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Spar   Listen
verb
Spar  v. t.  
1.
To bolt; to bar. (Obs.)
2.
To To supply or equip with spars, as a vessel. Note: A vessel equipped with spars that are too large or too small is said to be oversparred or undersparred.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Spar" Quotes from Famous Books



... feet 10 inches. At her departure from Cochin in India, her draught of water was 31 feet; but at her arrival in Dartmouth, not above 26, being lightened 5 feet during her voyage by various causes. She contained 7 several stories; viz. one main orlop, three close decks, one forecastle, and a spar deck of two floors each. The length of the keel was 100 feet, of the main-mast 121 feet, and its circumference at the partners was 10 feet 7 inches. The main-yard was 106 feet long. By this accurate mensuration, the hugeness of the whole is apparent, and far beyond ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... spar,' I said. 'The entrance is not more than forty feet wide, and the boom is part of the mainmast of ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty

... been drifted upon the road, our horses had no choice but to step into them. On that eminence I picked up specimens of Geodes which abound there, being lumps resembling fruits outside, but when broken found to be a crust of bright spar, and hollow in the centre; some of these were remarkably large. The hills were fragrant with wild herbs, and the ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn

... the nucleus of the fighting force with which the government met the war of 1861. In the frigates and sloops steam was purely auxiliary; they had every spar and sail of the sailing ships to which they corresponded. Four of the larger sloops—the Hartford, Richmond, Brooklyn, and Pensacola—constituted the backbone of Farragut's fleet throughout his operations in the Mississippi. The Lancaster, one of the ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... miss the spirit of it, and make the thing rigid and lifeless. But ignorance will not take the place of pedantry for all that. Every kind of vessel has its own peculiar structure, its own peculiar proportions, and its own peculiar arrangement of spar and rigging. Whether you are complete or not in the detailing of the masts and rigging, you must know and represent the true character of the craft you are painting. You must take the trouble to know how, why, and when sails are set, and what are the kinds, number, and proportion of them, ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst

... Now, that's jest what I had in my mind to ax you. Fact is ther' is a spar' room upsta'rs, as comfortable a room as the best of ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... I saw the mass of spar all tangled up with sail rise up on a wave as it drifted past. I found myself wondering why we had all been in the shadow of death only a couple of minutes before. There was no thought of danger now. I ran below for the balsam, ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield

... lips again. He had to spar for time: to divert for a while the vengeance he knew possessed the other's mind, so that he might find some chance, ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore

... had met, far away at Manhattan Beach, after Madame Raffoni had discreetly piloted Clayton over to a sandy hollow where a half-burned spar gave a convenient resting-place, before Fritz Braun and Lilienthal had finished an acrimonious settlement ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage

... comes a whizzing, booming sound—and it is caught in the bolas! The mast is struck too, and the balls, whirling around and around, lash it and the yard together, with the frumpled canvas between, as tight as a spliced spar! ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid

... confusion of masts and spars and sails, marvellous to behold, which yet she also saw was no confusion at all, but complicated and systematic order. How much those midshipmen must have to learn, though, if they were to know the names and uses and handling of every spar and every rope and each sail among them! as Dolly knew they must. Her eye came back to the deck. What order there too; what neatness; why it was beautiful; and the uniforms here and there, and the sailors' hats and jackets, filled up the picture ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner

... heights, you seem at the masthead of some lonely vessel, kept forever at sea. You feel as if no one but yourself had ever landed there; and yet, perhaps, even there, looking straight downward, you see below you in some crevice of the rock a mast or spar of some wrecked vessel, encrusted with all manner of shells and uncouth vegetable growth. No matter how distant the island or how peacefully it seems to lie upon the water, there may be perplexing currents that ever foam and swirl about it —currents which are, at all tides ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... not make the stranger out more fully. Charles, himself, thought that she was heavy and evidently steering for the small bay on which the factory stood. But their curiosity was soon to be satisfied, for spar after spar gradually became more and more clearly defined, until at last the deck itself could be seen, and St. George's cross observed flying saucily in the breeze. The ship was a British sloop-of-war, ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray

... of the Phase Law. We know that by phases are designated the homogeneous substances into which a system is divided; thus carbonate of lime, lime, and carbonic acid gas are the three phases of a system which comprises Iceland spar partially dissociated into lime and carbonic acid gas. The number of phases added to the number of independent components—that is to say, bodies whose mass is left arbitrary by the chemical formulas of the substances entering into the reaction—fixes the general form of the law of equilibrium ...
— The New Physics and Its Evolution • Lucien Poincare

... which the external form of the shell with its tubercles and striae, as seen in a, Figure 52, would be seen embossed. Now if the space alluded to between the nucleus and the impression, instead of being left empty, has been filled up with calcareous spar, flint, pyrites, or other mineral, we then obtain from the mould an exact cast both of the external and internal form of the original shell. In this manner silicified casts of shells have been formed; and if the mud or sand of the nucleus happen to be incoherent, or soluble ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell

... no means undeserving of the remark, being devoid of any kind of vegetation, except some straggling heath and a few patches of stunted gorse, which here and there sprung up amidst the rugged spar-stones that, intermixed with rude crags of granite, were thickly scattered over this wide waste, which, throughout its vast extent, afforded as perfect a picture of sterility as can be well conceived. With this brief outline of the scenery, we must next attempt to describe the parties ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various

... Portions of the rock may, nevertheless, be selected partially free from this difficulty, and which are possessed of sufficient compactness to render them of value as a coarse building stone; horn-stone, striped jasper (imperfect); hog-toothed spar, calcareous spar, and fluor spar, are imbedded in the rock, although the latter is ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland

... "Good night!" and with muffled oar Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore, Just as the moon rose over the bay, Where swinging wide at her moorings lay The Somerset, British man-of-war; A phantom ship, with each mast and spar Across the moon like a prison bar, And a huge black hulk, that was magnified By its own ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... it was, and presently she was bearing on us, and was ere long so close aboard that we could see her every spar and rope, and her folk all gathered to the windward, knights, sergeants, archers, and mariners, to gaze at us and mock us; and huge and devilish laughter arose from amongst them as she ploughed the water so close beside us, that ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris

... other, anxious to display his familiarity with the technicalities of her profession. "'E wouldn't take 'is turn to be attended to aboard of us—we was in a Destroyer, an' picked 'im up 'angin' on to a spar. Would 'ave the doctor fix up a German prisoner wot was bleedin' to death. Said 'e wasn't in no particular 'urry, speakin' for 'isself. An' 'im a-bleedin' to death, too. As fine a gentleman ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... talk, as in your latest letter, of the making of yourself. It seems so much more possible than that I could do the same. But I am a miserable groping creature, cast on a sea of doubt, rejecting one spar to grasp another, and crying all the time against the storm, for help. I do not know another man who has tortured himself so insistently with the problems that are unsolvable. You are firmer in your grasp, and when ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... roots; his delicate features worn and sharpened with spare diet and want of sleep; above all, with those haggard eyes, always watching and waiting for something a long way off—almost, indeed, out of sight at present, but coming up, as a ship comes spar by spar above the horizon, taking shape and distinctness as it nears. There were nineteen years and three months still, however, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn

... quarter-deck to the forecastle. These gangways were about five feet wide; and here the prisoners were allowed to pass and repass. The intermediate space from the bulkhead of the quarter-deck to the forecastle was filled with long spars and booms, and called the spar-deck. The temporary covering afforded by the spar-deck was of the greatest benefit to the prisoners, as it served to shield us from the rain and the scorching rays of the sun. It was here, therefore, that our movables were placed when we were engaged in cleaning the ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge

... coppice of stunted trees, which afforded refuge from the gale and shelter from the rain. He was quite blown by the time he reached it, and he clutched at the nearest sapling as a drowning man clutches at a spar. He stood there perforce for a full minute, panting hard. Then he shook his head doggedly, ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray

... of the last abyss: I walked the cold black pools without a star; I lay on rock of unseen flint and spar; I heard the execrable serpent hiss; I dreamed of sun, fruit-tree, and virgin's kiss; I woke alone with midnight near and far, And everlasting hunger, keen to mar; But I arose, and my reward is this: I am no more one more amid the throng: Though name be naught, and lips ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... fifteen dollars, already, that I haf been puttin' in the Germania Spar Bank for such a trouble. I had more as that, but we haf had bad luck. My uncle he will maybe lend me ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... of Morals, Humanity, Decorum and Sobriety of Manners; who with great Spirit, Genius, and Courage, to his lasting Honour, has publickly expos'd the Absurdities, Vices, and Follies, that stain and disgrace the Theatre; in which Censure he has not spar'd his own Performances: One who has express'd a warm Zeal on this Subject, and declar'd his generous Intention, if it were in his Power, to cleanse these polluted Places, and not to suffer a Comedy to be presented but what had past a severe Examination, and where all things which might ...
— Essay upon Wit • Sir Richard Blackmore

... opponents may be forgiven for turning Chance into Design. The bucketing went forward merrily. The Afghan forces were upon the run—the run of wearied wolves who snarl and bite over their shoulders. The red lances dipped by twos and threes, and, with a shriek, up rose the lance-butt, like a spar on a stormy sea, as the trooper cantering forward cleared his point. The Lancers kept between their prey and the steep hills, for all who could were trying to escape from the valley of death. The Highlanders gave the fugitives two hundred yards' law, ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling

... cents better," returned the man-o'-war's man, doing something to a big jib with a wooden spar tied to it. "But we didn't think o' that when we manned the windlass-brakes on the Miss Jim Buck, I outside Beau-fort Harbor, with Fort Macon heavin' hot shot at our stern, an' a livin' gale atop of all. Where was ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling

... had wheeled round at once and began to stump back along over the shell and crunching spar-gravel path, his chin pressed down upon his chest, and not uttering a word, only coughing slightly now and then, as if to clear his voice for the fierce tirade of angry ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn

... to spar with a private soldier led to remarks which I chose to consider insular, if not insolent, and I replied, supporting the principle of Yankee equality, until, losing my temper at something which one of the ensigns said, I delivered myself in some such fashion as this: "Well, gentlemen, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... the casks which had been brought by the large raft had been picked up, as well as a good many others. Those which would not float of themselves were now placed on the small raft, and the mate, taking a long spar in his hand, set out to lead the way. Four of the men took charge of the raft, while others dragged after them casks of beef and water and two of beer. Owen was thankful that no spirits had been picked up. He knew too well what would have ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston

... sturdy man," returned the sailor. "He has a body of oak and muscles as hard as a spare spar. So I am not afraid to have him ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne

... be well spar'd, and your deep eloquence Be worthily applauded amongst thouse Which ...
— The White Devil • John Webster

... come back to Widow Rippet's, for ye would hae spar't me a hard ride. Scarcely had ye ta'en the road when my Lord mindit that he had neglekit to gie you the sign, by the which ye were to make yoursel and message kent to his friends, and I was sent after ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... daughter, "you'se my moder an' I ought ter be de fust one ter help ease you up. I just dun declar dat you'se got ter take Vilet ter help you up. I kin spar her, an' I will spar her. She's strong an' gwine on twelve, an' de babies is gitten so dat dey ain't aroun' under my feet all de time. Vilet's spry an' kin run here an' dar an' fill de orders. She'd ease you up ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe

... recognize real men the world over; it is only your shams who fence and spar. Bill, taking in the voice of the speaker more than his ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte

... laid between the ship's side and some of the rocks, but without success, for it snapped assunder before it reached them. However, by the light of a lanthorn which a seaman handed through a sky-light of the round-house to the deck, Mr. Meriton discovered a spar which appeared to be laid from the ship's side to the rocks, and on this spar he resolved to ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous

... that had been gilding everything from masthead to floating spar gathered in its forces, and for one moment seemed to rest upon Liberty's torch, throwing the statue into clear relief, and then dropped rapidly behind the river's night-cloud bank, and presently lights began to glimmer far ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright

... about 700 feet above Nyassa, generally covered with trees; no people were seen. We slept by the brook Sikoche. Rocks of hardened sandstone rested on mica schist, which had an efflorescence of alum on it, above this was dolomite; the hills often capped with it and oak-spar, giving a snowy appearance. We had a Waiyau party with us—six handsomely-attired women carried huge pots of beer for their husbands, who very liberally invited us to partake. After seven hours' hard travelling we came to the ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone

... an enormous spar of some sixty or seventy feet in length, is stepped almost amidships in a kind of tabernacle, and has neither stays nor shrouds, its only visible support being a wooden prop, which a few feet above the deck takes part of the pressure when running before the ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready

... a certain star Is, it can throw (Like the angled spar) Now a dart of red, Now a dart of blue, Till my friends have said They would fain see, too, My star that dartles the red and the blue! Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled: They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it. What matter to me if their star is a world? ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various

... there we never think of making a fire of anything but driftwood. It makes the most wonderful, magical fire in the world. One could dream out stories for a whole evening from the wood alone. Here is a stick that must have been a part of a spar. Was it blown away from the mast in a gale? Now hold your breath and think if some poor sailor was blown off into the waves with it. Did he catch at this very stick as he sank? Did his wife wait and wait for him at home, till his shipmate came and told her? Here is a little ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost

... asked Captain Zeb of the lightkeeper. "That her off back of the spar buoy? Let me have a squint through that glass; my eyes ain't what they used to be, when I could see a whale spout two miles t'other side of the sky line and tell how many barrels of ile he'd try out, fust look. Takes practice to ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln

... expected disaster and of happy relief were vivid as they passed, but I made the steamer stop, and on climbing the mast, I found not even the slightest crack or injury there. Henceforth we shall trust the goodly spar in any gale, with the confidence only to be had by ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor

... of the flag-staff was shot down, and the flag fell.[20] It had been previously hanging by one halliard, the other having been cut by a piece of shell. The exultation of the enemy, however, was short-lived. Peter Hart found a spar in the fort, which answered very well as a temporary flag-staff. He nailed the flag to this, and raised it triumphantly by nailing and tying the pole firmly to a pile of gun-carriages on the parapet. This was gallantly done, ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday

... were now fairly clear of the shore. The wind freshened. "The Curlew" dashed forward, rising and falling with the swells. The whole east was reddening. The dark spar of the bow-sprit rose and fell through it. It seemed a good omen to be going toward the light. Ere the sun met us on the sea, we were twelve ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens

... former. Which now Silver Phil demands a bronco, bridled an' saddled. He gives the public ten minutes; if the bronco is absent at the end of ten minutes Silver Phil allows he'll introdooce about a pound of lead into where that village father does his cogitating. The bronco appears with six minutes to spar'. As it arrives, the vivacious Silver Phil jumps off the roof of the stoop—the same bein' low—an' is in the saddle an' out o' sight while as practised a hand as Huggins is pourin' out a drink. Where the trail bends 'round a mesa Silver Phil ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis

... bucking. It'll be a bit out of the common. Jack Buckler's training at 'The Tiger' for his match with Solly Blades. You know—eliminating round for middle-weight championship. And he's going to spar three rounds with our boy from the ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... her warm in his seaman's coat, Against the stinging blast: He cut a rope from a broken spar, And bound ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... attracted by the smoke of our fire, paid us a visit from the shore, and were the only living things seen during our stay. The rock constituting the cliffs along the shore where we were encamped, is a talcous rock, or steatite, with brown spar. ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis

... sympathies fresh as the morning, their gall Can transmute into honey,—but this is not all; Not only for those she has solace, oh say, Vice's desperate nursling adrift in Broadway, Who clingest, with all that is left of thee human, To the last slender spar from the wreck of the woman, 1420 Hast thou not found one shore where those tired drooping feet Could reach firm mother-earth, one full heart on whose beat The soothed head in silence reposing could hear The chimes of far childhood throb back on the ear? Ah, there's many ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... and the sound of an English voice. As to the fact that it is possible that the lad might catch fever, or be killed in an affray with natives, that must, of course, be faced; but as a sailor he runs the risk of shipwreck, or of being washed overboard, or killed by a falling spar. Everything considered, I think the idea of his going with you is a good one. I don't suppose that many guardians would be of the same opinion, but I have been so many years knocking about in one part of the world or another, that I don't look at things in the same light as men who ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty

... but I suppose little Pthah has touched it again, for it is very small. But, you see, here is the pyramid, built of great square stones of fluor spar, straight up; and here are the three little pinnacles of mischievous quartz, which have set themselves, at the same time, on the same foundation; only they lean like the tower of Pisa, and come out obliquely at the side: and here is one great spire of quartz which seems as if it ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... July with a hot and vaporous stillness. The whole air was full of blue haze, that softened the outlines of objects without hiding them. The sea lay like so much glass; every ship and boat was double; every line and rope and spar had its counterpart; and it seemed hard to say which was the more real, the under or ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... Ile in rime: And to my part did all the Muses win, With high-pitch Paeans to applaud him in: When cowardise had tyed vp euery tongue, And all stood silent, yet for him I sung; And when before by danger I was dar'd, I kick'd her from me, nor a iot I spar'd. Yet had not my cleere spirit in Fortunes scorne, Me aboue earth and her afflictions borne; 30 He next my God on whom I built my trust, Had left me troden lower then the dust: But let this passe; in the extreamest ill, Apollo's brood must be couragious ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton

... to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast, plumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head. True, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to spar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of thing is unpleasant enough. It touches one's sense of honour, particularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the Van Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if just previous ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... saint was preserved there for centuries. After the church fell into decay's early in the seventeenth century, the bell remained in the churchyard. The narrow-pointed spar of granite on which it rested still stands there. The bell, unfortunately, was wantonly removed, by Protestant strangers about thirty years ago, to the great indignation of the inhabitants of the glen, Protestant as well as Catholic; it has never ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett

... as a mack'rel gull on a spar-buoy, "what's the outlook for to-morrer? The Gov'ment sharp says there's a big storm on the way up from Florida. Is he right, or only an 'also ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln

... are finished the pieces of glass must be immersed one by one in a square leaden box or receiver, where they are to be submitted to the action of Hydroflouric Acid Gas, made by acting on Powdered Flour-Spar by Concentrated Sulphuric Acid. When the glasses are sufficiently corroded, they are to be taken out, and the wax is to be removed by first dipping them in warm and then in hot water, or by washing with turpentine or benzine. Various colors may be applied to the corroded parts of the glass, ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus

... midsummer, and the men walked briskly through the crisp stubble. A little later Beulah came down to the corral with her milk-pails, and the cows, comfortably chewing where they rested on their warm spots of earth, rose slowly and with evident great reluctance at her approach. A spar of light blue smoke ascended in a perpendicular column from the kitchen chimney; motherly hens led their broods forth to forage; pigs grunted with rising enthusiasm from near-by pens, and calves voiced insistent demands from their quarters. The Harris farm, like fifty thousand ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead

... attempt it. Seeing a plank, reaching, as he supposed, to the shore, he ventured upon it, only to find out that he had laboured under a mistake. He was immediately projected into the sea, and carried with the tide into the cavern; but succeeding in clasping a jagged spar of elevated rock, he gained by its aid a place of temporary safety. It is impossible to tell how many were killed by being thrown against these rocks by the relentless waves, but that numbers ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope

... fillie sic a shavie, She's a' bedevil'd with the spavie. My fur ahin's[11] a wordy beast, As e'er in tug or tow was trac'd. The fourth's a Highland Donald hastie, A d—n'd red wud Kilburnie blastie! Forbye a cowt o' cowt's the wale, As ever ran afore a tail. If he be spar'd to be a beast, He'll draw me fifteen pun' at least.— Wheel carriages I ha'e but few, Three carts, an' twa are feckly new; Ae auld wheelbarrow, mair for token, Ae leg an' baith the trams are broken; I made a poker o' the spin'le, An' my ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... He came down out of the tangle of ropes under the stays of the smashed bowsprit, some small rope caught his heel as he let go, and he hung for a moment head downward, and then fell and struck a block or spar floating in the water. We pulled towards him, ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells

... were torn from their hands. Short cries, short sentences followed. Here and there Mr. Clarkson caught an intelligible word: "Revolvers taken at gate"; "Expected Johnson would be shot if victorious"; "Opening spar almost academic in its calmness"; "Old wound on Jeffries's right eye opened"; "Both cheeks gashed to the bone"; "Jack handed out some wicked lefts"; "Terrible gruelling"; "Both shutters out of working order"; "Defeat certain ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson

... call of "Time!" the principals would rise from their seconds' knees, advance briskly to the scratch across the center of the ring, and spar away sharply for a little time, until one got in a blow that sent the other to the ground, where he would lie until his second picked him up, carried him back, washed his face off, and gave him a drink. He then rested until the next call ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... Deely! make yo' peace, honey! kaze I gwine right back ter dat baby ef de Lord spar' me. I gwine back, ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris

... career as a successful mineralogist. As an unsuccessful one I persevered for some months, and eventually had a collection of eighteen units. They were put out on the bed every evening in order of size, and ranged from a large lump of Iceland spar down to a small dead periwinkle. In those days I could have told you what granite was made of. In those days I had over my bed a map of the geological strata of the district—in different colours like a chocolate macaroon. And in those days I knew ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne

... John is still, as he says, "in fust-rate fettle." I saw him spar, not long since, at a private exhibition, and do himself great credit in a set-to with Henry Finnegass, Esq., a professional gentleman of celebrity. I am pleased to say that he has been promoted to an upper clerkship, and, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... more weapons. Gold work there was also, and in one corner lay the dried-up body of a great wolf hound, coiled as in sleep where it had been chained. Another had been tied by the passage doorway, where I had stepped on it; and below a spar that stood across a corner lay a tumbled heap of feathers that had been ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler

... Saucie! Companion! tis the Guise, but yet those termes might have beene spar'd of the guiserd. Companion! He's jealous, by this light. Are you blind of that side, Duke? Ile to her againe for that. Forth, princely mistresse, 125 for the honour of courtship. ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman

... this haunted spot, where, with the ebbing tide, twenty-three wrecks, one after the other, thrust forth a rugged rib or a jagged spar to remind the passer-by ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy

... deftly to his knees, and crawling under the path of the boom, whipped hold of a rope, secured one end to the bulwarks, and then flinging the other like a lasso, caught it round the boom as it swept over his head, and at the next jerk, the spar was that way trapped, and all was safe. The schooner was run into the wind, and while the hands were clearing away the stern boat, Queequeg, stripped to the waist, darted from the side with a long living arc of a leap. For three .. minutes or ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... them is French and one English, but the crews are all mixed. They carry strong crews all of them, and a longish gun in their sterns, so that in case they are chased they may have a chance of knocking away a spar out of anything after them. They would not fight if a cutter came up alongside them—that might make a hanging matter of it, while if none of the revenue chaps are killed it is only a case of long imprisonment, though the English ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty

... lay at my feet? A woman, lashed to a spar, and apparently dead. When I picked her up, though, she opened her eyes and shut them again. Enough! this was no time to think of peculiar difficulties. I lugged her to the warm room in the light-house where I sat and lived. I put her before the fire; I heated some brandy ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor

... foremast alone remained, and of this even the head was gone, a circumstance of which Captain Truck complained more than of any other, as, to use his own expressions, "it destroyed the symmetry of the spar, which had proved itself to be a good stick." What, however, was of more real importance, it rendered it difficult, if not impossible, to get up a spare topmast forward. As both the main and mizzen-mast ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... which is said to be a fine specimen of artistic beauty and elegant workmanship, bears the following device:—One side of the medal represents a group on a raft. One of the men is seated on a spar, waving a handkerchief, as a signal to a small boat seen in the distance; another is supporting a sailor who appears in a drowning state. There is also a female holding a child in her arms, the sea having a stormy appearance. The group ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock

... helped Paul to undress and helped him to bed in the kindest manner possible, and then sat down by the bedside and chuckled very much, while Mr. Feeder leaning over the bottom of the bedstead set all the little bristles on his head, bolt upright with his bony hands, and then made believe to spar at Paul, with great science, on account of his being all right again, which was so funny and kind, too, in Mr. Feeder, that Paul, not being able to make up his mind whether to laugh or cry, did ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... ses Alf; "but there was four of them saved, so why not five? Mightn't 'e have floated away on a spar or something and been picked up? Can't you dream it three nights running, and tell 'er that you feel certain sure ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs

... beat, but somehow I feel cocky instead. I laugh and say, "Well, I am bound to break something down" - and suddenly see. "Oho, there's the place; get weight on there, and the belt won't slip." With much labour, on go the belts again. "Now then, a spar thro' there and six men's weight on; mind you're not carried away." - "Ay, ay, sir." But evidently no one believes in the plan. "Hurrah, round she goes - stick to your spar. All right, shut off steam." And ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson

... no answer, and though the flood of light that dyed the water blood-red struck out every rope and spar distinct and clear, his straining eyes could see no living soul aboard. As they came nearer, they could distinguish the ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... unsafe. He maintained his station on the mizen top-mast that lay among the wreck to leeward; the surf which was rushing round the bow and stern continually overwhelming him. I was myself close to him on the same spar, and in this situation we saw many of our shipmates meet an untimely end, being either dashed against the rocks or swept over by the breakers. The large cutter, full of officers and men, now cleared a passage through the mass of wreck, and being furnished ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 403, December 5, 1829 • Various

... Porto Santo some years ago a piece of wood long as a spar but thicker. Pedro Correo, who is my brother-in-law, saw it. It was graved all over, cut by something duller than our knives with beasts and leaves and a figure that Pedro thought was meant for an idol. He and another saw it and agree in their description. ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston

... opinions, and submit to the inconsistency of professing an equal belief in two conflicting religions?" "Do you see," replied the subtle chief, laying his hand on the arm of the other, and directing his attention to a canoe, with a large spar as an outrigger lashed alongside, in which a fisherman was just pushing off upon the lake, "do you see the style of these boats, in which our fishermen always put to sea, and that that spar is almost equivalent to a second canoe, which keeps the first from upsetting? It is precisely so with ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... maximus hres Corpore, progressus cm pubertatis ad annos Esset, res gessit multas iuueniliter audax, Asciscens comites quo spar sibi iunxerat tas, Nil tamen iniust commisit, nil tamen vnquam Extra virtutis normam, sapientibus ...
— Chronicles (3 of 6): Historie of England (1 of 9) - Henrie IV • Raphael Holinshed

... Duncan looked out and saw below them the deck of a smack, and the crew looking upwards at them as though they were a horserace. "Row!" said Willie Weeks. Once, too, at the bottom of a slope down which they had bumped dizzily, Duncan again looked out, and saw the spar of a mainmast tossing just over the edge of a grey roller. "Row," said Weeks, and a moment later, "Ship your oar!" and a rope caught ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason

... cooking aboard submarine torpedo-boats, and that is why Lieutenant Ross ran his little submarine up alongside the flag-ship at noon, and made fast to the boat-boom—the horizontal spar extending from warships, to which the boats ride when in the water. And, as familiarity breeds contempt, after the first, tentative, trial, he had been content to let her hang by one of the small, fixed painters depending from the boom; for his boat was small, and the ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson

... way— A warrior scenting conflict from afar And fearing not defeat nor battle-scar Nor all the might of wind and dashing spray; Her foaming path to triumph none may stay For in the East, there shines her morning star; She feels her strength in every shining spar As one who grasps his sword and waits ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed

... transparent, and it's temperature appeas to be quite as cold as that of our best springs. we meet with a beautifull little bird in this neighbourhood about the size and somewhat the shape of the large spar-row. it is reather longer in proportion to it's bulk than the sparrow. it measures 7 inches from the extremity of the beek to that of the tail, the latter occupying 21/2 inches. the beak is reather ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... glass with anxious ken: The schooner's top she spied from far, And there she counted seven men That clung to mast and spar. ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... was great with child, At length my life he spar'd: But bade me instant quit the realm, One ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown

... forth on our little traversee, our landmark an odd-shaped needle of spar on the further side. My faith! it was simple. The paveurs of Nature had left the road a trifle rough, that was all. Suddenly we came upon a wide fissure stretched obliquely like the mouth of a sole. Going glibly, ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... fierce besiegers' eager host Beholds the fainting garrison retire, And rushes joyful to the naked wall, Destruction flashes from th' insidious mine, And sweeps th' exulting conqueror away. Perhaps, in vain the sultan's anger spar'd me, To find a meaner fate from ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... set fire that evening to the "Charon" frigate, making a sight of marvellous grandeur, for the ship became one mass of fire from the water's edge to her spintle-heads, all her ports belching flame and each spar and every rope ablaze at the same moment. The morning of the 11th found fifty-two pieces of artillery mounted and hurling a storm of projectiles into the British lines; and that evening, a second parallel was opened, bringing the guns of the besiegers less than three hundred ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford

... suite of rooms, 'hung with black, and lighted with a curious simplicity and grandeur.' Here, again, the coffin had to be lifted, and 'it was most striking to see the absolute silence with which the men moved the monstrous weight at a sign from the captain's hand.' The only sound was when a spar snapped in the hands of a 'giant of a fellow, who was lifting with it. There was a respectful delicacy in every motion of these men which combined beautifully with their immense, quiet, controlled strength, and impressed me very much. After ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... "Southern Cross" with not a spar carried away or sail lost, perfectly sound, and in a fit state to be off again at once. She left England on the same day that we did, and arrived just a fortnight after us, and this is attributable to her having kept in low latitudes, not going higher than ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... any more than I do. But the impossible was accomplished, and somehow he was clinging at last like a limpet to the very end of the gaff, his legs already dangling over the fatal edge, and with nothing to keep him from the clutch of death beyond it but his grip of the floating spar. To this he must cling until the mocking boat should again come taut on the line and possibly run within his reach. The next second out of the darkness what seemed to the man in the sail a mountain ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... lies," put in Delphy consolingly, "an' I 'low dat dar's mo' in de manner uv lyin' den in de lie. Some lies is er long ways sweeter ter de tas' den Gospel trufe. Abraham, he lied, en it ain't discountenance him wid de Lord. Marse Tom, he lied when he wuz young, en it spar'd 'im er whoppin'. Hit's er plum fool ez won't spar' dere own hinder parts on er 'count uv ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... I how May then minted treasuries Of crowfoot gold; and molded out of light The sorrel's cups, whose elfin chalices Of limpid spar were streaked with rosy white. Nor all the stars of twinkling spiderwort, And mandrake moons with which her ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein

... broadside after broadside, double-shotted with round and grape; and without exaggeration, the echo of these guns startled the world. "In less than thirty minutes from the time we got alongside of the enemy," reported Hull, "she was left without a spar standing, and the hull cut to pieces in such a manner as to make it difficult to keep ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... with the discomfort of not knowing why, they will create an explanation or find some answer, any answer, and then ever after, assert its rightness like a shipwrecked person clings to a floating spar in a storm. This is how I explain the genesis of many contemporary ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon

... inscrib'd with woe. Ah; Who hath reft (quoth he) my dearest pledge? Last came, and last did go, The Pilot of the Galilean lake, Two massy Keyes he bore of metals twain, (The Golden opes, the Iron shuts amain) He shook his Miter'd locks, and stern bespake, How well could I have spar'd for thee, young swain, Anow of such as for their bellies sake, Creep and intrude, and climb into the fold? Of other care they little reck'ning make, Then how to scramble at the shearers feast, And shove away the worthy bidden guest. Blind mouthes! that scarce themselves know how to hold A Sheep-hook, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... great was the fury of the tempest that in an instant the well-worn sail was torn into ribbons, and great pieces of it were blown away, like little white clouds played upon by the lightning. Worse than this, two of the men on the topsail-yard were wrenched from their hold on the spar, and hurled into the darkness beneath them, one falling into foaming waters, and the other striking senseless ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic

... to the sailor, that, in case of extremity, no wreck yet known to ocean could be so hopeless as this. Solid iron from keelson to turret-top, clinging to anything for safety, if the Monitor should go down, would only insure a share in her fate. No mast, no spar, no floating thing, to meet the outstretched hand in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... is the very barn-yard, Where muster daily the prime cocks o' the game, Ruffle their pinions, crow till they are hoarse, And spar about a barleycorn. Here too chickens, The callow, unfledged brood of forward folly, Learn first to rear the crest, and aim the spur, And tune their note like ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... these influences better than others, because neither the veinstone nor the metal is easily altered, and such veins therefore form better guides for the study of the origin of mineral lodes than fissures filled with calc spar and ores of the baser metals, all readily dissolved and re-formed by hydro-thermal agencies. Our mineralogical museums are filled with beautiful specimens of crystals of quartz, fluor spar, and various ores deposited one on the other; and the ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... between its own loop and the first one formed. After a little practice you can tie this knot almost instantly and by merely throwing a couple of turns around a post, two half-hitches may be formed instantly. This knot will hold forever without loosening, and even on a smooth, round stick or spar it will stand an enormous strain without slipping. A more secure knot for this same purpose is the "Clove Hitch" (Fig. 36), sometimes known as the "Builders' Hitch." To make this, pass the end of rope around the spar or timber, then over itself; ...
— Knots, Splices and Rope Work • A. Hyatt Verrill

... any great change in the order of the rest, was more than the Printers importunity, and that, of my own avocations (and perhaps also considerabler solicitations) would permit. But though some few preambles of the particular Experiments might have (perchance) been spar'd, or shorten'd, if I had had all my Papers under my View at once; Yet in the most of those Introductory passages, the Reader will (I hope) find hints, or Advertisements, as well as Transitions. If I sometimes seem to insist ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle

... among we, waterside or seafaring, and you'll find a many have never studied it, for the purpose. Many that would make swimmers, with a bit of practice, will hold off, for the reason I tell you. Overboard in mid-ocean, and none to help, and not a spar, would you soonest drown, end on, or have to fight for it, like ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... stood open: I went in when she addressed me. It was a large, stately apartment, with purple chairs and curtains, a Turkey carpet, walnut-panelled walls, one vast window rich in slanted glass, and a lofty ceiling, nobly moulded. Mrs. Fairfax was dusting some vases of fine purple spar, ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... Ba, atomic weight 137.37 [O16]), one of the metallic chemical elements included in the group of the alkaline earths. It takes its name from the Greek [Greek: barus] (heavy) on account of its presence in barytes or heavy spar which was first investigated in 1602 by V. Casciorolus, a shoemaker of Bologna, who found that after ignition with combustible substances it became phosphorescent, and on this account it was frequently ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... discovery was both affecting and suggestive, I had no leisure to examine further. What I saw was the blackened embers of fire of wreck. By all the signs, it must have blazed to a good height and burned for days; from the scantling of a spar that lay upon the margin only half consumed, it must have been the work of more than one; and I received at once the image of a forlorn troop of castaways, houseless in that lost corner of the earth, and feeding there their fire of signal. The next moment a hail reached me from the boat; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the topmast snapped like a carrot, a moment later. That was the worst dive we made. There is no doubt that getting rid of the leverage of the bowsprit, right up in her eyes, eased her a good bit; and as the topmast was a pretty heavy spar, too, that also helped." ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty

... had never had a more adroit counsel. Like a good lawyer, Douglas seemed to feel himself in duty bound to spar for every technical advantage, and to construe the law, wherever possible, in favor of his client. At the same time he did not forget that the House was the jury in this case, and capable of human emotions upon which ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... gunboats, following the example of the Pinola and Itasca, had their lower masts removed and moored to the shore. Of the four that kept them in three had their masts wounded in the fight, proving the advantage of this precaution. Thus prepared, and stripped of every spare spar, rope, and boat, in the lightest fighting trim, the ships stood ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan

... spar-enchased bowers, Bending on their twisted stems, Glow the myriad ocean-flowers, Fadeless—rich as orient gems. Hung with seaweed's tasselled fringes, Dyed with all the rainbow's tinges, Rise the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various

... granitic sand, full of brilliant leaflets of mica. Some deep creeks came from the eastward. To the west and north-west nothing was to be seen but ridges; but high imposing ranges rise to the north and north-east. At one spot, large masses of calcareous spar were scattered over the ground; they were probably derived from a ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt

... Contradiction to himself, and writes and prints, like a Tom Brown or Swift, a most bantering and drolling Letter, under the sneering Title of a Letter of Thanks to the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of London, for his late Letter, &c. whom, one would think, he should not only have spar'd, but have applauded for his profound Gravity, and carrying on the Cause of Religion in a very remarkable manner, with the most consummate Solemnity. But so strong was the Temptation, so naturally productive ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins

... pleased. He liked above all things to see a woman stand up to him defiantly; indeed, if they were worth "setting to with," he always tried to get them to spar as soon as possible, to find out if they had any idea of hitting straight. He did not betray his satisfaction, though, as he answered quite calmly, "Pardon me, I could not be so impertinent as to attempt a 'delusion' on so short an acquaintance. ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... and a spar of firewood, and stood by while Rube handed out to him the dripping combs ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton

... the hills spread with stones of the colour of gold and silver. At first he had conjectured they were marquesite. He tested them and ascertained they were el madre del oro. Where that is, the presence of gold below was supposed to be indicated. He remarked also the outside of many mines of white spar, from which he drew as flattering ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... aught I know, may be very gay. I don't know a living soul in it. We have not a single acquaintance in the place, and we glory in the fact. There is something rather sublime in thus floating on a single spar in the wide sea of a populous, busy, fuming, fussy world like this. At any rate it is consonant to both our tastes. You may suppose, however, that I find it rather difficult to amuse my friends out of the incidents of so isolated an existence. Our daily career is very regular and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... Missisque and her cargo were safe, and not a single one of the precious lives of her crew had been sacrificed; but the skipper was as dissatisfied as the skipper of a lake sloop could be; more so, probably, than if the vessel had gone to the bottom, and left him clinging for life to a lone spar on the angry waters, for men are often more reasonable under ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic

... arter poor old me when 'e 'ad money, an' when 'e lost everything, didn't 'e look arter me still? An' now 'e 's your shuvver, don' 'e keep a roof over me poor old 'ead like a son—don't 'e give me the run o' jour garridge an' let me watch 'im spar wi' you an' your gentlemen friends? Ain't 'e the best an' truest-'earted man as ever drawed breath? Ah, a king o' men is Joe, in the ring an' out, sir—only never let 'im 'ear me say so—'e 'd be that proud, Lord! there'd be no livin' wi' 'im—sh, ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol

... gloaming. There were neither windows nor candles, and he could not make out where the twilight came from, if not through the walls and roof. These were rough arches made of a transparent rock, incrusted with sheepsilver and rock spar, and other bright stones. But though it was rock, the air was quite warm, as it always is in Elfland. So he went through this passage till at last he came to two wide and high folding-doors which stood ajar. And ...
— English Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)

... conning the ship. Raveneau and Velsers, than whom no better seamen ever held a spoke, by Morgan's orders were stationed at the wheel to steer the frigate. Rock and Teach distributed the best of the men among the guns of the spar-deck battery on the port side. As was usual, the guns were already charged. There were no loggerheads available, no matches with which to fire them, but Morgan instructed those who seemed to have some skill in gunnery, whom he placed in temporary charge of the cannon, ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... the successful attack by the Confederate "fish-torpedo boat" David, on the Union ironclad Housatonic in Charleston harbor on February 17, 1864; and the next was the sinking of the Confederate ironclad Albemarle by a spar torpedo carried on a little steam-launch commanded by Lieutenant W. B. Cushing, U. S. N., on October ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske

... taken out for methods to obtain back the sulphuric acid used in making soda. Admitting that these fifteen experiments were not perfectly successful, there can be no doubt it would ere long have been accomplished. But then, in gypsum, (sulphate of lime), and in heavy-spar, (sulphate of barytes), we possess mountains of sulphuric acid; in galena, (sulphate of lead), and in iron pyrites, we have no less abundance of sulphur. The problem is, how to separate the sulphuric acid, or the sulphur, from these native stores. Hundreds of thousands of pounds weight ...
— Familiar Letters of Chemistry • Justus Liebig

... given, we will only add, that some of the mythologists inform us, that when Mercury had lulled Argus to sleep, a youth named Hierax awoke him; on which Mercury killed Argus with a stone, and turned Hierax into a spar-hawk. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... was clearing rapidly, but he pretended to sway on his feet. Lina and her father were not in sight. If only he could spar for a little time. ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various

... lad, no saying at all. All I know is that your father, the captain, was washed ashore at the same time as I was. As you have heard me say, I owed my life to him. I was pretty nigh gone when I caught sight of him, holding on to a spar. Spent as I was, I managed to give a shout loud enough to catch his ear. He looked round. I waved my hand and shouted, 'Goodbye, Captain!' Then I sank lower and lower, and felt that it was all over, when, half in a dream, I heard your father's voice shout, 'Hold on, Ben!' ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty

... her own movements, scorning the control of the elements, and keeping straight on to her destination in storm and calm alike. But in some respects the weak is strong. The ship is equal to most of the chances of a sea-experience. If the spar break, it can be replaced. If the storm rend the sails to ribbons, there are skilful hands which can find or make new ones. But the steamer has inexorable limitations. Break her machinery, and, if there be no friendly dock open to receive her, she is reduced at ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... though the hero may have feet of clay and body of beast. Such were the old Vikings of the North, who spent their lives in elemental warfare, and rode out to meet death in tempest, lashed to the spar of their craft. And such, too, were the New World Vikings of the Pacific, who coasted the seas of two continents in cockle-shell ships,—planks lashed with deer thongs, calked with moss,—rapacious in their deep-sea plunderings as beasts of prey, ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut

... Smite every rapturous wire With golden delirium, rebellion and silvery clamor, Crying—"Awake! awake! Too long hast thou slumbered! too far from the regions of glamour, With its mountains of magic, its fountains of Faery, the spar-sprung, Hast thou wandered away, O Heart! Come, oh, come and partake Of necromance banquets of beauty; and slake Thy thirst in the waters of art, That are drawn from the streams Of love ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein

... machine over, and you should have seen it. From top to bottom it was one mass of holes. One bullet passed through my combination and hit a can of tobacco. Another cut a main spar on one of my wings, and another hit my stabilizer, tearing it half in two. One other hit my gas tank and put a hole clear through it. Luckily my gas was low and it did not explode, but, ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... in several ways—by reflection, by transmission, but most commonly through what I have here, a prism of calcite, or Iceland spar, commonly called a Nicol prism. Light fully polarized consists of vibrations transverse to the direction of the ray, all in one plane. Ordinary light has transverse vibrations in all planes. Certain substances, due to their molecular structure, ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve

... life is strong in every heart, and when he found himself breathing the air again he threw out his arms wildly and grasped a spar. ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green

... ours!...[676] Observe my strength of mind and my supreme indifference to the Felician[677] one-twelfth legacy, and also, by heaven, my very gratifying connexion with Caesar—for this delights me as the one spar left me from the present shipwreck—Caesar, I say, who treats your and my Quintus, heavens! with what honour, respect, and favours! It is exactly as if I were the imperator. The choice was just lately offered him of ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... comfortable accommodation below. By these alterations and by the strong sheathing added to her bottom she was brought up to 242 tons burthen. It is a proof of the splendid seamanship of Captain Fitz-Roy and his officers that she returned without having carried away a spar, and that in only one of the heavy storms that she encountered was ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin

... Sea brake upon the poop and quarter, upon us, as it covered our ship from stern to stem, like a garment or a vast cloud. It filled her brimful for a while within, from the hatches up to the spar deck. . . ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... spar-loft the sail-loft had been set aside and fashioned most elegantly for refreshment. An immense table crossed it, behind which servants stood, and behind the servants the wall had been lined with shelves covered with cakes, ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... almost be termed a lake, being nearly 1000 links square. About these there were some lines of sandhills running about north-east and south-west; and in one of the flats between the sandhills I found several pieces of satin spar in lumps of the size of one's hand, partially buried in the ground, and all of them with the plane of cleavage nearly perpendicular with the surface to ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills

... there, had never had any right there. They must leave this place which was to Louis the fetich of his soul, the small compensation fate had made him for the trouble nature had cynically laid upon him. He had clung to it as a drowning man clings to a spar. To him it was the charter from which he could appeal to the world as the husband of Madelinette Lajeunesse. To him it was the name, the dignity, and the fortune he brought her. It was the one thing that saved him from a dire humiliation; it was the vantage-ground ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... night, we were overtaken by such a violent storm that the waves covered the vessel, in which were twenty-six persons, and we went to the bottom. During the voyage somebody said to me: "Let us recommend ourselves to God and to the Virgin Mary of Roc-Amadour. Let us put her name upon this spar and trust ourselves to the care of this good Lady." He who gave me this good counsel and myself fastened ourselves to the spar with a rope. The tempest carried us away, but in so fortunate a manner that the next day ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... was partly to punish him for his ill-treatment of Julia when living, and partly because that now she was dead he had neglected to purchase for her any gravestones. "And I promised," said he, "that if she was spar'd, I'd buy as nice a gravestun as I would if 'twas Sunshine." Three weeks from that time there stood by the mound in the little graveyard a plain, handsome monument, on which was ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes

... and I wish to have you know, I scorn to get a whore for any prince alive, and yet scorn will not help methinks: my Daughter might have been spar'd, ...
— A King, and No King • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... almost ranks with Kwan-tsz as an administrator, philosopher, economist, author, and statesman. Confucius has a good word for him too, though Yen-tsz's own opinion of Confucius' merits was by no means so high. The two men had to "spar" with each other behind their respective rulers like Bismarck and Gortschakoff did. Yen-tsz's interview with Shuh Hiang, when the pair discussed the vices of their respective dukes, is almost as amusing as a "patter" scene in the pantomime, a sort of by-play which ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker

... fagot-stick; Spar-gad a twisted stick picked at both ends to spar (Ger. sperren) or fasten down thatch. Near ...
— A Glossary of Provincial Words & Phrases in use in Somersetshire • Wadham Pigott Williams

... night w'en we was all sleeperin' in port, in a 'ouse on shore, the press-gang comes round an' nabs the whole of us. We fight like lions. I knock seven men down, one before the tother, 'cause of bein' very strong, an' had learn to spar a littil. ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne

... there were good bows i-bent, More than seven score, Hedge ne ditch spar-ed they none, That ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various



Words linked to "Spar" :   boxing, feldspar, debate, fit, cockfighting, sport, ship, struggle, equip, spar buoy, fence, fight, gaff, felspar, outfit, athletics, mineral, bowsprit, pugilism, jibboom, argue, calcite, heavy spar, sprit, contend, yard, fit out, Iceland spar



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