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Rocket   Listen
verb
Rocket  v. i.  (past & past part. rocketed; pres. part. rocketing)  (Sporting) To rise straight up; said of birds; usually in the present participle or as an adjective. (Eng.) "An old cock pheasant came rocketing over me."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rocket" Quotes from Famous Books



... a rocket moves toward Mars. It reminds us that the world will not be the same for our children, or even for ourselves in a short span of years. The next man to stand here will look out on a scene different from our own, because ours is ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... differently prepared; cinnamon, ginger, and sugar being added to the pulped carrots, besides a handful of currants, vinegar, and butter. A similar plan was adopted with the salads of burrage, chicory, marigold leaves, bugloss, asparagus, rocket, and alexanders, and many other plants discontinued in modern cookery, but then much esteemed; oil and vinegar being used with some, and spices with all; while each dish was garnished with slices of hard-boiled ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... of crackpot cults with a murder tinge: the werewolf gangs, the Berserkers and Amuckers, the revival of Shiva worship and the Black Mass, the machine wreckers, the kill-the-killers movements, the new witchcraft, the Unholy Creepers, the Unconsciousers, the radioactive blue gods and rocket devils of the Atomites, and a dozen other groupings clearly prefiguring Deathlander psychology. Those cults had all been as unpredictable as Thuggee or the Dancing Madness of the Middle Ages or the Children's Crusade, yet they had happened ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... of time we reached the Old Bell Inn, Holborn, where the coach stopped, and where my trunk and myself were to be handed over to the tender mercies of the coachman of the Rocket, a fast coach (I speak of the slow old days when railroads were unknown) which then ran to Helmstone, the watering-place where my future tutor, the Rev. Dr. Mildman, resided. My first impressions of London are scarcely worth recording, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... admired, it is compatible with a certain shadow of human sympathy and weakness. An A.D.C. in tail-coat and gold buttons is no longer a star; he is only a fire-balloon; though he may twinkle in heaven, he can descend to earth. But in the quiet disguises of private life he is the mere stick of a rocket. He is quite of the earth. This scheme of clothing is compatible with the tenderest offices of gaming or love—offices of which there shall be no recollection on the re-assumption of uniform and on re-apotheosis. An A.D.C. in plain clothes has been known to lay the long odds at whist, and to qualify, ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

... soary (and flighty) as a rocket to-day, with the unutterable joy of getting that Old Man of the Sea off my back, where he has been roosting more than ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... no time to fix the rocket apparatus. She was late in making her distress signals. But I doubt if anything could have been done. She ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... said, and then repeated the phrase in six languages. "The ship you see is a Venusian Class 7 interplanetary rocket, built for one-passenger. It is clear of all radiation, and is perfectly safe to approach. There is a hatch which may be opened by an automatic lever in the side. Please open this hatch ...
— The Delegate from Venus • Henry Slesar

... ruined a nice house, Gloria decided to try my strength on her car. I was much too fast and too hard on the brakes, which of course was not too bad because my foot was also too insensitive on the go-pedal. We took off like a rocket being launched and then I tromped on the brakes (Bending the pedal) which brought us down sharp like hitting a haystack. This allowed our heads to catch up with the rest of us; I'm sure that if we'd been normal-bodied human beings ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith

... time I had ever met any of the royal equipages at night, and the passage was much the most picturesque of any I had hitherto seen. Footmen, holding flaming flambeaux, rode in pairs in front, by the side of the carriage, and in its rear; the piqueur scouring along the road in advance, like a rocket. By the way, a lady of the court told me lately that Louis XVIII. had lost some of his French by the emigration, for he did not know how to pronounce this ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Minister for War at St. Petersburg had issued orders on April 25, 1878, for the despatch of three columns of troops which were to make a demonstration against India. The chief force, 12,000 strong, with 44 guns and a rocket battery, was to march from Samarcand and Tashkend on Cabul; the second, consisting of only 1700 men, was to stir up the mountain tribes of the Chitral district to raid the north of the Punjab; while the third, of the same strength, moved from the middle part ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... said. "Not a bit of it. Remember, our friend Pierce is also a student of human nature. He's thinking it out now in the cold plunge, and I miss my guess if Thoburn's sky-rocket hasn't got a stick that'll come back and ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... and marched up the hill in single file, 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 of darkness. The other section has been ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger

... out like a rocket tail behind us. The Planetara caught their impetus. In the rarified air, our bow lifted slightly, like a ship riding a gentle ground swell. At a hundred thousand feet we sailed gently forward, hull down to the asteroid's surface, cruising to seek ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various

... freedom of masculinity and ineffables. He was once a bookkeeper like myself; then a young attorney; then a medical student; then a bald-headed old gentleman, who seemed to blow a flageolet for a living; and lately, he has taken the shape of a well-to-do President of 'The Arkansas and Arizona Sky Rocket Transportation Company,' but through all these shifting shapes, I ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various

... der day ven crackers bust Und fill der air mid bowder tust, Und ven you shoots your bistol off, You make a smokes vot makes you cough. A rocket goes up in der sky— Der sthick vos ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)

... Taine's lips were shaped to deliver an expressive "oh" of admiration, even before the portrait was revealed. As though the painter, in drawing back the easel curtain, gave an appointed signal, that "oh" was set off with the suddenness of a sky-rocket's rush, and was accompanied in its flight by a great volume of sizzling, sputtering, glittering, adjectival sparks that—filling the air to no purpose whatever—winked out as they were born; the climax ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright

... 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 ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... rocket went whizzing up. It raced the other, outdistanced it, seemed bound for the furthest heights, never swerving from a ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman

... more than half-way between the boat and the ship. It seemed as if those on board had caught sight of us, for another rocket went up. They had evidently kept one back, as a last hope, in case any ...
— Saved at Sea - A Lighthouse Story • Mrs. O.F. Walton

... 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

... concourse of people. Some were highly entertained with the exhibition; but by far the greater number of spectators were terribly frightened; insomuch, that it was with difficulty we could prevail upon them to keep together to see the end of the shew. A table-rocket was the last. It flew off the table, and dispersed the whole crowd in a moment; even the most resolute among them ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... greatest chums you ever saw. He mebbe has his peculiarities, like the rest of us. Who ain't? You'll likely find him kinder sharp-tongued at first, but he don't mean nothin' by it; and' he's quick, too—goes up like a rocket at a minute's notice. Folks down in town insist in addition that he's jealous as a girl, but I've yet to see signs of it. Fur all his little crochets you'll like Jan Eldridge. You can't help it. We're none of us ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett

... to reflexion. If our analysis is correct, it is consciousness, or rather supra-consciousness, that is at the origin of life. Consciousness, or supra-consciousness, is the name for the rocket whose extinguished fragments fall back as matter; consciousness, again, is the name for that which subsists of the rocket itself, passing through the fragments and lighting them up into organisms. But this consciousness, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... windings of the shore by towing ropes of history. Facts, and the consequences of facts, draw the writer back to the falconer's lure from the giddiest heights of speculation. Here, therefore—in his France,—if not always free from flightiness, if now and then off like a rocket for an airy wheel in the clouds, M. Michelet, with natural politeness, never forgets that he has left a large audience waiting for him on earth, and gazing upwards in anxiety for his return: return, therefore, he does. But History, though clear of certain temptations in one direction, ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... rockets in such a manner that they will rake through the whole crowd; and if they should finish up by setting fire to the huts, so much the better. Fire the rockets, one after another, as rapidly as possible, and the moment that the last rocket has been fired we will spring out into the open and make a dash for those posts, to which I believe we shall find the missing men secured. Use your cutlasses as freely as may be needful, but reserve your pistols for an emergency. Then, having cut our men loose, we must all retire ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... 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, ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... 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. ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... standing at the side of the glassite super-highway, his arm half-raised, thumb pointed in the same direction as that of the approaching rocket car. Ordinarily Frederick Marden would have passed a hitch-hiker without stopping, but there was something in the bearing and appearance of this one that caused him to ...
— Hard Guy • H. B. Carleton

... lights a kind of Shell-Hole Nights' Entertainment. The phantom city over there is London, New York, Paris, according to his fancy. He's going out to dinner with his girl. All those flares are arc-lamps along boulevards; that last white rocket that went flaming across the sky, was the faery taxi which is to speed him on his happy errand. It isn't so, ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson

... and looked at the thermograph. At the last stroke of the clock the red line had given a little, final quaver on the 50 degree line and then had shot up like a rocket until it struck 72 degrees and lay there trembling and heaving like ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley

... into Jupiter, but he landed it successfully," said Quest. "He and my mother lived on Jupiter until the oxygen equipment wore out at last. I was born and brought up there, and I was finally able to build a small rocket with a powerful enough ...
— The Jupiter Weapon • Charles Louis Fontenay

... a fixed and apparently unattended camera came a steady, portentous view of the rocket ... sleek and so incredibly slim that Jordan wondered why on Earth it didn't simply topple over and ...
— If at First You Don't... • John Brudy

... Blackbeard's Point and opened fire on the American camp he received so warm a welcome from Crutchfield's heavy battery that he was presently glad to escape for shelter behind the Point, and content himself with throwing an occasional shot or rocket into the American camp. ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley

... Survey. It might well be the 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 were ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster

... had our fathers of old— Excellent herbs to ease their pain— Alexanders and Marigold, Eyebright, Orris, and Elecampane, Basil, Rocket, Valerian, Rue, (Almost singing themselves they run) Vervain, Dittany, Call-me-to-you— Cowslip, Melilot, Rose of the Sun. Anything green that grew out of the mould Was an excellent herb to ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling

... whistled and fairly shrieked at everything that didn't fly fast enough to suit it. Len and me had been puttin' in a lot of time together at his house, just chinnin'—there wasn't much else to do but to keep warm. Well, along about five o'clock, we heard a rocket! The wind died away for a minute or so, and we dashed out to the beach to get the lay of that distress signal. Talk about big city fires!" he digressed. "A fire on land ain't what it is on sea. It always seems like as if death has a double ...
— The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay - The Secret of the Red Oar • Margaret Penrose

... rockets were used for the purpose of throwing such a line. A small light line was attached to the stick of the rocket, and then the rocket itself was fired, being pointed in such a manner as to go directly over the wrecked ship. If it was aimed correctly, it would fall down so as to carry the small line across the ship. Then the sailors on board the wrecked vessel ...
— Rollo on the Atlantic • Jacob Abbott

... with Atterbury to the very summit of the tractor, where he discovered that his original guess had been correct and that the car rose from the earth rocket fashion, due to the back pressure of the radiant discharge from a massive cylinder of uranium contained in the tractor. Against this block played a disintegrating ray from a small thermic inductor, the inner construction of which ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train

... a magazine and read in it a story mentioning a passenger-carrying rocket driven by atomic power furnished by a substance prepared from uranium, you probably would not be greatly surprised. After all, such an invention is today but a step or two ahead of cold fact. But you might be surprised to learn that if this story was A Columbus of Space, the one I happen ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss

... the 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 ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... 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 perilous 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 ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... big house on Spindrift Island. The famous island off the New Jersey coast was home for the scientific foundation that his father headed, and for the scientist members. It was home for Scotty, too, and had been since the day he had rescued Rick from danger, as told in The Rocket's Shadow. As junior members of the foundation, Rick and Scotty had been included in a number of experiments and expeditions. Rick wouldn't have missed a one of them, and if opportunity offered he would go again with just as much eagerness. But it was nice to return to familiar ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine

... was ever the fountain of adventure, and an unmanageable heart sent him headlong to the oasis where he might loiter at the spring of feminine vanity, or truth, or impenitent gaiety, as the case might be. In proportion as his spirits had sunk into sour reflection, they now shot up rocket-high at the sight of a girl's joyous pose of body and the colour and form of the picture she made. In him the shrewdness of a strong intelligence was mingled with wild impulse. In most, rashness would be the outcome of such a marriage of characteristics; but clear-sightedness, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... in the bloody Iran-Iraq war was quick to follow after the commencement of daily Iraqi long-range rocket bombardments of Tehran that amounted to a reign of terror. Given that both sides were exhausted at that point, a show of force could have been convincing. Strong U.S. action in response to Iran's mining of neutral waters ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade

... drew it; Nor how each act could so befall: I'll only swear she did them all; Then lingered pensive in the grot, As if she something had forgot, Till a humble voice and a voice of pride Were heard, in murmurs of love, outside. Then, like a rocket set aflight, She sprang, and ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)

... what's happened to my practice," he said. "The blamed thing has gone up like a rocket. It seems to me there must be a great wave of sickness passing over ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various

... stopping to admire the beautiful purple thistles, which sent up one each a massive head on its small stalk, or admired the patches of dyer's rocket and the golden tufts of ragwort, the old fancies about the ancient quarries were forgotten for the time, and she seated herself at last upon a projecting piece of stone, away there in the solitude, to watch the grey gulls and listen ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn

... 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 in high arcs, ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam

... continues its flight apparently to an altitude of several hundred feet, remaining on the wing a number of minutes, and pouring out its song with the utmost clearness and abandon,—a slowly rising musical rocket that fills the night air with harmonious sounds. Here are both the lark and nightingale in one; and if poets were as plentiful down South as they are in New England, we should have heard of this song long ago, and had it celebrated in appropriate verse. But so far only ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs

... obeyed, and away they went after the whale like a rocket, with a tremendous strain on the line and a bank of white foam gurgling up to the edge of the gunwale, that every moment threatened to fill the boat and sink her. Such a catastrophe is of not unfrequent ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... remain in position, in case of a repulse, to protect the retreating columns. Of these three attacks, one must surely succeed. The first column which gains the ramparts will fire a rocket ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas

... said before, this habit of digression will be the death of me. Like a rocket, I start off splendidly, but explode and fall to pieces in every direction before I get half way on my journey. If the scintillations are varied and gayly colored, to be sure, the powder is not utterly lost; but the trouble of it is, if one keeps going off like ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... see not only Goldilocks but also the Three Bears and they took a remarkable journey through the air to do so. Tommy even rode on a Rocket and met the monstrous Blue Frog. When they arrived at Goldilocks' house they found that the Three Bears had been there before them and mussed everything up, much to Goldilocks' despair. "We must drive those bears out of the country!" said Pa Flyaway. Then they journeyed underground to the Yellow ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope

... me, if anyone else had made remarks leading up to it. But she says not a word. It was just that Mrs. Everett said that it was strange that when you had taken so long to consider marriage you should have made up your mind so quickly in the end—'Gone off like a sky-rocket!' was her exact wording, and Mrs. Stopford Brown said, in that frivolous way she has, 'Oh, I suppose he stumbled across a Primitive.' You will notice, Desire, that Mrs. Stopford Brown's name is not upon ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... depths, bowing the forest before it, bending the meagre, crevice-rooted pines on the walls of the gorge, they knew it for what it was. A wind, strong and warm, a balmy gale, drove past them, flinging a rocket-shower of sparks from the fire. The dogs, aroused, sat on their haunches, bleak noses pointed upward, and raised ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London

... thousands of natives were to precipitate themselves on the caras blancas (pale faces), and murder them. The failure of the conspiracy was, it appears, only attributable to a fortunate accident—to the circumstance, namely, that a body of the rebels mistook some rocket fired upon the occasion of a Church festival for the agreed signal, and commenced the attack ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... 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 ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie

... 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 motion. Another very remarkable feature is the ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... his rum for a coach and a crib, at the First Lord's stern decree, And he learns the use of the rocket and squib (which are useful as lights at sea): And they train him in part of the nautical art, as much as a landsman can, For they teach him to paddle the gay canoe, and to row ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley

... and morbidly intent in their expressions, a glassiness of the staring eye and a starchiness in the smiling lip, that has made me suffer under my bed-cover and swear that next time I would depart like a sky-rocket! ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren

... nothing. "Give way, boys! Give way! Lay out on your oars, and long stroke!'' said the captain; and stretching to the whole length of our arms, bending back again so that our backs touched the thwarts, we sent her through the water like a rocket. A few minutes of such pulling opened the islands, one after another, in range of the point, and gave us a view of the Canal, where was a ship, under top-gallant-sails, standing in, with a light breeze, for the anchorage. Putting the boat's head in the direction ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... voice said, "Of course. Proceed to your right and through Corridor K to Exit Four. Your rocket will be there. Identify yourself to Lieutenant Economou who will be at ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... projection with a dark ground, and breaking a little white over it, as we see done with judgment and truth by Ruysdael. But to paint the actual play of hue on the reflective surface, or to give the forms and fury of water when it begins to show itself—to give the flashing and rocket-like velocity of a noble cataract, or the precision and grace of the sea wave, so exquisitely modeled, tho so mockingly transient—so mountainous in its form, yet so cold-like in its motion—with its variety and delicacy of color, when every ripple and wreath has some peculiar passage of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... went behind the girlie tent, talking softly. Overhead a rocket burned by, but neither ...
— Charley de Milo • Laurence Mark Janifer AKA Larry M. Harris

... the Hindus opened a desolating fire from a number of field-pieces and rocket-batteries. The left and right of the Muhammadan line were pressed back after destructive hand-to-hand fighting, many falling on both sides. At this juncture Rama Raya, thinking to encourage his ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell

... twenty 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 launched and on ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor

... has happened. If we had sold a hundred copies it would trouble me far more than the fifteen hundred now on our hands; that's what I call hanging fire; whereas this insignificant sale only proves that the edition will go off like a rocket." ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... your mouth on it," said Gid. "Why, sir, there's the smile of a goddess in each drop and a 'Paradise Regained' in a swallow. Sit down, Wash Sanders—a swig of it would shoot you into the air like a rocket." ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read

... One was in Chicago years ago—an uncle of mine, just as good an uncle as I have ever had, and I had lots of them—yes, uncles to burn, uncles to spare. This poor uncle, full of patriotism, opened his mouth to hurrah, and a rocket went down his throat. Before that man could ask for a drink of water to quench that thing, it blew up and scattered him all, over the forty-five States, and—really, now, this is true—I know about it myself—twenty-four hours ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... for the road were, as far as possible, procured in Germany; but the idea of building the engines and cars there had to be given up, and, six weeks before the opening of the road, Geo. Stephenson, of London, whose engine, Rocket, had won the first prize in the competitive trials at Rainhill in 1829, delivered an engine of ten horse power, which is still known in Nuernberg ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various

... Dr. Powell, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, and Mr. Anderson, Commissioner for Fisheries, paid us their long -promised visit in H.M.S. Rocket. Though only a portion of our population were at home, our visitors expressed themselves as greatly astonished and delighted at all they saw. Dr. Powell has since written me an official letter, and read me his official report to the minister at Ottawa, both which were ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock

... silvery ship dissolved in a blaze of fire, a shower of golden sparks such as fly from a rocket, and simultaneously the last bomb that she was to drop broke ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... were pointed up. A rocket goes whichever way it is pointed. Rockets in war are fired through a tube, or from a trough. We will use the trough. Set to at once, boys, and make a trough about four feet long, without ends. It must stand on legs high enough to raise it above the level of the wall round the top ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty

... silence, which immediately closed around it. I leaned out of the window, my heart beating as though it must burst. After a brief space the silence was cloven once more by that note, as the darkness is cloven by a falling star or a firefly rising slowly like a rocket. But this time it was plain that the voice did not come, as I had imagined, from the garden, but from the house itself, from some corner of this rambling old ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... one, how many children they had (and they had some families then, let me tell you!), and when they all died, and why. I met him one morning in a cemetery. I was hunting for a certain stone and I asked him a question. Heavens! It was like setting a match to one of those Fourth- of-July flower-pot sky-rocket affairs. That question was the match that set him going, and thereafter he was a gushing geyser of names and dates. I ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter

... "see that rocket, Phil? It looks as though it might have been sent up by the torpedo boat. She will be somewhere out in that direction, ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood

... see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro' the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming; And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof thro' 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 home ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... be sorry when I strike some real big thing and another line gets it. Now then, I've got something brand new—the rocket danger signal." ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman

... to 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 ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... steamer,' he said,—'a twin-screw steamer, by the beat. I can't make her out, but she must be standing very close in-shore. Ah!' as the red of a rocket streaked the haze, 'she's standing in to signal before she clears ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... behind, I had a little the start, and kept it. Perhaps we were fifty yards from the house, when my mare stepped on a stone, as I suppose, and went down, throwing me clear of the stirrups, up in the air like a rocket, and down on my head like a spile-driver. I of course lay insensible with a crushed skull; and the brother was so near behind and going at such speed that he could not have stopped, even if he had known ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... Moniteur, "could not have made more beautiful, even if he had foreseen this occasion." Alas! the same thing had been said, in the same words, for the unhappy Marie Antoinette; but away with these gloomy presentiments! After the concert the discharge of a rocket from the palace gave the signal for the fireworks. These had been arranged for the whole length of the Avenue of the Champs lyses. The illumination brought out the impressiveness of the vast architectural lines ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... 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 thro' the perilous 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; Oh, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott

... hollow, but no water remained in it; yet here we were nevertheless obliged to encamp. Some of the men who had set out in search of water had not returned when it became dark; but on our sending up a rocket they found their way to the camp, although they had not succeeded in their ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... was 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 ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... The finest gift in the world is pleasure. Sometimes I think it's better to feed the soul and let the body fast. There is a time in life when one brief sky-rocket can produce more joy than ten ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed

... observer can take note of the rise and fall of some unlucky author or artist, painter or poet, widely and loudly proclaimed as a genius, only to be soon forgotten, often in his own generation. He may have soared aloft for a brief moment with starry scintillations, like a rocket, only at last to come down like ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews

... Secretary once with the lantern so that he staggered; and then, whirling it twice round his head, sent it flying far out to sea, where it flared like a roaring rocket and fell. ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton

... vociferation; not the smallest headway. In vain does Lafayette fret, indignant; and perorate and strive: Patriots in the passion of terror, bellow round the Royal Carriage; it is one bellowing sea of Patriot terror run frantic. Will Royalty fly off towards Austria; like a lit rocket, towards endless Conflagration of Civil War? Stop it, ye Patriots, in the name of Heaven! Rude voices passionately apostrophise Royalty itself. Usher Campan, and other the like official persons, pressing forward ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... oceans are we, With our liners of rocket speed, Till the God of Ice, in mist-filled trice, Calls to us harshly to pay his price As we sink to ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall

... his black night-cap on, [1] And every star its glim is hiding, [2] And forth to the heath is the scampsman gone, [3] His matchless cherry-black prancer riding; [4] Merrily over the Common, he flies, Fast and free as the rush of rocket, His crape-covered vizard drawn over his eyes, His tol by his side and his pops in ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer

... lanterns were put out, no rocket rose in the air, no cannon boomed from the portholes; but deep below there was a surging and a murmuring. The mermaid sat still, cradled by the waves, so that she could look in at the cabin window. But ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King

... cannot tell why exactly, but I know that part of the French started prematurely. There was some mistake about the signal-rocket. This gave the alarm to ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths

... capabilities for offensive action ran rife. Perhaps they could not move. They appeared to possess but one ray of light-fire; this had an effective radius of ten miles. The only other offensive weapon shown was the rocket, or bomb, that had destroyed the C., B. and Q. train near Garland and the town itself. Reports differed as to what had set fire to ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings

... of '[Greek] as much as Heraclitus ever did. Their titles do not convey much information. No. 4 is called Nocturne in Black and Gold, No. 6A Nocturne in Blue and Silver, and so on. The first of these represents a rocket of golden rain, with green and red fires bursting in a perfectly black sky, two large black smudges on the picture standing, I believe, for a tower which is in 'Cremorne Gardens' and for a crowd of lookers-on. The other is rather prettier; a rocket is breaking in a pale blue sky over ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

... of London, the leading journal of its kind at that period, had in mind when, in its number of September, 1830, it published the official report of the competitive trial between the steam carriages Rocket, San Pariel, Novelty, and others on the Liverpool and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various

... that they should lose head—feel as if they were under no responsibility to their fellow-men—and, as Shakspeare says, 'play such fantastic tricks before high Heaven, as make the angels weep.' Such rapid and ill-founded prosperity never lasts; and generally he who has ascended like a blazing rocket, tumbles to the earth like its charred and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various

... of bombardment ammunition is hampered by manpower shortages; so is production for its huge rocket program. Labor shortages have also delayed its cruiser and carrier programs, and production of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... Angel. "A few minutes ago a bomb was set off in my apartment. I think it was a rocket, and I know it was heavily laced with hydrogen cyanide. That's Suite 5000, Timmins Building, up on 112th Street. I called you because I have a hunch it's connected with the incident at ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett

... wife, and that was bad enough, but now she was a spacer's widow. And Oley? Oley's tomb revolved around the sun in an eccentric orbit that spun-in close to Mercury, then reached out into the asteroid belt, once every 725 days. When it came within rocket radius of Earth, it whizzed past at close ...
— Death of a Spaceman • Walter M. Miller

... walked into the grounds of the building, where they naturally broke into groups, conversing on the incidents of the day, or of such other matters as came uppermost. Occasionally, gleams of light were thrown across them from a fire- ball; or a rocket's starry train was still seen drawn in the air, resembling the wake of a ship at night, as it wades ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... three miles, and she had an eye to the country and a word to say about all she saw. When we turned to come back, I felt Brimstone make his usual spurt forward, but I was not prepared for Treacle's sudden break away. He was off like a rocket. That small child's cap was flung across my eyes in a sudden gust. I had retrieved it in a second, but it was time lost, and, by Jove! she was out of sight round a bend. I followed after, might and main, but the racket of Brimstone's hoofs only sent Treacle flying faster. I caught sight of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various

... banks, and other impediments forbid resort to the overhead cast. The essence and value of the Spey cast lies in this—that his line must never go behind the caster; well done, the cast is like the dart from a howitzer's mouth of a safety rocket to which a line is attached. To watch it performed, strongly yet easily, by a skilled hand is a liberal education in the art of casting; the swiftness, sureness, low trajectory, and lightness of the fall of the line, shot out by a dexterous swish of the lifting and propelling ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... acquaintances was present at blast-off time. He happened to be the grandfather of a certain competent young crewman. The old man was a proud figure during the brief ceremonies and his eyes filled with tears as the mighty rocket climbed straight up on its fiery tail. He remained there gazing up at the sky long after it ...
— It's a Small Solar System • Allan Howard

... 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 ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... ago; no wonder you have forgotten me," said the man; "but I can recall the night to your recollection. You were in the street with me the night I let off that unlucky rocket, which frightened the horses, and was the cause of overturning a lady's coach. ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth

... 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. Forgetting discipline, ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... and went to bed at half-past eight, but as a matter of fact the aged nurse did neither. Cissy stayed with the boys as long as they would allow her. At last the joyous moment arrived, they went on the balcony and Pickering started his first rocket. Cissy, a little frightened, ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson

... limb to limb, faster and faster, till it shoots from the tree-tops fifty or more feet into the air above them, and bursts into an ecstasy of song, rapid, ringing, lyrical; no more like its habitual performance than a match is like a rocket; brief but thrilling; emphatic but musical. Having reached its climax of flight and song, the bird closes its wings and drops nearly perpendicularly downward like the skylark. If its song were more prolonged, it would rival ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... be delighted. The following conditions were drawn up; and a lad, with a white handkerchief tied to a sky-rocket stick, was hoisted over the benches into the besieging quarters. The paper, after reciting (as is usual with all rebels in arms against their lawful sovereign) their unshaken loyalty, firm obedience, and unqualified devotion, went on thus—but we shall, to save time, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... a love of the bankside flowers and the downy edges of the young beech-buds fresh on the sprays. And it was no unreal love, though too intent and forcible to win the spirit from the object. She paid for this indulgence of her mood by losing the spirit entirely. At night she was a spent rocket. What had gone she could not tell: her very soul she almost feared. Her glorious walk through the wood seemed burnt out. She struck a light to try her poet on the shelf of the elect of earth by her bed, and she ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... heaven's name, man, cried Stubb, are you ramming home a cartridge there? —Avast! How will that help him; jamming that iron-bound bucket on top of his head? Avast, will ye! Stand clear of the tackle! cried a voice like the bursting of a rocket. Almost in the same instant, with a thunder-boom, the enormous mass dropped into the sea, like Niagara's Table-Rock into the whirlpool; the suddenly relieved hull rolled away from it, to far down her glittering copper; and all caught their breath, as half swinging —now over the ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... in the distance; voices shouting, but not the voice I loved. We all looked, and a black horse with a man on his back sprang into sight, like a rocket gone wrong. It was Jim, looking more beautiful than any picture of a man ever painted, his face transported with the joy of battle and triumph, and that fiend in horse shape under him doing all he ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... the tree-tops, he heard the gurgle of the stream, the stamp of the horses, the occasional barking of the dog which followed the cook's wagon, the hooting of an owl; and when these failed he saw Jeff, standing on a battlement, mid the rocket's red glare, and heard him sing, "Oh, say, can you see?", It was the first time he had ever slept on ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... from the head of the lake to the Mahratta Ditch. These discharged their muskets, and some rockets, and took to flight. One of the rockets caused a serious disaster. The Sepoys had their ammunition pouches open, and the contents of one of these was fired by the rocket. The flash of the flame communicated the fire to the pouch of the next Sepoy, and so the flame ran along the line, killing, wounding, and scorching many, and causing the greatest confusion. Fortunately the enemy were not near, and Captain Eyre ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty

... had ascended the tower of St. Stephen's; while in the city below every form was prostrate in prayer. With his own hand he fired the nightly rocket, and watched its myriads of stars as they shot heavenward, illumined the darkness, and then fell back into nothingness. His heart beat painfully, as the last scintillations went out, and left but the pall of ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach

... which airplanes are now put is the destruction of the enemy's observation balloons, on which he depends for the regulation of his artillery fire. An airplane which is to be used for this work is specially fitted with a number of rocket tubes which project in all directions, so that it looks like a pipe-organ gone on a spree. The rockets, which are fired by means of a keyboard not unlike that of a clavier, are loaded with a composition containing a large percentage ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell

... but he did not feel ready for bed. A great moment had arrived in his affairs. For days, Wall Street had been undergoing one of its periodical fits of jumpiness. There had been rumors and counter-rumors, until finally from the confusion there had soared up like a rocket the one particular stock in which he was most largely interested. He had unloaded that morning, and the result had left him slightly dizzy. The main point to which his mind clung was that the time had come at last. ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse

... wink of sleep till daylight, Dob," said he. "Infernal headache and fever. Got up at nine, and went down to the Hummums for a bath. I say, Dob, I feel just as I did on the morning I went out with Rocket at Quebec." ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... arrived. Three engines entered the lists for the prize,—namely, the Rocket, by George Stephenson; the Sanspareil, by Timothy Hackworth; and the Novelty, by Ericsson. Both sides of the railway, for more than a mile in length, were lined with thousands of spectators. There was no room for jockeying in such a race, for inanimate matter was to be put in motion, and that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... Lysander's soul like a rocket, culminated in a loud, explosive oath, and was followed by a shower of fiery curses falling harmless on the ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... 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, ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal

... I had a problem to thrash out. That morning I had been trying to work out an equation to give the coefficient of discharge for the matter in combustion. You may call it gas, if you wish, for we treated it like gas at the center for convenience—as it came from the rocket tubes in ...
— Houlihan's Equation • Walt Sheldon

... surface so close they seemed to scrape it. This was point-blank range; as the computers raced with the chaos of fire and counter-fire, human senses could only register a few impressions—the bruising jerks, the shudder of concussions, white streaks of rocket-trails, gushers of dirt from the surface, winking flashes ...
— Tulan • Carroll Mather Capps

... Again a rocket is fixed, with more allowance for the wind; but the black curve has disappeared, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... recruiting grounds of the Fijian and Queensland planters and place the labour-traffic under the most rigid supervision." The remark quoted above was then, as it is now, quite a hackneyed one, much used by the gallant officers who commanded the one-gun-one-rocket-tube craft aforementioned. Likewise, the "highly irregular proceedings" were a naval synonym for some of the bloodiest slaving outrages ever perpetrated, but which, however, never came to light ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke

... and another and another of the men darted into the station, donned his helmet, and buckled on his axe; then they all sprang to their places, the whip cracked, and off we went at full gallop only eight minutes after the alarm-bell rang. We spun through the streets like a rocket with a tail of sparks behind us, for the fire of the engine had been lighted ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne



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