"Rocket" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of triumph. "Mon Dieu! it is as plain as the nose on your face. MacMahon got three millions and each of the other generals got a million, as the price of bringing us up here. The bargain was made at Paris last spring, and last night they sent up a rocket as a signal to let Bismarck know that everything was fixed and he might come ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... close were we, that the enemy were distinctly seen loading their guns above us. After a few broadsides, we brought our starboard broadside to bear on the Fish-market, and our larboard side then looked to seaward. The rocket-boats were now throwing rockets over our ships into the mole, the effects of which, were occasionally seen on the shipping on our larboard bow. The Dutch flag was to be seen flying at the fore of the Dutch Admiral, who, with his squadron, were engaging the batteries to the eastward of the mole. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... out, no rocket rose in the air, no cannon boomed from the portholes; but deep below there was a surging and a murmuring. The mermaid sat still, cradled by the waves, so that she could look in at the cabin window. But now the ship began to make more way. One sail after another was unfurled; the waves rose ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... course. Proceed to your right and through Corridor K to Exit Four. Your rocket will be there. Identify yourself to Lieutenant Economou who will be at ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming; Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming? And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there; Oh, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... before the leader of a financial movement has got word to his following, wide-spread over the country, it has taken alarm, the rout has begun, and the field is strewn with corpses. A great financial excitement, like a rocket, should soar triumphantly into the air, leaving behind it a comet-like trail of glory, climaxing in a shower of gold; diverted from its course, it runs a mad, brief, tragic career along the earth, spreading ruin and ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... McClure as he bent over the depth dial. The hands of the indicator began to spin around and the Dewey, relieved of every pound of ballast, shot upward like a rocket. ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... been ripresinted, to jine wid yez in a stupendeous waste of gun-powder, and duck-shot, and 'high-wines,' and ham sand-witches, upon the silvonian banks of the ragin' Kankakee, where the 'di-dipper' tips ye good-bye wid his tail, and the wild loon skoots like a sky-rocket for his exiled home in the alien dunes of the wild morass—or, as Tommy Moore so illegantly describes the ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley
... strength of his arms hurt her. Suddenly another picture shot across her brain, like a searing rocket. She clung to his arm as if she feared that minute would snatch him from her. Then suppliantly she lifted not only her face, but ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... subsequent communication Redwood went further. He gave a perfect Brock's benefit of diagrams—exactly like rocket trajectories they were; and the gist of it—so far as it had any gist—was that the blood of puppies and kittens and the sap of sunflowers and the juice of mushrooms in what he called the "growing phase" differed in the proportion of certain elements ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... trial arrived. Three engines entered the lists for the prize,—namely, the Rocket, by George Stephenson; the Sanspareil, by Timothy Hackworth; and the Novelty, by Ericsson. Both sides of the railway, for more than a mile in length, were lined with thousands of spectators. There was no room for jockeying in such a race, for inanimate matter was to be put in motion, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... happy, while music arose with its voluptuous swell, and soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, or words to that effect. At least that was what a young fellow from Racine told us, who was here to see a specialist to have a splinter from a rocket ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... poplars along the road to Allarmont, were chatting and sharing coffee with the French riflemen, who had hailed them from their carefully hidden pits among the vineyards up the slopes of Beauville. A certain perplexity had come to these marksmen, who had dropped asleep tensely ready for the rocket that should wake the whirr and rattle of their magazines. At the sight and sound of the stir and human confusion in the roadway below, it had come to each man individually that he could not shoot. One conscript, at least, has told ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... Rothwell grinned crazily into the exploding debris, imagining nineteen other ships suddenly disintegrating under the rocket guns of nineteen different nations. He saw Earth, like a giant porcupine, flicking thousands of atom tipped missiles into space from hundreds of submarines and secret bases—the war power of the great nations, ...
— Alien Offer • Al Sevcik
... knows what's happened to my practice," he said. "The blamed thing has gone up like a rocket. It seems to me there must be a great wave of sickness passing over ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... colliery tram-road; railway and locomotive construction now became the business of his life; superintended the construction of the Stockton and Darlington Railway (1821-25), the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (1826-29), over which he ran his locomotive the "Rocket" at a maximum rate of 35 m. an hour; in the outburst of railway enterprise which now ensued Stephenson's services were in requisition all over the country; became principal engineer on many of the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... and finally he had begun to move up the hill. Everything in the West moved in the same direction, and now he had a big ranch and some coal mine shares, and building lots in Prairie Park where real estate was going up like a sky rocket. ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... consent to be done for, and would allow her to dominate all their thoughts and deeds. But the moment they revolted, or showed the weakest inclination to do things their own way, she blazed up and was off like a rocket. Her taste for governing was little short of a mania, and I could see, in my mind's eye, just how she had essayed to rule Daisy, and how in her failure she had written to ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... control, mobility in space, and electric power. Each suit had its own power-plant, reprocessing continuously the precious air breathed by the occupants, putting it back into circulation again after enriching it. Packed with food concentrates. Each suit a rocket, each human being part of a rocket, and the special "life-gun" that went with each suit each blast of which sent a man a few hundred thousand miles further on toward ...
— To Each His Star • Bryce Walton
... of that long, long hill that leads straight down to my home. Excitement lent a new impulse to my energy, and my heart thumped hard as I recognized familiar cottages still standing. This raised my hopes and sent me rocket-like down that ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... 1780 Hyder Ali suddenly quitted Seringapatam, with one of the finest armies ever seen in Southern India. This army consisted of 30,000 cavalry, 15.,000 drilled infantry, 40,000 irregular troops, 2000 artillery and rocket men, and 400 Europeans, many of whom were Frenchmen. With this force Hyder poured through the ghauts or passes, and burst like a mountain-torrent into the Carnatic. His arms were irresistible. Porto Novo, on the coast, and Conjeveram, close to Trichinopoly, were captured and plundered; almost every ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... mechanical arrangements might be devised, both in the case of the lighthouse and of the ship's deck, to place the firing-point of the gun-cotton at a safe distance, no such arrangement could compete, as regards simplicity and effectiveness, with the expedient of a gun-cotton rocket. Had such a means of signalling existed at the Bishop's Rock lighthouse, the ill-fated 'Schiller' might have been warned of her approach to danger ten, or it may be twenty, miles before she reached the rock which wrecked her. ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... numbers, and myriad overloaded crafts full of poorer sightseers enter the lagoon by all the small canals. Having seen Venetian pyrotechny, one realizes that all fireworks should be ignited over water. It is the only way. A rocket can climb as fiercely and dazzlingly into any sky, no doubt, but over land the falling stars and sparks have but one existence; over water, like the swan "on St. Mary's lake," they have two. The displays last for nearly an ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... the sun, and at a certain point, like smoke driven before a high wind, was vehemently swept backwards in a prolonged train. The appearance of the comet at this time was compared by Bessel,[281] who watched it with minute attention, to that of a blazing rocket. He made the singular observation that this fan of light, which seemed the source of supply for the tail, oscillated like a pendulum to and fro across a line joining the sun and nucleus, in a period of 4-3/5 ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... door open, Ross looked back, his eyes widening at what he saw. For it was plain now that he had just climbed out of a machine with the unmistakable outline of a snub-nosed rocket. The small flyer—or a jet, or whatever it was—had been fitted into a pocket in the side of the big structure as a ship into a berth, and it must have been set there to shoot from that enclosing chamber as a bullet is shot from a rifle ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... more than half-way between the boat and the ship. It seemed as if those on board had caught sight of us, for another rocket went up. They had evidently kept one back, as a last hope, in case any one ...
— Saved at Sea - A Lighthouse Story • Mrs. O.F. Walton
... of my wrist - you know it I - and the casement was open. It was as dark as the pit, and I thought I'd won my wager, when, phewt! down went something inside, and down went somebody with it. I made one leap, and was off like a rocket. It was my poor friend in person; and if he'd caught and passed me on to the watchman under the window, I should have felt no viler rogue ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... had followed the flying foe: but could not come up with them: and, as the enemy had prepared for every contingency, the fatal bastion, after first throwing a rocket or two to discover their position, poured showers of grape into them, killed many, and would have killed more but that Captain Neville and his gunners happened by mere accident to dismount one gun and to kill a couple of gunners at the others. This gave the remains of the company time to disperse ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... Corbett snapped orders into the intercom and his unit-mates responded by smooth co-ordinated action, the giant rocket cruiser Polaris slowly arched through Earth's atmosphere, first nosing up to lose speed and then settling tailfirst toward its destination—the spaceport ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... revealer," she whispered gently, rising to her feet with great eyes. He turned away, and after fumbling a moment sent a rocket into the darkening air. It arose, shrieked, and flew up, a slim path of light, and scattering its stars abroad, dropped on the city below. She scarcely noticed it. A vision of the world had risen before her. Slowly the mighty prophecy of her destiny ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... light, and a slight explosion, interrupted the half-laughing girl, and Mulford, turning on his heel, quick as thought, saw that a rocket had shot into the air, from a point close under the bows of the brig. He was still in the act of moving toward the forecastle, when, at the distance of several leagues, he saw the explosion of another rocket high in the air. He knew enough of the ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... the gunner, were getting a rocket out of the locker, detaching the harpoon and fitting on an explosive warhead. He stopped, while he and Cronje were loading it into the after launcher, and ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... as the working of nature; the results are therefore less destructive of efficiency than they might be otherwise. It is common to see the boss's nephew or his son get a good spot in the office and then rise like a rocket, even though he is a third-rater. And it is not less common to see a straw boss in a factory favor the man whom he thinks might grease the wheels for him on the outside. But in the armed establishment, favoritism on any grounds, and ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... steamer," he said,—"a twin-screw steamer, by the beat. I can't make her out, but she must be standing very close inshore. Ah!" as the red of a rocket streaked the haze, "she's standing in to signal before she clears ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... the series. A mushroom-shaped cloud of smoke burst four miles upward in air. The spectacle, one of grandeur, was plainly visible even from the Sacramento Valley. "At night," writes Doctor Diller, "flashes of light from the mountain summit, flying rocket-like bodies and cloud-glows over the crater reflecting the light from incandescent lavas below, were seen by many observers from various points of view, and appear to indicate that much of the material erupted was sufficiently ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... powder, Bertie. We have plenty of cartridges for sporting purposes, or for fighting; but a rocket is a thing that wants a lot of powder, besides saltpetre ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... harpooned the swordfish and had gone out in the small boat to lance it, when the huge fish dived under the craft and shot up from the bottom like a rocket, his sword going through the timbers as though they were paper and striking the boatman with such force that he was killed almost instantly. Boats used often to be sunk by the rushes of a swordfish, ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... second-class passengers, a loud hissing, shearing sound rent the air, heard distinctly above the now somewhat moderated roar of the escaping steam, and, leaning far out over the rail of the promenade deck, Dick was just in time to mark the heavenward flight of a rocket—the first visible signal of distress which the Everest had thus far made—and to see it burst, high up, into a shower of brilliant red stars. It was the light shed by these stars as they floated downward that first revealed ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... mensurate battlements, in blackness beyond night and darkness without stars. Yet Mr. Wordsley, the engineer, who was slight, balding and ingenious, was able to watch the firmament from his engine room as it drifted from bow to beam to rocket's end. This was by virtue of banked rows of photon collectors which he had invented and installed in the ...
— The Marooner • Charles A. Stearns
... sky-rocket, and seems to have had the traditional descent. From 1900 to 1906 everybody was talking about him; since 1906 one scarcely hears mention of his name. He was ridiculously overpraised, but he ought not to be forgotten. As an artist, he will not bear a moment's comparison with Andreev; but some of ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... At the signal rocket the enemy swept forward toward the canal, with companies of British sappers bearing scaling ladders and fascines of sugar cane. They moved with stolid unconcern, but the American cannon burst forth and slew them ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... with oils, paint and brushes; the king himself boasting that he was a blacksmith, carpenter, painter, and indeed every trade but a tailor. Independently of these trifles, as he termed them, he wished to Obtain half a dozen rockets, and a rocket gun, with a soldier from Cape Coast capable of undertaking the management of it; and lastly, he modestly ordered two puncheons of kowries to be sent him, for the purpose of defraying in part the expences, he had incurred in repelling the attacks of the men of Porto Novo, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... bitter fate, shot up a rocket, or a star-flare of calcium light, bursting to expose all underneath in pitiless radiance. With a gasp that was a sob, Dorn shrank flat against the wall, staring into the fading circle, feeling ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... suddenly heard the bull voice of a Hun officer hic-coughing gutturals, and they were on him. He had no time to send up an S.O.S. rocket, and his machine-gun jammed. In a minute they were all mixed up, at it tooth and claw as merry as a Galway election, the big Bosch officer, throwing off a hymn of hate, the life and soul of the party. He came for Patrick with an automatic, and Patrick thought all was up; ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... dangerous spot, you give the ever-ready steel-horse the rein; faster and faster whirl the glistening wheels until objects "by the road-side become indistinct phantoms as they glide instantaneously by, and to strike a hole or obstruction is to be transformed into a human sky-rocket, and, later on, into a new arrival in another world. A wild yell of warning at a blue- bloused peasant in the road ahead, shrill screams of dismay from several females at a cluster of cottages, greet ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... as a hard-luck man as far back as he could remember. His parents had been killed in a rocket crash on a trip to Mars; he'd been raised by one relative after another and they'd each one gotten rid of him as soon as they could. Finally he had married a nice girl and they had been happy until their daughter was born. Then the mother ...
— The Wealth of Echindul • Noel Miller Loomis
... away they went after the whale like a rocket, with a tremendous strain on the line and a bank of white foam gurgling up to the edge of the gunwale, that every moment threatened to fill the boat and sink her. Such a catastrophe is of not unfrequent occurrence, ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... magnificent Earth cities. But they all had one thing in common—a dream. All had visions of becoming Space Cadets, and later, officers in the Solar Guard. Each dreamed of the day when he would command rocket ships that patrolled the space lanes from the outer edges of Pluto to the twilight zone of Mercury. They ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... had to come in in the shortest possible time, and that meant a velocity here that we can't check without a spiral. However, even at that we saved a lot of time. You can save quite a bit more, though, by having a rocket-plane come out to meet us somewhere around fifteen or twenty thousand kilometers, depending upon where you want to land. With their power-to-mass ratio they can match our velocity and still ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... flourished in a way that left them, in their bottomless element, scarce a free pair of eyes to exchange signals. It struck Maisie even a little that there was a rope or two Mrs. Wix might have thrown out if she would, a rocket or two she might have sent up. They had at any rate never been so long together without communion or telegraphy, and their companion kept them apart by simply keeping them with her. From this situation ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... generous heart; there was no virtue of humanity of which he did not possess a goodly portion. He was always brimful of humor, throwing off his jokes, which sparkled without burning, like the flashes of a rocket. There was no sting in his wit. You felt as full of merriment at one of his witticisms, made at your expense, as when it was played upon another. Yet he was a profound lawyer, and some of his opinions are models of style and reasoning. He remained on the bench until January, 1862, ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... dear. The finest gift in the world is pleasure. Sometimes I think it's better to feed the soul and let the body fast. There is a time in life when one brief sky-rocket can produce more joy ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... Larkspur is of the same habit as the Dutch Rocket, but has longer spikes and larger and more double flowers. The Hyacinth-flowered is an improved strain of the Rocket. Among other of the hardy annual varieties may be mentioned the Candelabrum-formed, ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... it, and so be hoisted out. In heaven's name, man, cried Stubb, are you ramming home a cartridge there? —Avast! How will that help him; jamming that iron-bound bucket on top of his head? Avast, will ye! Stand clear of the tackle! cried a voice like the bursting of a rocket. Almost in the same instant, with a thunder-boom, the enormous mass dropped into the sea, like Niagara's Table-Rock into the whirlpool; the suddenly relieved hull rolled away from it, to far down her glittering copper; and all caught their breath, as half swinging —now over the ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... cartoons. In these cartoons, the famished Wile E. Coyote was forever attempting to catch up with, trap, and eat the Roadrunner. His attempts usually involved one or more high-technology Rube Goldberg devices — rocket jetpacks, catapults, magnetic traps, high-powered slingshots, etc. These were usually delivered in large cardboard boxes, labeled prominently with the Acme name. These devices invariably malfunctioned ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... top of the stairs until his father had reached the foot, he leaned forward as far as he could with one hand on the rail and the other pressing against the wall, swooped down to the mat at the bottom, without touching a single step on the way, and made a rocket-like noise with his mouth, He had no other manner of descending the staircase, unless he happened to be in disgrace. His father went straight to the desk in the corner behind the account-book window, assumed his spectacles, and lifted the lid of ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... corners. Martin and Garnet swung into position in the fighting-tanks just ahead of the power rooms; Canning slid rapidly through the engine room, oozed through a tiny door, and took up his position in the stern-chamber, seated half-over the great ion-rocket sheath. ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... fix the rocket apparatus. She was late in making her distress signals. But I doubt if anything could have been done. She went ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Then you can catch the Terra rocket and take your eight earth-weeks leave. You won't really know what I'm talking about until you've batted around space for a while. All I have to say adds up to one thing. You won't like it, because it doesn't sound scientific. That doesn't mean it isn't ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... disinterested observer can take note of the rise and fall of some unlucky author or artist, painter or poet, widely and loudly proclaimed as a genius, only to be soon forgotten, often in his own generation. He may have soared aloft for a brief moment with starry scintillations, like a rocket, only at last to come down like the ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... swift hiss, a streak of light cut through the darkness skyward, paused a moment, and then, with a muffled detonation, burst into globes of light which floated downward. The foremost of the troop reined in their horses sharply at the unexpected flight of the rocket, causing some confusion among those behind. Then came a quick command from an officer which was half lost in the great shout which rent ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... night sky is a beautiful thing, even though Deimos and Phobos are nothing to brag about. If you walk outside, maybe as far as the rocket field, ...
— Fee of the Frontier • Horace Brown Fyfe
... a rocket. Job kept his seat instinctively, as was natural to him; but before he could more than grab at the rein—lying loosely on the pommel—the filly 'fetched up' against a dead box-tree, hard as cast-iron, and Job's left leg was jammed from stirrup to pocket. 'I felt the blood flare up,' he said, ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... rather like a rocket; it shoots into the sky, flares, fades, and falls to the ground in dust so unnoticeable that you can hardly find its remnants, search how you may. Of course, I know that our lives don't really shoot upwards towards ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... the oceans are we, With our liners of rocket speed, Till the God of Ice, in mist-filled trice, Calls to us harshly to pay his price As we sink ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... were somewhat differently prepared; cinnamon, ginger, and sugar being added to the pulped carrots, besides a handful of currants, vinegar, and butter. A similar plan was adopted with the salads of burrage, chicory, marigold leaves, bugloss, asparagus, rocket, and alexanders, and many other plants discontinued in modern cookery, but then much esteemed; oil and vinegar being used with some, and spices with all; while each dish was garnished with slices of hard-boiled ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... him by deceitful appearances. These are among the bravest and most skilful mariners that exist. Let a gale arise and swell into a storm, let a sea run that might appal the stoutest heart that ever beat, let the Light-boat on these dangerous sands throw up a rocket in the night, or let them hear through the angry roar the signal- guns of a ship in distress, and these men spring up into activity so dauntless, so valiant, and heroic, that the world cannot surpass it. Cavillers may object that they chiefly live upon the salvage of valuable cargoes. So ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... see by the dawn's early light What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?— Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the clouds of the fight O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming! And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there; O! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free, and the ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... slowly passed, and still nothing had happened. Then suddenly a blue light flashed for a few moments on the blackness of the sea, answered almost instantaneously by a rocket from another quarter. It was clear that the boats, having signaled that the search had failed, had been recalled by the rocket to ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... still went on, breaking out into delighted giggles. Her new understanding of the satire back of her mother's quiet eyes, lent to Aunt Victoria's golden calm the quaint touch of caricature which made it self-deceived complacency. At the recollection she sent up rocket after rocket ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... boys sat with their heads bent down. More than one choking sob might have been heard, had the wind lulled, as they thought of the dear ones at home. Suddenly there was a flash of light ahead, and the boom of a gun directly afterwards came upon their ears. Then a rocket soared up into ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... a gravito-inertial drive, there is really no need to turn a ship over end-for-end as she approaches the mid-point of her trajectory. Since there is no rocket jet to worry about, all that is really necessary is to put the engine in reverse. In fact, the patrol ships of the Interplanetary ...
— Hanging by a Thread • Gordon Randall Garrett
... touched a rocket, of which he had several in the boat, with the lighted end of the cigar he had been smoking, and it went hissing up into the air, ascending so high as to be plainly visible from the deck of le Feu-Follet ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... had grown grey hairs, Hope had mourning on, Trenched with tears, carved with cares, Hope was twelve hours gone; And frightful a nightfall folded rueful a day Nor rescue, only rocket and lightship, shone, And lives at last were washing away: To the shrouds they took,—they shook in the hurling and ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... used; then, like an arrow out of a bow, away went the mare; then suddenly a dead stop, two or three plunges high in air, and down flat upon the ground. Againthe thwacking, and again suddenly up starts the mare and off like a rocket. Shanganappi harness is tough stuff and a broken sled is easily set to rights, or else we would have been in a bad way. But for all horses in the North-west there is the very simplest manner of persuasion: ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... The star-rocket, whose rays had transfixed him beside the pool, paled and winked out in mid-air, and for several minutes unbroken darkness obtained while, on hands and knees, the man crept on toward that gap in the ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... and I fixed the missile so that it would go just above the heads of the crowd of yelling blacks. Then I touched a match to the fuse, and away sailed the rocket ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Ares expedition turned away from the little telescope in the bow of the rocket. "Two weeks more, at the most," he remarked. "Mars only retrogrades for seventy days in all, relative to the earth, and we've got to be homeward bound during that period, or wait a year and a half for old Mother Earth to go around the ...
— Valley of Dreams • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... event to himself (Mr. Burke) has been that, as he rose like a rocket, he fell like ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... invoked his assistance to prevent bloodshed. "On my conscience," answered the archbishop, "I cannot help what is to happen." As he laid his hand upon his breast, at this solemn declaration, the hauberk, concealed by his rocket, was heard to clatter: "Ah! my lord!" retorted Douglas, "your conscience sounds hollow." He then expostulated with the secular leaders, and Sir Patrick Hamilton, brother to Arran, was convinced by his remonstrances; but Sir James, ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... open-collared khaki shirt, as he envisioned himself at the ship's controls within a few minutes. Finally, after long years of study, sweat and dedication, he'd made it to the Big League. No more jockeying those tubby old rocket-pots to Luna! From here on, he was going to see, taste, feel what the universe was like way, way out—in Deep Space. The Cosmos XII, like her earlier sisters, was designed to plow through that shuddery nowhere the cookbooks identified ...
— Next Door, Next World • Robert Donald Locke
... results. Neither the prophets nor the camp-followers seemed to realize that evolution, while undoubtedly a law of life within certain limits, was inseparable from degradation which was its concomitant, that is to say, that as the rocket rises so must it fall; as man is conceived, born and matures, even so must he die. The wave rises, but falls again; the state waxes to greatness, wanes, and the map knows it no more; each epoch of human history arises out ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... landed again in that foreign port penniless. Was it under the stimulus of that thought that I recalled of a sudden the first appearance of the Sea Queen in my life, and remembered the flash of the rocket? ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... up. Then fifteen. The city was a tiny patch of blended colors. Light rockets occasionally mounted now. But their glare fell short. Georg's mind was busy with his plans. Had the helicopter been seen? It seemed not. No rocket-light had reached it; and there was no sign of ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... on, stopping to admire the beautiful purple thistles, which sent up one each a massive head on its small stalk, or admired the patches of dyer's rocket and the golden tufts of ragwort, the old fancies about the ancient quarries were forgotten for the time, and she seated herself at last upon a projecting piece of stone, away there in the solitude, to watch the grey gulls and listen to the faint beat of the waves ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... black and horses roan, piebald, white—every colour that a horse may be—had come at last to Tattenham Corner and burst into the full view of everybody. Yet, as they came, a black mare, hugging the railed enclosure on the inner side of the sweep, arrowed forward with a sudden spurt, came like a rocket to the fore, and all the earth and all the sky seemed to ring with the cry: "Wilding! Wilding! Black Riot leads! ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... had retreated to the back of the camp-fire, where he lay blissfully snoozing; but at a booming "Whoop-ee!" from his master, which formed a prelude to the following verses, he shot up like a rocket, and manifested all his former ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... little garden, Which every one admires, Which pleased His Grace the Noble Duke To give our little squires. The news was something wonderful, Like the shooting of a rocket, When they heard that they had got a Park, And were ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... "Mr. Dickens" as writing "too often and too fast, and putting forth in their crude, unfinished, undigested state, thoughts, feelings, observations, and plans which it required time and study to mature," and to warn him that as he had "risen like a rocket," so he was in danger of "coming down like the stick." Small wonder, I say, and yet to us now, how unjust the accusation appears, and how false the prophecy. Rapidly as those books were executed, Dickens, like the real artist that he was, had put into them ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... Colonel Forster, that, as we have no horses at present, if you have any rockets, they might be useful in such a case. At the distance we are from you a rocket would be seen immediately if fired at night, and I promise you, that it shall not be fired without ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... the rocket bearers, quite over their fright by now, and acting with the nervous steadiness which acute danger brings. One of the sailors from the regular crew of the tug moved along the rail, mounting the fire signals one after ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... chap! Very true; but I'm thinking That you're just a little too "dear" for me—yet! Ah, yes! it's no use to stand smiling and winking; I like the bright ways of you, youngster,—you bet! You're white as the moon, and as spry as a rocket; No doubt all you say in self-praise is quite true, But you see, boy, I must keep an eye to my pocket! The Renters and Raters so put on the screw, That a "middle-class income" won't stand much more squeezing, And Forty or Fifty Pounds more in the year. For your bright companionship, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 29, 1891 • Various
... then that he made one last flight over the inner crater and saw light on the floor of stone in the funneled depths. Then he sent the ship like a rocket down to the shelf of rock where Chet had begun his descent; and he worked with trembling fingers to adjust the metal suit and regulate ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... dashing young rocket pilot in the UN Air Force, yearns to join the Space Expeditionary Force now planning the first landing and colonization of the planet Mars. Despite the protest of his lovely fiancee, Diane, he embarks upon the journey. The trip is fraught with hazards, ...
— Get Out of Our Skies! • E. K. Jarvis
... caras blancas (pale faces), and murder them. The failure of the conspiracy was, it appears, only attributable to a fortunate accident—to the circumstance, namely, that a body of the rebels mistook some rocket fired upon the occasion of a Church festival for the agreed signal, and commenced the attack ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... exclaimed Jack. "We can't fight a whole nation, can we? Look there! That was a rocket, ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... the black ditch, loathing the storm; A rocket fizzed and burned with blanching flare, And lit the face of what had been a form Floundering in mirk. He stood before me there; I say that he was Christ; stiff in the glare, And leaning forward from his burdening task, Both arms supporting it; his ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... morning, one of our learned men chanced to poke his head out of the window, to see what on earth had become of one of his glass retorts, which he had filled with gas until it went off like a rocket; and could not help being struck with the blue sky, the fresh green herbage, and the thousands of beautiful wild flowers that sprinkled the grass. It was a charming summer day; the birds had not yet left off singing, and the ...
— Funny Big Socks - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... Three great bulbs were now drifting. The wind was carrying them out toward the bay. They were coming down in a long, smooth descent. The plane shot like a winged rocket at the fourth great, shining ball. To the watcher, aghast with sudden hope, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... the warlike preparations being made. Secret anti-American meetings were held at places called clubs, where it was agreed to attack simultaneously the Americans inside and outside the capital. General Pio del Pilar slept in the city every night, ready to give the rocket-signal for revolt. Natives between 18 and 40 years of age were being recruited for military service, according to a Malolos Government decree dated September 21, 1898. In every smithy and factory bowie-knives were being forged with all speed, and 10,000 men were already ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... The rocket swept up in a wide curve and burst into crimson lights. After this there was darkness for a time until an indistinct black object appeared against the brightening sky. Then the launch sank back into the trough, where the gloom was only broken ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... take!" (I fired up like a rocket). "He did it just for punning's sake: 'The man,' says Johnson, 'that would make A pun, ...
— Phantasmagoria and Other Poems • Lewis Carroll
... Astra had been turned over to Maintenance. Maintenance asked no questions. It was that department's job to take the ship apart, fix what needed fixing, and put it. Ten minutes later Jacobs saw Armando Gomez was the mechanic detailed to check the rocket tubes. ...
— Daughters of Doom • Herbert B. Livingston
... till it shoots from the tree-tops fifty or more feet into the air above them, and bursts into an ecstasy of song, rapid, ringing, lyrical; no more like its habitual performance than a match is like a rocket; brief but thrilling; emphatic but musical. Having reached its climax of flight and song, the bird closes its wings and drops nearly perpendicularly downward like the skylark. If its song were more prolonged, it would rival the song of that famous bird. The bird ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... purely white, you can never, till the day of doom, understand what I am. If ever I have seemed weary it is but to keep up a mannerly appearance; verily I could break forth ten times a day and shoot skywards like a rocket for sheer joy in life. When that mood comes over me there is no holding me, and I should dare swear that the whole fair earth had been made and created for my sole and free use, with all that therein is—and above all other creatures the dear, sweet daughters of Eve!—and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... deafening roar of its rocket motors, the great vessel lifted itself laboriously from the ground, squatting on flame, filling Fletcher Monk's mind with the first real sense of fear since he learned the grim facts of ...
— Heart • Henry Slesar
... decorated with arches of little lamps, with columns and chains of lights, and the pedestrians passing through them looked strangely black in this great frame of fire. From the Piazza before the Carmine the first rocket rose, and, exploding, showered its golden rain upon the picture of ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... Mahmoud on a splendid war-horse, and five of his mounted staff, arrived at the head of the oncoming column; and Kagig saw them in a moment when the flare from the castle roared like a rocket hundreds of feet high and scattered all the shadows on that section of the road. Kagig passed the word along, but it was Monty who devised the instant plan, and one of Will's men who came ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... the winter stars. . . . Through openings in the woods we could see that we were marching along a high ridge, and on either hand vaporous depths and distances expanded, the darkness broken sometimes by a far light or the momentary glow of a magnesium rocket sent up from the German lines. There is something fascinating if one is stationed on sentry-duty immediately after arrival, in watching the dawn slowly illumine one of these new landscapes, from a position taken up under cover of darkness. The other section has been relieved ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... shalln't do that, my lord! for this same Jeppe is one of the heaviest sleepers in the whole district. Last year they tried setting off a rocket under his head, but when the rocket went off he never even stirred in ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... concretion which we call space, are welcomed by the mind as in a sense familiar and as revelations of a truth implicit in the soul, so that Plato could plausibly take them for recollections of prenatal wisdom. But a rocket that bursts into sparks of a dozen colours, even if expected, is expected with anxiety and observed with surprise; it assaults the senses at an incalculable moment with a sensation individual and new. The exciting tension and lively stimulus ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... in order, mind," Captain Pond commanded. "As soon as the first boat takes ground, you challenge: then count five, and up goes the rocket. Eh?" The Captain swung round at the sound of another footstep on the shingle. "Is that you, Clogg? Man, but you ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a bit of it. Remember, our friend Pierce is also a student of human nature. He's thinking it out now in the cold plunge, and I miss my guess if Thoburn's sky-rocket hasn't got a stick that'll come back and ...
— Where There's A Will • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... allusion to some crude form of firework, and what more likely or better calculated to impress the ignorant! Our firework makers still manufacture a "little Devil." Pyrotechnic is as old as history itself; we have an excellent description of a rocket in a document at least as ancient as the ninth century. And that a species of pyrotechny was resorted to by those who sought to imitate flight we have proof in the following recipe for a flying body given by a Doctor, eke a Friar, in Paris in the ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... ground which they had chosen for their night's rest, and occasionally firing off their rifles to drive away the lions which were heard prowling about; all of a sudden Omrah cried out, and pointed to the northward; our travelers turned and perceived a rocket ascending the firmament, and at last breaking out into a group ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... could find the courage. The fellow isn' without public spirit, if he'd only apply it the right way. Toy tells me that he, for his part, saw it from his bedroom window—the Town Quay wasn't safe, wi' the rocket-sticks fairly rainin'—an' the show wasn' a bad show, if you looked at it horizontal; but the gentry on the yachts derived next to no enjoyment from it, bein' occupied in gettin' up ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... rocket moves toward Mars. It reminds us that the world will not be the same for our children, or even for ourselves in a short span of years. The next man to stand here will look out on a scene different from our own, because ours ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... the surprising effects of the fire of the British rocket battery that served in Bernadotte's army. Captain Bogue brought it forward to check the charge of a French column against the Swedes. He was shot down, but Lieutenant Strangways poured in so hot a fire that the column ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... Air Forces; Airborne troops, Strategic Rocket Forces, and Military Space Forces are classified as independent combat arms, not subordinate to any ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... Venus," it said, and then repeated the phrase in six languages. "The ship you see is a Venusian Class 7 interplanetary rocket, built for one-passenger. It is clear of all radiation, and is perfectly safe to approach. There is a hatch which may be opened by an automatic lever in the side. Please open this hatch ...
— The Delegate from Venus • Henry Slesar
... saying anent that—zeal catches fire at a slight spark as fast as a brunstane match," observed the secretary. "I hae kend a minister wad be fair gude-day and fair gude-e'en wi' ilka man in the parochine, and hing just as quiet as a rocket on a stick, till ye mentioned the word abjuration-oath, or patronage, or siclike, and then, whiz, he was off, and up in the air an hundred miles beyond common manners, common sense, and ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... cynical as he now looks, was heartily and even frantically in Love: here therefore may our old doubts whether his heart were of stone or of flesh give way. He loved once; not wisely but too well. And once only: for as your Congreve needs a new case or wrappage for every new rocket, so each human heart can properly exhibit but one Love, if even one; the 'First Love which is infinite' can be followed by no second like unto it. In more recent years, accordingly, the Editor of these Sheets was led to regard Teufelsdroeckh as a man not only who would never wed, but ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... lined up to see us off. All of them. You don't think they're too close, do you? It would be bad to burn any of them with the rocket blast at this stage of ...
— Youth • Isaac Asimov
... Entertainment. The phantom city over there is London, New York, Paris, according to his fancy. He's going out to dinner with his girl. All those flares are arc-lamps along boulevards; that last white rocket that went flaming across the sky, was the faery taxi which is to speed him on his happy errand. It isn't so, ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... the door wide open, went out like a rocket, and bowled a man half over in his blind haste to be quit ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... where an ordinary propeller could not act, the bullet may become a prime mover, and co-operate with the gun. A rocket can burn without an atmosphere, and the recoil of the rushing fumes will ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... Mike weren't nervous. He also hoped that nobody had gotten at the fuel for the pushpots, and that the slide-rule crew that had calculated everything hadn't made any mistakes. He was also bothered about the steering-rocket fuel, and he was uncomfortable about the business of releasing the spaceship from the launching cage. There was, too, cause for worry in the take-off rockets—if the tube linings had shrunk there would be some rather ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... just enough to rinse his throat with, and threw on his saddle. It was flat on his neck that I came out the stable door, and what Macartney's men meant to have done I don't know, for I was down the road toward La Chance like a rocket. And before I had made a mile I knew I had got off none too soon, for we were going to have snow at last, ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... there's a shot from the crest of the hill! Look! there's a rocket leaps high in the air. By the beat of his gallop, that's nearing us still, That runaway horse ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... business looks very promising, very promising." He then began to proclaim trains and connections. " Dover, Calais, Paris, Brindisi, Corfu, Patras, Athens. That is your game. You are supposed to sky-rocket yourself over that route in the shortest possible time, but you would gain no time by starting before to-morrow, so you can cool your heels here in London until then. I wish I ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... beneath us: our landlord's family returning from a pilgrimage to a far-distant temple of the Goddess of Grace. (Although Madame Prune is a Shintoist, she reveres this deity, who, scandal says, watched over her youth.) A moment after, Mdlle. Oyouki bursts into our room like a rocket, bringing, on a charming little tray, sweetmeats which have been blessed and bought at the gates of the temple yonder, on purpose for us, and which we must positively eat at once, before the virtue is gone out of them. Scarcely ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... is so famous. Well, to fall in with your wishes, we will come ashore this evening, and if the Captain Delgado chances to sight the Queen's ship Crocodile before he sails, perhaps he will be so good as to signal to us with a rocket." ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... my aching head on my pillow I murmured: "Had I been an American citizen, much as I believe in sound currency and an honest dollar, one more rocket, a few more fog-horns, and I should have cast my vote for Bryan and ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... of bombardment ammunition is hampered by manpower shortages; so is production for its huge rocket program. Labor shortages have also delayed its cruiser and carrier programs, and production ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... do not therefore apply a spark to the barrel. I ventured on that. He pitied me in the snares of simile and metaphor. He is the same, you perceive. How often have we not discussed what would have become of him, with that "rocket brain" of his, in less quiet times! Yet, when he was addressing a deputation of workmen the other day, he recommended patience to them as one of the virtues that count under wisdom. He is curiously impatient for knowledge. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... came from the shore as we drew near our berth; but no sooner did the heavy splash of the anchor, and the noise of the cable running out, resound among the heights, than one loud yell of startled natives seemed to rise from one end of the island to the other. The discharge of a signal rocket, however, that curved its flight over the island, instantaneously quieted the uproar, and ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... no Congreve rocket, Discharged into the Gallic trenches E'er equalled the tremendous shock it Produced upon the Nursery benches. The Bishops, who of course had votes, By right of age and petticoats, Were first and foremost ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... the advanced piquets to be drawn in, the enemy seemed to have become suspicious, for they suddenly opened fire with guns and musketry from the Kaisarbagh, and for a moment we feared our plans had been discovered. Fortunately, one of Peel's rocket-carts was still in position beyond the Moti Mahal, and the celerity with which the officer in charge replied to this burst of fire apparently convinced the enemy we were holding our ground, for the firing soon ceased, and we ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... firesteps. On the favourable night the dome was removed and a lead pipe was connected to the cylinder and directed over the parapet into No Man's Land, with the nozzle weighed down by a sandbag. The pioneers stood by the batteries of twenty cylinders each and let off the gas a fixed few minutes after a rocket signal, at which the infantry retired to leave the front line free for the pioneers, who not only ran the risk of gassing from defective appliances but were subjected to almost immediate violent bombardment from the opposing artillery. When ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... men have nothing to do with her. But sometimes the vessel shows all her lights and rushes upon the South Pier. Then the men wait for the last lurch and that wallowing crash that they know so well. The rocket is laid, and flies out over the rigging; the brigadesmen haul on their rope, and the basket comes rocking ashore along the line. It is not child's play to stand in the open and work the rocket apparatus; sometimes a whole row of men are struck by a single sea, and have ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... sudden suck of air, disturbing the papers on the desk. They all turned to see one of the ship's rocket-boat bays open; a young Air Force lieutenant named Seldar Glav, who would be staying on Tareesh with them to pilot their aircraft, ...
— Genesis • H. Beam Piper
... Dete leaped up from her seat like a rocket and cried, "If that is all you have to say about it, why then I will give you a bit of my mind. The child is now eight years old and knows nothing, and you will not let her learn. You will not send her to church or school, as I was ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... terrific strain on both men and machines—the acceleration seemed crushing them with the weight of four men, as Arcot followed the pirate in a wide loop to the right that ended in a straight climb, the rocket ship standing on its tail, the rocket blast roaring out behind a stream of fire a ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... any one who had not by now realized that the ship was in danger, all doubt on this point was to be set at rest in a dramatic manner. Suddenly a rush of light from the forward deck, a hissing roar that made us all turn from watching the boats, and a rocket leapt upwards to where the stars blinked and twinkled above us. Up it went, higher and higher, with a sea of faces upturned to watch it, and then an explosion that seemed to split the silent night in two, and a shower of stars sank slowly down and went out one by ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... Emperor, said the captain. "Are you all well?"—"All well." Then the captain asked, "Has the Robert Small arrived?"—"No," was the answer, "nor yet the Burmah." {2} You may imagine what I felt. Then a rocket was sent up, and the pilot came on board. He gave us a roaring republican speech on the subject of India, China, etc. I rather admired him, especially as he faithfully promised to send us some fresh beefsteaks and potatoes for breakfast. A north-wester ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... the most difficult and comparatively unproductive of any that the Army undertakes. The careers of these unfortunate street women, who are nearly all of them very fine specimens of female humanity, for the most part follow a rocket-like curve. The majority of them begin by getting into trouble, at the end of which, perhaps, they find themselves with a child upon their hands. Or they may have been turned out of their homes, or some sudden misfortune may have reduced them to destitution. ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... day were sicklied by cold night, When sentries froze and muttered; when beyond the wire Blank shadows crawled and tumbled, shaking, tricking the sight, When impotent hatred of Life stifled desire, Then soared the sudden rocket, broke in blanching showers. O lagging watch! O dawn! O ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... and shapes; rubies from India, red as drops of blood; sapphires from Ceylon, blue and white; turquoises from Persia; Oriental pearls, some rosy, some lead-colored, others black. Those who have at night seen a great rocket burst in the azure darkness of the sky into thousands of colored lights, so bright that they make the eternal stars look dim, can imagine ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... that there was nothing else to wait for, and that all was said and done until ten o'clock the next morning, the time when the cardinals had their first voting, went off in a tumult of noisy joking, just as they would after the last rocket of a firework display; so that at the end of one minute nobody was there where a quarter of an hour before there had been an excited crowd, except a few curious laggards, who, living in the neighbourhood or on the very piazza itself; ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... place. Newspaper speculation regarding their capabilities for offensive action ran rife. Perhaps they could not move. They appeared to possess but one ray of light-fire; this had an effective radius of ten miles. The only other offensive weapon shown was the rocket, or bomb, that had destroyed the C., B. and Q. train near Garland and the town itself. Reports differed as to what had set fire ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... Bannister was a rocket scientist. He started with the premise of testing man's reaction to space probes under actual conditions; but now he was just testing space probes—and man was a necessary evil ...
— What Need of Man? • Harold Calin
... mantles in vain rage. At last, seeing the balls cut and strike the trees, they ran away, and we were left in peace and quietness. During the former voyage the Fuegians were here very troublesome, and to frighten them a rocket was fired at night over their wigwams; it answered effectually, and one of the officers told me that the clamour first raised, and the barking of the dogs, was quite ludicrous in contrast with the profound silence which in a minute or two afterwards prevailed. The next morning not a single Fuegian ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... they planning in all those miles of silence?'' Even the Verys were few. When one went up, far hills seemed to sit and brood over the valley: their black shapes seemed to know what would happen in the mist and seemed sworn not to say. The rocket faded, and the hills went back into mystery again, and Dick Cheeser peered level ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... indignant; and perorate and strive: Patriots in the passion of terror, bellow round the Royal Carriage; it is one bellowing sea of Patriot terror run frantic. Will Royalty fly off towards Austria; like a lit rocket, towards endless Conflagration of Civil War? Stop it, ye Patriots, in the name of Heaven! Rude voices passionately apostrophise Royalty itself. Usher Campan, and other the like official persons, pressing forward with help or advice, are clutched by the sashes, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... deep drift at the bottom, and the crust on top of it was none too hard. The sled struck on its fore-runners, and went through like a rocket. ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... violent vibration. There was a humming, throbbing, hissing sound. Suddenly the boys, and all within the projectile, felt it swaying. A moment later it began to shoot through space like a great rocket. ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood
... night off shore, when freight-laden craft, deceived by beacon lights, are beached upon the treacherous sand or dashed against jagged rocks. The life-savers, with rocket, and gun and line, and breeches-buoys, try in vain, and, as a last resort, grasp the oars of the life-boat and bring to safety one or two of a crew of ten. Sad hearts in homes when the news comes; but it is only one of the scenes in the drama ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... that about five o'clock on that afternoon Olva paid his second visit to the dark house in Rocket Road. His motives for going were confused, but he knew that at the back of them was a desire that he should find Margaret Craven, with her grave eyes, waiting for him in the musty little drawing-room, and that Mrs. ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... the fire light, he saw the clear stars through the tree-tops, he heard the gurgle of the stream, the stamp of the horses, the occasional barking of the dog which followed the cook's wagon, the hooting of an owl; and when these failed he saw Jeff, standing on a battlement, mid the rocket's red glare, and heard him sing, "Oh, say, can you see?", It was the first time he had ever slept ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... depended, the end of which swept the water several yards from the shore. This was a Tahitian swing. A native lad seizes hold of the cord, and, after swinging to and fro quite leisurely, all at once sends himself fifty or sixty feet from the water, rushing through the air like a rocket. I doubt whether any of our rope-dancers would attempt the feat. For my own part, I had neither head nor heart for it; so, after sending a lad aloft with an additional cord, by way of security, I constructed a large ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... visited Alcala in 1784, for the interesting purpose of examining the MSS. used in the Complutensian Polyglot. He there learned that they had all been disposed of, as so much waste paper, (membranas inutiles) by the librarian of that time to a rocket-maker of the town, who soon worked them up in the regular way of his vocation! He assigns no reason for doubting the truth of the story. The name of the librarian, unfortunately, is not recorded. It would have been as imperishable as that of Omar. Marsh's Michaelis, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... silvery light of love, Upon the silent bivouac of freedom's sons, Weary and resting upon their bayonetless guns; Quite near the bank of the James, Just above where their own fathers' names, Were first enrolled as ignoble slaves. The Second Brigade, valiant men and braves, Saw a meteor like rocket burst high, High up in the dewey morning sky. Then came the summons prepare to away, Butler leads to New Market heights at day. Beat the long roll, sound the alarm, Break the monotone and the dead calm, And the ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... is due." He is the same Oliver Evans whom the Mechanics' Magazine, of London, the leading journal of its kind at that period, had in mind when, in its number of September, 1830, it published the official report of the competitive trial between the steam carriages Rocket, San Pariel, Novelty, and others on the Liverpool and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various |
