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ballast
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  • To break windows for robbery, to determine depth of wells, to use as ammunition, as pendulum, to practice carving, wall building, to demonstrate Archimedes' Principle, as part of abstract sculpture, costh, ballast, weight for dropping things in river, etc., as a hammer, keep door open, footwiper, use as rubble for path filling, chock, weight on scale, to prop up wobbly table, paperweight, as firehearth, to block up rabbit hole.†   (source)
  • They decided either one of us would work for ballast, but feared Adah's handicap would prevent her holding on, and if she fell in the river the precious battery would also be lost.†   (source)
  • Overnight we'd topped up our gas cells with hydrium and pumped water into our ballast and drinking tanks.†   (source)
  • Walsh thought he was quick enough to get in front of Taylor; the ballast would do the rest.†   (source)
  • He retrieved it and set it up again, dried the interior with towels, and then went inside the house to look for ballast.†   (source)
  • It had jettisoned four thousand years of memories like so much ballast.†   (source)
  • The water was used as ballast, extra weight to keep the ship on the ground.†   (source)
  • The big tankers from the United States or England always carried fresh water to us in ballast, and then it was distilled again so that we could drink it.†   (source)
  • And had she not done so, then now might be high time to get rid of excess ballast in the editorial offices.†   (source)
  • The balloon, freed of the small sour ballast, uprose.†   (source)
  • Brock was all right now, but he had spent a lousy twenty-four hours, his body enthusiastically throwing off ballast from both ends.†   (source)
  • Joyce was a reasonably confident replacement, having learned from Vera how to do the electric work that was required on a frequent or daily basis—changing eight-foot-long fluorescents, replacing the ballasts of light fixtures, installing new exit signs and fixtures, and checking circuit boards.†   (source)
  • Flood the main ballast tanks.†   (source)
  • …terminal, where Klara lived after her divorce, with a makeshift shower and no stove, fifty dollars a month, and met painters and sculptors, people who worked with found material, and the street was paved with old stone blocks, once used as ballast perhaps, and they used to gather on the roof sometimes, three or four painters and a wife or husband and a couple of kids and a dog someone was keeping for someone else, and the two women remembered how Klara never sat on the sloped part of…†   (source)
  • While the others watched, he calculated the volume of air inside the pipes and concluded that they would need some ballast.†   (source)
  • The women were pleased at having thrown off the ballast of the soulthat laughable conceit, that illusion of uniquenessto become one like the next.†   (source)
  • Maybe they brought the stones as ballast.†   (source)
  • Ballast is what I want.†   (source)
  • Max yelled, cutting away the ballast of sand bags.†   (source)
  • The sailors sewed their bodies up in canvas, weighed down with ballast stones so they might sink more quickly.†   (source)
  • 'The Gaffer's delight, and rare good ballast for an empty belly.†   (source)
  • The Amistad was only carrying food for a five-day trip, plus a few barrels of meat, bananas, and yams to be sold at market in Puerto Principe, and a few kegs of fresh water which doubled as ballast.†   (source)
  • "I'm just ballast."†   (source)
  • At times I found myself moving to her own ambling, driven gait, round on the heels, nearly race-walking, breasts forward in guidance, my life's ballasts.†   (source)
  • It's made of broken amphorae that were used as ballast on ships that docked in the Tiber.†   (source)
  • The cigars are ballast, sweetheart.†   (source)
  • She spent some time at the periscope looking around the harbour and got the hang of that, but the ballasting and trim controls were beyond her and she was not much interested.†   (source)
  • We thought with an age limit— a reasonable one— the older heads could act as ballast while they grow up.†   (source)
  • So are the motions of a little vessel without ballast tossed about on a stormy sea.   (source)
  • There was the ballast board with gauges telling you how much water you had and in which tanks.†   (source)
  • We'll slip the stern line last, dump ballast, and go."†   (source)
  • I shouted and reached out for the ballast levers.†   (source)
  • Without ballast to dump, we'd go nowhere.†   (source)
  • "It's good luck for us they topped up the ballast tanks.†   (source)
  • Crew weren't allowed many books aboard, as they were just extra ballast, so I only had a few.†   (source)
  • I heard a distant clatter of water and looked down to see more ballast hit the sea.†   (source)
  • Woolf threw himself forward as ballast, thrusting his feet straight back.†   (source)
  • There was no ballast within — they were pillows upon pillows.†   (source)
  • Aboard the Argo II, she felt about as useful as a box of ballast.†   (source)
  • The Witch took air, weight, night burden, star-and-cold-wind ballast.†   (source)
  • She was the ballast he had wanted, the vital center of a new and better life.†   (source)
  • "Yeah," Cristian said, his tone suggesting it was obvious what ballast was.†   (source)
  • All they won was a sailcloth sack filled with ballast stones.†   (source)
  • Inside it was a water-filled ballast tank, a beehive of cellular baffles seven feet across.†   (source)
  • But his need for Abigail, his ballast, was acute.†   (source)
  • Her missile tubes had been filled with ballast and sealed months before.†   (source)
  • Elbridge Gerry likened him to a ship ballasted with iron, capable of riding out any storm.†   (source)
  • Johnsen reached up and pulled the release handle for the iron ballast.†   (source)
  • "Comrade Mannion, vent the ballast tanks," Ramius said.†   (source)
  • Nonetheless, the young man instructed his crew to fill the sacks in the hull with the salt, if for no other reason than to add to the ship's ballast.†   (source)
  • He had ballast.†   (source)
  • There was a great splash, and then another and another, as the ballast tanks opened all along the ship's belly and water hit the sand.†   (source)
  • Surely there could be no more ballast.†   (source)
  • I looked at the ballast board and its row of twenty levers, one for each of the tanks placed evenly along the ship's keel.†   (source)
  • From underfoot there was a metallic creak as the ballast tanks along the keel opened, and tons of water tumbled out to the sea below.†   (source)
  • "I know that," I said, annoyed he was telling me about my ship, and annoyed at myself for forgetting all the ballast we'd dumped.†   (source)
  • There was the gas control board and the ballast board and the engine room telegraph—I knew all the instruments and what they did, and imagined I could use them if given the chance.†   (source)
  • We dumped too much ballast.†   (source)
  • Her enthusiasm rekindled my own, and I pointed out the countless tanks of ballast and drinking water and Aruba fuel that were secured on either side of the catwalk, and the endless bundles of wires and cables and tubing that ran all throughout the Aurora like veins and arteries.†   (source)
  • His men were everywhere now—dozens of them ranged along the catwalk, crouched atop ballast tanks and ladders and in the rigging—all with their pistols drawn and pointed at the crew and our captain.†   (source)
  • Plus we need ballast.†   (source)
  • The two-hundred-strong ground crew cast off the mooring lines, and with a great splash we were dumping water ballast, and the men and women on the airfield sent up a cheer, and we were rising now, the passengers swinging caps and handkerchiefs from the open windows, and the people down below waving back, and we were rising, the airfield already far below us, and the spires of Lionsgate City spreading out to the north, and we were rising into the dawn sky, sure and smooth as an angel.†   (source)
  • They'd been little more than ballast since Storm's End, and were eager to get at the foe, confident of victory.†   (source)
  • …was apparently acceptable—"Who gave the mighty forests birth"—branches cracked like gunshots under the keel, thick vines snatched at what remained of the masts— "And made a Garden of the Earth"—fruit and leaves rained down on the deck, but a shudder meant that a broken tree had ripped away part of the hull, spilling the ballast—"We pray to Thee to stretch Thy hand"—Captain Roberts gripped the useless wheel tighter, and laughed at the roaring dark—"To those in peril on the land."†   (source)
  • Sheer ballast.†   (source)
  • The ballast tanks were now fully flooded, and the balancing act would have to be done with the much smaller trim tanks.†   (source)
  • The October was sitting still on the surface, down by the bow and listing twenty degrees to port from the vented ballast tanks.†   (source)
  • They had heard the ballast tanks refill; this could only mean interior compartments were filling with water.†   (source)
  • With all her ballast tanks now blasted free of water by compressed air, the submarine was very light, and she rose like a climbing aircraft.†   (source)
  • She was still down by the bow, which was partially compensated for when the intact ballast tanks were blown dry.†   (source)
  • He had to get her to the surface immediately, and he shouted orders to blow all ballast and make full rise on the diving planes.†   (source)
  • The Red October's hull was filled with the noise of rushing air as vents at the top of the ballast tanks were opened and water entering from the tank floods at the bottom chased the buoying air out.†   (source)
  • The forward ballast tanks were permanently vented to the sea, but the submarine was so big and her ballast tanks so subdivided that she was only eight feet down at the bow.†   (source)
  • The force of the explosion had torn a hole twelve feet across, shredded the interior ballast tank baffles, and ruptured a half-dozen air flasks, but already much of its force had been dissipated.†   (source)
  • The high-pressure air in the ballast tanks spilled out of the bottom floods and the tanks filled with water, dropping the angle of the boat and submerging her.†   (source)
  • All I mean is that a board of directors is one or two ambitious men—and a lot of ballast.†   (source)
  • What effect upon the stability of the boat would the shifting of the ballast have?†   (source)
  • Immediately—the chariot was so light without its accustomed weight—the car began to rock about like a ship tossing without ballast on the waves.†   (source)
  • The ballast had been shifted too.†   (source)
  • What was ballast?†   (source)
  • As it passed Ballast Office the clock showed half-past nine.†   (source)
  • So are the motions of a little vessel without ballast tossed about on a stormy sea.†   (source)
  • She is ballasted with utilities; not altogether with unusable pig-lead and kentledge.†   (source)
  • It was apparently considered out of the question to dive by filling the ballast tanks.†   (source)
  • Hissing sounds soon told me that water was being admitted into the ballast tanks.†   (source)
  • Meanwhile the ballast tanks filled with water and the Nautilus sank slowly.†   (source)
  • By then it was rising to the surface, but cautiously, while slowly emptying its ballast tanks.†   (source)
  • These ballast tanks exist within easy access in the lower reaches of the Nautilus.†   (source)
  • Near 11:30 the ballast tanks emptied, and the submersible rose to the surface of the ocean.†   (source)
  • Next the ballast tanks filled with water, the boat sank, and was fitted into its socket.†   (source)
  • The hatch closed, and I heard water hissing in the ballast tanks.†   (source)
  • Here, whenever he needed, Captain Nemo came to withdraw these millions to ballast his Nautilus.†   (source)
  • "But can't we float the Nautilus clear by emptying its ballast tanks, to regain our balance?"†   (source)
  • A well–known hissing told me that water was entering the ship's ballast tanks.†   (source)
  • Now then, I have supplementary ballast tanks capable of shipping 100 metric tons of water.†   (source)
  • Rain was drizzling down on the cold streets and, when they reached the Ballast Office, Farrington suggested the Scotch House.†   (source)
  • There was a stability, a ballast, in Phillotson's pronouncement which restrained his friend's comment.†   (source)
  • The hammock, the one which had been Billy's bed when alive, having already been ballasted with shot and otherwise prepared to serve for his canvas coffin, the last offices of the sea-undertakers, the Sail-Maker's Mates, were now speedily completed.†   (source)
  • As there were nine boats all told, it meant that we should have plenty of water, and ballast as well, though there was the chance that the boat would be overloaded, what of the generous supply of other things I was taking.†   (source)
  • She is almost entirely in ballast of silver sand, with only a small amount of cargo, a number of great wooden boxes filled with mould.†   (source)
  • Jostling with unemployed labourers of the lowest class, ballast-heavers, coal-whippers, brazen women, ragged children, and the raff and refuse of the river, he makes his way with difficulty along, assailed by offensive sights and smells from the narrow alleys which branch off on the right and left, and deafened by the clash of ponderous waggons that bear great piles of merchandise from the stacks of warehouses that rise from every corner.†   (source)
  • These useful articles of course took the place of the ballast I had hastily thrown in the day before; even so, the boys had brought so many things that we were obliged to leave some of them for a future trip.†   (source)
  • Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home.†   (source)
  • There were many things to be brought up from the beach and stored in the outhouse — as oars, nets, sails, cordage, spars, lobster-pots, bags of ballast, and the like; and though there was abundance of assistance rendered, there being not a pair of working hands on all that shore but would have laboured hard for Mr. Peggotty, and been well paid in being asked to do it, yet she persisted, all day long, in toiling under weights that she was quite unequal to, and fagging to and fro on all…†   (source)
  • Going in ballast.†   (source)
  • To recline on a stump of thorn in the central valley of Egdon, between afternoon and night, as now, where the eye could reach nothing of the world outside the summits and shoulders of heathland which filled the whole circumference of its glance, and to know that everything around and underneath had been from prehistoric times as unaltered as the stars overhead, gave ballast to the mind adrift on change, and harassed by the irrepressible New.†   (source)
  • For now the last of the fleet of ships was round the last low point we had headed; and the last green barge, straw-laden, with a brown sail, had followed; and some ballast-lighters, shaped like a child's first rude imitation of a boat, lay low in the mud; and a little squat shoal-lighthouse on open piles stood crippled in the mud on stilts and crutches; and slimy stakes stuck out of the mud, and slimy stones stuck out of the mud, and red landmarks and tidemarks stuck out of the mud,…†   (source)
  • Now, at the moment when the door had opened to admit the cardinal, the nine parts of self-esteem in Gringoire, swollen and expanded by the breath of popular admiration, were in a state of prodigious augmentation, beneath which disappeared, as though stifled, that imperceptible molecule of which we have just remarked upon in the constitution of poets; a precious ingredient, by the way, a ballast of reality and humanity, without which they would not touch the earth.†   (source)
  • Now a bed among brickbats and ballast-refuse on a damp night, between overcrowded horses and unwashed Baltis, would not appeal to many white boys; but Kim was utterly happy.†   (source)
  • He says he feels as if he 'could make a prosperous voyage now with me aboard as mate, and lots of love for ballast'.†   (source)
  • The frame-work of our stern was shattered excessively, and, in almost every respect, we had received considerable injury; but to our extreme Joy we found the pumps unchoked, and that we had made no great shifting of our ballast.†   (source)
  • As was usual in such craft, a large, round, smooth stone was in each end of the canoe, for the double purpose of seats and ballast; one of these was within reach of his feet.†   (source)
  • Now then, if I provide some ballast tanks equal in capacity to that one–tenth, hence able to hold 150.†   (source)
  • Jo hardly knew her own MS. again, so crumpled and underscored were its pages and paragraphs, but feeling as a tender parent might on being asked to cut off her baby's legs in order that it might fit into a new cradle, she looked at the marked passages and was surprised to find that all the moral reflections—which she had carefully put in as ballast for much romance—had been stricken out.†   (source)
  • We signalled our intention of remaining on board, and then spent the rest of our time in taking out the stones we had placed in the boat for ballast, and stowed in their place heavy articles, of value to us.†   (source)
  • Then, again, it would never do in plain sight of the world's riveted eyes, it would never do, I say, for this straddling captain to be seen steadying himself the slightest particle by catching hold of anything with his hands; indeed, as token of his entire, buoyant self-command, he generally carries his hands in his trowsers' pockets; but perhaps being generally very large, heavy hands, he carries them there for ballast.†   (source)
  • I could hear the ballast tanks filling little by little, and the Nautilus sank gently beneath the surface of the waves.†   (source)
  • The main ballast tanks were filled with the water that hadn't yet congealed at our line of flotation.†   (source)
  • The hatch closed, the ballast tanks filled with water, and the submersible sank some ten meters down.†   (source)
  • "Certainly," he replied, "since the ballast tanks aren't yet empty, and when they are, the Nautilus must rise to the surface of the sea."†   (source)
  • Just then a fairly loud hissing told me that the ballast tanks were filling, and the Nautilus sank beneath the waves of the Atlantic.†   (source)
  • Our full electric power was then put on the pumps, which instantly began to expel water from the ballast tanks.†   (source)
  • Its ballast tanks full, it was sitting at a depth of 1,000 meters in a comparatively unpopulated region of the ocean where only larger fish put in occasional appearances.†   (source)
  • Besides, I use my supplementary ballast tanks only to reach an average depth of 1,500 to 2,000 meters, and that with a view to conserving my machinery.†   (source)
  • The pumps began to expel water from the ballast tanks; on the pressure gauge, a needle marked the decreasing pressures that indicated the Nautilus's upward progress; then the needle stopped.†   (source)
  • The stopcocks of the ballast tanks were then opened wide, and 100 cubic meters of water rushed in, increasing the Nautilus's weight by 100,000 kilograms.†   (source)
  • When I want to rise again and lie flush with the surface, all I have to do is expel that water; and if I desire that the Nautilus emerge above the waves to one–tenth of its total capacity, I empty all the ballast tanks completely.†   (source)
  • My second hull, the outer cover, includes a keel fifty centimeters high by twenty–five wide, which by itself weighs 62 metric tons; this hull, the engine, the ballast, the various accessories and accommodations, plus the bulkheads and interior braces, have a combined weight of 961.†   (source)
  • If at this point you want to empty the supplementary ballast tanks in order to lighten your boat and rise to the surface, your pumps must overcome that pressure of 100 atmospheres, which is 100 kilograms per each square centimeter.†   (source)
  • And so, by loading up its ballast tanks, or by sinking obliquely with its slanting fins, the Nautilus successively reached depths of 3,000, 4,000, 5,000, 7,000, 9,000, and 10,000 meters, and the ultimate conclusion from these experiments was that, in all latitudes, the sea had a permanent temperature of 4.†   (source)
  • Then was the launching full of difficulty; there was shifting of ballast above and below till two thirds was submerged.†   (source)
  • Here are 200 of them, all chosen from the simplest colloquial vocabularies and without any attempt at plan or completeness: /American/ /English/ ash-can dust-bin baby-carriage pram backyard garden baggage luggage baggage-car luggage-van ballast (railroad) metals bath-tub bath beet beet-root bid (noun) tender bill-board hoarding boarder paying-guest boardwalk (seaside) promenade bond (finance) debenture boot Blucher, or Wellington brakeman brakesman bucket pail bumper (car) buffer…†   (source)
  • …by answering cheers from a big muster of henchmen on the distant Cambrian and Caledonian hills, the mastodontic pleasureship slowly moved away saluted by a final floral tribute from the representatives of the fair sex who were present in large numbers while, as it proceeded down the river, escorted by a flotilla of barges, the flags of the Ballast office and Custom House were dipped in salute as were also those of the electrical power station at the Pigeonhouse and the Poolbeg Light.†   (source)
  • My ties and ballasts leave me, my elbows rest in sea-gaps, I skirt sierras, my palms cover continents, I am afoot with my vision.†   (source)
  • [1] The ballast,—the sinners in the seventh bolgia.†   (source)
  • For the gravity of the Former, is like the steddinesse of a Ship laden with Merchandise; but of the later, like the steddinesse of a Ship ballasted with Sand, and other trash.†   (source)
  • Thus I saw the seventh ballast[1] change and rechange, and here let the novelty be my excuse, if my pen straggle[2] a little.†   (source)
  • O, sir, upon her nose, an o'er embellished with rubies, carbuncles, sapphires, declining their rich aspect to the hot breath of Spain; who sent whole armadoes of carracks to be ballast at her nose.†   (source)
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