st explosive
power, but subject to tolerably well-known laws.

GUN-ROOM. A compartment on the after-end of the lower gun-deck of large
ships of war, partly occupied by the junior officers; but in smaller
vessels it is below the gun-deck, and the mess-room of the lieutenants.

GUNROOM-PORTS. In frigates, stern-ports cut through the gun-room.

GUN-SEARCHER. An iron instrument with several sharp-pointed prongs and a
wooden handle: it is used to find whether the bore is honey-combed.

GUN-SHOT. Formerly, the distance up to which a gun would throw a shot
direct to its mark, without added elevation; as the "line of metal"
(which see) was generally used in laying, this range was about 800
yards. But now that ranges are so greatly increased, with but slight
additions to the elevation, the term will include the distances of
ordinary "horizontal fire" (which see); as between ships, with rifled
guns, it will not quite reach two miles: though when the mark is large,
as a town or dockyard, it is still within long range at five miles'
distance.

GUN-SIGHT. _See_ DISPART, or SIGHTS.

GUN-SLINGS. Long rope grommets used for hoisting in and mounting them.

GUN-STONES. An old term for cannon-balls, from stones having been first
supplied to the ordnance and used for that purpose. Shakspeare makes
Henry V. tell the French ambassadors that their master's tennis-balls
shall be changed to gun-stones. This term was retained for a bullet,
after the introduction of iron shot.

GUN-TACKLE PURCHASE. A tackle composed of a rope rove through two single
blocks, the standing part being made fast to the strop of one of the
blocks. It multiplies the power applied threefold.

GUNTEN. A boat of burden in the Moluccas.

GUNTER'S LINE. Called also the _line of numbers_, and the _line of
lines_, is placed upon scales and sectors, and named from its inventor,
Edmund Gunter. It is a logarithmic scale of proportionals, wherein the
distance between each division is equal to the number of mean
proportionals contained between the two terms, in such parts as the
distance between 1 and 10 is 10,000, &c.

GUNTER'S QUADRANT. A kind of stereographic projection on the plane of
the equinoctial; the eye is supposed in one of the poles, so that the
tropic, ecliptic, and horizon form the arches of the circles, but the
hour-circles are all curves, drawn by means of several altitudes of the
sun, for some particular latitude, for every day in the year. The use of