"Explosive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... house and remained all night with us. About three o'clock in the morning there was an explosion outside, and when we dressed and ran out we found one of the chicken houses blown to flinders by dynamite or some other explosive. About one ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer
... German chemist, who in his laboratory compounds a new explosive, has more effect upon the wars of the modern peoples than ten thousand soldierly legs and arms; and the man who invents one new labour-saving machine may, through the cerebration of a few days, have performed the labour it would otherwise have taken hundreds ...
— Woman and Labour • Olive Schreiner
... the billows of black smoke? Gone where the railroad sent the stage-coach, electricity sent the candle and horse-drawn street-cars, serum sent diphtheria, the knife sent the appendix, and rifled cannon and explosive shells sent the wooden walls of old ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... came to me with a message of relief, yet it justified my worse fears. She was here, and the place was about to be blasted by some titanic explosive of the Croen science creation! Her words were indistinct, but the tone was almost mocking, and I thought I ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... I take back nothing of what is written in these papers concerning the Gaelic revival. In a country governed against the will of its people, forces that, under normal and healthy conditions, would be purely beneficent, may easily grow explosive and disruptive. Yet I have not changed my mind on a critical question which led me to sever my connection with the work of the Gaelic League. When that body decided to rely on compulsion rather than persuasion, it took the wrong road, if its object was to endear the Irish language ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... gelatine," Jack declared. "One stick is enough to blow the Fortuna to pieces. Here are one, two, three, four, five, six—six sticks of high powered explosive lying right next to our engines. Where would the good ship have been if that stuff had let go? I tell ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... precautions have been developed. Good plant housekeeping is paramount. This is essential, not only because of influence of dust and dirt on the maintenance of motors and equipment, but because of the highly explosive nature of shell dusts. The U. S. Bureau of Mines has cooperated closely with the Northern Laboratory in evaluating the explosive hazards ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... hydrobromic acid formed. The nature of the gas evolved is now undergoing investigation. A letter from M. Lobry de Bruyn appears in the number of the Chemiker Zeitung for October 31, warning those who may attempt to prepare free hydroxylamine by the above method that it is a dangerously explosive substance when warmed to a temperature of 80 deg.-100 deg.. Upon warming a flask containing the free solid base upon a water bath a most violent explosion occurs. A spontaneous decomposition appears to set in about 80 deg., and even in open vessels the explosion is very ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... explosive stage into which planets may pass. According to the finest scientific thinking, a planet will either ...
— Mars Confidential • Jack Lait
... reached Jim and his mother, like an explosive shell fired from a distance into their humble dwelling—quite upsetting things. Twenty-five years constitute rather a long wait for social recognition, and Mrs. Irwin had long since regarded herself as quite outside society. To be ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... found the window and opened the lower sash. With the rush of air from outside my oppressed lungs got relief for a second or two, but the draught drew in the flames that rioted through the hall; the glass in the transom, already cracked, burst with a loud explosive sound, and a torrent of fire and smoke poured in through ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... creatures, and with the explosive and mechanistic aid of ideas we can pervert the whole psyche. Only, however, in a destructive degree, not in a positive ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... proving very useful as to a few hints towards the disentanglement of Eugene's affairs, Lightwood applied himself with infinite zest to attacking and harassing Mr Fledgeby: who, discovering himself in danger of being blown into the air by certain explosive transactions in which he had been engaged, and having been sufficiently flayed under his beating, came to a parley and asked for quarter. The harmless Twemlow profited by the conditions entered into, though he little thought it. Mr Riah unaccountably ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... from the German government. By the "business at hand" they meant a new explosive and slow-burning powder that was to be used in the new type of fourteen-inch turret guns being made in Glasgow. Some of that explosive was in my possession. The fact that it was not discovered in my effects, nor was anything else incriminating found ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... of war passed. The many societies of Earth began to merge into a single superstate. But the pressure to conform, instead of lessening, grew more intense. The need was dictated by the continued explosive increase in population, and the many problems of unification across national and ethnic lines. Differences in opinion could be deadly; too many groups now had access to the supremely ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... we're doomed to stick here for some time," remarked Mr. Henderson, with a grim smile. "The rock has caught us squarely and nothing short of dynamite will free us. To use the explosive might mean the destruction of the ship, and I dare ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... with a rending such as must have been sounded in the days when a molten globe was cooling. From the base of the dam sucking tongues had licked out boulders that upheld the formation as a keystone holds an arch. It went into collapse with an explosive splintering and left fang-like reefs still standing. Through the breach fell the ponderous weight of a ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... ugly, bright, good-natured face; the rest (to my sense) merely exquisite. She comes steering into my room of a morning, like Mrs. Nickleby, with elaborate precaution; unlike her, noiseless. If I look up from my work, she is ready with an explosive smile. I generally don't, and wait to look at her as she stoops for the bellows, and trips tiptoe off again, a miracle of successful womanhood in every line. I am amused to find plain, healthy Java pass in my fancy so far before pretty ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... same kind of fighting had been going on. We learned later that when Grim Hagen's men winged their way in from the sea, his army had already retaken the Tower. Ato and his soldiers were scattered. Half of them were dead. So, after scattering their explosive eggs across the city, and killing the very old and the very young, Grim Hagen and his men took refuge in the Tower and prepared to withstand our siege. They had learned much from their first defeat, and this time ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... feet up and it was moving in erratic, unpredictable darts and dashes here and there, like a dragon-fly's movements, but a hundred times more swift. Proximity-fused shells burst everywhere about it. It burst through a still-expanding puff of explosive smoke, darted down a hundred feet, and took a zig-zag course of such violent and angular changes of position that it looked more like a streak of ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... audible above the rattle of the motors, proclaimed the unpleasant fact that her antagonist was circling around the spot marked by the phosphorescent swirl and the iridescence of escaped oil, and was firing explosive grapnels in the hope of ripping open the ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... of the plain, and emits from its summit a constant stream of smoke. In times of eruption this smoke becomes very dense and voluminous, and alternates from time to time with bursts of what seems to be flame, and with explosive ejections of red-hot stones or molten lava. Besides the cities and towns that are now to be seen along the shore at the foot of the slopes of the mountain, there are many others buried deep beneath the ground, having been overwhelmed ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott
... coal mines shall either be fired in a water cartridge or be of such a nature that it cannot inflame firedamp. This indeed is the problem which has puzzled many able chemists during the last few years, and which Dr. Roth, of Berlin, claims to have solved with his explosive "roburite." We recently gave a detailed account of trials carried out at the School of Military Engineering, Chatham, to test the safety and strength of roburite, as compared with gun cotton, dynamite, and blasting gelatine. The results were conclusive ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various
... King. "I thought them as united amongst themselves as they are in my heart. Vermandois is quick, and as explosive as saltpetre; but he has the best nature in the world. I will reconcile them; they will ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... Bradshaw's plain dress and carpet-bag were more than made up for by the air and tone which imply the habit of being attended to. The clerk saw that in a glance, and, as he looked at the name and address in the book, spoke sharply in the explosive dialect of his tribe,— ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... had been called, and appeared in time to see this. I heard the explosive but muttered comments, and then a concerted snarl of hatred and rage as they rushed aft. But I paid no present attention to it. I had drawn my pistol, and was taking careful aim with my left hand at the captain, not so much determined by fear that I should be next as by a resolve, born of my emotions ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... the impaled memoranda he sat back again, chewing his cigar and staring into vacancy. A full minute elapsed before he deigned to become once more aware of my presence. Then he whirled upon me to rap out an explosive question. ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... replied. "It is something much more subtle than an explosive bullet—which would really be a rather crude appliance—admirably thought out and thoroughly well executed. We have to deal with a most ingenious ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... "Oh, boy—hydrogen! The loaf's unwrapped. After a while, in spite of the crust-seal, a little oxygen diffuses in. An explosive mixture. Housewife in curlers and kimono pops a couple slices ...
— Bread Overhead • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... lonely hours in the woods did cherish some vision such as Cyrus suggested, was so infected with their spirit, that, as he swung his axe with a giant's stroke against a hemlock branch, he joined in with an explosive:— ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... building is buried in bloated banks of savage, biting elements. Forked tongues dart out and in, dodge here and there, up and down, and wind their cutting edges around every object. A crash, a dull, explosive sound, and a puff of smoke leaps out. At the highest point upon the roof stands a dark figure in a desperate strait, the hands making frantic gestures, the arms swinging wildly—and then the body shoots off into frightful space, plunging upon the pavement with ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... The mutes represent an explosive sound, and are so called because the mouth organs are closed just before the sound is uttered and the voice is ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... hours, and no time to investigate. There were rumors of smuggling all along the line over there, and strange conferences between Mexican statesmen and sellers of Connecticut hardware of an explosive nature. He recalled having heard that Singleton was from Connecticut, or was it Massachusetts? Anyway, it was over there at the eastern edge of the country somewhere, and it was also where plots and counter plots were pretty thick concerning ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... you are wishful to be withering 'Tis hard to be confined to "blithering," And to express explosive thinkin' One longs ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various
... having finished his rearrangement and repair of the explosive-filled drawer under the mate's bunk, climbed up the companion steps, saw the battle, paused, and quietly ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... commanded him to leave her and find "Tom." But although the dog looked at her intelligently enough, and barked his response— a deep, sudden, explosive bark— he ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... and so repulsive as Northmour. He had the appearance of a finished gentleman; his face bore every mark of intelligence and courage; but you had only to look at him, even in his most amiable moment, to see that he had the temper of a slaver captain. I never knew a character that was both explosive and revengeful to the same degree; he combined the vivacity of the south with the sustained and deadly hatreds of the north; and both traits were plainly written on his face, which was a sort of danger signal. In person he was tall, strong, and active; his hair and complexion very dark; ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... aviator had dropped a large explosive bomb, which, luckily for the Motor Boys and their comrades, had fallen into an open space, though not far from one of the camouflaged stations where the soldiers were quartered before being taken up to the front-line trenches. The explosion ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... and nearly all the substances into which this element enters as a constituent are remarkably prone to decomposition. Yeast, and ferments of every kind—gunpowder, fulminating silver, chloride of nitrogen—and almost every explosive compound, contain this element. The cheesy matter is a very nitrogenous body, and in presence of air and moisture not only rapidly decomposes, or decays, itself, but induces by mere contact a like state ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... little tin cans. It is a liquid of a vile smell, something like onions and rotten eggs mixed. The girls' noses are going up sky-high now. But it does the work of ant killing. You must be careful in handling this. It has a horrid explosive habit. Pour about a teaspoonful down an ant hole. Do not use a good silver spoon from the dining room. Get an old spoon, or buy a tin one. For you will never use it again except it be for carbon-bisulphid ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... insistent reports that the French have a new shell which kills by concussion; it is officially stated in an army bulletin that a new explosive recently put into use doubles the explosive force of shells ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... present time mineral oils are used which possess flashing-points above 75 deg.F. The highly volatile components of petroleum are dangerous because they form very explosive mixtures with air at ordinary temperatures. A mineral oil like kerosene, to be used with safety in lamps, should not be too volatile. It is preferable that an inflammable vapor should not be given ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... whole interior, leaving the rock a mere shell. Into this drawing-room suite were inserted thirty tons of powder, ten barrels of nitro-glycerine, and a woman's temper. Von Schmidt then put in something explosive, and corked up the opening, leaving a long wire hanging out. When all these preparations were complete, the inhabitants of San Francisco came out to see the fun. They perched thickly upon Telegraph Hill from base to summit; they swarmed innumerable upon the ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... Here the missile is inserted at the breech, according to Your direction. Here is the mechanism which turns and aims the weapon, as You commanded. It is shown in greater detail on this second sheet.... And here, on the third, is the missile itself. It is hollow and filled with explosive powder, as You ordered, and there is in the tip a device which will attract it ...
— The Worshippers • Damon Francis Knight
... pocket she dragged several things before she found what she sought. The sixth member noticed several packets labelled MAGIC, which the Stranger handled very carefully. "Frightfully explosive," she said. ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... a roar of rejoicing which penetrated even his single-tracked, murder-obsessed brain. He turned, purple-face and explosive, to see what the ...
— Attention Saint Patrick • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... vents, we frequently observe accumulations of angular fragments of rocks formed during eruptions by the explosive action of steam, which shatters the subjacent stony formations, and hurls them up into the air. They then fall in showers around the cone or crater, or may be spread for some distance over the surrounding country. The fragments consist usually of different varieties ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... characteristic odor noticed about electrical machines when in operation. By subjecting it to great pressure and a low temperature, the gas condenses to a bluish liquid, boiling at -119 deg.. When unmixed with other gases ozone is very explosive, changing back into oxygen with the liberation of heat. Its chemical properties are similar to those of oxygen except that it is far more active. Air or oxygen containing a small amount of ozone is now used in place of oxygen in ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson
... forth) to craft. It is a very common thing, especially in modern history, to lay such things to the power of one or two wealthy or one or two bloody leaders, but you have only to think for a few moments of what a mob is to see the falsity of that. Craft can harness this sort of explosive force, it can control it, or persuade it, or canalize it to certain issues, but ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... with bayonets fixed, while Sept, the man who had captured the sentinel, took the hatchet he had brought with him at his girdle, flung over one of the barrels on its side, knocked in the head of it, allowing the dull black powder to pour on the cobblestones. Then filling his hat with the explosive, he came out towards us, leaving a thick trail behind him. By this time we were sorely beset, and one of our men had gone down under the fire of the enemy, who shot wildly, being baffled by the darkness, otherwise all ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... was taking place in the room below. As he made the hole, the murmur of voices became more and more distinct. At last, the sharp point of the knife pierced the board, and then working as carefully as though he were handling the most deadly explosive, he began to enlarge the little chink that he ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... a great explosive sigh of relief and joy, and as he gave vent to it he caught her close. "Will—you—do!... Good Lord!... I rather think ...
— On Christmas Day in the Morning • Grace S. Richmond
... came a serious break. Landor's relations with Mrs. Landor, never of such a nature as to give any sense of security, had grown steadily worse as he became more explosive, and they now reached such a point that he flung out of the house one day and did not return for many years, completing the action by a poem in which he took a final (as he ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... want to allow emotion to get the better of me, Valeria. I don't want to run rank like some overgrown weed, and so I dread the accumulation of emotion—emotion that has never had a good explosive utterance. One has to be so discreet in these Italian gardens; no one shouts or ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... here, there, back and forth, over these weeks of their stay together. It halted, it ran on, it stopped again to consider, but always it was of Dick and incidentally of himself who didn't matter so much, but who had to be in it all. Were they at one in this epidemic of world sickness? As the great explosive forces of destruction and decay seemed to have released actual germs to attack the physical well-being of races, had the terrible crashes of spiritual destinies unsettled the very air of life, ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... I refrained from retaliation. I did not tell him that his legs were out of drawing and that he had a frightfully vicious nose. But before I had time to explain my business he had started on a series of explosive directions: "Eat proper food. Plenty of open air. Exercise morning, noon and night and in between. Use the Muldow system. You need ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... nuclear weapon ever detonated by the United States. Before it was set off at Bikini on February 28, 1954, it was expected to explode with an energy equivalent of about 8 million tons of TNT. Actually, it produced almost twice that explosive power—equivalent to 15 ...
— Worldwide Effects of Nuclear War: Some Perspectives • United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
... that it is possible to be within ten miles of your energetic presence without being acutely aware of it, you do yourself the greatest injustice. How are you? And how are your good newspaper friends? [Burge makes an explosive movement; but Lubin goes on calmly and sweetly] And what are you doing here with my old friend Barnabas, if I ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... jerks and nervous, spasmodic spurts he rushes along from cover to cover like a soldier dodging the enemy's bullets. When he discovers me, he pauses, and with one paw on his heart appears to press a button, that lets off a flood of snickering, explosive sounds that seem like ridicule of me and my work. Failing to get any response from me, he presently turns, and, springing from the wall to the bending branch of a near apple-tree, he rushes up and ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... very gingerly. If he had not feared to give offence to the emir, he would have declined the gift, for while not for one moment did he dream that a demoniac presence fretted inside that shining copper, he did believe that it contained some explosive, or what would be more probable, some mephitic substance that gave off a deadly vapor. So, fully resolved to throw the bottle into the river and being very heedful of Achmed's injunction not to let the leaden plug ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... not find its mark. It may require a surgical operation to get a joke into a Scotsman, but only the medium of some high explosive could properly convey a hint ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... child for exuberance of joy! her aunt thought. Or, if there were others as glad, where were any who let the light of their gladness so shine before men, invading, conquering them as she did with the rush of her joy! Dorothy held fast to the skirt of her frock, fearing every instant the explosive creature would jump overboard in elemental sympathy. But, poled carefully along by Mr. Drake, they reached in safety a certain old shed, and getting in at the door of the loft where a cow-keeper ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... spleen was held to be the special seat of the sudden and explosive emotions and passions, whether of mirth or anger. Cf. Troilus and Cressida, I, iii, 178; 1 Henry IV, V, ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... the monotonous noise of the engines is the steady jingle of the splendid team. Anon, the intermittent funnel roar of protest at every violent roll, becomes the regular blast of a high pressure engine, and I recognise the exceedingly explosive steamer in which I ascended the Mississippi when the American civil war was not, and when only its causes were. A fragment of mast on which the light of a lantern falls, an end of rope, and a jerking block or so, become suggestive of Franconi's Circus at Paris where ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... Jupiter's gravity made movement a slow and laborious process, and he didn't want to be caught too far from security. At such times he might hear a crashing and splashing and see a reptilian head loom gigantically at him through the fog. Then he would discharge the deadly explosive gun which was Earth's latest weapon, and the creature would crash to the ground. The chorus of hissings and bellowings would increase as he hastened slowly and laboriously back to the ship, indicating that other unseen monsters of the steamy jungle ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... holiness of the tabu object, the holiness stored inside it like so much electricity, his death was a misfortune, an interesting accident, and no more.[68:1] But when it is made into the deliberate act of an anthropomorphic god, who strikes a well-intentioned man dead in explosive rage for a very pardonable mistake, a dangerous element has been introduced into the ethics of that religion. A being who is the moral equal of man must not behave like ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... Englander in the superfluous decade, might find myself equal to. But there was no uproarious jollity; on the contrary, it was a pleasant gathering of literary people and artists, who took their pleasure not sadly, but serenely, and I do not remember a single explosive guffaw. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... road, beyond a high cedar hedge. While he was speaking, the irregular explosive reports of a motor had sounded down the valley, unmistakable to those familiar with the testing of the stripped cars, and rapidly approaching. Now, as Emily would have answered, the roar suddenly changed in character, an appalling series of explosions mingled with the grind ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... oxygen and hydrogen. The former, as we have seen, is a supporter of combustion, and the latter is one of the most combustible substances known. These two gases are nearly two thousand times more voluminous than their equivalent of water, and, when ignited, they combine with explosive energy. If, then, the Creator were to decompose the atmosphere that surrounds the earth to the height of forty-five miles, and the water that rests upon its surface, either or both of them, the oxygen, being specifically heavier than the nitrogen or hydrogen, ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... energy resulting from emotional stimulation, from infection stimulation, and from nociceptor stimulation (pain), are, as nearly as can be judged, equally exaggerated. In the acute cases of Graves' disease the explosive conversion of latent energy into heat and motion is unexcelled by any other known normal or pathologic phenomenon. Excessive thyroid secretion, as in thyrotoxicosis from functioning adenomata, and excessive thyroid feeding, cause ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... 'It could be stopped right here if some one would dynamite all the block beyond Van Ness Avenue. It could never jump across a strip so broad.' 'But they've forbidden any more dynamiting,' said Anderson. 'Never mind; I'd take the chance myself if we could get any explosive,' replied Lane. 'Well, there's a launch full of dynamite from Contra Costa County lying right now at Meigs's Wharf,' said Anderson. Just then Mr. and Mrs. Tom Magee arrived, driving an automobile ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... clearness. The piece of damaged goods which, being of no further fighting use, was being returned with thanks to the hearthside from whence it came, was an individual answering to the unheroic cognomen of Briggs. A high-explosive shell had been sent by the Gods to alter the current of Briggs's career. Briggs came through all that part of the war which concerned him without a scratch upon his person—only after the arrival in his immediate vicinity of the high-explosive shell he ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... human spirit is difficult to deal with, and uncomfortably explosive. At least so Richard Rosco found it when, towards the close of the day on which his enemy chased him into the dismal swamp, he sat down on a gnarled ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... never fails to respond, and the cowboy is called upon to surrender. If he complies, which to the credit of his horse-sense he commonly does, he is led into brief captivity to be made loose when cooled. Does he resist arrest, there is an explosive rattle of six shooters, a mad scattering of the careful citizenry out of lines of fire, and a cowboy or marshal is added to the host beyond. At the close of the festival, if the marshal still lives he is congratulated; ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... religion, men possessing enormous power over the forces of nature are like children to whom powder or explosive gas has been given as a plaything. Considering this power which men of our time possess, and the way they use it, one feels that considering the degree of their moral development men have no right, not only to the use of railways, ...
— "Bethink Yourselves" • Leo Tolstoy
... a combination of oxygen and hydrogen, being composed of exactly two volumes of hydrogen to one volume of oxygen. If these two gases be separated from each other and then allowed to mix in these proportions they unite with explosive violence and form water. Water itself may be separated into the gases by any one of several means, one making use of a temperature of 2,200 ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly
... any apparent chance of his being able to rob me by the proceeding, I could have understood it. But my business interests as far as past inventions went were safe in the hands of my lawyers, and although I had told him a certain amount about the new explosive which I had been working at, it was quite impossible for him to turn it to any ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... cold and unsympathetic. Courteous, well-bred, self-possessed, she was to a fault, but—unpardonable sin in school-girl eyes—she shrank from those dear and delicious intimacies, those mushroom friendships of our tender years, that are as explosive as fire-crackers and as evanescent as the smoke thereof. The volumes of satire that have been written on the subject have exhausted the field and rendered new ideas out of the question, but they have in no wise diminished the impetuosity with which such friendships ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... warlike purposes? I am sick at heart when I hear the first question put in these days to each inventor: 'Can you enable us to kill more of our fellowmen than we can kill with existing appliances?' Is it a new engine, a new amalgam of metals, a new explosive, a new field of electrical energy, one hears the same vulture's cry— 'How many, how far, how safely can we slay?' I regard this lust for destruction as contemptible. It is a strange and ignominious feature of modern life. Forgive me, Mr. Theydon, ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... weapons of warfare from certain quotations from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, argued that the nalika must have been some kind of musket vomiting bullets of iron in consequence of some kind of explosive force. The Rishis discouraged use of nalika, declaring them to be barbarous and fit only for kings that would come in the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... a terrific explosive, which is being held in reserve to the last.... It is said that a bomb weighing scarcely ten kilometres can annihilate everything within a radius of two ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 19, 1917 • Various
... was joyous. Her explosive laugh pealed out in the second before fear of her father stifled it. So this was how Sissy had planned to get even; so this was the plot behind Bep's baffling blue eyes! And only the accident of Madigan's going to the door had saved ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... out again, spread on the air as if it were flying, looking something like a dragon, then closing up again, inconceivably powerful and explosive. The man's body, strung to its efforts, vibrated strongly. Then a sudden sharp, white-edged wrath came up in him. Swift as lightning he drew back and brought his free hand down like a hawk on the neck of the rabbit. Simultaneously, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... much"—from which I gathered that my friend had tempered his self-accusations with at least one legitimate boast. From this ghostly counselling, Jim turned to me; and though he never got beyond the explosive utterance of my name and one fierce handgrip, communicated some of his own emotion, like a charge of electricity, to his best man. We stood up to the ceremony at last, in a general and kindly discomposure. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... getting quite the reputation of a Doctor Faustus in the popular mind. Even educated people in this very place shake their heads and pity my daughter there for living with an alchemical parent, within easy smelling-distance of an explosive laboratory. Excessively ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... the occurrence of any phenomenon, it always has to be included that objects must be present, possessed of given properties. It is a condition of the phenomenon explosion that an object should be present, of one or other of certain kinds, which for that reason are called explosive. The presence of one of these objects is a condition immediately precedent to the explosion. The condition which is not immediately precedent is the cause which produced, not the explosion, but the explosive property. The conditions of the explosion itself were all present immediately ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... time before the conversation could be guided round to the subject which we three at any rate had at heart. Explosive cries of delight over Mac's last etching, Bill's new waist and a Chinese print I had recently acquired, were a matter of course. In deference to an unuttered request we adjourned to the studio upstairs, for Miss ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... weltering waste of heated water, before the land had yet emerged from the waves, and yet you and I were there in the latent potencies of the chemically and dynamically warring elements. We were there, the same as the heat and flame are in the coal and wood and as the explosive force of powder is in the grains. The creative cosmic chemistry in due time brought us forth, and started us on the long road that led from the amoeba up to man. There have been no days of creation. Creation has been ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... slowly. He stepped as if he expected to tread upon some explosive thing. Doubts and ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... swung from the window. Ben gave one glance, his left hand grasping the lever; Toomey made a flying leap for the bell-cord; Geordie scrambled in after; hiss went the steam-cocks; clang went the bell, and with an explosive cough that shook her big frame almost free of the rails the Mogul heaved slowly ahead. The shortened "Time Freight" picked up its heels and came jerkily after, and with her ponderous drivers rolling swifter and swifter, and the heavy ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... was called as a witness at the inquest upon the bodies of the unfortunate persons killed by the recent explosion at Bergen, N.J. The Professor having previously analyzed some of the explosive mixture, testified as follows:—"I have subjected it to chemical analysis, and find it to correspond to the formula C{6}, H{3}, O{3}, and NO{5}; it is well made nitro-glycerin; the substance freezes at about 46; it is made to decompose in a very peculiar way; on moistening ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... hob-nailed shoe, He stirred into his pottage; Some Irish stew, a pound of glue, A high explosive sausage. ...
— The Magic Pudding • Norman Lindsay
... you ought to drop this holiness stuff, for there is nothing in it—all bunk. Living above sin are you? Ha! ha! ha!" and the old man gave poor Robert an explosive horse-laugh. ...
— Around Old Bethany • Robert Lee Berry
... the arquebus, which was resting against a cleat on the rail. He fired, and the projectile, attached to a long line, entered the whale's body. The shell, filled with an explosive compound, burst, and shot out a small harpoon with two branches, which fastened ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... the republic's East India Company. The English in those regions were not slow to avail themselves of the advantage. The Portuguese of Tydor received from neutral sympathy a copious supply of powder and of pamphlets. The one explosive material enabled them to make a more effective defence of their citadel against the Dutch fleet; the other revealed to the Portuguese and their Mussulman allies that "the Netherlanders could not exist without English protection, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... finding out the truth of my uncle's words. The place was volcanic, and earthquakes of no uncommon occurrence; but Nature in the soil was not one half as bad as Nature in the human race—Spanish half-blood and Indian—with which she had peopled the region, for they were, to a man, stuffed with explosive material, which the spark of some speaker's language was always liable ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... and fifty years probably seemed impressive to them, amid the explosive spread of Terran colonies and federations. Actually, in the marshal's opinion, it was merely long enough to reveal such symbols as more than antiquated but less than ...
— The Outbreak of Peace • Horace Brown Fyfe
... had not been those of an explosion. It was more as though some tremendous force had pushed outward from within. It had not been the shattering shock of high explosive, but some great thrust that had unhurriedly, but irresistibly, moved everything ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... was not an explosive bomb. It was a weighted ball of oiled silk. As the machine soared again and rapidly rose to the upper air levels, the girl picked up the strange ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... entirely to the physical sciences. Altogether he wrote some eighteen treatises on chemical subjects. For a long time it was considered that he was the inventor of gunpowder, though this is now known to have been introduced into Europe by the Arabs. Roger Bacon studied gunpowder and various other explosive combinations in considerable detail, and it is for this reason that he obtained the undeserved reputation of being an original discoverer in this line. How well he realized how much might be accomplished by means of the energy stored up in explosives, can, perhaps, be best appreciated ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... out a wild and explosive oath. He knew this man was playing on his vanity, jealousy, and hatred for some purpose not yet apparent, but he found it impossible to close his mind to the whisperings of the plotter. He welcomed the spur of Steelman's two-edged tongue because he wanted ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... to race along the traverses. We found a machine gun and put an eleven-pound high-explosive "Stokes" under it. Three or four Germans appeared, running down communication trenches, and the bombers sent a few Millses after them. Then we came to a dug-out door—in fact, several, as Fritz, like a woodchuck, always has more than ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... off into fits of explosive laughter, bounding up and down like an india-rubber ball, and at last condescended to say, "I know what I'm about. Do you want Mag Hamilton breaking up the match, as she surely would do, between this and autumn, if ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... worked at this task for several hours, and only succeeded in making a hole six inches deep, Mr. Clifford, whose old bones ached and whose hands were very sore, suggested that perhaps they might break it up with gunpowder. Accordingly, a pound flask of that explosive was poured into the hole, which they closed over with wet clay and a heavy rock, leaving a quill through which ran an extemporized fuse of cotton wick. All being prepared, their fuse was lit, and they left ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... of the 9th May was the first major action of the war in which the "Ninth" took part. Shattered at its inception, the whole attack soon came to an end. The lack of high explosive shells and the consequent failure of the British artillery to destroy the enemy wire entanglements were probably the main causes of the holocaust that took place on that day. Though one of the ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... apprehension,—it would be unjust to style it fear,—let them try to imagine how they themselves would feel if they knew that there were scores of desperate men and women who had sworn to take their lives by means of bullets or explosive bombs, fired or hurled from the centre of some dense crowd, which would destroy the life of the victim of such an outrage without a moment's warning, or without being able to even so much as raise ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... which depends upon the strength of the acid, the duration of treatment, and one or two other factors. The nitrocelluloses are all highly inflammable bodies, the more highly nitrated burning with explosive force. They are produced commercially and are known as "gun cotton" or "pyroxyline". The most highly nitrated body forms the basis of the explosive variety; the least highly nitrated forms that of the soluble gun cotton used for making collodion for ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... I had arranged everything before you came in, and had sat down to make an end of it. This button at my hand once started an electric apparatus; but now it is connected with a quantity of an explosive—my own invention, and a terrible one. Believe me, one touch and everything in this ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... and Thistle's seeds have flying-hairs or parachutes and are blown about by the wind. What other plants can you find whose seeds are scattered in the same way? Can you discover a plant whose seeds are carried by water? The Witch-hazel shoots its seeds. What other plants can you find that have explosive fruits? Cherry-seeds are carried by birds. Mention some other seeds that are carried in this way. It would take very little observation to learn how Burdock-burs, Cockle-burs, Stick-tights, Beggar-lice, Spanish-needles, and ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... the door, ushering in half a dozen gentlemen, and among them the rightful host, just returned after a week's absence,—cutting off the major's outburst, and producing another equally explosive:— ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... what—only that it made him feel awfully fond, somehow, of this newly discovered cousin and namesake. But, about half-way down the room, that promise of a horse, a thorough-bred, and just as big as he could straddle, swept all before it, rendering his spirits uncontrollably explosive. So he made a wild rush and flung himself headlong ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... to be based on a common indignation against Mr. Wilson's conduct of international affairs. But international affairs were also a dangerous source of conflict. It was necessary to find an opening subject which would not only ignore 1912 but would avoid also the explosive conflicts of 1916. The speaker skilfully selected the spoils system in diplomatic appointments. "Deserving Democrats" was a discrediting phrase, and Mr. Hughes at once evokes it. The record being indefensible, there ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... are made as occasion demands. One kind consists of barrels and liquid containers, match-boxes, and explosive containers. These articles are subjected to shocks such as they would receive in transit and in handling, ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record
... decided to "shoot it," that is, tin cylinders, containing in all about two hundred pounds of nitro-glycerine, were to be lowered into the hole, one on top of the other. Then a heavy cylindrical weight was to be dropped down on them. The concussion would set off the explosive. ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... It was nothing but high explosives, high explosive shrapnel, ordinary shrapnel, trench bombs, and bullets from German machine-guns. One incessant hail of metal. Who on earth could live in it? What worried me most was that there was not sufficient light to film the scene; but, thank Heaven, ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... standing there, so aggressive and explosive, bottle in one hand and test-tube in the other, that Mrs. Hall was quite alarmed. But she was a resolute woman. "In which case, I should like to know, sir, what ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... her shoulder and hears a voice in her ear saying, "Taste it!" On examination, she finds she has got a morphine powder by mistake. The natural interpretation is that a sleeping memory of the morphine powders awoke in this quasi-explosive way. A like explanation offers itself as most plausible for the following case: A lady, with little time to catch the train, and the expressman about to call, is excitedly looking for the lost key of a packed trunk. Hurrying upstairs ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... customary also for the airships to carry, in addition to explosive and incendiary bombs, others which on being dropped throw out a light and thereby help to indicate to the vessel above the object which it is desired to aim at. Probably some of the bombs which were thrown in Norfolk were of this character. It is understood that all idea of carrying an armament ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... initiation has taken place, it leads to progression which goes on steadily, and develops of its own accord. Moreover, the phenomenon is not that of the slow and gradual progression that might be produced by a measured and systematic external action; rather it has the "explosive" character of unsuspected facts that establish themselves suddenly, and make us think of the crises of physiological life, so characteristic in the period of growth. Thus it is from one day to another that the baby cuts a tooth, from ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... but in such matters most men never learn wisdom from experience. A man of John Niel's age might have guessed that it is dangerous work playing with explosives, and that the quietest, most harmless-looking substances are sometimes the most explosive. He might have known that to set to work to cultivate the society of a woman with such tell-tale eyes as Jess's was to run the risk of catching the fire from them himself, to say nothing of setting her alight: he might have known that to bring all the weight of his cultivated mind to bear ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard |
