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Spurt   Listen
verb
Spurt  v. i.  (past & past part. spurted; pres. part. spurting)  To make a sudden and violent exertion, as in an emergency.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Spurt" Quotes from Famous Books



... met his visitor at the station, had intended to drive him back there. But after their spurt of temper he sent him with the boy. He remained in the doorway, glad that he was going to make money, glad that he had been angry; while the glow of the clear sky deepened, and the silence was perfected, and the scents of the night grew stronger. Old vagrancies awoke, and ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster

... and peace in the United Kingdom, and in the world at large, when the honeymoon began for that august but simple-hearted pair of lovers, Victoria and Albert; or, as she would have preferred to write it, Albert and Victoria. The fiery little spurt of revolt in Canada, called rather ambitiously, "The Canadian Rebellion," had ended in smoke, and the outburst of Chartism, from the spontaneous combustion of sullen and long-smothered discontent ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood

... complected, and has a long cut in his face that shows awful white when he gits his back up. Thunder! he pretty nearly scared me with that gash one night when he was drunk. It seemed to open and shut like a clam-shell, and made him look like a Voodoo priest! You'd think the blood was goan to spurt out by the yard." ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent

... emotion which, without some conduit into space, will surge upwards and ruin all but the greatest men. It was probably owing to this, certainly not on account of any care or anxiety for such a result, that he was successful in his art, successful by a seemingly sudden spurt, which carried him at one bound over the hindrances ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy

... brandishing their spears and climbing the rocks, were just going to cut Jack off when he, knowing their craze for the white man's clothes, threw his cap at them. Immediately there was a scramble which held up their advance. As they came on again he threw them his serge, and so on, taking a spurt after each throw. At last he took off his trousers, which set all the niggers fighting like mad round two big chiefs, each of whom was hanging on to one leg. Then he took a neat header and swam off to the boats, which had meanwhile pulled ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood

... notion that I was governed by a decision of judgment, not to be compared with a mere spurt of resentment. He knew not what it was to feel indignation against vice, and often boasted of his placable temper, and readiness to forgive injuries. True; for he only considered the being deceived, as an effort of skill he had not guarded against; and then, with a cant of candour, ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft

... apologise for them; it's only right that I should do so. What a pity;" he continued, "these new clothes too have been stained! But you'll find your sister Hua's costumes in here, and why don't you put one on, and take some hot wine and spurt it over yours and iron them out? You might also remake ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... demons to outflank the cloud of dust that hid our precious property. On we swept, fleet and sure, in a mad burst of speed to save our own. We were gaining now, and turning the cloud toward the river. Another spurt, and we would have them checked, faced about, subdued. I saw the end, and as the boys swung forward I ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter

... to the ground, the adventurers left the deadlight to use the windows. For a moment the view was obscured by a swirl of dust, raised by the spurt of the current; then this cloud vanished, settling to the ground with astounding suddenness, as though jerked down by ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint

... as he raced for the ball, but no one fancied he could catch it. Making a final desperate spurt, Hi leaped into the air and ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish

... dangerous as from an artery. The blood from the heart has to go through the little capillaries before it gets into the veins, and therefore the force of the heart muscle on the blood in the veins is not so great as in the arteries. The blood does not spurt out, but flows out as it would from a bottle tipped on ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... Captain close behind, with Quincy following leisurely. This was a young people's race—married men barred. For some unexplainable reason Captain Hornaby tried to cross Harry's bow. The project was ill-timed and unsuccessful. Harry had just made a spurt and his canoe went forward so fast that the Captain's boat, instead of clearing his, struck it full in the side and Harry and Maude were thrown into the water. Florence, who really loved her sister despite their many quarrels, gave a loud scream and stood up ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin

... latter means nothing, though its presence may mean everything," said Holmes. "Unless the powder from a badly fitting cartridge happens to spurt backward, one may fire many shots without leaving a sign. I would suggest that Mr. Cubitt's body may now be removed. I suppose, Doctor, you have not recovered the bullet which ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle

... that he had considered the matter in a more serious light. He had known all along that his marks were dropping behind, and every morning he had vaguely resolved to make a spurt that day so that when examination time came he might cross the tape neck and neck with if not in advance of the other fellows. The promised spurt, however, had not been made. Instead he had drifted along, studying only enough to keep his head above water and putting ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett

... some from factories, and some again from mere rubbish heaps. And yet, though the tints were all varied, they all seemed unnatural, like fumes from a witch's pot. It was as if the shameful and ugly shapes growing shapeless in the cauldron sent up each its separate spurt of steam, coloured according to the fish or flesh consumed. Here, aglow from underneath, were dark red clouds, such as might drift from dark jars of sacrificial blood; there the vapour was dark indigo gray, like ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton

... Chinese drawings of the dragon rampant, and as I looked I saw one of them light on the poor man's eye, and actually tear through it and down his cheek, leaving a wide band of red where the blood seemed to spurt ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker

... saw it. He gave me one look and said to his wife, "Take the dish away from her." I could not say a word, but I shook my head to say "No." The farmer's look had taken my nervousness away, and I held the dish quite steadily under the spurt of blood which came out from the pig's wound. When the pig was quite still, Eugene came up. He looked amazed at seeing me carefully catching the last red drops which were rolling down one by one like tears. "Do you mean to say you caught the blood?" he asked. "Yes," said the farmer; "that ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux

... civil or military, seems to have been to blame for the mishap. It was altogether owing to the unwisdom of military authorities at home, who seem to have fancied that they could transform, by a magical spurt of the pen, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... nearly spent. Hoopdriver, indeed, was quite spent, and only a feeling of shame prolonged the liquidation of his bankrupt physique. From that point the tandem grained upon them steadily. At the Rufus Stone, it was scarcely a hundred yards behind. Then one desperate spurt, and they found themselves upon a steady downhill stretch among thick pine woods. Downhill nothing can beat a highly geared tandem bicycle. Automatically Mr. Hoopdriver put up his feet, and Jessie slackened her pace. ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells

... in the stand screamed; but Patsy smiled as he lay low over his horse's neck. He saw that Essex had made her best spurt. His only fear was for Mosquito, who hugged and hugged his flank. They were nearing the three-quarter post, and he was tightening his grip on the black. Essex fell back; his spurt was over. The whip fell unheeded on his sides. The ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... north, just in time to see a tongue of red dart from a casemate port; then, as the bark of the gun came down the wind, a spurt of water lifted from the sea about ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson

... of alternate shout and challenge towards where the horses were herded on the level stretch below us. The sergeant of the guard was running rapidly thither as Carroll and I reached the corner of the corral. Half a minute's brisk spurt brought us ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... close at hand. It seemed as far as ever. We suffered a dozen or so of these disappointments, and then learned not to look up. This was only after we had risen above timber line to the smooth, rounded rock-and-grass shoulder of the mountain. Then three times we made what we thought was a last spurt, only to find ourselves on a "false summit." After a while we grew resigned, we realized that we were never going to get anywhere, but were to go on forever, without ultimate purpose and without hope, pushing ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... he cried, ramming the wet mop down one of the guns and making the water spurt out of the touch-hole like a little fountain, "Good! Why, we'll blow the Frenchy ships out of the water ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn

... considerable skill in his art had been almost thrown away, as regarded his private affairs, when it might easily have led him to fortune. Whereas, here in his extreme age, he had first bethought himself of a way to grow rich. Sometimes this latter spring causes—as blossoms come on the autumnal tree—a spurt of vigor, or untimely greenness, when Nature laughs at her old child, half in kindness and half in scorn. It is observable, however, I fancy, that after such a spurt, age comes on with redoubled speed, and that the old man has only ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... I hardly dared to breathe. Then I heard the rough sound of a match; there came a small blue spurt, and suddenly in the little upthrown illumination I saw the lips holding tightly the cigarette; a little higher the flame stretched, and I saw the eyes and the black bar of the brows. I almost screamed. At the same instant he looked up ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain

... addressed to a man who, as he rose up and handed Frowenfeld a note, ratified the Creole's sentiment by a spurt of tobacco juice and an ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... but the great crowd that had made the threat of disaster so ominous had disappeared. One of the mad group about them, teeth bared, was creeping closer to Torrance, a long stiletto held aloft. But as it jerked back to strike, the hand that held it opened nervelessly, and a spurt of blood covered ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan

... and more hold out" answered the cook. "Mrs. Archibald is good for a spurt, but I'll be bound she cried her eyes red at Griselda Kilgour's, and was ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr

... shouted an official, as the girls made a last wild spurt, the whistle sounded, the guard jumped into the van, and, with a loud clanging of coupling-chains, the train started. They had missed ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... most Men, at the Tricks of those Mountebancks that are commonly call'd Water-drinkers. For though not only the vulgar, but ev'n many persons that are far above that Rank, have so much admir'd to see, a man after having drunk a great deal of fair water, to spurt it out again in the form of Claret Wine, Sack, and Milk, that they have suspected the intervening of Magick, or some forbidden means to effect what they conceived above the power of Art; yet having once by chance had occasion ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle

... pursuit temporarily off the true line, but had as suddenly swung to the east. Here he had again been struck by the indefatigable Plumer, temporarily renovated and with sufficient steam up to take him a short spurt. That spurt was sufficient to rob De Wet of his last impedimenta, to cause him to bifurcate in his flight. Part of the pursued rabble went north, half hurled itself across the Cape Government Railway in ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer

... but since the others dropped back a little so as to accommodate the less skillful Bandy-legs, he had to follow suit, or be all alone in the van. Steve grumbled more or less because some fellows never could "get a move on 'em," as he complained; but outside of making an occasional little spurt, and then resting, he stuck pretty well by his mates during the ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie

... ain't, sir," cried Gedge. "The sight of our lads below there seems to ha' woke me up. I'm ready to die game; but I want to make one spurt for ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn

... the bridge. The Castle of St. Angelo, whose bastions were named after the Apostles, was in sight. The fat old Jew drew closer, anxious, now that he was come so far, to secure the thirty-six crowns that the prize might be sold for. But the favorite made a mighty spurt. He passed the Pope's window, and the day was his. The firmament rang with laughter as the other candidates panted up. A great yell greeted the fall of the fat old man in the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... has seen one, given chase to it, leaving Francesca somewhere to wait for him. Well, tia, you know what an ostrich is to chase? Now lagging along as if you could easily throw the noose round its neck, then putting on a fresh spurt—'twould tempt any one to keep on after it. Uncle may have got tantalised in that very way, and galloped leagues upon leagues without thinking of it. To get back to Francesca, and then home, would take all the time that's passed yet. ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid

... water from the puddle under him, stood and saw the last man—Dennis Hogan—crawl in. Then Grant, seeing Hogan's coat was afire, looked out and saw flames dancing along the timbers, and a spark with a gust of smoke was sucked into the room by some eddy of the current outside. In a last spurt of terrible effort the hole in the wall was closed and plastered with mud and the men were ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... Dingwell he pulled himself to the saddle. The exertion started a spurt of warm blood at the shoulder, but Roy clenched his teeth and clung to the pommel to steady himself. The cattleman led the horse and ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine

... long since to all kinds of hardships, but one cannot stand everything. Now and then a spurt of hail came with the rain, and it beat in their faces, slipped between the blankets and down their necks, making them shiver. Their weariness after so much exertion made them all susceptible to the rain and cold. Finally Henry called ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler

... stand there listening, but fly to the aid of my master. Though, indeed, by this time there can be little need, for the giant must be dead already, and will trouble the world no more. For I saw his blood spurt and run all over the floor, and his head is cut off and fallen to ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various

... regaining a sudden spurt of assurance. "What about that kid up there, Doc? Nobody's letting him by, are ...
— Rescue Squad • Thomas J. O'Hara

... another flared up even in that moment of battle and passion, when the man-hunting impulse was so strong. His aim, quick as it was, had been sure and deadly, but, deflecting the muzzle of the rifle a shade, his finger contracted again. The spurt of fire leaped forth and the bullet sang by the ear of Langlade, singing to him a little song of caution as it passed, telling such a wary partisan as he that his stump was a very exposed stump, dangerous to the last degree, and that ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler

... must be moving shoreward at a good rate before the wave overtakes them. When you see the wave coming that you want to ride in, you turn tail to it and paddle shoreward with all your strength, using what is called the windmill stroke. This is a sort of spurt performed immediately in front of the wave. If the board is going fast enough, the wave accelerates it, and the board begins its ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... to Edwin, and tried to say something; and then Edwin saw his father's face working into monstrous angular shapes, and saw the tears spurt out of his eyes, and was clutched convulsively in his father's shirt-sleeved arms. He was very proud, very pleased, but he did not like this embrace; it made him feel ashamed. He thought how Clara would have sniggered about it and caricatured it afterwards, had she witnessed ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... susceptible—worshipped her almost as much as he had once worshipped her mother. And Morgan had only realised how she had grown into his spirit just when despair had begun to show itself again. The discovery had perhaps given him a fresh spurt of hope, but the charred mass had marked the end ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill

... the stairway at a run, with his clothes scorching and the protecting cotton cloth bursting into flame. It was a desperate spurt, but Hodge went through the fire, and with a bound threw himself beyond it, and felt, rather than knew, that he was in some kind of hall, where the fire was not so bad. He pulled aside the flaming cloth, pitched it from him, put up his ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish

... have to wonder long; for, almost as he uttered the last word, a spurt of flame leaped out from the dark shadows of the distant clump of trees, and a rifle bullet whistled so close by his face that it burnt the end of his nose, and buried itself in ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil

... baccarat and spent inordinate sums on food. And all the time Doria wrote glowingly of their doings. Adrian had put the book out of his head, was always in the best of spirits. He had completely recovered from the strain of work and was looking forward joyously to the final spurt in London and ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... he was seized by an anxiety, an excitement that he had not been aware of at the start. The sight of the goal perturbed him; it suggested the failure that up to that moment he had not allowed himself to contemplate. Like an athlete he gathered himself together for the final spurt; and ninety-nine was a brilliant year for The Planet made glorious by the poems, articles and paragraphs showered on it by S.K.R. Maddox shook his head over some of them; but he took them all and boasted, as he well might, that ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... Bloomsbury Headquarters. The Chief as much as promised that he'd leave word there to put us wise to anything that had been learned by way of the telephone, from other places. And given a clue in that way, we might take a fresh spurt, you know." ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy

... to "spurt," agile, alert, Shall be my one endeavour; For Cits may stare, and Jehus swear, But I run on ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various

... places where the earth was exposed, I tore through thickets, I dodged a thousand trees. In some grassy descents it was as if I had seven-league boots. I must have broken all records for jumps. All at once I stumbled just as Cubby made a spurt and flew forward, alighting face downward. I dug up the pine—needles with my outstretched hands, I scraped with my face and ploughed with my nose, I ate the dust; and when I brought up with a jolt against ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey

... want? What's the game?" Jack asked, as the man let go of his wrist. The fellow, however, kept one hand on the bridle of the pony, so that there was no chance for Jack to make a sudden spurt ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster

... afterward the odd foreshortening of the weapon and the crooked twist of the face behind it. With the first jerk of his horse's head his own gun had leaped to his shoulder—he was not conscious of having willed it to do so—and even as he pressed the trigger he beheld a jet of smoke spurt from the muzzle aimed at him. With the kick of his carbine he felt Bessie Belle give way—it seemed to Dave that he shot while she was sinking. The next instant his feet, still in the stirrups, were on the ground and his horse lay between them, motionless. That nervous fling of her head had saved ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... Mr. James Young he writes of his voyage, and discharges a characteristic spurt of humor at a mutual Edinburgh acquaintance who had mistaken an ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... into the air some 150 feet. So, unless this reef was subject to the intermittent eruptions of a geyser, the Governor Higginson had fair and honest dealings with some aquatic mammal, until then unknown, that could spurt from its blowholes waterspouts mixed ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... deliberately makes up his mind that he will amuse himself after that fashion, must always remember his resolve, and be true to the conduct which he has laid down for himself. He must jump not at all. He must not jump a little, when some spurt or spirit may move him, or he will infallibly find himself in trouble. There was an old Duke of Beaufort who was a keen and practical sportsman, a master of hounds, and a known Nimrod on the face of the earth; but he was a man who hunted and never jumped. His experience was perfect, and he ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope

... flung the revolver at the Centaurian. The creature tried to dodge, but the heavy gun struck its body a glancing blow. There was a slight spurt of body fluid as the chitinous armor ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... a stride of his lead, and Steve made a final spurt that took just about all the breath left in his body. On the fifteen yards his hand went out gropingly, touched Eric's back and fell away. Near the ten-yard line Steve launched himself forward and his arms settled about Eric's thighs, slid down to his knees and tightened. Eric ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour

... shook to the thunder of the Fiala's eight-inch gun, and a blinding spurt of flame leaped from the cruiser's bows. With a whining shriek a shell rose toward the moon. There was a quick flash followed by a dull concussion. The shell had not reached a tenth of the distance ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train

... tricklings from myself and sisters as we often squatted down opposite each other and crossed water, laughing at the different sources from which they flowed. My sisters often envied me the power of directing the spurt where I pleased, so little were we from dreaming of the real intent of that ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous

... the top of his bent, heightening the crash and bang and fury of every fight with all the artillery of epithets and similes at his command. But he was not always in a good humor or happy mood. The slight spurt of peevish susceptibility which had escaped him in their first interview was a symptom of a perpetually recurring mental ailment, half of it nervous irritability, half of it the heart-bitterness produced by the sense of his deformity. In these fits of susceptibility every glance seemed to him ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... Reveillaud's criticism, and his sudden startled spurt of admiration: "Mais! Vous l'avez trouvee, la beaute de la ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair

... not give up. The old "never say die" spirit that had carried him through so many tight places still persisted. On, on, he ran, putting every ounce of speed and strength in one last spurt. He could feel the hot breath of the grizzly and the padding feet were terribly near. Then, just as the beast was ready to hurl its huge bulk against him, Bert swung on his heel like a pivot, doubled in his tracks and flashed ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield

... then, for one more spurt of climbing. Time is precious. Can you really manage this formidable boulder, or would you like a ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver

... standing at Macdonald's side. A little spurt of flame among the ends of wood in the chimney threw a sudden illumination over them, and played like water over a stone upon Macdonald's face, then sank again, as if it had been plunged in ashes. Frances remained ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden

... instant did he hesitate; then his face settled into an expression not pleasant to look upon. He forgot that he was tired, that a grandstand full of howling maniacs was ahead of him. He thought only of the girl in pink—and made his spurt. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... his anxious gaze like an impenetrable face. At last the stem touched the strand. He flung rather than dragged the boat up the little beach. At once, turning his back upon the sunset, he plunged with long strides into the ravine, making the water of the stream spurt and fly upwards at every step, as if spurning its shallow, clear, murmuring spirit with his feet. He wanted to save every ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... little fox makes a final spurt for a large red pine, leaps straight for the bare trunk, mounts like a squirrel and gains a rotten limb, panting with effort. As we approach he climbs still higher and lodges himself securely in the crotch of the tree, gazing furtively down ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... hedged a little his first spurt of speed Jerry broke the lid of his cab and called down through the aperture in the voice of a cracked megaphone, trying ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry

... stopped and involuntarily my hand went to my hip pocket. I remember only this, that it seemed in that moment a good thing to me to take a life. The soldier's rifle came to his shoulder. There was a sharp report and I saw the smoke spurt from the muzzle. The thug straightened up with a wrench, he shot his right arm above his head and pitched forward across the body of the woman. He died with her wrist in his grasp. It may sound murderous, but the feeling I experienced was ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum

... C Battery, and rode at their head. Despite the spurt to cross the canal, their turn-out was smart and soldierly, and there was satisfaction in the colonel's quick, comprehensive glance. Through Pontoise, another village from which the inhabitants had fled ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)

... actual circumstances. If this golden rim were quenched, if life were no longer circled by an illusion (but was it an illusion after all?), then it would be too dismal an affair to carry to an end; so he wrote with a sudden spurt of conviction which made clear way for a space and left at least one sentence standing whole. Making every allowance for other desires, on the whole this conclusion appeared to him to justify their relationship. But the conclusion was mystical; ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... and cedar timber, heavy with the pitch that made their thick tops spurt into flame like a sea of explosive, the fire rushed on with a tremendous roar. From it—in a straight race—there was no escape for man or beast. Out of that world of conflagration there might have risen one great, yearning cry to heaven: WATER—WATER—WATER! Wherever there was water there was ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood

... minister to morbid tastes; but I have an object in describing this dreadful oubliette, for it still exists—exists within thirty-two miles of British territory, and it is a scandal that some effort is not made to mitigate its horrors. Through the bars of a padlocked door, from which spurt blasts of mephitic heat, we can descry amid the steam of foul exhalations, as soon as our eyes become accustomed to the dimness, a mob of seething, sweating, sweltering captives, like in aspect as a whole to ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... reply of De Pean, as he suddenly reflected that it were best for himself also not to be seen watching his master too closely. He uttered a spurt of ill humor, and continued pulling the mane of his ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... no wit, and Babbitt fell into a great silence and devoted himself to the game of beating trolley cars to the corner: a spurt, a tail-chase, nervous speeding between the huge yellow side of the trolley and the jagged row of parked motors, shooting past just as the trolley stopped—a ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... behind had made a little spurt, and the horses were almost neck and neck. Wharton looked ugly, and the black-eyed girl with fluffy black hair was looking behind Judith's head at Crittenden and was smiling. Not once had Judith turned her head, even to see who they were. Crittenden hardly knew whether she was ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.

... rate, he used to bark long and grievously about dawn in the road across the canyon. One morning I was almost frantic with the irregularity of his outbursts. It was like waiting for the other shoe to drop. Suddenly a rifle shot rang out; a spurt of yellow dust, a streak of yellow dog, and silence! I rushed to J——'s room, to find him with the weapon, still smoking, in his hands. I begged him not to start a neighborhood feud, even if we never slept after dawn. I even wept. He laughed ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane

... vineyard. Even in the condition of poor tilth, deep holes are often a menace to the life of the plant, especially if drainage is not provided, for the deep hole becomes a tub into which water pours and stands to soak the roots of dying vines. An extra spurt in digging holes cannot take the place of perfect fitting of ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick

... on coldly until he saw Kincaid head off the retreat and face his adversary. Instantly there was a spurt of fire from a pistol in Farley's right hand, a brief flash with the report swallowed up in the roar from the furnace lip. Then the two men closed and rolled together to the bottom of the slope, and Gordon turned ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde

... With him was Suarez, who knew what was expected of him, so the language difficulty offered no apparent hindrance once the fight began. Finally, if the Indians made good their footing, the defenders were to rally towards the saloon companion where steam jets were ready to spurt withering blasts ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy

... as if he were going into a river and must try its depth. He did not like the going here, but he plodded on with his burdens. The girl was light; he did not mind her weight; but he felt this place uncanny, and now and then would start on a little spurt of haste, to get into a better way. He liked the high mountain trails, where he could step firmly and hear the twigs crackle under his feet, not this muffled, velvet way where one made so little progress and had to ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill

... was to Landry Court. She wrote it almost with a single spurt of the pen, and dated it carefully, so that he might know it had been written immediately after he had left. Thus ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris

... unable to pay. This was the beginning of the prospecting era which opened up De Kaap, Witwatersrand, and other fields; but it was a small beginning, and for some time nothing worth mentioning was discovered. The Republic was again in a bad way, and drifting backwards after its first spurt. The greatest uncertainty prevailed amongst prospectors as to their titles, for in Lydenburg, at Pilgrim's Rest, and on the Devil's Kantoor, concessions had been granted over the heads of the miners at work on their claims, and they had been turned off for the benefit of ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... himself on the altar and laughs from thick lips. The black executioner raises his sword and whirls it above my head. Another moment and my head will roll down on the floor. Another moment and the red jet will spurt ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... any time over this stretch we could have run away from his team, and once they got our sledge they started that game on us. We expected it, and never had I stepped out so hard before. We had been marching hard for nearly 12 hours and now we had two miles' spurt to do, and we should have stuck it, bad runners and all, had we had smooth ice. As it was we struck a belt of rough ice, and in the dark we all stumbled and I went down a whack, that nearly knocked me out. This was ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... tyrants when they came to power) I rather dread the loss of use than fame; If you—and not so much from wickedness, As some wild turn of anger, or a mood Of overstrained affection, it may be, To keep me all to your own self,—or else A sudden spurt of woman's jealousy,— Should try this charm on whom ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... laboriously from the trench and emerged into the bullet-swept plain once more. It was with a great effort that he even dragged himself along. He felt himself growing weaker with the moments. Every few yards he was compelled to lie over on his back for rest and to gain fresh strength for the next spurt. It required the most heroic courage for one in Rene's condition to go on. But he grimly stuck to it, creeping ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce

... stepped behind the Duke's chair, and Farnese in a fresh spurt of panic came to his feet. Galeotto locked an arm about his neck and pulled his head back. Into his ear he muttered words that I could not overhear, but it was matter that stilled Farnese's last struggle. Only the Duke's eyes moved, rolling in his head as he sought to look upon the face of ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... colors in this poem add much to its effect; the grey sea, the black land, the yellow moon, the fiery ringlets, the blue spurt of the match, the golden light of morning. The sounds and smells are realistic; one hears the boat cut harshly into the slushy sand; the sharp scratch of the match; one inhales the thick, heavy odor radiating from the sea-scented beach that ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps

... tightened its grasp of Betty's arm. "Are you game for one last spurt?" he asked her. "We may ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope

... after him. Now and then a spurt of flame and a spatter of bullets indicated that his own plane was being more or less perforated. The lad became doubtful as to the wisdom of waiting longer for his comrade. Evidently Blaine would fight on as long as his ammunition lasted or until disabled himself. After all, ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry

... north-east, were two great ugly lugger-like craft, with one high mast each, and a big square brown sail. A prettier sight one would not wish than to see the three craft dipping along upon so fair a day. But of a sudden there came a spurt of flame and a whirl of blue smoke from one lugger, then the same from the second, and a rap, rap, rap, from the ship. In a twinkling hell had elbowed out heaven, and there on the waters was hatred and savagery ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... whole strength of his arm he held the savage jaws from his face as he wrenched and twisted at the firmly embedded knife. Finally it loosened, and as the thick-backed blade was withdrawn from the wound it was followed by spurt after spurt of blood—bright, frothy blood, straight from the lungs, which gushed hot ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx

... which was beginning to be felt across the continent grew for five years or more up to the beginning of the World War, and then took another spurt after the war. It was not merely a boom, inflation to burst like a bubble. It grew only as more territory was settled and greater areas of ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl

... so easy, so tempting! Just think! A mistake of less than half an inch, and her skin would be cut at the neck where the jugular vein is, and the jugular would be severed. My knives cut very well! And when once the jugular is cut—good-bye. The blood would spurt out, and one, two, three red jets, and all would be over; she would be dead, and I should have ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant

... expensive one his uncle had given him on Christmas. It was made as nearly like a real engine as possible, only instead of working by steam, it worked by a spring. When a spring was wound up, it operated a small pump in the engine. The pump made water spurt out through a little rubber hose, and the water for the engine was poured into a tank. The tank held about two gallons, so you see when it was all pumped out in the kitchen, and spurted on those in the room, it ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on a Houseboat • Laura Lee Hope

... readily be understood that Walter's progress in the higher paths of duty on which he had now sincerely entered was not at all times equally rapid. He was always meaning well, and could "put on a spurt and row hard against the stream," as he himself expressed it, from time to time, but the long, steady, and regular stroke he found it very hard to keep up. Naturally full of spirits, cherished and encouraged in ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson

... her hands were torn and bleeding and she thought gratefully for the first time of her buckskin trousers which valiantly resisted all detaining thorns. The way dropped rapidly and after her first wild spurt Rhoda leaned exhausted and panting against a boulder. She had not the vaguest idea of where she was going or of what she was going to do, except that she was going to lose herself so thoroughly that not even Kut-le could find her. After that she ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow

... the valley we put on a spurt to the cave, and found Warrigal sitting on the log in front of us. He'd got home first, of course, and there was Aileen's bundle, a biggish one too, alongside of him. We could hear father raving and screaming ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... charge of cavalry. The whole battalion at once opened fire on me; my cloak and my saddle were riddled, but I was not wounded nor was my mare. She continued her rapid course, and went through the three ranks of the battalion as easily as a snake through a hedge. But this last spurt had exhausted Lisette's strength; she had lost much blood, for one of the large veins in her thigh had been divided, and the poor animal collapsed suddenly and fell on one side, rolling me over ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various

... on the fender trying to get some warmth at the little fire extracted from Reb Shemuel's half-crown. December continued gray; the room was dim and a spurt of flame played on her pale earnest face. It was a face that never lost a certain ardency of color even at its palest: the hair was dark and abundant, the eyes were large and thoughtful, the nose slightly aquiline and the whole cast of the features ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... she hated me for having pushed her into his arms, she hated him worse. I thought that where I had been stabbed once, he would be stabbed a thousand times." David spoke with that look of primitive joy which must have been on the face of the cave-dweller when he felt the blood of his enemy spurt ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland

... an' took the pelt;—for I thowt I'd wear un, now the poor dead thing did n' want to make oose of un no more,—an' partly becase't was sech a lovun thing. An' so I set out, walkun this way, for a spurt, an' then t' other way, keepun up mostly a Nor-norwest, so well as I could: sometimes away round th' open, an' more times round a lump of ice, an' more times, agen, off from one an' on to another, every minute. I did n' feel hungry, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... instant their eyes fell upon him he moved: then, as they started for him, he darted like a flash for deep water, pursued by the two men at the top of their speed through a sheet of water six inches deep for nearly a hundred feet out. It was a fair race, and the six-feet-three Indian made a splendid spurt, but the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... The spurt lasted for a time, but again the terrible weakness troubled her, and she had to conduct household affairs from a couch. School work was carried through on the verandah, and when she spoke in the church she was borne there ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone

... and stiff. The road ran pretty straight, skirting the mountains and threading the valleys, and hour after hour the dark, silent woods wheeled past us. Swarms of black flies—those insect wolves—waylaid us and hung to us till a smart spurt of the horse, where the road favored, left them behind. But a species of large horse-fly, black and vicious, it was not so easy to get rid of. When they alighted upon the horse, we would demolish them with the whip or with our felt hats, a proceeding the ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs

... A spurt of smoke leaped from the battered door and the bored Hopalong promptly tumbled back inside. He felt of his arm, and then, delighted at the notice taken of his artistic efforts, shot several times from a crack on his right. "This yer's shore gittin' like home," he gravely remarked to the splinter ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford

... You've got to go! One more spurt and you'll have him! There you are over the line! On time! On railroad time! Three cheers for Railroad Blake, fellows! 'Rah, 'rah, 'rah, and a tigah! Good for you, Rod Blake! the cup is yours. It was the prettiest race ever seen on the Euston track, ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe

... was careful to add. Interests of that sort, serving to connect him with the world, with society, with women, had totally disappeared from his life. He rolled and lighted a fresh cigarette, and in the minute orange spurt of the match his ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer

... a soldier in the front rank was struck on the head by a fragment of an exploding shell. There was no outcry; simply a spurt of blood and brain, ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola



Words linked to "Spurt" :   go, forge, squirt, travel, spritz, spout, pour, pump, spirt, jet, discharge, run, blow, whoosh, outpouring, move, locomote, gush



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