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Spar   Listen
verb
Spar  v. i.  (past & past part. sparred; pres. part. sparring)  
1.
To strike with the feet or spurs, as cocks do.
2.
To use the fists and arms scientifically in attack or defense; to contend or combat with the fists, as for exercise or amusement; to box. "Made believe to spar at Paul with great science."
3.
To contest in words; to wrangle. (Colloq.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Spar" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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

... destination. That they should have put him back in consequence of storms which he had weathered, gave him a consoling sense of British superiority. "These gentlemen," said he, "are not accustomed to a Gulf of Lyons gale: we have buffeted them for one-and-twenty months, and not carried away a spar." He, however, who had so often braved these gales, was now, though not mastered by them, vexatiously thwarted and impeded; and on February 27th he was compelled to anchor in Pula Bay in the Gulf of Cagliari. From the 21st of January ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey

... done with Sir John Hawkins. We shall hear of him again. He became the manager of Elizabeth's dockyards. He it was who turned out the ships that fought Philip's fleet in the Channel in such condition that not a hull leaked, not a spar was sprung, not a rope parted at an unseasonable moment, and this at a minimum of cost. He served himself in the squadron which he had equipped. He was one of the small group of admirals who met that Sunday afternoon in the cabin of the ark Raleigh and sent the fire-ships down to stir Medina ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude

... as you fancy. You and I, n'est-ce-pas? we have little time to concern ourselves about our neighbors' failings. Very well, other people are in the same box, better or worse. When a ship goes to pieces on those rocks out at sea, the poor devils who are pushing their way to land on a floating spar, don't bestow many glances on those who are battling with the waves beside them. Their eyes are fastened to the shore, and all their care is for their own safety. In life we are all afloat on a tumultuous sea; we are all struggling toward some ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... The largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Silenus (si le' nus). The foster-father of Bacchus. Sleipnir (slap' ner). The swift eight-legged horse of Odin. Sonmus (som' nus). The king of sleep. Sparta (spar' ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd

... purposes, but can be made efficient in four or six weeks, capable of carrying the armament or battery of a first-class frigate—say four ten-inch guns and twelve eight-inch guns. These alterations would consist of a removal of the deck-houses, spar or upper deck, forward and abaft the paddle-wheel boxes, fitting the after and forward bulwarks in sections, cutting port-holes, fitting hammock cloths or nettings, putting in extra beams and knees, and stanchions, moving the windlass below, building ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey

... Brown, chipper 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

... 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

... settled down upon a flat ledge of level rock, and rested, keel downwards, in a perfectly upright position, having apparently recovered herself whilst settling down. She was greatly damaged, both in hull and rigging; the spar-deck and forecastle being swept away, and her main deck blown up in midships, very possibly through the explosion of her boilers. Her bowsprit and mizzen-mast were gone, as was also her fore topmast; and the mainmast, with topmast and all attached, was leaning aft, and so far over the side that ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... 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 ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... force an engagement without delay, but the British fleet retired to Amherstburg because Barclay was waiting for a new and powerful ship, the Detroit, and he preferred to spar for time. The American vessels thereupon anchored off Erie and took on stores. They had fewer than three hundred men aboard, and it was bracing news for Perry to receive word that a hundred officers and men under ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine

... a barque with her main-yard carried away; there a stately ship with her mizzenmast and all attached still towing astern, and the crew busy cutting away at the rigging which held the shattered spar; here another fine ship, totally dismasted; and there, now far astern, more than one dark object lying low in the water, and but imperfectly seen through the flying spindrift, which George Leicester knew only too well were the hulls of ships which had capsized, and whose crews would be left to ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood

... quickly did she go. Her slim black body, her white, beautifully set sails—not a strake or an inch of canvas on her that he did not know and love. And more thought was given by him to the proper peaking of a spar and the exact setting of a leech than to the profits of the cargo. It was like having one's own country, and his cabin aboard was like his own castle—the little stateroom with the swinging-lamps, ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne

... it!" returned the woman, with a snort. "Well, whatever you air, you kin jest as eas'ly keep on along that thar road. I ain't got nothing on this place for you. Some of you broke into my smokehouse night befo' last an' stole all the spar' ribs I'd been savin'. ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... upon crystal stems, and catching the sunbeams with the brilliancy of diamonds. Taken at certain angles, they decompose light into iridescent colours, appearing now like emeralds, rubies, or topazes, and now like Labrador spar, blending all hues in a wondrous sheen. When the lake freezes for the first time, its surface is of course quite black, and so transparent that it is easy to see the fishes swimming in the deep beneath; but here and there, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... ten next morning, and looked around. We hadn't budged a peg! At first I could not understand it; then it occurred to me that the old thing must be aground. So I cut down some trees and rigged a spar on the starboard and another on the port side, and fooled away upward of three hours trying to spar her off. But it was no use. She was half a mile wide and fifteen or twenty miles long, and there was no telling just whereabouts she WAS aground. The men ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... got their hawser round it, and eight of them, one behind the other, hung on to it, when it suddenly snapped, seven fell backwards, and the forward one went overboard to be no more seen. Some house that night was desolate. Reeling downwards, the big mast and spar of the ungainly craft caught in a tree, giving her such a check that they were able to make her fast. It was a saddening incident. I asked Ito what he felt when we seemed in peril, and he replied, "I thought I'd been ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... king and court occupy an immeasurable place in the life and thought of the people; and even within the domain of government, to employ the figure of Lowell, if the crown is no longer the motive power of the ship of state, it is the spar on which the sail is bent, and as such it is not only a useful but an essential part of the vessel.[78] The entire governmental order of Great Britain hinges upon the parliamentary system, and nowhere ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... in the disaster. I was by her side when the steamer was struck. We had both concluded to go on deck to join you. With the first terrible lurch we were both thrown headlong into the water. I did my utmost to save her, but it was not to be. A floating spar struck her, and she ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey

... chosen a more romantic situation. The garden lies extended beneath, gay with flowers, and glittering with compartments of spar, which, though in no great purity of taste, has an enchanted effect for the first time. Two large marble basins, with jet-d'eaux seventy feet in height, divide the parterres; from the extremity of which rises a rude cliff, shaded with firs and ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... you, sair gruppin' to a spar Or whammled wi' some bleezin' star, Cryin' to ken whaur deil ye are, Hame, France, or Flanders— Whang sindry like a railway car ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... large hollow pyramid, the apex of which connected with a pipe, which in turn after divers wanderings led through a hole in the roof, offered an exit for the smoke. Needless to say, this offer was frequently ignored. Around this fireplace was a foot-railing constructed from the main spar of a crashed Handley-Page. The rest of the furniture fortunately was not homemade. Large easy-chairs and lounges, the gift of a friendly merchant of Nancy, often made progress from one end of the room to the other,—a feat requiring considerable skill in navigation. A piano ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece

... 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 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... 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

... but rather more difficult plan is to fasten the rectangular frame on first and then apply the fabric.) The same course is followed in dealing with the elevator, which is fixed, however, not to the rod, but to the 4-inch horizontal spar, HS1, just behind it, in such a manner as to have a slight hinge movement at the back. This operation presents no difficulty, and may be effected in a variety of ways. To set the elevator, use is made of the short vertical mast, ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams

... Under 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 Triton's palace ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various

... don't have their chronometers pop up in Shanghai a year later, I'm tellin' ye. There ain't nobody ever saw this here Devil's Admiral, sure enough, that lived to tell it, but ships don't always go down in deep water and never a boat got off or a life-preserver or a spar or a door found ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore

... say that I like to go to sea on a Friday, but I have gone to sea on a Friday, and nothing has happened; and twice before that we have been thirteen, because one of the hands didn't turn up at the last minute, and nothing ever happened either—nothing worse than the loss of a light spar or two, or a little canvas. Whenever I have been wrecked, we had sailed as cheerily as you please—no thirteens, no Fridays, no dead men in the hold. I believe ...
— Man Overboard! • F(rancis) Marion Crawford

... case; and under this conviction Arthur rolled himself in the blanket (cut from the spar of the ice-boat), and went into dreamland straight from his brushwood bed, Mr. Holt continuing to sit by the fire gazing into it as before; which sort of gazing, experienced people say, is very bad for the eyes. ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... the vessels caused a very agreeable excitement that day; but a greater was in store. In the afternoon, Tadcaster, Staines, and the principal officers of the ship, being at dinner in the captain's cabin, in came the officer of the watch, and reported a large spar ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... What follows is for no wife's eyes. O Camma, Rome has a glimpse of this conspiracy; Rome never yet hath spar'd ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... she dwelt, 'twould seem, Yet stream nor breeze could bar Her little boat, that to a nook, Dark with the pine-tree's spar, Each evening Ronald saw shoot up ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... yacht was so great that before the two dazed salts on board realized what had happened their master was far astern. They bustled to bring the Enchantress about and to come to his rescue in the dingy. Stunned by the blow of the—spar, he had gone down like a stone; so, in all probability, they would have been too late. When he came up the second time it was on the port bow of the Firefly, but completely out of reach. Giving the tiller to her friend, and stripping off superfluous apparel, ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant

... some intelligence. When the coastguardsman is going out to the wreck, it isn't necessary to wave your arms about like a windmill. You say he's swimming, and that's enough. And if a floating spar knocked him senseless before he got to the wreck, I don't believe he could take them both in his arms and swim ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge

... the sponges that wipe clean the slate of the beach. Each day a new record is made and each day it is wiped out: records from passing ships, an empty crate, broken spar or useless barrel grounded now and then by the tide in its flow as it moves up and down the sand at the will of the waters. Records, too, of many footprints,—the lagging steps of happy lovers; the dimpled feet of joyous children; the tread of tramp, coast-guard or fisherman—all ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith

... Even the Archdeacon has begun to tell the world how he 'took an interest' in me from the first and gave me my title. I met him again the other day at a rich woman's house, where we had only one little spar, and yesterday he wrote urging me to 'organize my great effort,' and have a public dinner in honour of its inauguration. I did not think God's work could be well done by people dining in herds and drinking bottles of champagne, but I showed no malice. In fact, I ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... bright chamber His form we have laid; With spar, pearl and amber The walls are arrayed— Though high rolls the billow He wakes not at morn, And sponge for his pillow From rocks we ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various

... the Marines who may not be distributed to other divisions for action are to compose a Division of Marines, to be under the immediate command of the Senior Officer of Marines on board. He will form his division on such part or parts of the spar or upper deck as the Captain ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN

... picture. It is at once dispiriting to find so intrepid a geographer and so acute a merchant befooled by the madness of gold, and pathetic to know that his hopes in this direction were absolutely unfounded. The white quartz of Guiana, the 'hard white spar' which Raleigh describes, confessedly contains gold, although, as far as is at present known, in quantities so small as not to reward working. Humboldt says that his examination of Guiana gold led him to believe that, 'like tin, it is sometimes ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... bricks one after another each laid so workmanlike in its place, and set with a knock of the trowel-handle, The piles of materials, the mortar on the mortar-boards, and the steady replenishing by the hod-men; Spar-makers in the spar-yard, the swarming row of well-grown apprentices, The swing of their axes on the square-hew'd log shaping it toward the shape of a mast, The brisk short crackle of the steel driven slantingly into the pine, The butter-color'd ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... was elegance, all splendour! The arches were hung with Tyrian-dyed curtains. The ornaments on the pale Parian mantelpiece were of red Bohemian glass. Everywhere were crimson couches and sofas. The housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax, pointed out to my notice some vases of fine purple spar, and on all sides were Turkey carpets and large mirrors. Elegance of taste and fastidious research of ornament could do no more; but what is luxury to the mind ill at ease? or can a restless conscience be stilled by red Bohemian glass ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang

... 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 ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... that slight spar within her arms, the mother drifted out upon the dark and unknown sea that rolls ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... small piece of shin. That was enough, however, to end my 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 ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne

... spar when erected perpendicularly to the deck. The top-masts are said to be an-end when swayed up to their usual stations and fidded. To strike a spar or plank an-end is to drive it in the direction of its length. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... the knight-heads out upon the bowsprit. The crew stood abaft the windlass and hauled the jib down, while we got out upon the weather side of the jib-boom, our feet on the foot ropes, holding on by the spar, the great jib flying off to leeward and slatting so as almost to throw us off of the boom. For some time we could do nothing but hold on, and the vessel diving into two huge seas, one after the other, plunged us twice into the ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... 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, and then brought ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling

... the blue ether. Brightly fell her golden beams on the tall, old forest trees, that pointed spar-like toward the starry heaven, and down, through their interlacing branches, upon gray, mossy rocks and uprooted trunks, over which wild vines wreathed in untrained exuberance; and dim, star-eyed flowers reared their slender heads among the rank undergrowth ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton

... the horizon now, and the Northumberland lay adrift in a river of silver. Every spar was distinct, every reef point on the great sails, and the decks lay like spaces of frost cut by ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... on the spar of rock beside her. His hand slipped down her arm till it covered hers. With the contact there came to him a flood of courage. He took her in his arms and kissed her ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine

... else that would. Had she been real, I felt sure that others aboard us would have been bound to have seen her long before I had—I got a bit muddled there, with trying to think it out; and then, abruptly, the reality of the other ship, came back to me—every rope and sail and spar, you know. And I remembered how she had lifted to the heave of the sea, and how the sails had flapped in the light breeze. And the string of flags! She had been signalling. At that last, I found it just as impossible to believe that she had not ...
— The Ghost Pirates • William Hope Hodgson

... He loved the bustle of business, but into the business he butted a lot of talk—helpful, good-natured, kindly, paternal talk, and often there was a suspicion that he talked for the same reason that prizefighters spar for time. "Here, Robbins, get off this telegram, and remember that if the rolling stone gathers no moss, it at least acquires ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard

... The vessel had to pass between two rocks, so near that a biscuit could have been thrown from the deck on either. An old quarter-master was at the wheel; the captain stood by to con and to direct his steering. At one fearful crisis, every blast threatened to shiver a sail, or to carry away a spar, and a single false movement of the helmsman, or the slightest want of steadiness or of obedience on the part of any man on duty, would have been fatal to the life ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly

... mercury. The lower one was colored like the contents of a wash-tub after a liberal use of indigo; and in the centre was a horizontal stroke of red, surmounted by a perpendicular dash of white, intersected by an oblique line of black—all of which represented a red boat, with a white sail and black spar, making an endless voyage across the lake of indigo. The black crosses in the sky were birds. The black lines on the left were bulrushes. And among these bulrushes a certain gloomy little object was either a Hebrew prophet ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.

... sedative and idle resort. The conceited Yankee has to learn that it is not he alone who can be accused of the thrift of craft. There is at the Warm Springs a thriving mill for crushing and pulverizing barites, known vulgarly as heavy-spar. It is the weight of this heaviest of minerals, and not its lovely crystals, that gives it value. The rock is crushed, washed, sorted out by hand, to remove the foreign substances, then ground and subjected ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... be so, and you my noble Prince, With other Princes that may best be spar'd, Shall waite vpon your ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... to and fro so violently, that three of the men who sprang to obey the order were hurled by it into the lee scuppers. Gascoyne darted towards the broken spar and held it fast, while Manton quickly severed the ropes that fastened it to the sail and to the deck, then the former hurled it over the side with as much ease as if it had ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne

... so that the enemy's marksmen may never know exactly what part of the object in sight is to be aimed at. The torpedo will be carried on a mast, which at the right moment can be lowered to form a projecting spar like a bowsprit; and the explosion that will take place on its impact with the enemy's hull will be enough to blow a fatal breach in any ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland

... of the Guerriere went by the board, and her mainyard in the slings, and the hull, rigging, and sails were completely torn to pieces. The fire was kept up for fifteen minutes longer, when the main and foremast went, taking with them every spar except the bowsprit, and leaving the Guerriere a complete wreck. On seeing this Hull ordered the firing to cease, having brought his enemy in thirty minutes after he was fairly alongside to such a condition, that a few more broadsides ...
— Thrilling Stories Of The Ocean • Marmaduke Park

... too, was often terribly unhappy, and their helplessness in the face of a common danger gave them a sort of equality. But she was good to him, and her faithfulness was the one sure thing in his convulsed and rocking world. He clung to her as a drowning man clings to a floating spar, and his father's, "I wish to God, Christine, you'd get out and leave us alone," or, "I won't have you in my house. You're poisoning my son's mind against me," reiterated regularly at the climax of one of the hideous rows ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... them!—an' made me feel that in the end I was a man agin. She went t' pieces when she struck," he added, as if in afterthought; "but I'm something of a hand at swimmin', an' I got ashore on a bit o' spar. An' then I come down the coast 'til I found you lyin' here in the lee o' Saul's Island." After a pause, he said hoarsely, to Skipper Billy: "They had the smallpox at Tops'l Cove, says you? They got it yet at Smith's Arm? At Harbour Rim an' Highwater Cove they been dyin'? ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan

... a supply of strips of the same wood, they let themselves down through a narrow aperture; creeping still farther down, they came into what seemed a large subterranean hall, arched as it were with high cupolas of crystal, and divided into long aisles by columns of glittering spar, in some parts spread into wide horizontal chambers, in others terminated by the dark mouths of deep and steep abysses receding into ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... the captain more completely, he sat him down to engage Mr. and Mrs. Manners. Comyn was soon hot in an argument with John Paul concerning the seagoing qualities of a certain frigate, every rope and spar of which they seemed to know. And so I stole a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... she reached the proper position. General Beauregard, however, had positively forbidden that she should be used as a submarine any longer on account of her disastrous behavior, and on this occasion she was provided with a long spar sticking out from her nose, on the end of which was one hundred pounds of powder in a copper cylinder provided with four extremely sensitive tubes of lead containing a highly explosive mixture, which would ignite upon contact with a ship's side or ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... suddenly into the boxer's position of defence, assuming at the same time a fierceness of look which we had never before seen in any of them. The gentleman to whom he addressed himself, thinking that Ookooma wished to spar, prepared to indulge him; but Madera's quick eye saw what was going on, and by a word or two made him instantly resume his wonted sedateness. We tried in vain to make Madera explain what were the magical words which he had used to Ookooma. ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall

... find rest at the last, and let my friends make no mourning over it, Guy. 'Tis a beautiful clean grave, no mould nor crawling worms there. But if it be that the sea will have none of me, and the metalled war-dogs drive me, and spar-shattered and hull-battered I make a run of it to harbor in my old age, I shall come in full confidence of a mooring under your roof, Guy. And who knows that I won't be worth ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly

... task. One moment the great seas lifted him high into the air, and the next down he came again till the massive spar crashed on to the deck of the San Antonio with such a shock that he nearly flew from it like a stone from a sling. Yet he hung on, and, biding his chance, seized a broken stay-rope that dangled from the end ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard

... the soil where they were found, and whose presence it was hard to explain. Schists and different productions of limestone were found in abundance, as was also a sort of strange, transparent, colorless crystal, which has a refraction peculiar to Iceland spar. ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... mistress of 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 once to a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... heads, cutting both topsail-sheets, and scooping a bit of wood as big as a thirty-two pound shot, out of the foremast. I went up on one side, myself, to knot one of these sheets, and, while aloft, discovered the injury that had been done to the spar. Soon after, the tack of the mainsail caught fire, from a wad of one of the Englishmen; for, by this time, we were close at it. I think, indeed, that the nearness of the enemy alone prevented our decks from being entirely swept. The grape and canister were ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper

... their brethren car'd To keep them just and pure, Perchance their pitying God had spar'd, The pains they now endure. What if to fault of ours those pains be due, To ill example shown, or ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier

... you 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 you get something you cling to it and push your way like ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... 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

... spring, as soon as the frost and snow were gone, Quinbey employed laborers to flatten the ground near his house to the extent of a hundred feet by ten; then, with stakes, he laid out the plan of a ship's deck. Next he contracted with spar makers, ship carpenters, and ship chandlers for material and labor; and before June three masts were erected, each with topmast, top-gallant, and royal mast, the standing rigging of which was set up to strong posts driven ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson

... Poet's, or degrees in Wit, Nor men, nor Gods, nor niblick-polls admit. At festivals, as musick out of tune, Ointment, or honey rank, disgust us soon, Because they're not essential to the guest, And might be spar'd, Unless the very best; Thus Poetry, so exquisite of kind, Of Pleasure born, to charm the soul design'd, If it fall short but little of the first, Is counted last, and rank'd among the worst. The Man, unapt for sports of fields and plains, From implements ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace

... was heavy and sweet, the smoke from a brazier arising in a thin, motionless blue spar which, when it had climbed up through the air for a distance of about four feet, broke into a sort of turquoise fan and this drifted on up to the ceiling in heavy wisps. The incense pot was very old, of black lacquer and brass, greened ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... they could find; and, stripping off its branches, placed it on a wain, and dragged it to the village with the help of an immense team of oxen, numbering as many as forty yoke. Each ox had a garland of flowers fastened to the tip of its horns; and the tall spar itself was twined round with ropes of daffodils, blue-bells, cowslips, primroses, and other early flowers, while its summit was surmounted with a floral crown, and festooned with garlands, various-coloured ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... of pines; its wonderful moss, its fragrant and dewy ferns, its graceful sumacs, just putting on their scarlet-lipped leaves, the morning stillness broken only by the faint unearthly cry of the melancholy loon, the spar-dyked cliffs of limestone, and the fantastic couch, with its too lovely occupant, never faded from his memory and remained to the last as realities which indeed they have become likewise to me, through the intensity with which they ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison

... pete out o' us. She was close to the water and could have fought us so much better than we could her. We didn't want to fight 'cause we knowed enough to jest natu'ally be skeered. She was a one decker man o' war. We was a two decker with six guns on berth deck, an' five guns on spar deck. I never saw her after that, but I heard she was contacted by the Kearsage which ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various

... out something about the boat. The seamen were none too friendly; but by patching up his almost forgotten French and by signs, he learned something. His sudden failure of strength in the water had been due to a blow from a floating spar, as a bruise on his forehead testified; "the old man," whom Jim supposed to be the captain, was a hard master; Monsieur Chatelard was owner, or at least temporary proprietor, of the yacht; and the present voyage was an unlucky one by all the signs and omens ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger

... be, you might have spar'd 'em now, Since those Florella give me were sufficient: —And yet a little longer, fixing thus Thou'dst seen me turn to Earth, without thy aid. Florella!—Florella!—is thy Soul fled so far It cannot answer me, and call me on? ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn

... launches from some of the cruisers were busy amid the wreckage where here, on a spar, some stunned form clung like a limpet, and there, a-bob in the curling seas, a swimmer in his life-suit ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers

... port before Christmas Day, even if he had to send it by post-chaise. I took the letter to the post myself, for the old man would trust nobody but me, and indeed would have preferred taking it himself; but in winter he was always lame from the effects of a bruise he had received from a falling spar in the ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald

... hurt me," he answered. "I'm all rawhide and whalebone, and it isn't in you to hurt me. Confound you, I'll get you at something or other yet. Want to spar with bare knuckles?" ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish

... intelligence, reconcile yourself thus to halt between two 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

... 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! ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol

... done, and done quickly. If the child fell she was dead or maimed to a certainty. She had crawled in some unheard-of way down from the top, and must go back the way she had come; and since I had no time to help her from above, I must go up to her. A spar had been washed up among the debris upon which I had mounted, and this helped me up a little way. Then I managed to creep a trifle farther, hand over hand: whenever I could take breath I called out to her that it was all right and I should be up in another minute. The necessity ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various

... at once to unpack and arrange her belongings. She felt a little choky as she took out and looked at the photographs and the various little parting gifts that had been given her, particularly when she came across a piece of spar that Tony, without saying a word to any one, must have wrapped up and tucked in amongst her things as a pleasant surprise for her. It was a very pretty bit that he had himself found, and was immensely ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... "I meant it for the most glorious possible praise; but somehow people always seem to take me for a little hard bit of spar, a barbarian, or a baby; I wish I had a more ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Catholicism,—you do not tell him the truth. . . . You may speak what is true to you,— but it becomes an error when received into his mind. . . . If his mind is a refracting and polarising medium—if the crystalline lens of his soul's eye has been changed into tourmaline or Labrador spar- -the only way to give him a true image of the fact, is to present it to him already properly altered in form, and adapted to suit the obliquity of his vision; in order that the very refractive power of his faculties may, instead ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley

... completion of his gift, one of his thick curls of yellow-brown hair. He showed me the chain he had brought for Dora, and gave me one glance at a clear, pure, crystal cross, from spar found in New Zealand, near the gold-fields. Would he ever be able to give it? I answered the question in his eyes by telling him a certain Etruscan flower-pot had stood in a certain window at Arked House all the winter, and ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge

... went behind a curtain of cloud. But Captain Macpherson coolly called out by name the men to handle the life-boat, and, with no evidence of disorder, they crowded in, none too soon! As the boat with its human freight hung in readiness for the lowering, the remaining spar of the Lord Nelson fell with a ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham

... up one day while we were crossing the Gulf Stream, and the sea all around us was pretty well covered with patches of yellow weed—having much the look of mustard-plasters—amidst which a bit of a barnacled spar bobbed along slowly near us, and not far off a new pine plank. The yellow stuff, Bowers said, was gulf-weed, brought up from the Gulf of Mexico where the Stream had its beginning; and that, thick though it was around us, this was nothing to the thickness of it in the ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier

... haven blest Waves like drifted mountain snow Break from out the shoreless West— (Ay de mi, Cristofero!) Cast ashore a broken spar Born beneath some alien star, Broken, beaten by the wave— In what far-off unknown grave Lie the hands that shaped it so? ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... 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, uprose 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, and then brought them down, gasping ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling

... Press every day, thinking it is English, sends one thoughtless and headlong among the bitter herbs and stark boulders of Doughty's burning and spacious expanse; only to get bewildered, and the shins broken, and a great fatigue at first, in a strange land of fierce sun, hunger, glittering spar, ancient plutonic rock, and very Adam himself. But once you are acclimatized, and know the language—it takes time—there is no more London after dark, till, a wanderer returned from a forgotten ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson

... of 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 ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston

... in a black velvet coat, who repeatedly suspended himself by the hands, head downwards, and who died of apoplexy not long afterwards; every one was being exercised upon. Here, a lathy young man, bent sideways over a spar, was struggling, with a very red face, to right himself, while a stout teacher held him down; there, a corpulent gentleman, in the hands of five robust assistants, was having his body violently revolved upon the base of his hip joints, as if they were trying to unscrew him ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor

... officers and ship's company. I was much gratified with the conduct of Captain Hall and Lieutenant Greenleaf, and the marines belonging to his company, in the management of six long twenty-six pounders, on the spar-deck, which I placed under his direction. Captain Decatur speaks in the highest terms of the conduct of Lieutenant Thorn and Midshipman McDonough, of No. 4, as does Captain Somers of Midshipmen Ridgely and Miller, ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat

... land; His evil angel leads him to my strand. Through the torn hulk the dashing waves shall roar, The shatter'd wrecks shall blacken all my shore. Themselves escaped, despoil'd by savage hands, Shall, naked, wander o'er the burning sands, Spar'd by the waves far deeper woes to bear, Woes, e'en by me, acknowledg'd with a tear. Their infant race, the promis'd heirs of joy, Shall now, no more, a hundred hands employ; By cruel want, beneath the parents' eye, In these wide wastes their infant race shall die; Through dreary wilds, where ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb

... baby roars all day, and I don't blame him; for he is trotted, shaken, spanked, and scolded by a very cross nurse, who treats him like a meal bag. I pity that little neighbour, and don't believe he will stand it long; for I see him double up his tiny fists, and spar away at nothing, as if getting ready for a good tussle with the world by and by, if he lives ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott

... noble broadness; I've no complaint to make on that score. It's the length of the way that is troubling me just now—this cursed leg of mine! Might I be so bold to ask the loan of your arm so far as the fortress? An old sailorman with a sprung spar navigates but ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... summer or winter, Hurricane nights like these, When spar and topsail are rag and splinter Hurled o'er the ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various

... find notes are, a Paper on the forms of the Teeth of Wheels, communicated to the Philosophical Society on May 2nd; some notes about Musical Concords, and some examination of a strange piece of Iceland Spar. On Apr. 29th I was elected to the Northern Institution (of Inverness); the first compliment that I received ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy

... seemed inevitable: a death-like silence prevailed during the awful crisis; but happily they passed off side by side. Instantly, however, the Cato struck on the reef, and was totally lost. All hands were preserved, except three boys; of these, one spent the night on a spar, bewailing his unhappy lot: four times he had embarked in different vessels, and each time had been wrecked; this was the last, for before morning he disappeared. The Bridgewater was yet safe: she ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... "The first [the Loves, etc.] is all glitter and point like a piece of Derbyshire spar, and the other is dark and massy like a block of marble.... Moore writes with a crow-quill, ... Byron writes with an eagle's plume;" while Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh, likens Moore to "an aurora borealis" and Byron to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... riding into port, the people huzzaing and the guns saluting, and the lucky captain bows from the ship's side, and there is a care under the star on his breast that nobody knows of; or you are wrecked and lashed, hopeless, to a solitary spar out at sea; the sinking man and the successful one are thinking each about home, very likely, and remembering the time when they were children; alone on the hopeless spar, drowning out of sight; alone in the midst of the crowd ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... the course at length; the sails untried Were spread; the raw crew set at spar and coil. Now round the prow Charybdean waters boil And ever higher surges war's red tide. The mate who should the captain's care divide Has strengthless proved. Where shall, the foe to foil, A man be found able to bear the toil And stand, ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various

... residents of Portsmouth. The father of Thomas B. Laighton was a spar-maker and did a considerable business when shipbuilding was thriving in those times. Thomas B. in his youth was afflicted with a fever which confined him to his room for many months and from the effects of which he never recovered. He married Miss Eliza Rymes, ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns

... sea. He had scarcely lost sight of the land when a violent storm arose, and after several hours of beating about, the vessel was driven on to some rocks, on which it dashed itself to bits. The Prince was fortunate enough to be able to lay hold of a floating spar, and contrived to keep himself afloat; and, after a long struggle with the winds and waves, he was cast upon a strange island. But what was his surprise, on reaching the shore, to hear sounds of the most heartrending distress, ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various

... of sailing on the Great Lakes, it was requisite to dress the yacht in her proper array, with her high tapering masts; the cords of her rigging stretching from spar to spar with the beautiful accuracy of a picture; and so equipped, as to give her the appearance of a majestic, white winged sea-bird resting gracefully on ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler

... on board the Swash with great rapidity, and the brig made a bold push at the Stepping-Stones. Spike was a capital pilot. He insisted if he could once gain sight of the spar that was moored on those rocks for a buoy, he should run with great confidence. The two lights were of great assistance, of course; but the revenue vessel could see these lights as well as the brig, and she, doubtless, had an excellent pilot on board. By the time ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper

... with this valuable bird manure. Whether the white colour of the island, perceptible even in a large Terrestrial telescope, is in any degree due to the whiteness of the birds, their nests, and leavings, or wholly to reflection from the bright spar-like surface of the rock itself, and especially of the flat table-like summit, I will not ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... unshipped, and attempted to be 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 ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous

... protection for bows seems to be spar varnish. This keeps out moisture. It has two disadvantages, however; it cracks after much bending, and it is too shiny. The glint or flash of a hunting bow will frighten game. I have often seen rabbits or deer stand until the bow goes off, then jump in time to escape the arrow. At first we believed ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... about his limbs; his fine hair cropped to the 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, between him ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn

... muster how many we were. The crew, including the captain, was seven hands, but we were sure there were eight men sitting on the mast. It was too dark to see faces; but you could see the dark figures clinging to the spar. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various

... pretty Parisian could fail to be there. When I arrived, about one o'clock, the crowd already filled the vast bazaar. It was not easy to stand against certain currents that set toward the departments consecrated to spring novelties. Adrift like a floating spar I was swept away and driven ashore amid the baby-linen. There it flung me high and dry among the shop-girls, who laughed at the spectacle of an undergraduate shipwrecked among the necessaries of babyhood. I felt shy, and attaching myself to ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... took the Old Man's sight. Fine 'aul this time if we 'ave luck. Swiggle me stiff, it'll set us up ashore for bleeding toffs! ... ye'll 'ear about it later.... Ay, that's the royal, lad—topmost spar—be shakin' that rag out afore long.... Ay, mate, and a proper fine mate she is, bless 'er bleeding little 'eart! Grew up at sea—proper shark for navigation—Old Man never 'ad 'er 'ead for figures.... See—them's the 'alyards, lad! ... Ay, prime sailorman, ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer

... of prize fighters (Sullivan was then just rising to his glory), and professional scullers (those were the days of Hanlan), and the like. No man talked of his own doings or of those of his friends, for he and his friends did nothing, except perhaps to spar for an hour or so once or twice a week, or go through perfunctory gymnastics for their ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... produced. Others were stiff and formal, and can scarcely be regarded as beautiful. The variety of marbles quarried in Derbyshire gave the artist ample opportunity of displaying taste in colour. The most beautiful are those made of fluor-spar, the celebrated Blue John Mine providing the most beautiful specimens. The purple shades present delightful tints, and some of the old workers in Derbyshire mosaics were exceptionally fortunate ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess

... swift gun sometimes falters, sparing the foe afar, And the hid mine wastes destruction on the drag's decoying spar, But I am the wrath of the Furies' path—of the war ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... next burden—the water-cask—was the heaviest of all. He struggled with it and once nearly went down, so tired was he, but he got it ashore, and the basket of biscuits, too, and some other things. The boat, floating more lightly, he now pulled to the strand; then he took out the spar and the sail. This done, he gazed around; the place was deserted by man, though of birds and crabs and other crawling objects there were a-plenty. Mr. Heatherbloom stood with knitted brow; it was a time for contemplation, visual ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham

... were in full possession of the ship from a little past midnight until eight o'clock of the following evening. One of them, venturing near the skylight, was shot in the breast by the captain, and then the two coolies rushed forward and threw a spar overboard. One of them jumped into the sea and clung to the spar, while the other dropped down into the between-decks, where he proceeded to set the ship on fire. Seeing this, the sailors who had barricaded themselves in the forecastle broke out, and two of them proceeded ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox

... 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 wind, ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready

... packet containing first-aid appliances which he thrust into the pocket of his swimming waistcoat, together with a flask and a small tin of compressed meat lozenges. Once before, earlier in the war, he had fought for life clinging to a floating spar. Then succour had come in a comparatively short time, but the experience had not ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... at that crab there. See if you can't haul His backward progress to this spar of a ship Thrown up and sunk into the sand here. Clip His clipping feelers hard, and give him all Your hand to gripe at: he'll take care not fall: So,—but with heed, for you are like to slip In stepping on the plank's sea-slime. Your lip— No wonder—curves ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... 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 a ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... they went below and left a sentinel on watch. He was a young man who had eaten heavily and drunk to even more excess. For a time he paced the deck conscientiously. Then he sat down, leaned against a spar and smoked. After a while the pipe fell from ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... old man, falling back upon his dignity, "hit e'en about takes all my spar' time fer ter keep up wid you en Brer Rabbit, let 'lone keepin' up wid Brer Fox. Ole Brer Rabbit tuck'n tuck keer hisse'f, en now let Brer Fox take ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris

... deepest part, and at six miles further another large one which might 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 ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills

... 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

... magnificent spar at the North Pole!" he exclaimed, all his sailor instincts thoroughly aroused. "How do you intend to manage ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman

... only the ship. "Oh, great Lord!" he loathingly drawled, "is it Damned Fools' Day again?" Her web of cordage began to grow dim in a rising smoke, and presently a gold beading of fire ran up and along every rope and spar and clung quivering. Soon the masts commenced, it seemed, to steal nearer to each other, and the vessel swung out from her berth and started down the wide, swift river, a ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable



Words linked to "Spar" :   equip, boom, bowsprit, fence, Greenland spar, dolphin striker, box, sport, yard, martingale, fit, sprit, fit out, jibboom, contend, bitter spar, sparring, fight, boxing, calcite, gaff, felspar



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