"Explode" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Andromaque. Hermione is a splendid tigress consumed by her desire for Pyrrhus; and Oreste is a melancholy, almost morbid man, whose passion for Hermione is the dominating principle of his life. These are the ingredients of the tragedy, ready to explode like gunpowder with the slightest spark. The spark is lighted when Pyrrhus declares to Andromaque that if she will not marry him he will execute her son. Andromaque consents, but decides secretly to kill herself immediately after the marriage, ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... tragic poets, the choral songs have frequently little or no connexion with the fable, and are nothing better than a mere episodical ornament, they therefore conclude that the Greeks had only to take one more step in the progress of dramatic art, to explode the Chorus altogether. To refute these superficial conjectures, it is only necessary to observe that Sophocles wrote a Treatise on the Chorus, in prose, in opposition to the principles of some other poets; and that, far from ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... can say 'damn' as often as I choose. I don't say it very often, but sometimes I feel I must say it or explode." ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... Diestricht who honoured you by accepting the commission; not you who honoured Max Diestricht by intrusting him with it. "Of what use is it to me, a safe!" he would exclaim. "It hides nothing; it only says, 'I am inside; do not look farther; come and get me!' Yes? It is to explode with the nitro-glycerin—POUF!—and I am deaf and I hear nothing. It is a foolishness, that"—he had a habit of prodding at one with a levelled fore-finger—"every night somewhere they are robbed, and have I been robbed? HEIN, tell me that; ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... a graver suspicion crossed his mind: might not some detonating substance of a nature to explode when trodden upon, have been flung in? Hillsborough excelled in deviltries ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... foul aspersions that have been, or will be cast upon him (not only by malignant prelates, but even by the high fliers, or more corrupted part of the presbyterian persuasion) namely, on account of his firing at bishop Sharp; which, they think, is enough to explode, affront or bespatter all the faithful contendings of the true reformed and covenanted church of Scotland. But in this Mr. Mitchel stands in need of little or no vindication; for by this time the reader may perceive, that he looked upon himself ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... had already shipped to my hostess, for her children, of whose age, number, and sex I was ignorant, half of Gamage's dolls, skees, and cricket bats, and those crackers that, when you pull them, sometimes explode. But it was not to be. Most inconsiderately my wealthiest patient gained sufficient courage to consent to an operation, and in all New York would permit no one to lay violent hands upon him save myself. By cable I advised postponement. Having lived in lawful harmony with his appendix for fifty ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... maintaining a most dignified silence, looked as if she must speak or explode. "No you don't. Heaven begins here and now," she recited. "If you are good, you are well and ...
— The Little Mixer • Lillian Nicholson Shearon
... smallest data, unless by taking the thing for granted, or supposing that the present state of things is that former shape after which we inquire. Now, this is a species of reasoning that M. de Luc would certainly explode; for he admits, as we shall afterwards find, great changes among the mountains of the Alps, from the influences of the atmosphere, perhaps more rapid changes than we are disposed to allow. Therefore, to call in the aid of the ocean, for the degradation of these secondary calcareous mountains, ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... little space let the unholy creature lie there writhing. Let it understand what it is to have a back broken by the weight of an impossible burden. Let it try vainly to drag its limbs from beneath an immovable load. Observe it, let it suffer. Very soon we will finish with it, and explode the iniquitous system it represents. See, in the name of humanity, of labour, of the unknown and unnumbered millions of the martyred poor, I set a match to this good little fuse, and, with the rapidity of thought, blow blasphemous ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... moment there was dead silence, as the two men glared at each other. If it had been a blow the youth might have stood it better, but there was something so stinging, as well as insulting, in a slap, that for a moment he felt as if his chest would explode. Before he could act, however, Joe Binney thrust his bulky ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... consideration it was thought that a good way to strike a decisive blow would be to send a vessel loaded with shells and gunpowder into the harbor of Tripoli by night, and explode her there. This might result, it was thought, in the destruction of the forts and ships, and possibly part of the town, and so terrify the Bey that he would come to terms. Lieutenant Somers, who had been foremost in contriving this project, volunteered ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... happened, Tom?" he yelled, for he had to use all his lung power to be heard above that racket. "Did it explode?" ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Glider - or, Seeking the Platinum Treasure • Victor Appleton
... instead of being merely rinsed, had been left in distilled water for twelve or fifteen minutes, or more, it would rarely fail, when put into the oxygen and hydrogen, of becoming, in the course of a minute or two, ignited, and would generally explode the gases. Occasionally the time occupied in bringing on the action extended to eight or nine minutes, and sometimes even to forty minutes, and yet ignition and explosion would result. This effect is due to the removal of a portion ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... Spaniards had advanced to Terracino, and the French to Nepi. The cardinals saw that Rome now stood upon a mine which the least spark might cause to explode: they summoned the ambassadors of the Emperor of Germany, the Kings of France and Spain, and the republic of Venice to raise their voice in the name of their masters. The ambassadors, impressed with the urgency of the situation, began by declaring the Sacred College ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the base was one solid mass of rumor. Rick heard variously that the Earthman had been found, that he had stolen an entire rocket assembly, that the warehouse had been loaded with dynamite triggered to explode, that he had killed the clerk, that the clerk had seen him just before he flickered into invisibility, and ...
— The Scarlet Lake Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... that could explode into another Rim War, and we think he's at the heart of it," said Stetson. "We've eighty-one touchy planets, all of them old-line steadies that have been in the League for years. And on every one of them we have reason to believe there's a clan ...
— Operation Haystack • Frank Patrick Herbert
... hardly know," and the old man scratched his head in perplexity. "But everybody in this house seems about ready to explode with excitement. I never saw sich a happy bunch in all my life. Ye'd think that summer had been suddenly dumped down here, with all the birds singin', the bees hummin', and the flowers bloomin'. That's the only way I ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... of the little village of West Brookfield we came to a stand-still; the spark disappeared,—or rather from a large, round, fat spark it dropped to an insignificant little blue sparklet that would not explode ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... learned of remarkable escapes that he had had from death during the four days of the drive. On one occasion a Hun shell, sufficient in size to have blown him to atoms, lodged in his truck among supplies and failed to explode. I saw the shell myself, also saw the hole in the top of the truck through which it passed and can vouch for the truthfulness of the story. On another occasion a shrapnel shell exploded on the ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood
... well. For the first time I discovered that there were certain compensating advantages in a slightly-built craft, as compared with one more substantial: the missiles never lodged in the vessel, but crashed through some thin partition as if it were paper, to explode beyond us, or fall harmless in the water. Splintering, the chief source of wounds and death in wooden ships, was thus entirely avoided; the danger was, that our machinery might be disabled, or that shots might strike below the water-line, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... be a secret between you and me, as Jeffrey might not like such a project;—nor, indeed, might C. himself like it. But I do think he only wants a pioneer and a sparkle or two to explode most gloriously. Ever ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... head to foot. Sancho glanced at him and saw him with his head bent down upon his breast in manifest mortification; and Don Quixote glanced at Sancho and saw him with his cheeks puffed out and his mouth full of laughter, and evidently ready to explode with it, and in spite of his vexation he could not help laughing at the sight of him; and when Sancho saw his master begin he let go so heartily that he had to hold his sides with both hands to ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... witnessed at close quarters. Many of us crept up to the brow of the hill to see the "fun," though we were warned that we were courting trouble in so doing. We could see columns of rebel infantry marching in ranks of four, just as we marched, en route, and as shell after shell from our guns would explode among them and scatter and kill we would cheer. We were enjoying ourselves hugely until presently some additional puffs of smoke appeared from their side, followed immediately by a series of very ugly hissing, whizzing sounds, and the dropping of shells amongst our ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... satisfied with this explanation, he can try a very simple experiment which ought to be conclusive. If he will explode a grain of dynamite, the concussion within a foot of the point of explosion will be greater than that which can be produced by the most powerful bomb at a distance of a quarter of a mile. In fact, if the latter can condense vapor a quarter ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... adopt it would be to throw a whole population morally and politically into confusion. Is it necessary to explode a volcano under the foundation ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Germans—glared snarling at them out of the trench, or whimpered in a corner with arms upraised, as was the nature of the beasts. A non-commissioned officer picked up a bomb and hurled it at the advancing platoon sergeant; only to cry "Kamerad" when it failed to explode. . . . ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... very different shake of the head and deep sigh, Stephen said, 'Thank you, sir, I wish you good day.' So he left Mr. Bounderby swelling at his own portrait on the wall, as if he were going to explode himself into it; and Mrs. Sparsit still ambling on with her foot in her stirrup, looking quite cast ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... going to be married to-night. Be careful now! Look out! Don't explode! Remember the bet!" The old gentleman repressed ...
— The Flyers • George Barr McCutcheon
... arms, and a team runs away and plunges through a plate-glass window into a tinware and crockery store. People are all running round and shrieking, and the dog that was run over is still yelping—he wasn't killed outright evidently, but only crippled—and several tons of dynamite explode in ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... the work of mining and pushing our position nearer to the enemy was prosecuted with vigor, and I determined to explode no more mines until we were ready to explode a number at different points and assault immediately after. We were up now at three different points, one in front of each corps, to where only the parapet of ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... performance made it actually painful since the feeling could not be expressed—since we knew that our father knew that we were only too liable to explode in the presence of an honoured guest, and nothing vexed him more. While in the room we dared not change glances or even smile; but after seeing and hearing the wonderful laugh a few times we would steal off and going to some quiet ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... and then Tom drew out the firecracker still in his pocket and lit it on the sly. Just as it was about to explode he threw it ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... Hobbs, there's a good fellow. Tell the guards I wouldn't obey. That will let you out, my boy, and I'll do the rest. For Heaven's sake, Hobbs, don't burst! You'll explode sure if you hold in like that much longer. I'll be back in ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... to pieces an enemy's camp that lies in the open field. All this is accomplished by dropping shells composed partly of some elements not found in our world. These shells are made in such a way that they explode as soon as they touch any substance, and the concussion is much more terrible than is caused by our most powerful explosives. Because no ship could hold together under such destructive shells, the nations abandoned their navies and devoted their energy to devising a safe camp for soldiers ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... explosives. With new processes in manufacture, involving chemical and mechanical transformations, and other uses of new substances and new uses of old substances, explosions increase. The flour-dust of the miller, the starch-dust of the confectioner, increase in fineness and quantity, and they explode; so does the hop-dust of the brewer. In 1844, for the first time, Professors Faraday and Lyell, employed by the British government, discovered that explosion in bituminous coal mines was the quickening of the comparatively slow burning of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 288 - July 9, 1881 • Various
... originality of this position, sweeping aside as vain both participants in the new political duel, was quite lost on the little world in which Lincoln lived. For after-time it has the interest of a bombshell that failed to explode. It is the dawn of Lincoln's intellect. In his lonely inner life, this crude youth, this lover of books in a village where books were curiosities, had begun to think. The stages of his transition from mere story-telling yokel—intellectual only as the ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... the harbour near and above the city. Therefore, as soon as it was light enough to make observations, Repeller No. 1 did not hesitate to discharge a motor-bomb into the harbour, a mile or more above where the first one had fallen. This was done in order to explode any torpedoes which might have been put into position since the ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... ironmonger himself came in order to light it for the first time, and to initiate Pelle into the management of the wonderful contrivance. He went to work very circumstantially and with much caution. "It can explode, I needn't tell you," he said, "but you'd have to treat the mechanism very badly first. If you only set to work with care and reason there is ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Abbe Hautefeuille explained how a machine could be constructed to work with gunpowder as fuel. His arrangement was to explode the gunpowder in a closed vessel provided with valves, and cool the products of combustion, and so cause a partial vacuum to be formed. By the aid of such a machine, water could be raised. This inventor, however, does not seem to have ...
— Gas and Oil Engines, Simply Explained - An Elementary Instruction Book for Amateurs and Engine Attendants • Walter C. Runciman
... altogether shut off. This was to be forced down upon the steel drill tube, after which the regulator was to be similarly attached to the threads of the preliminary cap. The situation was hazardous for all. There was danger that the out-rushing gas in the trench below might explode when it rose and came in contact with the roaring blaze above. But it was hoped that the work might be done so quickly that ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... he would next be asked to boil eggs or do the boots. He found a bell and rang it with the needless violence of a man who has no special knowledge of ringing bells. How was he to know? he was a chauffeur. The bell did not so much ring as explode and swamp the place. Sounds of ringing came from all the windows, and even out of the chimneys. It seemed as if once set ringing that ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... incandescent lights special precautions must be taken to avoid any risk of fire. A lamp having been enveloped with paper and lighted by a current, the heat generated was sufficient to set fire to the paper, which burnt out and caused the lamp to explode. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... terrific impact, and the groundcar dome shattered above him. Unprotected, he felt the air explode from the groundcar, from his lungs. Oxygenless death poured in through ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... that he was not born to be merely happy and get rich, or to have a fine old time, why, such a complete upheaval as this seems to me to be necessary, and for me—if this war can rip off, with its shrapnel, the selfishness with which prosperity has encrusted the lucky: if it can explode our false values with its bombs: if it can break down our absurd pretensions with its cannon,—all I can say is that Germany will have done missionary work for ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... sometimes explode just on the point of starting the engine? A. Because starting the engine has the same effect as opening ...
— Rough and Tumble Engineering • James H. Maggard
... in this survey of the heroic. At the age of forty-five Carlyle had not recognised Friedrich at all, for he does not figure in the "Hero as King." Napoleon takes his place, though Bonaparte was a "hero" only in the bad sense of hero which Carlyle was seeking to explode. It is well that, since he finished the French Revolution, Carlyle seems to have found out that Bonaparte "parted with Reality," and had become a charlatan, a sham. Still for all that, he remains "our last great man." Mazzini was present at the delivery ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... the cud of his misfortune. Punctual to the time and place, that same evening beheld the injured Cudmore resume his wonted corner, pretty much with the feeling with which a forlorn hope stands match in hand to ignite the train destined to explode with ruin to thousands —himself perhaps amongst the number: there he sat with a brain as burning, and a heart as excited, as though, instead of sipping his bohea beside a sea-coal fire, he was that instant trembling beneath the frown of Dr. Elrington, for the blunders in his ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... divinely appointed; the next man denies this totally. The Quaker denies what the disciple of Calvin or Knox believes, while the Universalist ignores what the latter professes; and now the Mormons, spiritual rappers, and Transcendentalists explode the Bible altogether. The Catholic church, with those countless millions of her children that constitute her body, has been reading the Bible and studying it these nineteen hundred years, and never yet, with all her learning, could find two opposite meanings to one single ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... trial. At first Defoe, in heaping contemptuous ridicule upon the High-flying Doctor, had spoken as if he would consider prosecution a blunder. The man ought rather to be encouraged to go on exposing himself and his party. "Let him go on," he said, "to bully Moderation, explode Toleration, and damn the Union; ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... told Phoebe, and they bound his brows with a wet handkerchief, and advised him to keep in-doors. He sat down in the coolest part of the house, and held his head with his hands, for it seemed as if it would explode into two great fragments. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... to my heart; and your confidence in my humble abilities has followed in the sa me direction. The pulse of the old militia-man throbs with pride as he thinks of the trust you have placed in him, and vows to deserve it. Don't be surprised at this genial outburst. All enthusiastic natures must explode occasionally; and ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... callers went on. Joe and Blake worked in silence, making ready for their part in it. All about the boys, though they could neither see nor hear them, were Uncle Sam's men—soldiers, some of them—stationed near where, so rumor said, the attempt was to be made to explode the dynamite. ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... is the corruscation of the tail. It has been attempted to explode this fact also, by referring it to conditions of our own atmosphere; and it is generally considered the argument of Olbers, founded on the great length of the tail and the velocity of light, is sufficient to prove that these corruscations are not ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... She was, in truth, not much bigger than a ship's gig; but she had a soul out of all proportion to her size. The way it throbbed and strained and set her whole little frame quivering with excitement, made me think every moment that she was about to explode. The fact that she was manned exclusively by Japanese did ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... He heard the pistol explode and his face felt scorched, but he struck savagely, and something rattled upon the floor. The pistol had dropped and he was somewhat surprised to feel himself unhurt as he grappled with Daly. They reeled through the door and fell against the rails of the ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... meteors, to generate thunder. It is of the essence of some inflammable matter to gather itself together, to ferment in the caverns of the earth, to increase its active force by augmenting its heat, and then explode, by the accession of other matter suitable to the operation, with that tremendous force which we call earthquakes; by which mountains are destroyed; cities overturned; the inhabitants of the plains thrown into ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... men, the cure and the Duc de la Force, were astonished, could not utter a word. The sick man redoubled his instances. M. de la Force, recovering himself, found the thing so amusing, that he gave his blessing; and in fear lest he should explode, left the room, and came to us in the adjoining chamber, bursting with laughter, and scarcely able to relate ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... refuge. Fort Hudson, Fort Pulaski, Fort Moultrie, Fort Sumter, Gibraltar, Sebastopol were taken. But Jesus is a castle into which the righteous runneth and is safe. No battering-ram can demolish its wall. No sappers or miners can explode its ramparts, no storm-bolt of perdition leap upon its towers. The weapons that guard this fort are omnipotent. Hell shall unlimber its great guns as death only to have them dismantled. In Christ our sins are pardoned, discomforted, blotted out, forgiven. An ocean can not ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... inevitable trial with a patience born of philosophy, since indifference was not at his command, yet he could not refrain from the expression of his sentiments in his secret communings. Occasionally he allowed his wrath to explode with harmless violence between the covers of the Diary, and doubtless he found relief while he discharged his fierce diatribes on these private sheets. His vituperative power was great, and some specimens ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... shriek and explode, now near, now far, Jerry investigated the happening. As surely as the house was gone, just as surely was Nalasu gone. Upon both had descended the ultimate nothingness. All the immediate world seemed doomed to nothingness. Life promised ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... to enhance the perfection of harmony. There certainly is some use even in defects. A faultless style sends you to sleep. Defects rouse and excite the sensibility to seek and appreciate excellences. Some of Shakspeare's finest passages explode all grammar and rhetoric like skyrockets—the thought blows the language ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... trigger and detonator attached. Inside the tube was a powerful acid, which, when it had eaten its way through, set free the trigger and exploded the charge. The length of time it took for the mine to explode was gauged by the strength or weakness of the acid ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... a Spencer repeater but had shot away the ammunition adapted to the rifle and had been able to procure only some cartridges which fitted the chamber so badly that two blows of the hammer were generally required to explode one of them. Notwithstanding this serious defect of his weapon, Searles had so poor an opinion of the Grizzly that he went out alone after the bear several miles from camp. There was some snow on the ground and on the brush, and finding ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... a new primer for shell, which will explode from the slightest pressure. The shell is buried just beneath the surface of the earth, and explodes when a horse or a man treads upon it. He says he would not use such a weapon in ordinary warfare; but has no scruples in resorting to any means of defense against ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... form of which mea culpa seized the worthy manager with such an irresistibly ludicrous effect that he left the poor, guilty authoress without being able to address a syllable to her, lest he should explode in peals of laughter instead of decent ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... powder, and make their terrible projectiles. You know that these have to be manufactured by artificial light, as exposure to sunlight always results in an explosion. You have noticed that their bullets explode when they strike an object? Well, the opaque, outer coating is broken by the impact, exposing a glass cylinder, almost solid, in the forward end of which is a minute particle of radium powder. The moment the sunlight, even though diffused, strikes ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... naval architect named DUNKIN claims to have constructed a new style of vessel, impervious to rams, shell, or shot." Now, then, where is our friend, Captain ERICSSON? The Captain has a torpedo which he is anxious to explode, near a strong vessel belonging to somebody else. He says it will blow up anything. DUNIN says nothing can blow up his vessel. A contest between these very positive inventors would be a positive luxury—to those who had nothing to risk. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... well a blower, and give it up in disgust; the time wasn't ripe for gas yet. Now they bore away sometimes till they get half-way to China, and don't seem to strike anything worth speaking of. Then they put a dynamite torpedo down in the well and explode it. They have a little bar of iron that they call a Go-devil, and they just drop it down on the business end of the torpedo, and then stand from under, if you please! You hear a noise, and in about half a minute you begin to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... treat it with respect, of course," Bending said. He rubbed his big hands together in an unconscious gesture of triumph. "Just like any power source. But it won't explode; that I can guarantee. And there's no danger from radiation. All the power ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Herbert; "the sparks were all around me and the shanty was smoking while I was feeling around for the dogs' leash. I heard the canister explode before I reached ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... came back rather far when at full-cock, that was because the lock had been converted from a flint, and you could not expect it to be absolutely perfect. Besides which, as the fall was longer the blow was heavier, and the cap was sure to explode. ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... most flaming love of royalty and realm serves not to keep warm toes extended beyond short blankets at Christmas-tide. It is not strange that late in December, 1776, all Jersey was mined with discontent, and needed but the spark of Continental success to explode. ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... put in a single plea for the poor, little Lucy, dancing so gayly over the mine just ready to explode. She was purely selfish still, with all her qualms of conscience, and thought only of Anna, whom she would make happy at another's sacrifice. So she never hinted that it was possible for Arthur to keep his word pledged to Lucy Harcourt, and, as she finished ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... after we left the boat an' began to push through the bushes, we went straight for the line of my musket, as I had expected; but by some unlucky chance it didn't explode, for I saw the line torn away by the men's legs, and heard the click o' the lock; so I fancy the priming had got damp and didn't catch. I was in a great quandary now what to do, for I couldn't concoct in my mind, in the hurry, any good reason for firin' off my piece. But ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... question were so appalling that for some minutes the orator appeared unable to find words to go on, and his audience glared at him in dread anticipation, as though they expected him to explode like a bomb-shell, but were prepared to sit it out and take the consequences. And he did explode, after a fashion, for he suddenly raised his voice to a shout that startled even the sentinel on ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... incendiary they could not carry a sufficiently heavy charge to affect so large a body. The skin of the "sausages," as the balloons were commonly called from their shape, was too soft to offer sufficient resistance to explode a shell of any size. The war was pretty well under way before the precise weapon needed for their destruction was discovered. This proved to be a large rocket of which eight were carried on an airplane, four on each side. They were discharged by powerful springs and a mechanism started ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... it is true, it has one fault, that is so serious that it outweighs all the virtues. This fault is that the dynamite-gun has a habit of going off at both ends; that is to say, it is liable to explode both at the breech and the muzzle. It may therefore be quite as destructive to the army firing it, as to the enemy at which it ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1. No. 23, April 15, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... of people more easy to be amused, more eager to laugh or sympathize. A gentleman's hat blows up in the air; hoots of laughter explode after it. It rolls under an express van; a dozen citizens spring to its rescue. Nerves are on edge. Stimulants are exciting keen brains. It is a trifle savage, this crowd. Look! See them hustle that masher! His hat's smashed already. ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... cause or motive of this discrepancy among the witnesses does not appear. The facts, that at first they went into fits in beholding him, were all struck dumb for a while, and Ann Putnam saw him on the beam, were likely to have an unfavorable effect upon the minds of the people, and threatened to explode the delusion. But Ann, with a quickness of wit that never failed to meet any emergency, when Mercy Lewis said it was not the man, cried out in a fit, "Did you put a mist before my eyes?" She conveyed the idea that the power of Satan blinded her, and caused her to mistake the ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... I feel as if something ought to explode, or the captain ought to break out the black flag. This atmosphere is getting ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... not idle; their guns, of which they had a decent number, sought for our position with dauntless perseverance. Their shells soon began to drop amongst us, but they did no harm at all. They fell close enough to our troops in many instances, but they were so badly made that they would not explode, or if they did they simply fizzed, and were almost as harmless as ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... clatter of crockery, but Mrs. Harmon seemed not to hear them. An excited foreigner of some sort finally rushed from this quarter, and thrust his head into the booth where Lemuel and Mrs. Harmon sat, long enough to explode some formula of renunciation upon her, which left her serenity unruffled. She received with the same patience the sarcasm of a boarder who appeared at the office-door with a bag in his hand, and said he would send an express-man ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... night," he returned grimly. "And it is partly forest covered, that morass. The guns have shattered the forest in places. But most of the huge shells which drop into the swamp never explode." ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... his cheeks, and putting his hands in his waistcoat pockets, and saying, "God bless my soul, you don't say so," so exactly after the fashion of old Jos, that it was impossible to refrain from laughter. The servants would explode at dinner if the lad, asking for something which wasn't at table, put on that countenance and used that favourite phrase. Even Dobbin would shoot out a sudden peal at the boy's mimicry. If George did not mimic his uncle to his face, it was only by Dobbin's rebukes and Amelia's terrified entreaties ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... of time, nothing happened. Then the viewplate was filled with a deadly blue-white glare. Unlike an ordinary atomic bomb, the flare bomb would not explode violently; it simply burned, sending out a brilliant flare of deadly radiation that would crisp all life dozens of feet below ...
— The Judas Valley • Gerald Vance
... advances there seems imminent danger that the fat little body will explode from curiosity and excitement. But suddenly the "dog" collapses in the strangest way and the marmot raises on the very tips of his toes to see what it is all about. Then there is a roar, a flash of fire and another skin is added to the millions which have already been sent to the seacoast ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... of work and Weltpolitik. They talk of nothing here at meals but this Weltpolitik. I've just been having a dose of it at breakfast. To say that the boarders are interested in it is to speak feebly: they blaze with interest, they explode with it, they scorch and sizzle. And they are so pugnacious! Not to each other, for contrary to the attitude at Kloster's they are knit together by the toughest band of uncritical and obedient admiration for everything German, but they are pugnacious to the Swede girl and myself. Especially to ...
— Christine • Alice Cholmondeley
... believe me. Then Mr. Ellsworth held up his hand in that quiet way he has. "This sounds like the Western Front or a Bolshevik meeting," he said, "and I'm afraid our young Raven, Mr. Pee-wee Harris, will presently explode and that would be an unpleasant episode ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... what kind that is, but it sounds good on a Fourth of July," said Jerry with a laugh. "I hope it doesn't explode when I eat it, though, like a ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandma Bell's • Laura Lee Hope
... and someone asked who would volunteer for water. We were all dirty, thirsty, greasy and tired, and I offered to go. I ambled over to the farmhouse, stopping to speak to the Captain for a moment on the way, when I heard a shell explode; it had ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... in on an individual, "explode," penetrate—and set up heavy housekeeping on a permanent basis. They did. ...
— Inside John Barth • William W. Stuart
... where they could be got at in a moment, by simply lifting up the skin and unbuckling the strap; by this means too, all danger or risk was avoided, which usually exists when the fire-arms are put on or off the drays in a loaded state. I have myself formerly seen carbines explode more than once from the cocks catching something, in being pulled out from, or pushed in amidst the load of a dray, independently of the difficulty of getting access to them in cases of sudden emergency; a still better plan ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... save shouts of joy and protestations of fidelity. Nevertheless it did not need great sagacity to foresee the perils reserved for the new establishment. The French regime disquieted interests too numerous and prejudices too powerful throughout the Peninsula not to explode at the first difficulty which it might encounter ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... the cellar of this noble building the Germans buried several tons of dynamite. To this dynamite they attached a seven-day clock. They set the seven-day clock to explode at eleven o'clock one week after the Germans had retreated. These beasts worked out the theory that the largest possible number of British and French officers and public men would be inspecting the building at that hour ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... has justified. On the slightest alarm, the prisoners were loaded with chains, fastened to ring-bolts attached to the ship's sides. Perhaps, no vessel ever crossed the Line without some plot, rumoured or real; but the most ordinary precautions have been found usually sufficient to detect and explode them: their inventors have often been their discoverers. The prisoners, commonly distrustful of each other, shrank from the confidence required to plan and execute a revolt. But when timid officers were in charge, they sometimes adopted restrictions ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... was entrusted with the perilous duty of conducting the fire-ships in the attack upon the French fleet in Basque Roads, he had lighted the fusee which was to explode one of these terrific engines of destruction, and had rowed off to some distance, when it was discovered that a dog had been left on board. Lord C. instantly ordered the men to row back, assuring them that ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... blessings of having an open garden is, that I do not have to watch my fruit: a dozen youngsters do that, and let it waste no time after it matures. I wish it were possible to grow a variety of grape like the explosive bullets, that should explode in the stomach: the vine would make such a nice border for the garden,—a masked battery of grape. The pears, too, are getting russet and heavy; and here and there amid the shining leaves one gleams as ruddy as the cheek of the Nutbrown Maid. The Flemish Beauties come off readily from the stem, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... started to count—one, two, and his hand began to shake; at three his hand was moving about violently; at four the bomb fell. I wonder if there is any one in the world who thinks that we stopped there to see that bomb explode. No, we didn't. ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... into The Barbarian's tankette before the other Leaguesman could fire. But Dugald was not aiming for The Barbarian. First he had to eliminate Geoffrey from the scene entirely. When he fired, at almost point-blank range, the world seemed to explode in ...
— The Barbarians • John Sentry
... of happiness and scare and a secret that if I didn't have this little book to spill some of it out to I don't know what I would do. A secret sometimes makes a girl feel like she would explode worse than a bottle of nitroglycerin, though it makes me nervous even to write the word when I think of what might have happened to Lovelace Peyton if I hadn't had a father who is cool enough to keep his head at all times and handed that ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... strength. Base sappers and miners! Thank God ye are few! And the number of the people ye are trying to hoodwink and seduce from their allegiance is hourly growing less, as your cunningly devised schemes explode. Do ye not know that the people of the Free States are loyal to the core? That great principles are invincible as fate, say rather, Providence? and that those who will not move in their onward course must be overwhelmed ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the long and short of it was that we were both regularly engaged and had made all kinds of plans to be married at Christmas and go over to Tasmania or New Zealand, when this terrible blow fell upon us like a shell. I did see one explode at a review in Melbourne—and, my word! what ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... kicked it in the ribs. Things began to happen at once. A huge creature of a man slid out on the opposite side of the cook wagon, an' when he came around the tail of it he was holdin' a bear gun so it would explode without much ceremony. He was usin' some language an' his speed was a thing to covet; but I just stood with my back to the fire, waitin' until I could get a chance to introduce myself. He was in the light, an' he was enough to make a man reform. Nigger, Greaser, Injun—oh, he was the hardest ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... comfortable. Possibly some agreeable little device in clockwork. The tick, tick, tick suggested clockwork which had been planned to go a certain time, and then—then, for all I knew, ignite an explosive, and—blow up. It would be a charming solution to the puzzle if it were to explode while I stood there, in my nightshirt, looking on. It is true that the box weighed very little. Probably, as I have said, the whole affair would not have turned the scale at a couple of ounces. But then its very ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... ship that survives collision with a berg, a dozen perish. Presumably, when the shock comes, it loosens their bulkheads and they fill and founder, or the crash may injure the boilers or engines, which explode and tear out the sides, and the ship goes down like a plummet. As long ago as 1841, the steamer President, with 120 people aboard, crossing from New York to Liverpool in March, vanished from human ken. In 1854, in the same month, the City of Glasgow left Liverpool ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... slightest danger, aunt Nesta. It cannot explode without concussion. I have been carrying it about with me all ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... the community and provided with such a weapon—even though it is likely to explode in their own hands—women will continue to limit their families. No social legislation, however generous, will prevent it, nor, as far as the Committee can see, will legal prohibitions ...
— Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Various Aspects of the Problem of Abortion in New Zealand • David G. McMillan
... failures, strikes, slack seasons, all inherent to great political disturbances. In times of revolution misery is both cause and effect. The blow which it deals rebounds upon it. This population full of proud virtue, capable to the highest degree of latent heat, always ready to fly to arms, prompt to explode, irritated, deep, undermined, seemed to be only awaiting the fall of a spark. Whenever certain sparks float on the horizon chased by the wind of events, it is impossible not to think of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine and of the formidable chance ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... What does part of a last act or the “star song” matter in comparison with five minutes of valuable time to the good? Like the river captains, we propose to run under full head of steam and get there, or b—- explode! ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... to show, that the notions I advance are so far from being inconsistent with, that they are the sole foundation of morality and laws, and of rewards and punishments in society, and that the notions I explode are ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... which would certainly explode any supernatural machinery that could be invented. The Pharsalia could not be anything more than an interesting but unsuccessful attempt; it was not on these lines that epic poetry was to develop. Lucan died at an age when most poets have done nothing very remarkable; ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... solidity. For, if we should, according to our author's proposition, consider those consolidated bodies as having been originally formed in that solid state, here the door might be shut against any farther investigation;—But to what purpose?—Surely not to refute my theory, but to explode every physical inquiry farther on the subject, and thus to lead us back into the science of darkness and of scepticism. But let us proceed to see our ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton
... Go without eating rather than do it. Your credit is still good; but it is being slowly undermined—and the indiscretion of a friend who chanced to say: "I think Valorsay is hard up," might fire the train, and then you'd explode.'" ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... by Wonota as fast as the man could hook them to the string and set the string to swinging. Then he threw glass balls filled with feathers into the air for the Indian girl to explode. ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... either side of her. To continue on would have been certain destruction, and, turning in the midst of that deadly hail which had half disabled her, the craft was run high and dry on the beach, where she was at once abandoned, her crew doubtless fearing lest the magazines would explode. ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... the downfall of English ministries and Ulster. Born of Irish parents. First man to successfully explode dynamite in Parliament without being executed. Ambition: An Ulsterless Ireland, a Conservativeless England. Address: Close to the English ministry. Epitaph: The Bills ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... Grinder's story it was seen that Mr Bosher had become black in the face. He was waving his arms and writhing about like one in a fit, his goggle eyes bursting from their sockets, whilst his huge stomach quivering spasmodically, alternately contracted and expanded as if it were about to explode. ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell |
