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Rocket   Listen
noun
Rocket  n.  
1.
An artificial firework consisting of a cylindrical case of paper or metal filled with a composition of combustible ingredients, as niter, charcoal, and sulphur, and fastened to a guiding stick. The rocket is projected through the air by the force arising from the expansion of the gases liberated by combustion of the composition. Rockets are used as projectiles for various purposes, for signals, and also for pyrotechnic display.
2.
A blunt lance head used in the joust.
3.
Any flying device propelled by the reactive force of hot gases expelled in the direction opposite its motion. The fuel used to generate the expelled gases in rockets may be solid or liquid; rockets propelled by liquid fuels typically have a combustible fuel (such as hydrogen or kerosene) which is combined inside the rocket engine with an oxidizer, such as liquid oxygen. Single liquid fuels (called monopropellants) are also known. Since rocket engines do not depend on a surrounding fluid medium to generate their thrust, as do airplanes with propellers or jet engines, they may be used for propulsion in the vacuum of space.
Congreve rocket, a powerful form of rocket for use in war, invented by Sir William Congreve. It may be used either in the field or for bombardment; in the former case, it is armed with shells or case shot; in the latter, with a combustible material inclosed in a metallic case, which is inextinguishable when kindled, and scatters its fire on every side.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rocket" Quotes from Famous Books



... thus lost a superb novelty which nature has lately added to the wonders of this Fall, in that place at the edge of the great Horse Shoe where the rock has fallen and left a peculiarly shaped chasm: through this the spray leaps up from below, and flashes a hundred feet into the air, in rocket-like jets and points, and then breaks and dissolves away in the pyrotechnic curves of a perpetual Fourth of July. Basil said something like this in celebrating the display, with the purpose of rendering her loss more poignant; but she replied, with tranquil piety, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... and the accumulator had spurred interplanetary trade and settlement. Until it had been possible to store Sun-power for the driving of spaceships and for shipment to the outer planets, ships had been driven by rocket fuel, and the struggling colonies on the outer worlds had fought a bitter battle without the aid of ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak

... on the other side of the koodoo. I called Harry to my side, and explained to him what I thought would be our best course, when suddenly, without any delay, the koodoo saved us further trouble by suddenly starting off down the hill like a leaping rocket. I do not know what had frightened it, certainly we had not. Perhaps a hyaena or a leopard—a tiger as we call it there—had suddenly appeared; at any rate, off it went, running slightly towards us, and I never saw a buck go faster. ...
— A Tale of Three Lions • H. Rider Haggard

... made him master of the colloquial forms of the court language of Europe, yet a dozen classmates who had never seen a French verb before their admission stood above him at the end of the first term. He had gone to the first section like a rocket and settled to the bottom of it like a stick. No subject in the course was really hard to him, his natural aptitude enabling him to triumph over the toughest problems. Yet he hated work, and would often face about with an empty black-board and take a zero and a report for neglect of studies ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... time he saw that little light, that solitary spark of hope, it was not quite so near as before. A mortal sickness fell on his heart. The ship had recalled the boats by rocket. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... that 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 ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

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

... read your excellent magazine ever since it came out, and though it needs a few corrections like the others, A. S. is nearly perfect. Why not have your pages evened up, and add a department of science on subjects such as Rocket Propulsion etc., so the readers could become familiar with the mystifying problems stated in the stories? Have the advertisements in the back, and don't change your artists as their work ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various

... a little feeble squeaking voice, ("that's Bill" thought Alice,) which said "well, I hardly know—I'm all of a fluster myself—something comes at me like a Jack-in-the-box, and the next minute up I goes like a rocket!" "And so you did, old ...
— Alice's Adventures Under Ground • Lewis Carroll

... 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. Had the fleet possessed such a signal, instead of the ubiquitous ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... to the right, now caressingly to the left, as it ascended. The whole Corso rang again with laughter and clapping. The horse-racing at the end was not of much account. The horses start excited by the rocket let off at their tails, and by all the sharp pellets hanging around about them, to say nothing of the howling of the crowd. At six o'clock I was at home ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... the pinnace's gun. Toward morning a shot fell apparently just where they were at work; and that being accompanied by what we afterward ascertained caused more horror and consternation among the enemy than any thing else, a common signal sky-rocket, made them resign the ground entirely to us. The last shot, too, that was fired from the ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... shouted 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

... resistance; when, however, in the flashes of the shots, they saw a gigantic beast and on him a person dressed in white, and when their ears were dinned with the reports of the weapon which Kali from time to time discharged, their hearts sank. Fumba on the mountain, seeing the first sky-rocket, which burst in the heights, fell on the ground from fright and lay as though dead for a few minutes. But, regaining consciousness, he imagined from the desperate yells of the warriors one thing, namely, that some kind of spirits were exterminating the Samburus ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... journey. He hoped that Haney and the Chief and 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 gruesome consequences—and there could always be last-minute orders from Washington ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster

... lying below, only waiting for the signal to move up to destroy the rest of the bridge and carry succour to the city; but the incompetent and cowardly Jacobzoon rowed hastily away after the explosion, and the rocket that should have summoned the Zeelanders was never sent up. Parma moved about among his troops, restoring order and confidence, and as the night went on and no assault took place he set his men to work to collect drifting timbers and spars, and make a hasty and temporary restoration, ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty

... darling. It seems but yesterday; and I have a flower now which you gathered for me there. It grew at a very giddy height upon the wall, full of cracks and places where the evening-star came through; but up you went, like a rocket or a race-horse; and what a fright I was in, until you came down safe! I think that must have made up my mind to ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... tumult with some ringing assurance, but long 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 disaster ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... he 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 ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... be a fire at Vienna, if a gendarme is galloping." In fact, he brought tidings of a very deplorable event. While an artillery company had been preparing, in the arsenal of the town, numerous fireworks to celebrate his Majesty's fete, one of them, in preparing a rocket, accidentally set the fuse on fire, and becoming frightened threw it away from him. It fell on the powder which the shop contained, and eighteen cannoneers were killed by the explosion, ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant

... this; are we calling the roll after we have broken ranks? Our rocket has scaled the sky, poised, curved, burst, spread out all its stars, and dropped its stick. All is done unless we desire to watch the fading sparks slowly sink and melt into darkness. The General, the Major, his brother, their sister, my mother, ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable

... instruments, mounted on three large panels, the central panel of the group containing a circular lens which apparently was the eyepiece of some type of television disk the like of which I have never seen or heard. From my hasty examination I gathered that the ship operated by both a rocket effect (an early type of propulsion which was abandoned as ineffective) and some form of attraction-repulsion apparatus, evidently functioning through the reddish, pitted disks I had observed around the nose of the ship. The lettering upon the control panels and the instruments, while nearly ...
— The God in the Box • Sewell Peaslee Wright

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

... 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. ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens

... my horse have 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, and ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... last pinwheel had whizzed itself out in streams and stars of colored fire, until the last sky-rocket had gone hissing upward toward the clouds, and until the last glow of red fire had died ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandma Bell's • Laura Lee Hope

... 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 ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley

... collar and rubbed his stubbled chin unhappily. "I didn't make the choice. Neither did anyone else. Travel by warp is a little different from travel by the rocket you fiction writers make so much of. With a rocket vehicle you pick your destination, make your calculations, and off you go. The warp is blind flying, strictly blind. We send an unmanned scanner ahead. ...
— Circus • Alan Edward Nourse

... Wally whistling to himself the way he did, the sound muffled by his oxygen mask and drowned in the rocket noise, but still perfectly audible. The tune was Sophisticated Lady. Sometimes it was Easy to Love and sometimes Chasing Shadows, but mostly Sophisticated Lady. ...
— The Hated • Frederik Pohl

... vacuum, 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 impel ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro

... way they antagonized us?" asked Tom. "Refusing to let us contact Space Academy and sending us out on a stripped-down rocket scout to investigate the asteroid cluster. It seems to me they should have acted a little more friendly to throw us off the track. All they did was arouse suspicion ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell

... and half-breeds. Ropes, shanganappi, whips, and sticks were freely 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: if the ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... A rocket went up from the Rouen House, then another, followed by a salvo of anvils and rackety discharge of small-arms; the beginning a noble display of fireworks in celebration of prospective victories of the United States and utter discomfiture of the Mexicans when the ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington

... the bench, and it afterwards warmed into the attachment of a brother. He had a great and 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 ...
— 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

... sincerity. He never wrote for effect. He may dazzle us, but his fire is never pyrotechnical; it always springs from the deep volcanic heart of him. His was a fervor too easily stirred and often ill-directed, but its wild brilliance cannot long be mistaken for the sky-rocket's; it flares madly in all directions, now beautifying, now appalling, the night, the fine ardor of the painter passing into the fierce invective of the prophet. But in the end it is seen that Ruskin's style, like his subject-matter, is a unity,—an emanation from a divine enthusiasm making ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... work ahead. Carleton often rode through them, and out on the picket-line. Among his other studies, being a musician, he soon learned the various notes and tones of round and conical bullet, of globular and case shot, of shell and rocket, as an Indian learns the various sounds and calls of birds and beasts. Never wearing eye-glasses, until very late in life, and then only for reading, he was able, when standing behind or directly before a ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis

... 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; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

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

... after Stephenson and the Rocket pulled through with it somehow. They inherited the sound constitutions of the men who sat on rustic seats in the gardens of the twenties. The second generation—that's you and me—felt the strain of it more severely: new machines had come in to make life still more complicated: sixpenny ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen

... sacristan, show us a light there! Down it dips, gone like a rocket. What, you want, do you, to come unawares, Sweeping the church up for first morning-prayers, And find a poor devil has ended his cares At the foot of your rotten-runged rat-riddled stairs? Do I carry the moon in ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton

... a soft rush through the air and a shower of silver fell from the blue evening sky. In another direction, pale Roman candles shot up singly through the trees, and a fire-haired rocket swept the horizon like a portent. Between these intermittent flashes the velvet curtains of the darkness were descending, and in the intervals of eclipse the voices of the crowds seemed to sink to ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton

... see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro' the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming; And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof thro' the night that our flag was still there! O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... a higher clearing house! No trace of him or clue to his whereabouts was found, until the Evening Post, on the principle of setting one mystery to solve another, sent its representative to examine a strange steel rocket, discovered half-buried in the sands of Lake Michigan, near Berrien Springs, two days ago. Our reporter investigated this bullet-shaped contrivance and found an opening into it, and within he discovered a scrap of paper on which were written the words: 'Farewell ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass

... notice it. His eyes were on the man behind the counter standing ready to serve him. He strode over to him and flung down a ten-dollar bill, ordering a drink of whiskey, and a bottle of the spirit to take away with him. He was promptly served, and Silas Rocket, the proprietor, civilly passed the time of day. It elicited no responsive greeting, for Jim gulped down his drink, and helped himself to another. The second glass of the fiery spirit he swallowed greedily, while Rocket looked ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum

... on my pluck, and I bust out just like a sky-rocket too. My blazers! If it didn't make my ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn

... lost, but the French made it so hot for them that they abandoned it, and the contested trenches now lie in No Man's Land. All that night the whole Wood was illuminated, trench light after trench light rising over the dark branches. There would be a rocket like the trail of bronze-red powder sparks hanging for an instant in the sky, then a loud Plop! and the French light would spread out its parachute and sail slowly down the sky toward the river. The German lights (fusees eclairantes), cartridges ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan

... forwards crowded round the Scotch sticks like a hive of bees on a June morning, and a straight shot from the foot of D. Steel, who rushed in from his place at half-back, caused the ball to glide past the Scotch goalkeeper like a rocket. ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone

... Roy was seldom absent from Aruna's side. They said little, but his presence wrapped her round with a sense of companionship more intimate than she had yet felt even in their happiest times together. While rocket after rocket soared and curved and blossomed in mid-heaven, her gaze reverted persistently to the outline of a man's head and ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... the 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

... the signal "Stop, or I fire," the Falaba steamed off and sent up rocket signals to summon help, and was only brought to a standstill after a chase of a ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... And as the shark, turning on his back, exposed the white of his belly, they both fired. The brute disappeared, and so did the bait, sinking like a rocket until ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston

... Even now, a rocket moves toward Mars. It reminds us that the world will not be the same for our children, or even for ourselves in a short span of years. The next man to stand here will look out on a scene different from our own, because ours is a time of change—rapid and fantastic change ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... were lost in the distance. But behind him a man's voice rose with a roar like a rocket and was met with a ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis

... had assembled to see an extraordinary race—a race, in fact, without any parallel or precedent whatsoever. There were four entries but one dropped out, leaving three: The Novelty, John Braithwaite and John Ericsson; The Sanspareil, Timothy Hackworth; The Rocket, George and Robert Stephenson. These were not horses; they were locomotives. The directors of the London and Manchester Railway had offered a prize of five hundred pounds for the best locomotive, and here they were to try ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson

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

... mother during confinement had seen a person so marked; of an infant with fins as upper and lower extremities, the mother having seen such a monster; and another, a child born with its feet covered with scalds and burns, whose mother had been badly frightened by fireworks and a descending rocket. There is the history of a woman who while pregnant at seven months with her fifth child was bitten on the right calf by a dog. Ten weeks after, she bore a child with three marks corresponding in size and appearance to those caused by the dog's teeth on her leg. Kerr reports the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... an opportunity to complete his speech, a sound, as of an avalanche and earthquake, all in one, was heard—a shock, as of contending thunderbolts, shook the train, and the last thing I saw was the head and body of Mr Jeeks propelled, with the force and velocity of a rocket, against the expansive countenance of Mr Shookers. My own forehead was dashed against the opposite side, and I was insensible. There had been a collision between two trains. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various

... the mimic thunder of carriages hastening to the scene of action, bespoke the Signor's success. After the ninth hour, his numbers swelled rapidly. Pacini assumed an amusing importance, and his very myrmidons gave out their brass tickets with an air. At ten, a rocket was fired. At this preconcerted signal, the pavilion, hitherto purposely concealed, blazed in a flood of light. On its balcony stood the three Styrian brethren,—although, by the way, they were not brethren at all,—and, striking their harmonious guitars, wooed attention to their ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... touched a rocket, of which he had several in the boat, with the lighted end of the cigar he had been smoking, and it went hissing up into the air, ascending so high as to be plainly visible from the deck of le Feu-Follet before it exploded. Griffin saw this signal with wonder; ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... without tents round fires of kauri gum, but next morning all was astir for the attack. A rocket was sent whizzing over the palisades. It fell and burst among the Maoris, frightening them greatly, but succeeding discharges were failures, and the Maoris gathered courage to such an extent that a number under Kawiti came out to fight. The soldiers lowered their bayonets ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland

... 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 of dim ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... not getting over quick enough. They had 150 men on the other side. These seven got over in a row boat, passed my sentry on the beach running, a few minutes after the firing began from the fortress the Alligator was at quarters with her ports lit up, and a rocket was thrown from the ship. All this showed that there was no hope of a surprise, the others ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury

... 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 told down in Dorfli, and she is ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri

... 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 fresh breeze, fanning the bald forehead ...
— Funny Big Socks - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow

... 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 ...
— The Delegate from Venus • Henry Slesar

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

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

... 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

... the quartermaster on duty?" shouted Lingard in English and Malay. "This way, come here! Put it on a rocket stick—can't you? Hold over the side—thus! Stand by with the lines for the boats forward there. Mr. Shaw—we ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... nothing else but the evaporation of this concrete oil—to effluvia that escape from all parts and that exert upon the body whence they emanate a recoiling action exactly like that which manifests itself in an lopile mounted upon a brasier, or, better yet, in the explosion of a sky-rocket. A portion of these camphory vapors, as well as a small portion of the camphor itself, dissolves in the water and forms upon its surface an oily layer which is at first very slight, but the thickness ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various

... green light crept out of the dark to seawards, and a faint throbbing grew into the measured beat of a steamer's screw. Then a low, shadowy hull, outlined by a glimmer of phosphorescence, came on towards the harbor mouth, and a rocket swept up in a fiery curve and burst, dropping colored lights. A harsh rattle of running chain broke out, the screw splashed noisily for a few moments and stopped, and a launch came ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss

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

... up their own smoke and the long shadows of men flitting about the fire; but further to one side and behind them from where the velvety chime floated there was still the same unbroken black gloom. All at once, cleaving the darkness, a rocket zigzagged in a golden ribbon up the sky; it described an arc and, as though broken to pieces against the sky, was scattered crackling into sparks. There was a roar from the bank like a ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

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

... of this great dinner-party, that I might partake, first-hand, of the good things which I had seen preparing. I was to enjoy the feast in a silence proper to my years. So I had promised. And now one of those dangerous questions which rise like a rocket from a boy's lips had transformed me from a small guest whose part was to sit silently in the shadow of the mighty clergyman, and there only to even up the side of the table, into a person of unpleasant importance. Had my father rapped for order, risen, and announced ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd

... that his mission in that place was over, he nimbly came to his feet and shot like a rocket through the opening. ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis

... grape shot through the calf of my leg, a lance through my left shoulder, a piece of a shrapnel in the left deltoid, a bayonet through the cartilage of my right ribs, a cut-cut that carried away a pound of flesh from my chest, and the better part of a congreve rocket on my forehead. Pretty well, ha, ha! and all while you'd say bah! and in eight days and a half I was making a forced march, without shoes, and only one gaiter, the life and soul of my company, and as ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

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

... cabin in the fall, lifted up. Barely visible under it was a pair of large, running feet. One soldier, trying to oppose it with his hands, was knocked senseless and bleeding. He might as well have tried to stop an oncoming rocket ship. ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl

... Corbett snapped orders into the intercom and his unit-mates responded by smooth co-ordinated action, the giant rocket cruiser Polaris slowly arched through Earth's atmosphere, first nosing up to lose speed and then settling tailfirst toward its destination—the spaceport at ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell

... lady's entertainers, 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 they saw the grandeur of their intenser relation to her ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James

... the first proofs, glued on to enormous pages, posters, screens. It is now that you may shiver and feel pity. The appearance of these sheets is monstrous. From each sign, from each printed word, go pen lines, which radiate and meander like a Congreve rocket, and spread themselves out at the margin in a luminous rain of phrases, epithets, and substantives, underlined, crossed, mixed, erased, superposed: the effect ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars

... have another go at him. But he's a difficult chap to chat with. If you give him the least encouragement, he sort of goes off like a rocket." He addressed another question to the sufferer, and listened attentively to ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse

... were admiring this picture, a rocket of light shone out from one of the high corners of the agriculture building and flooded the MacMonnies fountain in a whiteness which made all the other light seem dim and lifeless. Under its focus the ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')

... absinthe, the days of rain and sun, the ostrich chases, the watch for the jackal and the races over the plain. All this, helter-skelter, in crowds, crossing, following, multiplying, like the sheaves of sparks which burst forth from a rocket. ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... signal in rock lighthouses, where it would be impossible to mount large pieces of apparatus, the use of a gun-cotton rocket has been suggested by Sir Richard Collinson, deputy-master of the Trinity House. A charge of gun-cotton is inclosed in the head of a rocket, which is projected to the height of perhaps 1,000 feet, when the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various

... way. Then he slackens pace. Wraysford rushes forward in front, the pursuing host rush on behind, but every one sees how it will be. The fellow takes a deliberate drop-kick at the goal, and up flies the ball as true as a rocket, clean over the posts, as certain a goal as Saint Dominic's ever lost! It was no use crying over spilt milk, and for the rest of the game Stansfield relaxed no efforts to stay the tide of defeat. And he succeeded too, for though the ball remained dangerously near the school goal, and once or twice ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... moment had arrived in his affairs. For days, Wall Street had been undergoing one of its periodical fits of jumpiness. There had been rumors and counter-rumors, until finally from the confusion there had soared up like a rocket the one particular stock in which he was most largely interested. He had unloaded that morning, and the result had left him slightly dizzy. The main point to which his mind clung was that the time had come at last. He could make the ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse

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

... Throughout our journey the Germans were firing rockets. A slow, green ball of fire ascends as gradually into the air as a loaded balloon, seems to poise aloft for a moment, then sinks slowly to earth, lighting the country for a long way around with a ghastly green illumination. Each rocket is followed by a prompt fire from the field batteries and a short spurt of ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various

... could be sent out from either pipe. Thus when floating above the earth the ship was forced forward by the blast of air rushing from the pipe at the stern. It was the same principle as that on which a sky rocket is shot heavenward, save that gases produced by the burning of powder in the pasteboard rocket form its ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood

... But there was no nonsense of that sort about that singularly agile stranger,—if he was not made of india-rubber he ought to have been. So to speak, before he was down he was up,—it was all I could do to grab at him before he was off like a rocket. ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh

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

... depths of space, some twenty thousand miles from the earth, the body of Professor Jameson within its rocket container cruised upon an endless journey, circling the gigantic sphere. The rocket was a satellite of the huge, revolving world around which it held to its orbit. In the year 1958, Professor Jameson had sought for a plan whereby he might preserve his body ...
— The Jameson Satellite • Neil Ronald Jones

... by a bit of driftwood and cautiously threw in, his arm extended, his figure alert. The squint on his face took a firmer grip. Suddenly his pole gave a leap, the water splashed, his line sang in the air and a fish went up like a rocket. As we were looking into the treetops it thumped the shore beside him, quivered a moment and flopped down the bank He scrambled after it and went to his knees in the brook coming up empty-handed. The water was slopping out of his ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... royal flourish, sprang in air to seek her; but her outraged mate was ahead of him, and with a scream she fled, leaving a tuft of feathers in her mate's beak. In turn the Cardinal struck him like a flashing rocket, and then red war waged in Rainbow Bottom. The females scattered for cover with all their might. The Cardinal worked in a kiss on one poor little bird, too frightened to escape him; then the males closed in, and serious business began. The Cardinal would have enjoyed ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter

... Branches: Ground Forces, Navy, Air Forces, Air Defense Forces, Strategic Rocket Forces, Command ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... senses. But when you get them about a deer-forest they are a still more intolerable nuisance; you are never safe; just as you are getting up to the stag, creeping along the course of a burn, perhaps, bang! goes one of those brutes like a sky-rocket, and the whole herd are instantly on the alert. Oh, that's a job old Waveney likes well enough; and it will give the dogs a rest as ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black

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

... a 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, emerged from ...
— Genesis • H. Beam Piper

... hove her to until he should see a guiding rocket from the men-of-war which he knew were waiting. And presently one came, a blue and gold from due west, and another red and gold from the west-nor'-west, then a red and blue from north-west by west. Presently there ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly

... Honest old Brown of England was very drunk, and showed his Loyalty to the Tune of a hundred Rockets. The Mob drank the King's Health, on their Marrow-bones, in Mother Day's Double. They whip'd us half a dozen Hogsheads. Poor Tom Tyler had like to have been demolished with the End of a Sky-Rocket, that fell upon the Bridge of his Nose as he was drinking the King's Health, and spoiled his Tip. The Mob were very loyal 'till about Midnight, when they grew a little mutinous for more Liquor. They had like to have dumfounded the Justice; but his ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... said Amrei, "just as if we were two doves flying through the air. Juhu! away into the heavens!" And "Juhu!" cried the lad gleefully, "Juhu!" And the sound shot up heavenward like a fiery rocket. "Juhu!" cried Amrei, rejoicing with him. And on they danced with ever-increasing joy. Finally ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... poverty and dishonesty, and acts as a preventive to all improvement. So high and fatal a rate deters all honest enterprise, and the country must lie in ruin under such a system. The wild speculator borrows upon such terms, to rise suddenly like a rocket, or to fall like its exhausted stick. Thus, honest enterprise being impossible, dishonesty takes the lead, and a successful expedition to the White Nile is supposed to overcome all charges. There are two classes of White Nile traders, the one possessing ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker

... the Caminho do Meio, the highway supposed to bisect the island, and gradually rising to the Rocket Road (Caminho do Foguete) with a pleasant slope of 23 deg., or 1 in 2 1/3. These roads are heavy on the three h's—head, heart, and hand. We greatly enjoyed the view from the famous Levada, the watercourse or leat-road of Santa Luzia, with its ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... two or three high-spirited dames, defy this Czar of Gaul. Yet they and their cabal are as inconsistent on the other hand. They make epigrams, sing vaudevilles,[2] against the mistress, hand about libels against the Chancellor [Maupeou], and have no more effect than a sky-rocket; but in three months will die to go to Court, and to be invited to sup with Madame du Barri. The only real struggle is between the Chancellor [Maupeou] and the Duc d'Aiguillon. The first is false, bold, determined, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole

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

... fireworks, feller-citizens, will be a rocket, which will go up in the air, bust, and assume ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne

... Here Father Kelly paused, his persuasive argument rolling back on himself; he didn't know what to do with the watch. It was too perilous to run the risk of new discords over it. The priest cast a distress rocket in a look at the Vicar-General; but the Vicar-General perfidiously smiled and ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various

... apparatus of the newest and best type is stored in the life-boat houses placed at intervals close to the seashore. On stormy nights the watching sentinels summon by telephone the fishermen of the tiny hamlets near. At sound of a rocket the distressful cry, "A wreck, a wreck!" runs over the telephone, and immediately brave hearts and hands are putting off to the rescue, while trembling women anxiously wait their husbands' return with warm restoratives for ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson

... up to ten thousand feet. Aiming it in the map direction of Qualpha's Village, he let go with everything he had—hot jets, rocket-booster and all. The forest landscape came hurtling out of the ...
— Oomphel in the Sky • Henry Beam Piper

... 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

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

... and then they began playing tricks on one another as if we were out for a junketing. I sat with my watch in my hand, feeling queer, and wondering whether I was a greater coward than the rest. Then came a streak of light. I put up my watch, formed the men; up went a rocket, my signal, and out into the open we went at the double. We hadn't got over a third of the ground when bang went the fort guns, and the grape-shot were whistling about our ears; so I shouted 'Forward!' and away we went as hard as we could go. I was obliged to go ahead, you see, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... of an oratorical rocket. It dazzles, but to an observer having the wrong kind of nose its most conspicuous peculiarity is the smell of the several kinds of powder used ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... patent secured in 1828 by Mr. Cooper for an improved steam engine, he took pains to declare the suitability of his invention as a motor for "land carriages." No doubt he had heard of Stephenson's "Rocket," if not of the engine built by Blenkinsop in 1813, the sight of which in operation caused Stephenson to resolve that he would "make a better." The famous competitive trial of the Rocket, the Novelty, the Sanspareil, and the Perseverance, on a two-mile section of the Liverpool ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond

... your own, which is so 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 ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... hear that sound, like the whistling of a rocket? See! Something has fallen upon the tree-top, breaking several branches! As I live it is the kite! Dead he is, and the blood is spurting from a wound ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... above the horizon, a light proceeding from the south, of the breadth of three inches, which went off to the north, always spreading itself as it moved, and made itself heard by a whizzing light like that of the largest sky-rocket. I judged by the eye that this light could not be above our atmosphere, and the whizzing noise which I heard confirmed me in that notion. {38} When it came in like manner to be about 45 degrees to the north ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz

... Nassau from its landward side. The sentries dozing at their posts were easily overpowered, and the garrison was aroused from its peaceful slumbers by the cheers of the Yankee blue-jackets as they came tumbling in over the ramparts. A rocket sent up from the fort announced the victory to the "Providence," and she came in and cast anchor near ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... pilot replied. "We 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 make the ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith

... extensively spread rumor that he is often intoxicated. I am sure that it is not so, and I contradict it with all my might. At last I discovered the reason of the rumor. It is Mr. Seward's unhappy passion for generalizations. He goes off like a rocket. Most people hearing him become confused, understand nothing, are unable to follow him in his soarings, and believe him to be intoxicated. His devotees alone get in ecstacies ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski

... were to destroy the fortifications on the Mole; while the fifth covered them from the batteries south of the town, and the heavy frigates, from those on the town wall. The bomb-vessels were to fire on the arsenal and town, assisted by a flotilla of the ships' launches, &c., fitted as gun, rocket, and mortar-boats. The smaller frigates and the brigs were to assist ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler

... turbans in which a spray of pearls was fastened, while jewels and diamonds of great value were around and suspended from their necks. Harcarrahs, or Brahmin messengers of trust, headed the procession, and seven standard-bearers, each carrying a small green banner displayed on a rocket-pole. After these marched 100 pikemen, whose weapons were inlaid with silver. Their escort was a squadron of cavalry, with 200 sepoy soldiers. They were received by the troops in line, with presented arms, drums beating, and officers in ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... correct proportions, beauty of finish, and strength of hull. They were the Evergreen City, 612 tons, and the Fountain City, 820 tons. The schooner Ellen White, 160 tons, was built, and then the firm resumed work on propellers. The Cornet, 624 tons, and Rocket of the same size, were built and put into the railroad line running from Buffalo westward. These were models of beauty and strength. Next came the schooners Metropolis, 360 tons, Mary B. Hale, 360 ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

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

... anybody can stop them, often without being seen or heard. Now and then a passenger will do it, but he generally has what he thinks a pretty good reason. I have seen a man empty his revolver into a crowd of emigrants forward, and then go over like a rocket. Of course, any officer who respects himself will do what he can to pick a man up, if the weather is not so heavy that he would have to risk his ship; but I don't think I remember seeing a man come back when he was once fairly ...
— Man Overboard! • F(rancis) Marion Crawford

... the use of Tarragon is advised to temper the coldness of other herbs in salads, like as a Rocket doth. "Neither," say the authorities, "do we know what other use this ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... a blinding flash of lightning lit up the scene, and then came another crash of thunder, even louder than before. Billy reared up, and then came down with a leap. On the instant he was off, like a rocket, over bushes, logs and rocks, dragging the swaying and ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer

... McClellan is now attempting a change of base in the face of public opinion, and is endeavoring to escape the consequences of having escaped from the Peninsula. For a year his reputation flared upward like a rocket, culminated, burst, and now, after as long an interval, the burnt-out case comes down to us in ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... wind then were forgotten as the rocket-cart came up, and Mr Temple and his sons staggered after it, Josh laying hold of one of Dick's arms, Will of the other, while old Marion and Mr Temple were on either side of Arthur, who wondered how the wind could thunder so heavily ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn

... rest, stepped forward and challenged, bringing, as he did so, his musket to the present. An instant later he fired, just as the words, "A Russian sentry," broke from the first lieutenant's lips. Almost simultaneously three or four other shots were fired at points along the beach. A rocket whizzed high in the air from each side of the bay, a bugle sounded the alarm, voices of command were heard, and, as if by enchantment, a chaos of sounds followed the deep silence which had before reigned, and from every house armed ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty

... go thirty miles an hour, and was urged before the House of Commons not to say so, as he might be thought to be mad. This I have from person who knew the circumstances. Nevertheless, at the trial, I believe the "Rocket" did go at the rate of thirty miles an hour, to the not small astonishment of the world, and especially to the unbelievers in steam as a land agent. The stipulation made was that trains were to be conveyed at the rate of ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness

... History. Facts, and the consequences of facts, draw the writer back to the falconer's lure from the giddiest heights of speculation. Here, therefore—in his "France"—if not always free from flightiness, if now and then off like a rocket for an airy wheel in the clouds, M. Michelet, with natural politeness, never forgets that he has left a large audience waiting for him on earth, and gazing upward in anxiety for his return; return, therefore, he does. ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey

... many of us, who are now certain beyond a doubt that space travel will forever remain in the realm of the impossible, probably would, if a rocket that were shot to the moon, for instance, did arrive, and perhaps return to give proof of its safe arrival on our satellite, accept the phenomenon in a perfectly blase, twentieth century manner. Dr. Smith, that ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... parlor, deciding she really did have a headache. At times she had to come out when a rocket went off, to see if it was one of the little boys. She was exhausted by the adventures of the day, and almost thought it could not have been worse if the boys had been allowed gunpowder. The distracted lady was thankful there was likely ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale

... thereabout, above the level of the sea. Bless us, what a long bell you must have pulled, to call your top workmen to their nuncheon on the low grounds of Sennaar. Or did you send up your garlick and onions by a rocket? I am a rogue if I am not ashamed to show you our Monument on Fish-street Hill, after your altitudes. Yet we think ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... No Man's Land, crouching in shell-holes every time a rocket rose and made a glimmer of light. They took their time at the wire, muffling the snap of it by bits of cloth. Reliefs crawled up with more gloves, and even with tins of hot cocoa. Then through the gap into the German trenches, and there were screams of German soldiers, terror-shaken ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... abrupt turn, in a style that insured a capsize. In another second the spirited horse turned sharp round, the sleigh turned sharp over, and the occupant was pitched out at full length, while a black object, that might have been mistaken for his hat, rose from his side like a rocket, and, flying over him, landed on the snow several yards beyond. A faint shout was heard to float on the breeze as this catastrophe occurred, and the driver was seen to jump up and readjust himself in the cariole; while the other black object proved itself not to be a hat, by getting ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne

... a half years ago. Neither Howley nor I are wondering now. According to the front page of today's Times, the first spaceship, with a crew of eighty aboard, reached Mars this morning. And, on page two, there's a small article headlined: ROCKET OBSOLETE, SAY SCIENTISTS. ...
— ...Or Your Money Back • Gordon Randall Garrett

... value and a direct invitation to piracy. Of course there was the attempt at secrecy and the shippers had sent along those guards. His engineer, Tom Farley, was thoroughly reliable, too. But this failure of the control rocket-tubes, missing their destination as a result—there was something ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent

... 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, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

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

... underground, burying is done in reverse, by tying a rocket to the tail of the deceased and shooting him ...
— Mars Confidential • Jack Lait

... sooner was I on her back than—Whoo! Holy Rocket! she was over the gate, an' tearin' afther the hounds loike mad. "Yoicks!" ses I; "Come back you thafe of the world, where you takin' me to?" as she carried me through the huntin' field, an' landed me by the soide of the masther of the ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers

... moment poised, he dares the leap And cuts the wind and cleaves the deep. Down through the emerald vaults self-hurled That roof the sea-god's awful world. Another moment sees him rise And beat the salt spray from his eyes. He breasts the waves, he spurns their blows; Then, like a rocket, up he goes, Up, up to where the gusty wind With all its wrath is left behind; Still up he soars and high and high A speck of light that dots the sky. Then watch him as he slowly droops Where the great sea-birds wheel their troops. Three broad-winged gulls, himself their ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann

... Natal was spent in a service with a confirmation at Claremont, and an evening service at Durban. "As we were returning," wrote his sister Alice, "we saw a rocket from the sea; a gun fired, the mail was in; and the captain, who was with us, said he would let us know the first thing in the morning the hour he would sail. Well, after this, there was little peace or quiet. We were too tired to sit up that ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

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

... Solid and silent all, To me are stars of an instant, Only the fires that fall From God's good rocket, rising ...
— The Wild Knight and Other Poems • Gilbert Chesterton

... of those generators in the rocket. They're new." He fumbled in his coat pocket for his pipe and tobacco. "I never thought I'd run another nuclear-bomb test, ...
— The Answer • Henry Beam Piper

... It was like a sky-rocket scattering showers of sparks on a lowering cloud. In a twinkling the heaviness of the feast was dispersed by shouts of laughter. Everybody found something delightful to tell that was ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... many squibs and crackers as the seller thereof would trust with his young customers; also one rocket. ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

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

... purposes the newly developed atomic disintegrators. Many holes equally spaced over the sphere were the outlets for the dissolving ray—most of them on the bottom and alternating with them on the bottom and sides were the outlets of powerful rocket propulsion tubes, which would enable it to rise easily from the hole it would presently blast into the earth. A small, tight-fitting door gave entrance to the double-walled interior, where, in spite of the space taken ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various

... Holiday in the Manufacturing Districts Coaching trip to Liverpool Coventry English scenery 'The Rocket' The two Stephensons Opening of the railway William Fawcett Birkenhead Walk back to London Patricroft Manchester Edward Tootal Sharp, Roberts and Co. Manchester industry Coalbrookdale The Black Country Dudley Castle Wren's ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... of the boatswain, the steward and the carpenter were stowing provisions under the thwarts, making the two almost jump out of their skins. It descended into the sea with the same sort of "whish" which the stick of a signal rocket makes when, the propelling power that had enabled it previously to soar up so majestically into the air above being ultimately exhausted, it is forced to return by its own gravity to its proper level below, unable to sustain itself unaided ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson

... tornado and an idiot you must think me! I cannot explain my extraordinary departure. I suppose I was in such a nervous state that I was obsessed in some mysterious manner and went off like a rocket. I can assure you I feel like a stick this morning. You will forgive me, won't you? for you know that although my affections do fluctuate for some people, they ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... and got through it with much credit. So far as I can remember—and it is, indeed, no stretch of imagination—the goal got by Mr. M'Callum could not have been saved by any keeper, as it came out of a scrimmage from the Celtic man's foot like a rocket. Mr. Downie is a very neat kicker-out in front, and shows fine judgment with his hands in clearing the ball away from a crowd ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone

... elsewhere. An excellent jest, truly, from one whose hospitality 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

... got 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



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