can't keep it there. And when a fellow's turning flip-flops up among the clouds, he's naturally going to have the farmers gaping at him. But in the end there always comes a time when the parachute fails to work. I don't know anything that's quite so dead as a man who's fallen three or four thousand feet off the edge ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... nose of the shell and this explosion ejects the star-shell out of the rear of the steel casing. At the same time the black powder ignites the priming mixture next to it, which in turn ignites the slow-burning illuminating compound. The star-shell has a large parachute of strong material folded in the rear of the casing and the cardboard tube containing the illuminating mixture is attached to it. The time of burning varies, but is ordinarily less than a minute. Certain structural details must be such as to endure the stresses of a high muzzle velocity. ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... every glade in the forest, a box of beetles or grasshoppers—or even bits of chopped meat—offers the possibility of a new and neglected sport, in effect the inversion of baiting a school of fish. Toss a grasshopper into the air and he has only time to spread his wings for a parachute to earth, when a bat swoops past so quickly that the eyes refuse to see any single effort—but the grasshopper has vanished. As for the piece of meat, it is drawn like a magnet to the fierce little face. Once I tried ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... the boys watched they saw distinctly that each man, from his wrist to his side, was possessed of a sort of leathery fiber like that of bat's swing, and that as their arms were of unusual length this fiber supported them in their downward flights like a parachute. ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... nineteen-thousand-foot level, which was about midday, the wind was so severe that I looked with some anxiety to the stays of my wings, expecting momentarily to see them snap or slacken. I even cast loose the parachute behind me, and fastened its hook into the ring of my leathern belt, so as to be ready for the worst. Now was the time when a bit of scamped work by the mechanic is paid for by the life of the aeronaut. But she held together bravely. Every cord and ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the present body into a char-a-banc or a tipping-waggon. The hood is reversible, so that passengers may be sheltered from the wind when the car runs backwards. In the rear of the boot, concealed by a door flush with the panels, is an EINSTEIN parachute, by means of which a passenger may leave the car before an imminent accident or when ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 31, 1920 • Various
... experiment unless you provide yourself with a parachute! An aeroplane could make a good start up here. Do you ever get ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... others, as Sir J. Richardson has remarked, with the posterior part of their bodies rather wide and with the skin on their flanks rather full, to the so-called flying squirrels; and flying squirrels have their limbs and even the base of the tail united by a broad expanse of skin, which serves as a parachute and allows them to glide through the air to an astonishing distance from tree to tree. We cannot doubt that each structure is of use to each kind of squirrel in its own country, by enabling it to escape birds or beasts of prey, or to collect food more quickly, ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... they were still falling, but not so fast. The top of the buggy caught the air like a parachute or an umbrella filled with wind, and held them back so that they floated downward with a gentle motion that was not so very disagreeable to bear. The worst thing was their terror of reaching the bottom of this great crack in the ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... see a thing open out like a parachute, while below it trailed something that might have been the stick of the rocket. Eagerly Kennedy followed the parachute as the wind wafted it along and it sank slowly to the earth. When, at last, he recovered it I saw that ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... to a closely allied subgenus, is known as the "Flying Squirrel,"[1] from its being assisted in its prodigious leaps from tree to tree, by the parachute formed by the skin of the flanks, which on the extension of the limbs front and rear, is laterally expanded from foot to foot. Thus buoyed up in its descent, the spring which it is enabled to make from one lofty tree to another resembles the flight of a bird rather than the bound of a quadruped. ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... part in a debate or two and then off to the North Pole in a balloon. Managed to see a good deal of snow and ice, and fancy we caught a sight of the Pole itself. Sent home (by parachute) to one of my Magazines, "How I got within Measurable ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 31, 1892 • Various
... It was due to a steadily increasing discomfort in his tail. It was not the first time, however, that he had realized that a long, tapering tail has its disadvantages as well as its uses. As a controllable balancing-pole, there is probably nothing to equal it. As a parachute, it serves its purpose in a precipitate leap. As a decoy, it frequently disturbs the enemy's aim. But, when once it is firmly jammed, it is liable to congestion, and this ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... very high altitude-as high as 100,000 feet. By this time the gas bag has swelled to full size, about l00 feet high and 70 feet in diameter. At a set time, a device releases the case of instruments under the balloon. The instruments descend by parachute, and the balloon, rising quickly, explodes from ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... could fly by the aid of this ingenious machinery. You will see that his wings are arranged so that they are moved by his legs, and also by cords attached to his arms. The umbrella over his head is not intended to ward off the rain or the sun, but is to act as a sort of parachute, to keep him from falling while he is making his strokes. The basket, which hangs down low enough to be out of the way of his feet, is filled with provisions, which he expects to need in the course of ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... the supposition, an all but impossible supposition I quite wish to believe.——Well, suppose that he goes, what will become of you without a husband? Keep well with your husband as you take care of your beauty; for beauty, after all, is a woman's parachute, and a husband also stands between you and worse. I am supposing that you are happy and loved to the end, and I am leaving unpleasant or unfortunate events altogether out of the reckoning. This being so, fortunately ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... balloon, the valve of which was too large and would not shut; Harris fell, and was killed! Sadler, deprived of ballast by his long sojourn in the air, was dragged over the town of Boston and dashed against the chimneys; Sadler fell, and was killed! Cokling descended with a convex parachute which he pretended to have perfected; Cokling fell, and was killed! Well, I love them, these victims of their own imprudence, and I shall die as they ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... expostulated Elephant. "I'm small, but I can get around as well as the next one. And when I get to sailing through the air, I expect to have wings. Then, if any accident comes along, it's me to flap my feathers, and drop like a thistle-down. In other words, Larry, I've got a parachute all arranged that will let me down easy; just like the fellow at the county fair, who drops from a hot ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... could have been stuck, the manoeuvre must have failed; but the shelf was nearly all rock, against some fragments of which the stick was propped. There was no failure then. There came up a faint rasping sound as of wood over stone, as the cord tightened, and then very slowly the umbrella began, parachute-like, to rise in the air, higher and higher, as it was hauled up hand over hand till the spike touched the lower twigs of the horizontal ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... ascents of last season. Let me reckon them up. There were the horse, the bull, the parachute, - and the tumbler hanging on - chiefly by his toes, I believe - below the car. Very wrong, indeed, and decidedly to be stopped. But, in connexion with these and similar dangerous exhibitions, it strikes me that that portion of the public whom they ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... the directness if not quite with the speed of an arrow. A moment later, tired of his flight, he sprawls his eight webbed legs out in every direction, breaking them seemingly into a thousand joints, and settles back like an animated parachute awreck. Then perchance he perches on a rock knowingly, with the appearance of owl-like wisdom, albeit his head looks surprisingly like a frog's. Anon he holds his head erect and stretches out his long arms in what is most palpably a yawn. Then, for pure diversion, he may hold himself half ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... primrose path of dalliance"—it shrinks back from it as from a precipice, and keeps in the iron rail-way of the understanding. Irish oratory, on the contrary, is a sort of aeronaut: it is always going up in a balloon, and breaking its neck, or coming down in the parachute. It is filled full with gaseous matter, with whim and fancy, with alliteration and antithesis, with heated passion and bloated metaphors, that burst the slender, silken covering of sense; and the airy pageant, that glittered in empty space and rose in all the bliss ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... another. They have regular aerial highways, and some of the tree frogs are veritable wonders in the accuracy of their leaps from tree to tree. Even more skilled than these are the agamid lizards of India, whose chief means of travel is a folding parachute, which at a moment's notice can be erected and carry to another tree its lucky possessor. In Borneo is an aviator tree-snake which is able to so spread his ribs and inflate his body that he can actually sail from branch to branch in ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... frosty air Of this morning bright and fair, Eddying round and round they sink Softly, slowly: one might think From the motions that are made, Every little leaf conveyed Sylph or fairy hither tending, To this lower world descending, Each invisible and mute, In his wavering parachute. But the kitten, how she starts, Crouches, stretches, paws and darts! First at one and then its fellow, Just as light and just as yellow; There are many now—now one— Now they stop and there are none: What intenseness of desire ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... a grenade and not a parachute? Some remnant rather of the ancient folly, Some touch of times before the Big Dispute? I have it now! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... and the ancient conception of the winged angelic host show how the human mind has long been fascinated by the idea of flight, but the first design of an apparatus to lift man into the air, a parachute-like contrivance, was only reached at the end of the fifteenth century in one of Leonardo da Vinci's manuscripts. About the same time lived the first of the long line of daring practical aviators, without whom success would never have been ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes
... her softly upon the forehead, but before she had time to suffer from a new fear her eye caught the glitter of a flake of snow in its parachute descent across the path of her lamps. "They hate snow...." she whispered, not knowing whether it was true. She tried to picture them as a band of workmen, who, content with their little pillage, were now far from her on their way to ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... genuine flight, being merely able to sustain themselves in the air through the extensive leaps which they take from tree to tree, the wing-like expansions of the skin simply exercising the mechanical function of a parachute. The apparatus of flight in the "Pterosaurs" is of the most remarkable character, and most resembles the "wing" of a Bat, though very different in some important particulars. The "wing" of the Pterosaurs is like that of Bats, namely, in consisting of a thin leathery expansion of the skin which is ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... mute, As her pearly parachute Cometh slowly down from heaven, softly floating to and fro; And the earth emits no sound, As lightly on the ground Leaps the silvery-footed ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... better to give him his freedom, and see him scamper up one tree and "fly" to another. As he springs he spreads out the whitish membranes along each side, holds his flat tail rigid, quivering. Thus he goes down, parachute fashion, on an inclined plane. Just before he gets to the tree trunk which is his objective point, he makes momentum aid his muscles in the ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... 'No-Man's-Land,' for it is on that mighty graveyard stretching from Switzerland to the sea that the enemy's eyes are bent. The regiments used to get various kinds of flares to experiment with. We used to laugh over an incident that occurred when a new type, a species of parachute, had been served out. The Second-in-command, who fired it, miscalculated the strength of the wind, which was blowing from the enemy's trench, and the flare was carried in a stately curve backwards until it ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... Kut, there came to him by aeroplane not only food (in quantities sadly insufficient for his needs), but salt, saccharine, opium, drugs and surgical dressings, mails, spare parts for wireless plant, money, and a millstone weighing seventy pounds, which was dropped by means of a parachute. In the actual operations of the war the uses of aircraft, and especially of the aeroplane, were very rapidly extended and multiplied. The earliest and most obvious use was reconnaissance. To the Commander-in-Chief ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... dandelion are next examined, the tiny seeds are found standing on tiptoe on a raised platform, each grasping a tiny parachute and waiting for a puff of wind to start them off. A pupil is permitted to give the puff. Seeds are distributed, and the means of flight is compared with that of the milkweed. The shape of the seeds is observed and also the tiny anchor points at the lower end of the ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... His own opinion was, that the publication, during his life would injure his practice as a physician. It would be impossible without the aid of diagrams, and I do not remember sufficient, to explain his mechanical contrivances; but the general principle was, to suspend the man under a kind of flat parachute of extremely thin feather-edge boards, with a power of adjusting the angle at which it was placed, and allowing the man the full use of his arms and legs to work any machinery placed beneath; the area of the parachute being proportioned, as in birds to the weight of the man, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 46, Saturday, September 14, 1850 • Various
... comes down very gently when the gas gives out." said the man. "It's almost like a parachute. Your children will come down like feathers. We'll get up a searching party and go after them." He knew there was great danger but he did not want to add to Mrs. ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the County Fair • Laura Lee Hope
... the copy of that matter you printed about me in England? This is the time to call you to account for it. We are two or three miles above terra firma, and I might like to drop you for a parachute." ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... than any ever seen under the old regime. These modern Olympics consist of chariot-races and wrestling, horse and foot races, ascensions of balloons, carrying three or four persons, descents from them by means of a parachute, mock-fights and aquatic tilting. After the sports of the day, come splendid illuminations, grand fire-works, pantomimes represented by two or three hundred performers, and concerts, which, aided by splendid decorations, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... are so bold and reckless in leaping through the trees is that, if they miss their hold and fall, they sustain no injury. Every species of tree-squirrel seems to be capable of a sort of rudimentary flying,—at least of making itself into a parachute, so as to ease or break a fall or a leap from a great height. The so-called flying squirrel does this the most perfectly. It opens its furry vestments, leaps into the air, and sails down the steep incline from the top of one tree to the foot of the next as lightly ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... elapsed when there fluttered from the tiny monoplane a paper parachute. It dropped for several hundred feet before it spread to the air pressure and floated more gently toward the earth and a moment later there burst from its basket a puff of white smoke. Two more parachutes followed the first and two more puffs of smoke. Then the machine ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... from which they started. This feat they are enabled to perform by means of a broad membrane that extends from the skin of their fore-legs to that of their thighs, and which, when stretched out, endows them with the properties of a parachute. Their bodies, too, have a flattened shape like the bats; and this also helps to ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... each adapted to a particular method of escape from the Skylark. The one he selected was of heavy canvas, braced with steel netting, equipped with helmet and air-tanks, and attached to a strong, heavy parachute. He put it on, tested all its parts, and made his way unobserved to one of the doors in the lower part of the vessel. Thus, when the chance for escape came, he was ready for it. As the Skylark paused over the Isthmus, his lips parted in a sardonic ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... he might break his shins over at any moment. It might be here, it might be there, it might come at any hour of the day. The next post might bring it. It might be in yonder Parcel Delivery van,—nothing more probable. Or at any moment it might fall from heaven in a parachute, or be at that second passing through the dock-gates, wearily home from the Islands of Sugar and Spice. ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... dashed off a story and enclosed it in one of several leather cylinders he had provided for this purpose. Each one had a sort of miniature parachute connected to it, and a flag to attract attention as ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... really important question. The Alligator may use his tail as a club, the Horse, his tail as a fly-flapper, the Porcupine his tail as a spiked war-club, the 'Possum his as a hooked hanger, the Fox his as a muffler, the Fish his as a paddle; but the Gray Squirrel's tail is a parachute, a landeasy. I have seen a Gray Squirrel fall fifty feet to the ground, but his tail was in good condition; he spread it to the utmost and it landed ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... a lever and the machine glided down towards the valley, falling all the while with the effortless grace a parachute. The shed from which his machine had issued was midway down a slope, with a short length of rails which ran, apparently, through it. The machine seemed to hover for several moments above the building, then descended slowly ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... on the horns of the moon, And he hung up there till next day noon— When all at once he exclaimed, "Hoot-toot!" And then came down in his parachute. ...
— The Book of Joyous Children • James Whitcomb Riley
... little dandelion," said the sprout. "I was in mother's head, with a heap of brothers and sisters. Each of us had a little parachute. 'Fly away now, darlings,' said mother. 'The farther away you go, the better. I can do no more for you than I have done; and I won't deny that I am a little concerned about all the children that I have brought into the world. But that can't be helped ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... falling, the skirt of her dress, spreading as a parachute, lessened the velocity of the descent. This still extended, hinders her from sinking. As she knows not how to swim, it will not sustain her long; itself becoming weighted with ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... dangling to one of the pieces. For a consideration which the citizens of Binghamton, New York, sensibly declined to give he offered to ascend to the height of a mile in a paper balloon, there set fire to it and descend in a parachute. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... see myself that it wasn't acting normally. It was losing elevation and was pursuing a very erratic course. Before we could reach it it lost flying speed and fell into a spinning nose dive and headed for the ground. I watched, expecting every minute to see the crew make parachute jumps, but they didn't and the plane hit the ground with ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... (pryer) Cortaplumas (penknife) Chupaflores (humming-bird) Destripaterrones (navvy) Lavamanos (wash-hand stand) Limpiabotas (boot-black) Matamoros (boaster) Mondadientes (toothpick) Papahueros (ninny) Papamoscas (ninny) Papanatas (ninny) Paracaidas (parachute) Paraguas (umbrella) Pelagatos (ragamuffin) Pintamonas (slap-dasher or bad partner) Sacacorchos (corkscrew) Salvavidas (life-boats) Sepancuantos (slap ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... patented a balloon and parachute dingus which worked on the principle of a duck's foot in the mud. I use scientific terms because I am unable to express myself in the common language of the vulgar herd. This machine had a tail which, under great excitement, it would throw over ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... the bottom of the valley. A white smoke rose from between two masses of basalt, and the condor, shot in the head, gradually turned over and began to fall, supported by his great wings spread out like a parachute. He had not let go his prey, but gently sank down with it on the ground, about ten paces from ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... of the dews of an immortal youth, and dieted on the ambrosial ether of gods, and sent his seedling offspring sailing ten thousand airy seas with the wind for master pilot and never a craft but the gypsy parachute of a seed with wings shaken out from the cones purpling ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... something pathetic in seeing any cheerful, light-hearted animal reduced to silence and depression. To watch a barking, worrying, jovial puppy suddenly desist from parachute expeditions on unsteady legs, and from shaking imaginary rats, and creep, tail close at home, overcome by affliction, into obscurity, is a sad sight. Mr. Alwynn felt much the same kind of pity for Dare ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... on this point. In case any pilot objects to attacking the observers with machine-gun fire, he is to strew their parachutes with autumn leaves and such field-flowers as the season affords. Now, listen! What difference, ethically, is there, between attacking one observation officer in a parachute, and dropping a ton of bombs on a train-load of soldiers? And to kill the observers is really more important than to destroy the balloon. If you are going to be a military pilot, for the love of Pete ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... laughter: round the lake A little clock-work steamer paddling plied And shook the lilies: perched about the knolls A dozen angry models jetted steam: A petty railway ran: a fire-balloon Rose gem-like up before the dusky groves And dropt a fairy parachute and past: And there through twenty posts of telegraph They flashed a saucy message to and fro Between the mimic stations; so that sport Went hand in hand with Science; otherwhere Pure sport; a herd of boys with clamour bowled And stumped the wicket; ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... Renard, the eminent superintendent of the French Aeronautical Department, exhibited at the Paris Exposition of that year, an apparatus experimented with some years before, which he termed a "dirigible parachute." It consisted of an oviform body to which were pivoted two upright slats carrying above the body nine long superposed flat blades spaced about one-third of their width apart. When this apparatus was properly ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... form of delusion. You remember what Jesus Christ said when the Devil tried to entice Him to do a thing of that sort, by quoting Scripture to Him—'He shall give His angels charge concerning Thee, to keep Thee in all Thy ways. Cast Thyself down. Trust to the promise as a kind of parachute to keep Thee from falling bruised on the stones of the Temple-court.' Christ's answer was: 'Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.' You will not get God's protection in ways ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... parachute, I'd like nothing better than to make the trip!" he said a trifle wistfully. "To tell you the truth, though," his voice sank to a whisper, "between the doctors and Mrs. Damon I'll be lucky if I'm allowed to walk around the block alone for some time ...
— Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope • Victor Appleton
... like the crowd of a county fair at a parachute act. For the next puff may get him. Who knows this better than the aviator? He is, likely, an old hand at the game; or, if he is not, he has all the experience of other veterans to go by. His ruse is the same as that of the escaped prisoner who runs from the fire ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... a fountain," said a Brown Pelican that had come sailing into Cuthbert Rookery with her wings sloped downward like a parachute. "It was the gold-seekers who filled the islands with the thunder of their guns and the ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... (Chancellor of the Exchequer) for L500, which was soon granted: and from this time there is a great deal of correspondence (mainly with Mr Baily) upon the details of the experiment and the theory of the calculation.—On July 24th I saw the descent of the parachute by which Mr Cocking was killed. I attended the coroner's inquest and gave evidence a few ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... place of the bullets. The shell on bursting, blows off the head and scatters the ignited stars. This shell is only supplied to mountain guns and howitzers, and takes the place of the older types of illuminating shell, viz. the ground light ball and the parachute light ball. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... rode out with father, or went on the steamboat. Last week a balloon went up, from the other side of the river. We had a fine view of it from the roof of our house. Two men were in it, and when they had risen so high that the balloon appeared quite small, they threw out a little machine, called a parachute. It looked something like an umbrella, and had a dog to it. The balloon sailed a great distance through the air, and ...
— The Summer Holidays - A Story for Children • Amerel
... whose delightful compositions, somewhat in the "Hugh Thomson" manner, embellish several volumes of Messrs. Macmillan's Cranford series, has illustrated also "The Parachute," and "English Fairy and Folk Tales," by E. S. Hartland (1893), and also supplied two pictures to that most fascinating volume prized by all lovers of children, "W. V., Her Book," by W. Canton. Perhaps "Westward ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... of the parcel dislodged an unfolded sheet of note-paper, which made a parachute expedition to the floor. Mr. Gresley picked it up and laid it on ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... flight. As Darius Green expressed it so long ago, the trouble about flying comes when you want to alight. That holds as true to-day with the most perfect airplanes, as in boyhood days when one jumped from the barn in perfect confidence that the family umbrella would serve as a parachute. To alight with an airplane the pilot—supposing his descent to be voluntary and not compelled by accident or otherwise—surveys the country about him for a level field, big and clear enough for the machine to run off its momentum ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... unbroken from gable to gable; the windows were glazed with sheets of plate glass, a temporary iron stovepipe passing out near one of these, and running up to the height of the ridge, where it was finished by a covering like a parachute. Walking round to the end, he perceived an oblong white stone let into the wall just above the plinth, on which was inscribed ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... the twenty-foot silk of his parachute bellied out in the denser air of the lower heights. His respirator tube was still in his mouth, and the double, vacuum-interlined leather of his safety suit had kept him from freezing in the spatial cold of the ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... was just now particularly active with his aeroplanes, and with fine nights he made frequent trips over our lines, dropping bombs. When the nights were very dark he often used to let off brilliant white parachute lights, and as they descended he was able to get some view of the roads and transport lines and any movement there might be. Usually he flew extremely low, and there is no doubt that he did considerable damage; especially as there were such masses of troops and transport ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
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