Dynamite

“ Thousands of men were earnestly at work; groups of West Indians were manipulating the air-drills which bored the holes for the dynamite charges, scores of steam shovels were toiling to remove the heaped-up debris, dozens of steam-engines were hurrying to and fro and sending forth shrill screams. From the escapes of the steam shovels came puffs of greyish smoke, from the funnels of the engines a thick black smoke was belched, from the air-drills little spurts of steam darted, and from all around came the heavy detonation of dynamite discharges, shaking the earth. ”

“ You have just now portrayed one of the popular superstitions about dynamite, and you show by your actions how necessary a lecture of this sort is in order that you may comprehend thoroughly the substance with which you have to deal. That brick is perfectly harmless, because it is frozen. Dynamite in its frozen state will not explode—a fact well understood by miners and all those who have to work with it, and who, as a rule, generally prefer to blow themselves to pieces trying to thaw the substance before a fire. ”

“ The first blast made by the Chinamen did explode the dynamite, which not only wrecked the shaft, but also lifted the whole jutting bit of tableland—ice, earth, everything—sending it—an avalanche—down the mountain slope several hundred feet, exposing a thick stratum of glacial detritus, under where the ice had been, so full of gold that it proved to be one of the richest finds ever made in Alaska. ”

“ THE DOORWAY LEADING INTO THE DYNAMITE MAGAZINE. pound of dynamite? But here is the difference, gasolene combustion is comparatively slow, while the chief value of dynamite is the suddenness of its explosion. It is chiefly that first explosion wave that we must guard against, and so we make it dash itself against the rock walls until it is pretty well spent. This door here” (we had come to the end of the passageway by this time) , “is made to stand twice the pressure that we estimate it will be subjected to. ”

“ Without the pause of an instant, the doomed Japanese crew sprung the huge mine, when a vast cone of flame shot up, reddening the night, carrying with it high into the air, decks, superstructure and guns of the warship. The warship’s magazines, fired simultaneously by the dynamite blast, aided the complete demolition. The returning torrent of guns and wreckage plunged into the sea. ”

“ On that day, in the colliery of New Aberfoyle, work was going on in the usual regular way. In the distance could be heard the crash of great charges of dynamite, by which the carboniferous rocks were blasted. Here masses of coal were loosened by pick-ax and crowbar; there the perforating machines, with their harsh grating, bored through the masses of sandstone and schist. ”

“ The revolver is good in extreme cases, dynamite in great movements, but, generally speaking, the dagger and poison are the best means of propagation. Yes, tremble, ye canaille, ye bloodsuckers, ye ravishers of maidens, murderers, and hangmen, the day of reckoning and revenge is near. The fight has begun along the picket line. A girdle of dynamite encircles the world, not only the old but the new. The bloody band of tyrants are dancing on the surface of a volcano. There is dynamite in England, France, Germany, Russia, Italy, Spain, New York, and Canada. ”

“ Org and Little Bit arrived just in time to view the effects of the tragedy, and came away with a deep impression of the explosive power of dynamite.
“Dat stuff ain’t nothin’ fer us to fool wid, Marse Org,” Little Bit said earnestly. “Jes’ look whut dat little stick of dynamite done to dat big growed-up man. Ef a wad of dynamite wus to bust close to us, de white folks would hab to put on deir readin’ specks to find de pieces, an’ dey’d tote us bofe back to Tickfall on a shingle.” ”

“ Finding it impossible to escape by running, Kruger climbed a tree with all the alacrity he could muster, and had just reached a vantage of safety when the dynamite exploded, and the dog—well, the dog was holding the stick in his mouth when it went off. ”

“ Although dynamite in such quantities as a carload when ignited is almost certain to explode instead of merely burning, still, sometimes, even that quantity will take fire and burn up completely without exploding; while, at other times, a single stick of dynamite when ignited will detonate. ”

“ The dynamite was nitro-glycerin dynamite, not designed for use under water, but it would withstand the moisture for twenty minutes or more, and the whole mass would go off if a single stick were detonated. It only required that the wire connections to the fulminate cap be taped against a water short-circuit to make the thing fiendishly certain. The spark would set off one stick of explosive and the concussion would ignite the others in turn. ”

“ Yon other—’
‘Half an hour!—’ echoed Somerset, dancing with trepidation. ‘Merciful Heavens, in half an hour?’
‘Dear fellow, why so much excitement?’ inquired Zero. ‘My dynamite is not more dangerous than toffy; had I an only child, I would give it him to play with. You see this brick?’ he continued, lifting a cake of the infernal compound from the laboratory-table. ‘At a touch it should explode, and that with such unconquerable energy as should bestrew the square with ruins. ”

“ An inventor, who lived in the mosquito belt of Staten Island, constructed a dynamite gun out of a piece of four-inch-gas-pipe, and a dynamite bomb out of a short section of gas-pipe, capped at both ends. ”

“ But, dynamite is an explosive which annihilates its victims. All experiment and experience demonstrates that fact. The State of Illinois, to convict any man for using a dynamite bomb at the Haymarket, must show that it was dynamite; because the absolutely necessary link to connect these defendants with the explosion, (and especially Lingg, whom they charge, and are going to hang, for merely its supposed manufacture by him) is the proof that it was a dynamite bomb, and not an infernal machine, as they were called in war times. ”

“ One day Kruger took some sticks of dynamite and went to a neighboring stream with the intention of dynamiting some fish. He attached fuze and exploder to a stick of the explosive, and threw it toward the stream, but, missing his aim, the dynamite landed on a rock.
The faithful dog, thinking that the stick had been thrown for him to bring, ran and returned with it to his master in great glee, with the fuze sizzing nearer and nearer to the explosive. Kruger ran in horror, the dog after him, deeming it great sport. The dog being the better runner, danced about his master. ”

“ Complaints began to pour in to the factory from all kinds and classes of customers, and I began to be afraid to walk the streets for fear that some one would accuse me of having bottled dynamite instead of ginger-beer.
I sold a case of it to a friend of mine who kept a noted sporting resort on South Clark street, Chicago. It was harmless enough when I sold it to him. It was young then, and its propensity for mischief had not been fully developed. It developed later. One evening when all was quiet there was an explosion in the cellar. It sounded like the muffled report of a dynamite cartridge. ”

“ The miners waited a while for the fumes of the dynamite to be dissipated and kept me away from the tunnel mouth, saying:
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"If you ever get a dynamite headache you will never want to come near the mine again. And, besides, that unexploded cap may do damage yet."
I went back to the smithy to wait, for it was the last of October, and snow in the mountains at ten thousand feet is cold. I attempted to sit down on a keg behind the little sheet-iron stove, which was nearly red hot. ”

“ When the head of the work crew calls out “Hold! Hold! Hold!” they know a fuse of dynamite is about to be lighted to blast the rock from the mountain side and they hurry to safety. “Dynamite is powerful destructuous!” one tells the other, and they remain at safe distance until again the boss of the crew calls out “All right!” and they are back with pick and shovel.
The mountaineer has become a good steel worker, a dairyman in the foothills, a good mill hand.
The old folk, however, still cling to the old order of things. ”

“ When one reads in the Official Handbook issued by the Commission that a pound of dynamite has been used to about every two cubic yards of material blasted, and compares it with the total excavation of about 200,000,000 cubic yards one thinks that even the undoubted sins of the Isthmus during its riotous days are expiated by such a vigorous blowing up. ”

“ The water forces the plungers out, exerting enough pressure to burst the rock. Not only is this system perfectly safe, but it is economical, because the gallery does not have to be cleared of workmen before every blast. There is more certainty in the use of water cartridges, and the danger, common where dynamite is used, of having the rock drill or pick strike and explode a stick of dynamite which failed to go off with the rest of the charge in a previous blast is avoided. ”

“ If you exploded a ton of dynamite on top of the ground it would blow quite a hole and jar the earth for several miles around it; and that would be all. But if you set off another ton of dynamite, and then another and another, and kept it up continuously—always timing the explosions to the period of the earth's vibration—eventually the jar would be felt clear through the globe. And if you still persisted, in time you would wreck the world. ”

“ The tremendous rending force of dynamite is well known. A small charge in a torpedo will sink a ship. The Greely Relief Expedition used it to open their way through the arctic ice fields. Its atoms rush apart with such frightful velocity that if a pound of it be exploded upon a naked bowlder, of many tons weight, the rock is shivered into fragments. ”

“ Also it is the huge high explosive shell that makes way for the march of modern armies, and high explosive mines and torpedoes are the terror of the underseas.
All forms of dynamite are high explosives, and all high explosives may fairly be called dynamite.
Smokeless gunpowder is actually but a modified form of high explosive. It is dynamite that has been chained and tamed by the chemist’s cunning, so that it will burn without detonation, and thus permit the utiliza [24] tion of its awful energy to hurl shot and shell from war’s great guns. ”

“ If you will walk out to the orchard back of the smokehouse, and take a look at the field of oats, you will see a strip o>f oats more than a foot higher than the surrounding oats and eight feet wide running across the field—that will show you what dynamite does to the land. I would like you to go to the edge of the field and take a look at those oats. Most of us think that dynamite is used for tearing things apart, but here is a case where it is building up the land and making it produce greater crops. ”

“ Out came his pocketknife again as he slit the waxed paper of the gelatinous sticks, then inserted the cap in the dynamite. One after another the charges were shoved into the holes, Harry tamping them into place with a steel rod, instead of with the usual wooden affair, his mustache brushing his shoulder as he turned to explain the virtues of dynamite when handled by an expert.
"It's all in the wye you do it," he announced. "If you don't strike fire with a steel rod, it's fine." ”

“ Any sort of fire will explode gunpowder, but any sort of fire will not explode dynamite; it will only cause it to burn. It requires a detonator to explode it with violence. Without its detonator, dynamite is a sleeping giant. ”

“ However, since a way has been found to transform it into dynamite, that is to say, to mix with it some solid substance, clay or sugar, porous enough to hold it, the dangerous liquid has been used with some security. But dynamite was not yet known at the time when the settlers worked on Lincoln Island.
“And is it that liquid that is going to blow up our rocks?” said Pencroft incredulously.
“Yes, my friend,” replied the engineer, “and this nitro-glycerine will produce so much the more effect, as the granite is extremely hard, and will oppose a greater resistance to the explosion.” ”

“ To the intensely rapid action of dynamite the air affords as much resistance as a solid substance, while the explosion of the powder is so slow that the air has time to move away; hence the destruction of the windows in the first case, and the safe in the second." When they had moved beyond the danger line, Bearwarden, as the party's practising engineer, pressed the button, and the explosion did the rest. ”

“ For all the while you are fighting Flanders mud as well as the Germans.
To carry realism to the limit of the Grand Guignol school, then, arrange some bags of bullets with dynamite charges on a wire, which will do for shrapnel; plant some dynamite in the parapet, which will do for high explosive shells that burst on contact; sink heavier charges of dynamite under your feet, which will do for mines, and set them off, while you engage someone to toss grenades and bombs at you. ”

“ At dawn of the sixth night the dam was scheduled to be blown up, and they wanted to get their dynamite in place twenty-four hours ahead of time. Slade had figured that he could place the dynamite, run a wire down the pipe so that it extended about one inch from a hatch opening. Then, on the last night, he could hook up another length of wire to that, lead it away to his detonator, and set it off. ”

“ A quantity of dynamite for two or three days’ consumption may be stored near the entrance of the tunnel in a locked box, the keys of which are kept by the foreman of the work. When dynamite has been frozen the engineer should provide some arrangement by which it may be heated to a temperature not exceeding 120° F., and absolutely forbid it being thawed out on a stove or by an open fire. ”