narrow squeak

And just as Laura was drifting off to sleep, she heard Uncle Peter say: “Eliza had a narrow squeak the other day, when I was away at Lake City. You know Prince, that big dog of mine?”

Respectable/brave 2-0 quarter-final loss after narrow squeak to that stage based on discipline and a couple of flukey clean sheets.

When he appeared at the door, he had that excited, tense look that meant a Narrow Squeak was on its way.

“Well,” he said proudly, “that was a Narrow Squeak!”

In short, in plain words, it was a narrow squeak; and ever afterwards, both in the Navy and out of it, this officer, who rose to the rank of admiral and lived to the ripe old age of eighty-six, was known as "Swiftsure Burke."