"Rocket" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stood at the window of the laboratory where the thousand parts of the strange rocket lay strewn in careful order. Small groups worked slowly over the dismantled parts. The captain wanted to ask but something stopped him. Behind him Doctor Johannsen sat at his desk, his gnarled old hand tight about a whiskey bottle, the bottle ...
— Test Rocket! • Jack Douglas
... when he saw Antonino climbing up the mountain-side with the letter-bag slung over his shoulder. He felt as if he could not forego this last festa. When it was over, when the lights had gone out in the houses of San Felice, and the music was silent, and the last rocket had burst in the sky, showering down its sparks towards the gaping faces of the peasants, he would be ready to give up this free, unintellectual life, this life in which his youth ran wild. He ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... strengthen the idea, now and then above the trees would burst what seemed a rocket of coloured stars. The stars would drift away in a flock on the wind and be lost. They were flights of birds. All-coloured birds peopled the trees below blue, scarlet, dove-coloured, bright of eye, but voiceless. ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... signal in rock lighthouses, where it would be impossible to mount large pieces of apparatus, the use of a gun-cotton rocket has been suggested by Sir Richard Collinson, deputy-master of the Trinity House. A charge of gun-cotton is inclosed in the head of a rocket, which is projected to the height of perhaps 1,000 feet, when ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... give the ever-ready steel-horse the rein; faster and faster whirl the glistening wheels until objects "by the road-side become indistinct phantoms as they glide instantaneously by, and to strike a hole or obstruction is to be transformed into a human sky-rocket, and, later on, into a new arrival in another world. A wild yell of warning at a blue- bloused peasant in the road ahead, shrill screams of dismay from several females at a cluster of cottages, greet the ear as you ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... be happier, I suppose, to be running your legs off, if it is to no purpose. A lover with a new impulse is like a rocket when the fuse is lighted; he must needs go off with a rush, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... the Skylark, and no knowledge of intra-atomic energy. Therefore their space-ships are of the rocket type, and for that reason they can cross only at the exact time of conjunction, or whatever you call it—no, not conjunction, exactly, either, since the two planets do not revolve around the same sun: but when they are closest together. Our solar system is so complex, ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... Tom Corbett snapped orders into the intercom and his unit-mates responded by smooth co-ordinated action, the giant rocket cruiser Polaris slowly arched through Earth's atmosphere, first nosing up to lose speed and then settling tailfirst toward its destination—the spaceport at Space ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... light, and a slight explosion, interrupted the half-laughing girl, and Mulford, turning on his heel, quick as thought, saw that a rocket had shot into the air, from a point close under the bows of the brig. He was still in the act of moving toward the forecastle, when, at the distance of several leagues, he saw the explosion of another rocket high in the air. He knew enough of the practices of vessels ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... for the game to begin, the New York, which was the flagship, sent up a rocket, warning the other vessels to be on the lookout ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 18, March 11, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... seized Adam by the throat and backed him under the meal spout. Adam opened his mouth to squall and it spouted meal like a whale. He made a surge for breath and liberty and tossed Bert away like a feather. Then he shot out of the mill door like a rocket, leaving his old battered plug hat and one prong of his coat tail in the hands of the enemy. He ran through the creek and knocked it dry as he went. He made a bee line for my grandfather's house, a ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... a train of cars, carrying coal, drawn by a steam locomotive, ran from Stockton to Darlington in Lancashire. In a week the price of coals in Darlington fell from eighteen shillings to eight shillings and sixpence. In 1830 the 'Rocket,' designed by George Stephenson, ran from Liverpool to Manchester at a rate of nearly forty miles an hour, and the possibilities of the new method of transportation became manifest. But the jealousy of the landed interest, eager to maintain the beauty and the privacy of the ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... rocket," Mr. Jackson said as they left the window. "It means something. It can only be a signal. People don't let off rockets for amusement nowadays. Did you meet anyone on the road?" "No, sir," Harvey said, ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... its rocket motors, the great vessel lifted itself laboriously from the ground, squatting on flame, filling Fletcher Monk's mind with the first real sense of fear since he learned the grim facts of his ailment ...
— Heart • Henry Slesar
... the spelling-book was turned. That tricksey little list of "goblin, problem, conduct, rocket, pontiff, compact, prospect, ostrich" finally left but three scholars between Ruth and Julia at the head of the class. One of these was Oliver Shortsleeves, a French Canadian lad whose parents had Anglicised their name when they came down into New York State. He was ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... an ordinary rocket, is fired from a rifle and is designed for short-range use. It consists of a steel cylindrical shell a few inches long fastened to a steel rod. A parachute is attached to the cardboard container in which the illuminating ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... A rocket! They were looking for us then! The pinnace must have been picked up! A cheer—what a cheer!—came brokenly from our lips; and we lashed furiously at the oars, steering to where a glare in the mist had come with ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... around us witnesses of that time. On every hand we are wrapped in a veil of ignorance, as with a pall of darkness, we no more distinguish the light beyond the cradle than that beyond the tomb. So far as memory is concerned, it would seem that we might be compared with a rocket such as we sometimes see flashing through the sky in the night-time, leaving behind it a line of light, this light never shows anything more than a limited portion of the way. Of like nature is memory, a trail ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... of lobelias spread out like green wool gemmed with pale mauve. The softly shaded stars of globularia, the blue cups of nemophila, the yellow crosses of saponaria, the white and purple ones of sweet rocket, wove patches of rich tapestry, stretching onward and onward, a fabric of royal luxury, so that the young couple might enjoy the delights of that first walk together without fatigue. But the violets ever reappeared; real seas of violets that rolled all round them, shedding the ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... Suddenly a rocket shot up from below, arched its trail of light, and exploded: and on the instant the whole valley answered and exploded below us. Between the detonations a cheer rang up the hillside and was drowned in the noise of musketry, as under a crackle of laughter. ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... write me letters seem to get themselves wound up into a sky rocket and then let themselves explode in the last paragraph, and it always upsets my nerves. I was just about to begin to cry again over the last words of the judge, when the only bright spot in the day so far suddenly happened. ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the surnames of some of the star families. There goes a jolly rocket," answered George, and Jane felt as if she almost understood about the ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... in that place at the edge of the great Horse Shoe where the rock has fallen and left a peculiarly shaped chasm: through this the spray leaps up from below, and flashes a hundred feet into the air, in rocket-like jets and points, and then breaks and dissolves away in the pyrotechnic curves of a perpetual Fourth of July. Basil said something like this in celebrating the display, with the purpose of rendering her ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... below the water-line, and tearing the schooner adrift. She dropped astern, lay quietly for a few moments off the port-quarter of the Richmond, and then steamed slowly up the river, receiving broadsides from the Richmond and Preble, and throwing up a rocket. In a few moments three dim lights were seen up the river near the eastern shore. They were shortly made out to be fire-rafts. The squadron slipped their chains, the three larger vessels, by direction of the senior officer, retreating down the Southwest Pass to the sea; but in the attempt ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... and all went well until I reached mid-stream. Then, the wire beginning to sag threateningly towards the water, Mac flung his whole weight on to his end of it, and, to his horror, I shot up into the air like a sky-rocket. ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... met the Wolf—we had sighted her on the evening of the 4th, but it was too rough then to communicate, and, it was said, the Wolf did not recognize our rocket signals. With the Wolf's usual luck, the weather moderated next day, and the ships stopped. Just as the Germans on land always seemed to get the weather they wanted, so they were equally favoured at sea. This was noticed over and over again, and the Hitachi passengers had very good reason to ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... handles of the controls, and insulation peeked through rips in the plastic siding here and there. I wondered if the thing had any slow leaks and supposed fatalistically that it had. The agent waved at me, stony-faced, the conveyor belt trundled me outside the dome, and I kicked the weary rocket into life. ...
— The Risk Profession • Donald Edwin Westlake
... too, glad that he had diverted his friend's attention from the elusive and perhaps non-existent note. "Did you know the space rocket is due pretty soon," he said, "perhaps even in ...
— I Like Martian Music • Charles E. Fritch
... In the summer of 1780 Hyder Ali suddenly quitted Seringapatam, with one of the finest armies ever seen in Southern India. This army consisted of 30,000 cavalry, 15.,000 drilled infantry, 40,000 irregular troops, 2000 artillery and rocket men, and 400 Europeans, many of whom were Frenchmen. With this force Hyder poured through the ghauts or passes, and burst like a mountain-torrent into the Carnatic. His arms were irresistible. Porto Novo, on the coast, and Conjeveram, close to Trichinopoly, were captured and plundered; almost ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the ship was in danger, all doubt on this point was to be set at rest in a dramatic manner. Suddenly a rush of light from the forward deck, a hissing roar that made us all turn from watching the boats, and a rocket leapt upwards to where the stars blinked and twinkled above us. Up it went, higher and higher, with a sea of faces upturned to watch it, and then an explosion that seemed to split the silent night in two, and a shower of stars sank slowly down and went out one by one. And with ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... like crazy, an' that half-smart Rubero drills him right through the head. I take one shot at the thing, low so's not to hit Movaine, an' then we're all running, I'm halfway to the hall when Cooms tears past me like a rocket. The Duke an' the others are already piling out through the portal. I get to the hall, and there's this terrific smack of sound in the room. I look back ... an' ... an'—" Baldy ...
— Lion Loose • James H. Schmitz
... no more creative than this? Had the worlds dedicated themselves to the same monotonous pattern? He had caught a glimpse of conventional, rocket-shaped spaceships, plying their courses back and forth among the planets. He saw boats and cars and a few long-nosed airplanes, with the merest trace of vestigial wings far back near the empennage, streaking through the sky ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... monstrous. And I tell you, sir,' said Mr Pecksniff, towering on tiptoe among the curtains, as if he were literally rising above all worldly considerations, and were fain to hold on tight, to keep himself from darting skyward like a rocket, 'I tell you without fear or favour, that it will not do for you to be unmindful of your grandson, young Martin, who has the strongest natural claim upon you. It will not do, sir,' repeated Mr Pecksniff, ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... head!" he said happily. "You've hit the nail on the head, Kenneth. I knew I could depend on you." His voice grew serious again, and thoughtful. "We're not laughing any more because there's nothing to laugh about. We have orbital satellites, and we've landed on the Moon with an atomic rocket. The planets are the next step, and after that the stars. Man's heritage, Kenneth. The stars. And the stars, Kenneth, belong to ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the Navy has cached in their warehouse?" Lee asked. "That new rocket fuel their destroyers use when they need a little extra push. Isn't that ...
— This One Problem • M. C. Pease
... under the winter stars. . . . Through openings in the woods we could see that we were marching along a high ridge, and on either hand vaporous depths and distances expanded, the darkness broken sometimes by a far light or the momentary glow of a magnesium rocket sent up from the German lines. There is something fascinating if one is stationed on sentry-duty immediately after arrival, in watching the dawn slowly illumine one of these new landscapes, from a position taken up under cover ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... October, a great crowd had assembled to see an extraordinary race—a race, in fact, without any parallel or precedent whatsoever. There were four entries but one dropped out, leaving three: The Novelty, John Braithwaite and John Ericsson; The Sanspareil, Timothy Hackworth; The Rocket, George and Robert Stephenson. These were not horses; they were locomotives. The directors of the London and Manchester Railway had offered a prize of five hundred pounds for the best locomotive, and here they ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... commenced the rolling thunder, of the British guns. Nothing grander in warfare could be conceived than the effect of the batteries when they opened, as the cannonade passed along from the Sutlej to Little Sobraon in one continued roar of guns and mortars; while ever and anon the rocket, like a spirit of fire, winged its rapid flight high above the batteries in its progress towards the Sikh intrenchment. The Sikh guns were not idle, and replied with shot and shell; but neither were well-directed, nor did much damage. At first, it was believed ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... Brown, in the midst of all this hubbub, cut his own throat with his own razor. Whether this dismal catastrophe were exactly due to his mortification as a baffled visionary, whose favorite conceit had suddenly exploded like a rocket into smoke and stench, is more than we know. But, at all events, the sole memorial of his hypothesis which now reminds the English reader that it ever existed is one solitary notice of good-humored satire pointed at it by Cowper. [Footnote: "The Inestimable Estimate of Brown."] And ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Brou was the last effort of mediaeval times, the last rocket flung up by the flamboyant Gothic style—a Gothic which though fallen from its glory struggled against death, fought against returning paganism and the invading Renaissance. The era of the great cathedrals ended in the production of this exquisite ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the nature of this machine," he replied. "Ye see, it runs on the rocket principle by spurtin' out gases. Ef we want to go up off the ground we squirt out under the machine an' that gives us a h'ist. Then, when we get 'way up high, we spread out a pair o' big wings like and start the propeller at the stern end o' the thing. Now them wings ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... dim red ember of Phi Coronis, Wolf's old and dying sun, gave out a pale and heatless light. The pair of Spaceforce guards at the gates, wearing the black leathers of the Terran Empire, shockers holstered at their belts, were drowsing under the arched gateway where the star-and-rocket emblem proclaimed the domain of Terra. One of them, a snub-nosed youngster only a few weeks out from Earth, cocked an inquisitive ear at the cries and scuffling feet, then jerked his head ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... history than anything else, and this is true not only of nations, kings, politicians, or wars, but of events and things witnessed or called into existence in every-day life. In The Engineer for September 17, 1880, we did our best to place a true statement of the facts concerning the Rocket before our readers. In many respects this was the most remarkable steam engine ever built, and about it there ought to be no difficulty, one would imagine, in arriving at the truth. It was for a considerable period the cynosure of all eyes. Engineers all over the world were ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... say, can you see by the dawn's early light What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?— Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the clouds of the fight O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming! And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there; O! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free, and ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... his collar and rubbed his stubbled chin unhappily. "I didn't make the choice. Neither did anyone else. Travel by warp is a little different from travel by the rocket you fiction writers make so much of. With a rocket vehicle you pick your destination, make your calculations, and off you go. The warp is blind flying, strictly blind. We send an unmanned scanner ahead. It probes around more or less hit-or-miss until it locates something, ...
— Circus • Alan Edward Nourse
... us; never before had we fought fire with wildly-waving ulsters, but they prove excellent weapons in engagements of this character, I assure you. Profiting by fatiguing experience, we poised the second rocket so deftly that it could not fail to rise. On it we hung our hopes, light enough burdens if they were all as faint as mine. With the spurt of a match we touched it, a stream of flaky gold rushed forth and then, as if waiting to gather ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... Three great bulbs were now drifting. The wind was carrying them out toward the bay. They were coming down in a long, smooth descent. The plane shot like a winged rocket at the fourth great, shining ball. To the watcher, aghast with sudden hope, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... received another start. The earth was a thousand feet beneath, and yet I heard a child crying softly, and seemingly very close to hand. And though the "Little Nassau" was shooting skyward like a rocket, the crying did not grow fainter and fainter and die away. I confess I was almost on the edge of a funk, when, unconsciously following up the noise with my eyes, I looked above me and saw a boy astride the sandbag which was to bring the "Little Nassau" to earth. ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... Ground Forces, Navy, Air Forces, Air Defense Forces, Strategic Rocket Forces, Command and General ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... behind her and her fingers busily engaged. Her husband's breath was almost gone by the time he reached the foot of the stairs; consequently his entrance was a trifle less noisy and startling than his sky-rocket flight through the kitchen. It is doubtful if his wife would have noticed even if it had been. She caught a glimpse of him in the mirror, and heaved a ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... squad ship. Police ships, naturally, had their special drive, which could lift them off without rocket aid and gave them plenty of speed, but filled up the hull with so much machinery that it was only practical for such ships. Commercial craft were satisfied with low-power drives, which meant that spaceport facilities lifted them to space and pulled them down again. They carried rockets for emergency ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... our mine, which was exploded opposite the Oxfords after two false starts with much pomp and ceremony. A green rocket was sent up one mile west of Ploegsteert 'to deceive the enemy,' as the Staff memorandum hopefully remarked. Captain Hadden, of the 1st/4th Oxfords, opposite whose trench the explosion was to occur, was ordered to keep half his company in the fire trench with the rifles and bayonets ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... light crept out of the dark to seawards, and a faint throbbing grew into the measured beat of a steamer's screw. Then a low, shadowy hull, outlined by a glimmer of phosphorescence, came on towards the harbor mouth, and a rocket swept up in a fiery curve and burst, dropping colored lights. A harsh rattle of running chain broke out, the screw splashed noisily for a few moments and stopped, and a launch ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... back to earth like the stick of a rocket. But he didn't go down immediately to the water. He sat there and nursed his knees and began to think. Whether it was Howard's unexpected talk of Plattsburg and of being made something of or not he didn't know. What he did know was that he was suddenly ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... most important business of the human race—on which its survival or destruction would depend. Other remodeled ships had gone out before the Niccola, and others would follow until the problem was solved. Meanwhile the Niccola's twenty-four rocket tubes and stepped-up drive and computer-type radar system equipped her for Plumie-hunting as well as any human ship could be. Still, if she'd been lured deep into the home system of the Plumies, the prospects ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster
... world she would not do, for people who would consent to be done for, and would allow her to dominate all their thoughts and deeds. But the moment they revolted, or showed the weakest inclination to do things their own way, she blazed up and was off like a rocket. Her taste for governing was little short of a mania, and I could see, in my mind's eye, just how she had essayed to rule Daisy, and how in her failure she had written to me, unconsciously revealing ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... was a soft rush through the air and a shower of silver fell from the blue evening sky. In another direction, pale Roman candles shot up singly through the trees, and a fire-haired rocket swept the horizon like a portent. Between these intermittent flashes the velvet curtains of the darkness were descending, and in the intervals of eclipse the voices of the crowds seemed to sink to ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... a light proceeding from the south, of the breadth of three inches, which went off to the north, always spreading itself as it moved, and made itself heard by a whizzing light like that of the largest sky-rocket. I judged by the eye that this light could not be above our atmosphere, and the whizzing noise which I heard confirmed me in that notion. {38} When it came in like manner to be about 45 degrees to the north above the horizon, it stopped short, and ceased enlargeing itself: in that place it appeared ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... anti-air craft guns, and their shells were bursting high in the air in white puffs like Japanese fireworks. We took our field glasses out to the square in front of our billet and could follow the course of the air craft quite plainly. After each one of our shells fell the plane would shoot a rocket as a signal. The German air craft shells fell hundreds of yards short. The aeroplanes soon rose to such a height that the German guns quit firing on them. The British naval planes were beautiful large craft. On the frontier we had already established air preponderancy and were also ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... hurting it. But Wallis is obstinate; refuses Free Withdrawal; will hold out to the uttermost, though his meal is running low. He pretends there is relief coming; relief just at hand; and once, in midnight time, "lets off a rocket and fires six guns," alarming Prince Leopold as if relief were just in the neighborhood. A tough industrious military man; stiff to his ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... enveloped him along with the pall of smoke from the edges of the field. Just ahead of him he saw something that looked like a huge rocket lift toward Sim's ship. It exploded with a blinding flash directly under the P-51. Sim's ship shot upward and a wing swirled away like a dark strip of paper torn from a wall. Then the P-51 nosed into the ground and exploded. Cold sweat broke out all over Stan's ...
— A Yankee Flier Over Berlin • Al Avery
... consideration of the subject, it might be thought that as the comet was dashing along with enormous velocity the tail was merely streaming out behind, just as the shower of sparks from a rocket are strewn along the path which it follows. This would be an entirely erroneous analogy; the comet is moving not through an atmosphere, but through open space, where there is no medium sufficient to sweep the tail into the line of ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... pilgrimage to a far-distant temple of the Goddess of Grace. (Although Madame Prune is a Shintoist, she reveres this deity, who, scandal says, watched over her youth.) A moment after, Mdlle. Oyouki bursts into our room like a rocket, bringing, on a charming little tray, sweetmeats which have been blessed and bought at the gates of the temple yonder, on purpose for us, and which we must positively eat at once, before the virtue is gone out of them. Scarcely rousing ourselves, ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... party was always told off to watch for shells from the fort's guns. If a black speck was seen in the midst of the cannon smoke, then the sentinel shouted, and a rush was made for safety, for the shell was coming their way. At night the burning fuse could be seen like a rocket in the air; so long as it span and flew, the card-players were safe, but the moment it became stationary above their heads it was time to run, for the shell was falling upon them. The guns of the ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... to fire a rocket when the launch left the shore, in order that the captain of the yacht might run in closer to pick them up. As he hurried down the beach, he called to his boatswain to give the signal, and the man answered that he understood and stooped to light a match. King had jumped into the stern ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... away in some places and as much as 400 in others. It is rather exciting wandering about in front of the line, as lights go up every now and then and show a bright white light in the air for a minute or two like a rocket. When one goes up you fall flat and pretend you are a sandbag or a milk-can or a rat. You may meet Fritz on the same job sometimes; I always have a bomb handy to give ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack
... k-metal was of enormous value and a direct invitation to piracy. Of course there was the attempt at secrecy and the shippers had sent along those guards. His engineer, Tom Farley, was thoroughly reliable, too. But this failure of the control rocket-tubes, missing their destination as a result—there ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... himself again Riches, make themselves wings Ridiculous and the sublime Right, whatever is, is Righteous forsaken —overmuch Righteousness and peace —exalteth a nation Ripe and ripe Road, a rough, a weary Roam, where'er I Robbed, lie that is Robbing Peter he paid Paul Hobes and furred gowns hide all Rocket, rose like a Rod, and thy staff —, a chief's a —of empire —, spare the Roderick, art them a friend to Rogue, every inch not fool is Roman, than such a —senate long debate Romans, countrymen, and lovers Rome, palmy state of —, more ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... rocket is fixed, with more allowance for the wind; but the black curve has disappeared, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... rocket Discharged into the Gallic trenches, E'er equall'd the tremendous shock it Produc'd upon the Nursery Benches. The Bishops, who, of course had votes, By right of age and petticoats, Were first and foremost in the fuss— "What, whip a Lama!—suffer birch To touch his sacred—-infamous! Deistical!—assailing ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... seeming irreverence, Miss Clyde smiled. Blue Bonnet's tempestuous little outbursts were often entertaining if they were reprehensible. They sometimes reminded Miss Clyde of a Fourth of July sky-rocket. They glowed in brilliancy and ended in—nothing! Likely enough Blue Bonnet would finish the term quite adoring her room-mate. She ventured to ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... thick forest of trees and gardens, while shells would burst high over the city, illuminating the spires and domes, and bringing into prominence every object around. There was not only the roll of the heavy guns and mortars, but the sharp rattle of musketry, and the hiss of the huge rocket, as it cut through the air with its brilliant ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... which they had chosen for their night's rest, and occasionally firing off their rifles to drive away the lions, which were heard prowling about, all of a sudden Omrah cried out, and pointed to the northward; our travellers turned and perceived a rocket ascending the firmament, and at last breaking out into ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... away. General McClellan is now attempting a change of base in the face of public opinion, and is endeavoring to escape the consequences of having escaped from the Peninsula. For a year his reputation flared upward like a rocket, culminated, burst, and now, after as long an interval, the burnt-out case comes down to ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... might have been heard, had the wind lulled, as they thought of the dear ones at home. Suddenly there was a flash of light ahead, and the boom of a gun directly afterwards came upon their ears. Then a rocket ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... children and played together on the beach where they first ate seafood out of curiosity, then continued because they liked it. And due to their protein diet the Terran had grown well over six feet in height and the Ssassaror seemed to have touched off a rocket of expansion in his body with his protein-eating. Those Ssassarors who shared his guilt—became meat-eaters—became ostracized and eventually moved off to live by themselves. They were called Ssassaror-Giants and were pointed to as an object lesson to the young of the normal Ssassarors ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... 'A huge rocket sent up from either my estancia house or Coila Villa. There may be several, but you must act when you see the first. There is fuse enough to the bomb to give you time to escape, and the bomb is big enough to ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... shoots a spear. But the whole goes light as a bird and straight as a bullet. There is no Victorian writer before him to whom he even suggests a comparison, technically considered, except perhaps De Quincey; who also employed the long rich rolling sentence that, like a rocket, bursts into stars at the end. But De Quincey's sentences, as I have said, have always a dreamy and insecure sense about them, like the turret on toppling turret of some mad sultan's pagoda. Ruskin's sentence branches into brackets and relative clauses as a straight strong tree branches ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... side, also had seen the sky-rocket which arose up from the chateau and dropped almost instantly into ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... the unfinished intonation, like a rocket that had never dropped its stick, and started up the ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... off which we lay. By the ripple of the water against the bows, I knew that a strong current was running, which accounted for the ship having been brought up. Looking forward, I saw that a bright light was burning at the bowsprit end, and presently it was answered by a rocket fired from the shore, which rose high in the air, scattering its drops as it fell. Exclamations of satisfaction escaped the mate and several of the crew ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... did not weep. She sat long on the edge of her bed, thinking silently; then a silver rocket of sound broke the sepulchral quiet of the flat. Dolly had had a vision of what must inevitably happen; and Dolly ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... by for an hour with no result, then sought his bunk once more, cursing all men. Confound the Infantry getting the jumps over a rocket or two! Confound them two times! Then a spark of inspiration glowed within him, glowed and flamed brightly. If his exalted poilus got the wind up over a handful of rockets, how much more also would the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 23, 1917 • Various
... you are a foxy fellow!" exclaimed even Norem, the Actor, when he ran across him on the street. "Here you go along quietly and say nothing, and all of a sudden you set off a rocket right under our very noses. You ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... the cadet candidates were standing in silent awe in front of the battered hull of the Space Queen, the first atomic-powered rocket ship allowed on exhibition only fifty years before because of the deadly radioactivity in her hull, created when a lead baffle melted in midspace and flooded the ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... said Blake. "It's too bad you couldn't stay to see them, Martel." He turned in his saddle, and the others reined in as a rocket soared into the night sky and burst with a shower of sparks. Others followed ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... it. His eyes were on the man behind the counter standing ready to serve him. He strode over to him and flung down a ten-dollar bill, ordering a drink of whiskey, and a bottle of the spirit to take away with him. He was promptly served, and Silas Rocket, the proprietor, civilly passed the time of day. It elicited no responsive greeting, for Jim gulped down his drink, and helped himself to another. The second glass of the fiery spirit he swallowed greedily, while Rocket looked on in amazement. As he proceeded ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... horse's head as soon as he discovered my intention; but I gave him the rein, and he went off like a rocket. I turned towards Parkville, and after going half a mile, I reined up to ascertain whether I was pursued or not. I could hear nothing; so I turned into a by-road, leading to a grove. I had taken ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... her and had the full advantage of her care. Tregear was riding behind with Lord Chiltern, who had been pressing him to come with his friend to Harrington. As soon as the shouting was heard Chiltern was off like a rocket. It was not only that he was anxious to "get well away," but that a sense of duty compelled him to see how the thing was being done. Old Fowler certainly was a little slow, and Dick Rabbit, with the true bloody-minded instinct of a whip, was a little apt to bustle a fox back into covert. ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... minutes after the bell is rung she rushes down the steep and plunges into the surf. The loving, lingering watchers on the beach just see her foresail hoisted, and she vanishes into the night, as the green rocket shoots one hundred yards into the sky to tell the distressed sailors 'The lifeboat is ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... "It's the first rocket, I'm sure!" exclaimed Frank, dropping the nut-crackers, "let us go off to a window somewhere, for I am sure the fireworks ...
— Naughty Miss Bunny - A Story for Little Children • Clara Mulholland
... commander of the German submarine had the intention of allowing passengers and crew ample opportunity to save themselves. It was not until the Captain disregarded the order to lay to and took to flight, sending up rocket signals for help, that the German commander ordered the crew and passengers by signals and megaphone to leave the ship within ten minutes. As a matter of fact, he allowed them twenty-three minutes, and did not fire the ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... shalln't do that, my lord! for this same Jeppe is one of the heaviest sleepers in the whole district. Last year they tried setting off a rocket under his head, but when the rocket went off he never even stirred ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... below, only waiting for the signal to move up to destroy the rest of the bridge and carry succour to the city; but the incompetent and cowardly Jacobzoon rowed hastily away after the explosion, and the rocket that should have summoned the Zeelanders was never sent up. Parma moved about among his troops, restoring order and confidence, and as the night went on and no assault took place he set his men to work to collect drifting timbers ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... until the last pinwheel had whizzed itself out in streams and stars of colored fire, until the last sky-rocket had gone hissing upward toward the clouds, and until the last glow of red fire had died ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandma Bell's • Laura Lee Hope
... Amrei, "just as if we were two doves flying through the air. Juhu! away into the heavens!" And "Juhu!" cried the lad gleefully, "Juhu!" And the sound shot up heavenward like a fiery rocket. "Juhu!" cried Amrei, rejoicing with him. And on they danced with ever-increasing joy. Finally ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... the vigor with which this law of growth and decay applies itself to all organized things in this lower world? Death itself, in times of scourge, has periods when it advances, slackens, sinks back, and slumbers. Our globe is perhaps only a rocket a little more continuing than the rest. History, recording the causes of the rise and fall of all things here below, could enlighten man as to the moment when he might arrest the play of all his faculties; but neither the conquerors, nor the actors, nor the women, ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... been agreed that Admiral Jacobzoon should, immediately after the explosion of the fire-ships, send an eight-oared barge to ascertain the amount of damage. If a breach had been effected, and a passage up to the city opened, he was to fire a rocket. At this signal, the fleet stationed at Lillo, carrying a heavy armament, laden with provisions enough to relieve Antwerp from all anxiety, and ready to sail on the instant, was at once to force ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and bombs and pin-wheels; and the boys had tiny red and blue lights which they held until their fingers were burned, just as boys do in America; and there was a general hush of wonder as a particularly brilliant rocket swished into the dark sky; and when it burst into a rain of serpents, the crowd breathed out its delight in a long-drawn "Ah-h-h-h!" just as the crowd does everywhere. We might easily have imagined ourselves at a Fourth ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... standing on another mound two hundred yards away. Beside him stood a singular erection made apparently of two rods. He bent over it and there was the flare of a light; all March's schoolboy memories woke in him, and he knew what it was. It was the stand of a rocket. The confused, incongruous memories still possessed him up to the very moment of a fierce but familiar sound; and an instant after the rocket left its perch and went up into endless space like a starry arrow ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... in a ferment of boards, commissions and target-firing. But these would carry us beyond our prescribed limit into a boundless field of inquiry and description. It would be like passing from a notice of the tubular boiler of Stephenson's Rocket to a discussion of the vast ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... tanks, more than enough fuel to take us to Neptune. But the leaks in the starboard tanks lost us half our supply, and we had used the other half before discovering that. Since the ship's rocket-tubes cannot operate without fuel, we are simply drifting. We would drift on to Neptune if the attraction of Uranus were not pulling us to the right. That attraction alters our course so that in three ship-days we ...
— The Sargasso of Space • Edmond Hamilton
... fastened, while jewels and diamonds of great value were around and suspended from their necks. Harcarrahs, or Brahmin messengers of trust, headed the procession, and seven standard-bearers, each carrying a small green banner displayed on a rocket-pole. After these marched 100 pikemen, whose weapons were inlaid with silver. Their escort was a squadron of cavalry, with 200 sepoy soldiers. They were received by the troops in line, with presented arms, drums beating, and officers in ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... this he touched a rocket, of which he had several in the boat, with the lighted end of the cigar he had been smoking, and it went hissing up into the air, ascending so high as to be plainly visible from the deck of le Feu-Follet before it exploded. Griffin saw this signal with wonder; the frigate noted it with embarrassment, ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... jungles; the vari-colored jacket and trouser combinations of the boys from the magnificent Earth cities. But they all had one thing in common—a dream. All had visions of becoming Space Cadets, and later, officers in the Solar Guard. Each dreamed of the day when he would command rocket ships that patrolled the space lanes from the outer edges of Pluto to the twilight zone of Mercury. ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... inexhaustible stream, and initiated her hearer into all the intricacies of Parisian life. She was as familiar with the galleries as with the famous buildings, and in front of the works of art in the one and the facades of the other she fired off a rocket-like shower of original remarks, paradoxes, and brilliant criticism. She knew exactly where to scoff and where to be enthusiastic, jeered with all the ruthless slang of the Paris gamins at the pompously mediocre sights recommended to the tourists' admiration ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... somewhere below a faint, rushing, whistling sound, as of a firework, followed by a crack, and the white stars of a rocket lit up the sides of the pass and made the stones in front visible in a soft glare. The next instant from front and rear, almost simultaneously, there were flashes and a scattered roar, while the sides of the ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... happiness that had come to him greater even than the happiness of freedom. But he stood, holding her hand, his tongue speechless, and he was looking at her when the lightning revealed her again. In a rending flash it cut open the night so close that the hiss of it was like the passing of a giant rocket, and involuntarily she shrank against him, and her free hand caught his arm at the instant thunder crashed low over their heads. His own hand groped out, and in the blackness it touched for an instant her wet face ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood |
