"Tack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... no notice of the bunting, but just watched to see what he was about. So while we are repairing damages, I'll just tell you what I saw of the rest of the fleet. As soon as old Jervis had done for the Spanish admiral, he hauled his wind on the larboard tack, and followed by four or five other ships, weathered the Spanish line, and joined Collingwood in the Excellent. Then they all dashed through the line; the Excellent was the leading ship, and she first took ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... Annie to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who pokes his nose in our packing room, but they are Tom, Dick, and Harry to her. It is not being called by your first name that makes the rub. It is being called it when you must forever tack on the Mr. and the Mrs. and the Miss. Annie is in awe of no human being. Annie is the fastest packer in the room and draws the most pay. Annie sasses the entire factory. Annie never stops talking unless she wants to. Which is only now and then when her mother has had a bad spell and Annie gets ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... inner soles and counters have been made ready and brought to the lasting-room. The toe stiffeners and also the counters are now cemented into their places. The inner sole is tacked to the last, and the uppers are put in place and held there by a tack at the heel. This is done by machines; but their working is simple compared with that of the machine which now takes charge of the half-made shoe. This machine puts out sturdy little pincers which seize the edge of the ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... later Instructions; but there occurs elsewhere, and previously, the direction that, when the enemy is to windward, if the leading British Squadron finds it can weather any considerable part of them, it is to "tack and stand in, and strive to divide the enemy's body," and that, "being got to windward, is to bear down on those ships to leeward of them," which have thus ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... or beasts while at sea. Instead, they call them all cheweh—which, to them, signifies an animal, though to others it is meaningless, and is supposed not to be understanded of the beasts. To this word they tack on the sound which each beast makes in order to indicate what animal is referred to; thus the pig is the grunting cheweh, the buffalo the cheweh that says 'uak,' and the snipe the cheweh that cries 'kek-kek.' Each boat that puts to sea has been medicined with care, many incantations ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... calm and serene by the realization that in these crises of his voyage he needs a clear mind and a cool head; that he has naught to do but to do each day the best he can by the light he has; that he will never flinch nor falter for a moment; that, though he may have to tack and leave his course for a time, he will never drift, he will get back into the true channel, he will keep ever headed toward his harbor. When he will reach it, how he will reach it, matters not ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... youngsters ran up in the lee main rigging to see him go down, and as we watched him go glimmering and glimmering down to a mere speck, we wondered where he was bound, and how long it would take him to fetch Davy Jones' locker on that tack. ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... all. I know the same about myself. I've taken cheap things. Biology got me on the wrong tack at first; with a biological mind I saw everything via the body. Biology's a dragon one has to slay; that's why, in my work, I've taken to psychology instead. Love-making! I told you, right at the first, I always made love to women—. I always have done it, and always should have gone on doing it ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... display his knowledge with pedantick ostentation; as when, in translating Virgil, he says, "tack to the larboard,"—and "veer starboard;" and talks, in another work, of "virtue spooning before the wind."—His vanity now ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... cracked, and all run jabbering of the irony of Fate, to escape the annoyance of tracing the causes. And what are they? nine times out of ten, plain want of patience, or some debt for indulgence. There's a subject:—let some one write, Fables in illustration of the irony of Fate: and I'll undertake to tack-on my grandmother's maxims for a moral to teach of 'em. We prate of that irony when we slink away from the lesson—the rod we conjure. And you to talk of Fate! It's the seed we sow, individually or collectively. I'm bound-up in the prosperity of the country, and if the ship is wrecked, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... doubtful of him—whether he was not showing himself too well inclined to do the bidding of the democratic leaders. The one accusation has been as unfair as the other. In this letter he reminds Lentulus that a captain in making a port cannot always sail thither in a straight line, but must tack and haul and use a slant of wind as he can get it. Cicero was always struggling to make way against a head-wind, and was running hither and thither in his attempt, in a manner most perplexing to those who were looking on without knowing the nature of the winds; but his ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... sweetish caps, side by side with a card of gingerbread. The carpet was woven of every color, in every form, but without any definite figure, and promised to be another puzzle for my curious eyes to unravel; it seemed to have been just thrown down with here and there a tack in it, only serving to make it look more awry. While amusing myself with this carpet, it recalled an incident that a roguish cousin of mine once related to me after he had been to see Aunt Polly, connected with this parlor, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... tell us where we'll be able to find a lunch counter?" asked Ned. "We have nothing in our kits except some hard tack." ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... to me, and begg'd that I would not put about, for if I did, they would certainly board us. As to my Part, being a Stranger to this Coast and Angria, knowing my Chief Mate had been often this Way, and my Third Mate had sail'd in the Gallies, I was over prevail'd upon not to tack about. As the Enemy kept under my Stern, playing their Shot in very hot upon us, and destroying my Rigging so fast, I soon after endeavour'd to wear the Ship upon the Enemy; but the Wind dying away to a Calm, she would not ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... government, though pledged to the preservation of slavery, soon found itself beaten back upon its course and out upon a new tack. Before a year had elapsed, namely on April 10, 1862, Congress resolved that financial aid should be given to any state that might adopt gradual emancipation. Six days later it abolished slavery in the District of Columbia. Two short ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... the holding of the council, I happened to go on deck in the middle watch, and found the yards braced sharp up on the larboard tack, with the South East Trades strong on our bow. The captain was no better; and we were ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... braces, the ship spun round, and there we were on the starboard tack heading straight for the stranger. 'Twas clear then that she thought something was amiss, for she tried to put about and run for it; but being greatly hampered by her stern sails and the press of canvas she was carrying, by the ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... understand. She never guessed how every part of that dwelling had been planned with a direct reference to her and her tastes; that not a curtain, or a carpet, or a picture had been purchased without Melinda's having said she believed Ethie would approve it. Every stone, and plank and tack, and nail had in it a thought of the Ethie whose coming back had been speculated upon and planned in so many different ways, but never in this way—never just as it had finally occurred, with Richard gone, and no one there to welcome her, save the servants ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... hastily around to find a scene of great excitement a little way down the street. The people were crowding around Toto and throwing at him everything they could find at hand. They pelted the little dog with hard-tack, crackers, and even articles of furniture which were hard baked and heavy enough ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... a restless movement of Rupert's that she was not upon the right tack she faltered, floundered wildly, and finally drew forth the inevitable pocket-handkerchief, to add feelingly if irrelevantly from its folds, "And indeed if I thought such a calamity had really fallen upon us—and of course there are symptoms, no ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... suffering hero pictures himself as in the right, and animated by the noblest intentions, though misunderstood, and thus further enhances his self-esteem; but sometimes he takes the other tack and pictures himself as wicked—but as very, very wicked, a veritable desperado. It may be his self-esteem has been wounded by blame for some little meanness or disobedience, and he restores it by imagining himself a great, big, important ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... for all I know—of the firm had a ship named after them. Good, solid, old-fashioned craft they were, too, built to carry and to last. None of your new-fangled, labour-saving appliances in them, but plenty of men and plenty of good salt beef and hard tack put aboard—and off you go to fight your way out ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... do not tack remembrances to Mrs. Williams and your daughters and Miss Kavanagh to all my letters, because that makes an empty form of what should be a sincere wish, but I trust this mark of courtesy and regard, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... of the wind, and headed her for the wreck. How her sharp prow did tear through the waves, and at times she was almost smothered by the leaping water. But this course would not bring them to the overturned boat. It was necessary for them to tack once more, and as they drew near they could see people clinging frantically to the half-submerged yacht. The captain gave a loud shout of encouragement when he came within speaking distance. With much ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... won't do—it won't do!" Ransom went on, laughing. "You are on the wrong tack altogether. Do you really take the ground that your sex has been without influence? Influence? Why, you have led us all by the nose to where we are now! Wherever we are, it's all you. You are ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... another highly unpopular fatigue. First of all you produce your portable entrenching-tool—it looks like a combination of a modern tack-hammer and a medieval back-scratcher—and fit it to its haft. Then you lie flat upon your face on the wet grass, and having scratched up some small lumps of turf, proceed to build these into a parapet. ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... but one fault to find with Mr. Bartlett's Dictionary, and that it shares with all other provincial glossaries. No accents are given. No stranger could tell, for example, whether hacmatack should be pronounced hac'matack, hacma'tack, or hacmatack'. The value of Mr. Wright's otherwise excellent dictionary is very much impaired by this neglect. Ignorance of the pronunciation enhances tenfold the difficulty of tracing analogies or detecting corruptions. The title of Mr. Coleridge's volume (the second ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... freshened so much in the night that we changed our purpose. We saw many white birds about this island, having two long feathers in their tails. These birds, and various other kinds, accompanied us along with, such contrary winds and gusts that we often split our sails, and being obliged to lie to, or tack to and again, we rather went to leeward than gained way, having ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... fair, till we had to tack about in order to enter Laurvig, where we arrived towards three o'clock in the afternoon. It is a clean, pleasant town, with a considerable iron-work, which gives ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... sergeant passed called to him for an explanation, and not receiving it, followed in a quickly growing mob that filled Margaretha Street from wall to wall. When he dismounted he had almost to fight his way to the post or door upon which he was to tack the next placard. The crowd surged about him in its anxiety to read what the placard bore, and then, between the cheering and yelling, those in the front passed back to the crowd the tidings that filled them with ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... do it, Miss O'Carroll. If I were to take all the mean and sordid qualities of a money-dealing Jew, and tack on to them, as with a nail, the quality of extreme benevolence, I should have a very decent hero for a modern novel; and should contribute my quota to the fashionable method of administering a mass of vice, under a thin and unnatural covering ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... Clavy, a shelf. Clavel-tack, a mantel-piece, a place where keys (claves) are kept, a shelf for keys. Holmen-clavel, an inn on Blagdon hill, so called from having a large holm-beam ...
— A Glossary of Provincial Words & Phrases in use in Somersetshire • Wadham Pigott Williams
... Ashton-Kirk. "Three lines there are, and each follows a row of tack heads. These latter were, apparently, once driven in to hold down a step-protector of some sort which has since become worn ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... piece of silver in both states, a piece of copper in both states, a piece of brass in both states, a piece of iron in both states, a piece of steel in both states, a piece of tinfoil, a piece of solder, a screw, a clasp nail, a clout nail, a hob nail, a spike nail, a sparable, and a tack. ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... the middle watch, the captain came on deck, and took to walking up and down with the second mate. The night was clear, though dark. The Chrysolite was close-hauled on the starboard tack, and was making good headway under a clinking breeze. She was an old-fashioned, frigate-built, full-rigged ship, such as one seldom happens on now, her quarter-galleries, chain-plates, to' gallant bulwarks, and single topsail-yards being ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... a Bible, we got one. If it's sewin'-machines, we ain't, but don't. If it's savin' our souls, we belong to church reg'lar an' ain't interested. If it's explainin' God, nothin' doin'! An' if it's tack-pullers with nail-files an' corkscrews on 'em, you can save your breath," said the girl rapidly, in a heated voice, and with a half-dry ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... he has prayers for sale—and he knows they are never failing, "If you tack 'em up on the wall and say 'em over and over every day they's ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... let me speak! I've hit on a lovely plan: it will work like a machine; it can't possibly fail. We have been on the wrong tack, trying to meet force with force. What we want is craft. Do you follow ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... longer; never dreaming that my moralist would proceed to extremities, while all hands were present. But bethinking him that by going this roundabout way he would never get at his object, he went off on another tack; apprising me, in substance, that he was instructed by the whole mess, then and there assembled, to give me warning to seek out another club, as they did not longer fancy the society either ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... brunette. The load was drawn by four broken down, spavined animals, the crippled man riding one of the horses of the rear span, the boy one of the leaders. The soldiers manifested great interest in this curious load of refugees, and freely divided with them their hard tack and coffee. The writer of these pages, reining his horse to the side of the vehicle, addressed the aged negress, "Well, aunty, are all those your children?" "Lor, no massa, dey's only eighteen ob 'em." Doubtless she designed to say that there were only eighteen ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... majority of anti-federalists have got into the Assembly of Virginia, so that Mr. Henry is omnipotent there. Mr. Madison was left out as a senator by eight or nine votes; and Henry has so modeled the districts for representatives, as to tack Orange to counties where himself has great influence, that Madison may not be elected into the lower federal House, which was the place he had wished to serve in, and not the Senate. Henry pronounced a philippic against Madison ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... wouldn't have mistaken it for a gigantic cetacean? I spent three-quarters of the day on the platform. I stared at the sea. Nothing on the horizon, except near four o'clock in the afternoon a long steamer to the west, running on our opposite tack. Its masting was visible for an instant, but it couldn't have seen the Nautilus because we were lying too low in the water. I imagine that steamboat belonged to the Peninsular & Oriental line, which provides service from ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... attention to the matter, and then, pulling up the collar of his rough pea-jacket, stepped boldly out into the rain. Three or four minutes' walk, or rather roll, brought him to a dark narrow passage, which ran between two houses to the water-side. By a slight tack to starboard at a critical moment he struck the channel safely, and followed it until it ended in a flight of old stone steps, half of which were ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... a different light on it." And Mr. Oliver Fernald, president of the great city bank of which Sam Burnett was cashier, got promptly down on the knees of his freshly pressed trousers, and proceeded to tack the frazzled edge of the pulpit stair-carpet with interest and skill. That stair-carpet had been tacked by a good many people before him, but doubtless it had never been stretched into place by a man whose eye-glasses sat astride of a nose of the impressive, ...
— On Christmas Day In The Evening • Grace Louise Smith Richmond
... none, and he is a kind o' comfort to lay things on when you've been, more'n usual, cussed. That's the Andrew Halloran over there to the left." He pointed to a dusky boat that was coming in slowly. "That's his last tack, if he makes it, and I reckon he will. Now, if you'll go in and start the chowder, I'll see if he want's any ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... with a hammer and carried a pair of steps, while Harlow bore a large piece of wallpaper which the two of them proceeded to tack on the wall, much to the amusement of the others, who read the announcement ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... course, nevertheless, with all hands on deck, eagerly, anxiously scanning the sea ahead. And presently an object loomed into view, which soon defined itself for a great ship on fire. As the Arabella with the Elizabeth following closely raced nearer on their north-westerly tack, the outlines of the blazing vessel grew clearer. Presently her masts stood out sharp and black above the smoke and flames, and through his telescope Blood made out plainly the pennon of St. George ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... "He's the tack in the tire. I can see what happened as well as if I had been there. Ersten knew he ought to move. Lofty tried to buy him and Schnitt tried to force him. Then he got his Dutch up. Schnitt left on account of it. ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... cried Don Quixote; "squeeze, tack, and string your proverbs together; here are none to oppose you. My mother whips me, and I whip the top. Here am I exhorting thee to suppress thy proverbs, and in an instant thou hast spewed forth ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Moniteur to the effect that, although public opinion had been agitated by alarming rumours, there was nothing in the foreign relations of France to justify the fears these rumours tended to create. He continued on this tack, with more or less consistency, to the very verge of the outbreak of hostilities. 'The Empire was peace,' as it was always announced to be in the intervals when it was not war; there was no more harmless dove in Europe than the person enthroned in the Tuileries. These assurances were given ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... thing dat you'll hatter gi' 'im credit fer, an' dat wuz keepin' his face an' han's clean, an' in takin' keer er his cloze. Nobody, not even his mammy, had ter patch his britches er tack buttons on his coat. See 'im whar you may an' when you mought, he wuz allers lookin' spick an' span des like he done come right out'n a ban'-box. You know what de riddle say 'bout 'im: when he stan' up he sets down, an' when he walks he hops. ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... the war, were inhabited, and yielded vast quantities of grain. We usually landed to cook breakfast, and then went on quickly. The breadth of water between the islands was now quite sufficient for a sailing vessel to tack, and work her sails in; the prevailing winds would blow her up the stream; but I regretted that I had not come when the river was at its lowest rather than at its highest. The testimony, however, of Captain Parker and Lieutenant Hoskins, hereafter to ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... were outside and hoisted their sails, the sea being very smooth under the land; and when they had run out two or three miles, with the wind aft, they wore ship, one after another, coming to a little, to get their sheets in, and then holding off to jibe the great sails for the port tack, with much creaking of yards and flapping of canvas. Then, as they ran free along the coast to the eastward, the wind quartering, they got out great booms to windward, guyed fore and aft, and down to the forward beaching-hooks at the water's edge, ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... and beareth those titles, for great reason, and to our commodity. Every circumstance relating both to Christ's humiliation and exaltation ought to be duly weighed by us, because of that mystery of God, and of man's redemption that is wrapped therein; for as there was not a pin, nor a loop, nor a tack in the tabernacle but had in it use of instruction to the children of Israel, so there is not any part, whether more near or more remote to Christ's suffering and exaltation, but is, could we get into it, full ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the nearest I can figure it, El Hassan is ruler of an area about the size of Mexico. At least it was yesterday. By today, you can probably tack on Texas." ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... of pine or poplar. These pieces are made into two frames as shown in the drawing and held together with long screws or nails. Fasten with glue and screw short blocks on the inside of the couch rails for holding the two frames in place. Tack pieces of cheap burlap across the frame and cover with ordinary black cambric. This will give a strong, springy rest ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part 2 • H. H. Windsor
... a sheet!" cried Adam, when everything had been arranged to his liking. "We'll tack it across the lower half of the window. Then Bundy, please go down and bring up two buckets of water and pour it into this jar. Now, Mrs. Colton, come along, you and I will bring up blossoms enough to fill it," and the two dashed downstairs and out into the orchard with ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... needlework is done, do not finish it with a flat iron. That finishes it in more senses than one. But suppose it is puckered? In that case, stretch it and damp it. To do this, first tack on to it (as explained on page 251) a frame of strong tape. Then, on a drawing-board or other even wooden surface, lay a piece of clean calico, and on that, face downwards, the embroidery, and, slightly stretching it, nail it down by the tape with tin-tacks rather close together. ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... LE GEOGRAPHE was passing, so as to keep our broadside to her, lest the flag of truce should be a deception, and having come to the wind on the other tack, a boat was hoisted out, and I went on board the French ship, which ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... a serviceable vessel, and ran bravely before the wind on the calm sea. Had the wind been fully in our favour we should have made the island for which we were steering within the hour; but it blew slightly across our course, compelling us to tack and change our course often, so that it was a good two hours before we were close to our goal. When we came close enough we saw that the island seemed in all respects to be a more delectable spot than that island on which chance had first cast us. There was a fine natural bay, with a strand ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... to tack, to enter the channel of the river; and, at that fatal moment, the wind struck the mainmast with a force which instantly threw it over-board; and the ship, cast on her beam-ends by the violence of ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... said the Representative, as he chewed a tack awhile, thinking it was a clove. 'I want to find a boarding house where the proprietress was an orphan found in a livery stable, whose father was a dago from East Austin, and whose grandfather was never placed on the map. ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... he could not keep him confined forever. Some time he would get out, and Martin feared that he would set the officers on his track. The remark of Smith that he would make a good boy for their business occurred to him, and he determined to try him on a new tack. If he could get him compromised by a connection with their business, it would be for his interest also to keep clear ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... inches long. Two inches from one end of it make a cross mark with the square, and from the ends of the mark run lines towards the end at an angle of 45 degrees. Cut along these lines, and lay one of the edges just cut up against C, and flush with the outer edge of L1 (Fig. 5). Tack the strut on temporarily to both legs, turn the trestle over, and draw your pencil (which should have a sharp point) along the angles which the strut makes with the legs. This gives you the limits of the overlaps. ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams
... your last letter to me, telling me that it will soon disappear. I think, on the contrary, that it is, at most, only at its dawning. They are on a different tack from before, but nothing more. At the time of La Harpe, they were grammarians; at the time of Sainte-Beuve and of Taine, they are historians. When will they be artists, only artists, but really artists? Where ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... you read John Bull. It was a Scotch gentleman,(7) a friend of mine, that writ it; but they put it upon me. The Parliament will hardly be up till June. We were like to be undone some days ago with a tack; but we carried it bravely, and the Whigs came in to help us. Poor Lady Masham, I am afraid, will lose her only son, about a twelvemonth old, with the king's evil. I never would let Mrs. Fenton see me during my illness, though she often came; ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... see'd trays sold at mos' every country auction I goes to. I'd jes' as soon sell that one to you, if you like it, but maybe you'd think I was askin' too much if I was to tack on the cost of time I lost that day. I never got a chanst to bid on the oak side-board, 'cause a city man felt so mad at Abe fer buyin' the tray, that he run up the side-board out of spite, when he found ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... to tease being conceded, she went that instant on the opposite tack, and began to tell him how she had missed him, and how sorry she had been anything should have occurred to vex their kind good friend. In short, Edouard spent a delightful day, for Rose took him one way to meet ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... occupied several floors of the building devoted to calfskins, and the first task given Peter was to help stretch and tack the skins which were still wet from dyeing on boards, after which they were dried by steam in a large, hot room. In some factories, he learned, the skins were put in great rooms with open shutters on all sides, where they dried in the air. But the Coddington Company, he was told, preferred ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... alone; and then there was that scheme for a new book that he had laid down hopelessly some time ago; it seemed to have arisen into life again within the last hour; he understood that he had started on a false tack, he had taken the wrong aspect of his idea. Of course the thing couldn't be written in that way; it was like trying to read a page turned upside down; and he saw those characters he had vainly sought suddenly disambushed, and ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... tack now, old chap," added Tom Pringle. "But only see what I've discovered! such a high old battery, boys! six brass cannon nearly as big as boot-jacks. Hurrah for the Dashahed Zouaves!" and away scampered the boys to look at the guns, while Colonel ...
— Red, White, Blue Socks, Part First - Being the First Book • Sarah L Barrow
... not know what he meant; and I supposed that he did not know himself, unless indeed by sheer blundering he had pitched upon the truth that I was come on a mission. But so soon as James was in the room again, he began upon the other tack, and talked of Prince this and the Duke of that, with whom I might be supposed to be on terms of intimacy, winking on me all the while, so that my man saw it. However, I answered him civilly. I could do ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... before sleeping on it. Hair mattresses that have become hard and dirty, can be made nearly as good as new by ripping them, washing the ticking, and picking the hair free from bunches, and keeping it in a dry, airy place, several days. Whenever the ticking gets dry, fill it lightly with the hair, and tack it together. ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... bid for to mention is, when the class gets up to read You give 'em too tight of a reinin', an' touch 'em up more than they need; You're nicer than wise in the matter of holdin' the book in one han', An' you turn a stray g in their doin's, an' tack an odd d on their an'; There ain't no great good comes of speakin' the words so polite, as I see, Providin' you know what the facts is, an' tell 'em off jest as they be. An' then there's that readin' in corncert, is censured from ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... a powerful one, of the semi-rotary type, and they had nearly two miles of smoother water before they stretched out of the bay upon the other tack. When they did so, Carroll, glancing down again through the scuttle, could not flatter himself that he had reduced the water. It was comforting, however, to see that it had not increased, though he did not expect that state of affairs ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... you've made up your mind to reform after this, p'raps we might let you off easy, Bud. But the next time you get caught, oh! but you're going to get it. Better quit that crowd, and try another tack. Ted and Ward have all the fun, and you fellows take the drubbings. ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... tack: he had thrown in his interest with her first school in his mudirieh; he got her Arab teachers from Cairo who could speak English; he opened the large schoolhouse himself with great ceremony, and with many kavasses in blue ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... whiskey and encouraged by the eagerness of the bystanders, that gentleman was now rehearsing the history of his misfortune. It was but scraps that reached me: how he "filled her on the starboard tack," and how "it came up sudden out of the nor'nor'west," and "there she was, high and dry." Sometimes he would appeal to one of the men—"That was how it was, Jack?"—and the man would reply, "That was the way of it, Captain Trent." Lastly, he started a fresh tide of popular sympathy by enunciating ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... nature: they are capable of many friendships and of a true dignity in danger, giving each other a sympathetic, if transitory, regret—one sorry that another "should be foolishly lost at a game of tick-tack." Words which seem to exhaust man's deepest sentiment concerning death and life are put on the lips of a gilded, witless youth; and the saintly Isabella feels fire creep along her, kindling her tongue to eloquence at the suggestion of shame. In places ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... largest of the Spanish vessels would scarcely pass for third rates in the present navy of England; yet were they so ill framed or so ill governed, that they were quite unwieldy, and could not sail upon a wind, nor tack on occasion, nor be managed in stormy weather, by the seamen. Neither the mechanics of shipbuilding, nor the experience of mariners, had attained so great perfection as could serve for the security and government of such bulky vessels; and the English, who had ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... is nothing but babble; and I hardly ever yet saw that man who did not rather prate too much, than speak too little. And yet half of our age is embezzled this way: we are kept four or five years to learn words only, and to tack them together into clauses; as many more to form them into a long discourse, divided into four or five parts; and other five years, at least, to learn succinctly to mix and interweave them after a subtle and intricate manner let us leave ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... her sums, for the welcome voice that would call her away; she saw herself again examining its grave face and striving to calculate, with childish eagerness, if she would have time to build another Tower of Babel or put another tack in the doll's frock before the ruthless iron tongue struck the ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... hear the tick-tack all the time since the last attempt. It haunts my ears, it is frightful, to say to one's self: There is clockwork somewhere, just about to reach the death-tick—and not to know where, not to know where! When the police were here ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... too busy mentally to permit even his agile mind to indulge in continued speculations as to her identity. He knew that his first duty was to prove entertaining, and in some distress as to what might be the best tack, suddenly took advantage of a sandwich man's conspicuous overcoat that read, "The Marvelous ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... yet adverse, and the schooner had to beat against it. As she went on each tack, they came in sight of the shores; but as time passed, the bay widened, and Captain Corbet kept away from the land as much as possible. All the time the boys never ceased to maintain their forlorn lookout, and watched over the sides, and peered anxiously through the mist, in ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... boat breasted the sea. It was within three miles of the light, though hardly visible in the gloom to the watchful eye of the light-keeper on his gallery, when Butler attempted to go upon another tack. Twice he tried, twice he failed, when, making a third attempt, the boom of the sail jibed, and instantly the boat capsized. The disappearance of the sail from his horizon told the man upon the gallery of the peril of his friends, and quickly launching a boat, ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... people are often lost in the high country of the Rockies. Mountain trails twist and turn, tack and loop around unscalable cliffs. Let a stranger step off a trail for a moment to pick a flower blooming in the shade of the surrounding woods, and, unless he be an outdoor man, he is liable to be confused as to the trail's ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... saw GAWAIN'S head! With one wild bound toward the dark'ning skies, From out the garden gates he madly flies. But soon his mind it alters. Slipping back, His tune he changes—trying this new tack:"Howe'er it be, it seems to me 'Tis only noble to be good; Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... to the American. One needed a good appetite to enjoy it. Great twenty-five pound white fish were produced from skin bags and sliced off to be eaten raw. Reindeer meat was stewed in copper kettles. Hard tack was soaked in water and mixed with reindeer suet. Tea from the ever present Russian tea kettle and seal oil from a sewed up seal skin took the place of drink and relish. The tea was good, the seal oil unspeakable, a liquid not ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... in spare time, in contrast to mainstream 'back burner' (which connotes benign neglect until some future resumption of activity). Some people prefer to use the term for processing that they have queued up for their unconscious minds (a tack that one can often fruitfully take upon encountering an obstacle in creative ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... rush order in ahead of yours, and these refreshments is going through by express. I've raised your ante. Money no object, understand? I'll boost the price again if I have to, and keep on boosting it.' Then he warned me not to start anything or he'd tack two letters onto the front of my name. He'd do it, too. I took it on the run, and here ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... for a while, and it wasn't until Lafe heard Peg's voice growling at one of Milly's kittens that he ceased his tick-tack. ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... and I behold again in memory those two noble frigates, the Imperieuse and the Chesapeake, straining tightly at their cables, with smoke-stacks too modest in proportions to impair to the critical nautical eye the tack and sheet suggestions of the graceful, exquisitely symmetrical fabric of spars and yards and rigging soaring triumphantly aloft to where the long whip or pennant at the main flickered like a delicate line of fire against the hard cold ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... Walters did, get a cup of coffee and a hard-tack; that'll go way ahead of nothin' if ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... For the Master repeatedly commands us, "Be not anxious." It helps to get a habit labeled correctly. Here to tack on "sinful" in block letters, black ink, white paper, so as to get greatest contrast is a decided help. And worrying is a reproach upon Jesus. Let the Gentiles, the outsiders, the people who have not taken Jesus into their lives, let them ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... or before the wind Wind abeam Port tack Wind abeam Starboard tack Pointing into the wind Port tack Pointing into ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... himself with an effort and, disregarding the allusion, decided to take another tack. "But doesn't ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... now made to raise the poor animal from his perilous position, which great work, to the no small joy of the major, was effected by putting the "Two Marys" on the other tack. Old Battle now shook the water from his mane, and as if to thank his deliverers, gave out a loud neigh. And so suddenly did this bring the major to his feet, in the full possession of his senses, that he set about thanking heaven for ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... companies, and another was an officer on the staff of General Meade. The Colonel invited us to take supper with him and some of his friends, and the kind and unexpected proposal was gladly accepted, for recently we had had nothing but hard-tack to satiate our hunger. At sunset he sent a guard to conduct us to his tent, which was large and comfortable. We found the table well supplied with a variety of savory eatables, and we were struck by the contrast of the tent and the table with ...
— Reminiscences of a Rebel • Wayland Fuller Dunaway
... improvised hospital was ready. One tent was taken for operating-tables, and the work of surgeons and nurses began. They worked night and day for forty-eight hours, with only brief intervals for coffee and hard-tack. ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... in fleets migrating by, Now beat across some meadow's bay, And as they tack and veer on high, With faint and hurried click beguile ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... to Juan Fernandez, we hauled up to the S.W. having very little wind till the 12th, at three a.m. when a gale sprung up at W.S.W. which obliged us to tack and stand to the N.W. At day-break, we were agreeably surprised by the appearance of a sail on our weather-bow, between four and five leagues distant, on which we crowded all sail and stood towards her, soon perceiving she was a different vessel from that we had chased ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... what did she hear among the bean-rows in the garden but a noise that went tick-tack, tick-tack, just for all the world as if a brogue-maker was putting on the ...
— The Irish Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... Her cooking knack Would conquer fifty Catos— The Queen of tarts, and tuck, and tack, And cream, and ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... unless strong proof appeared, that any man could be so daring as to hold up such a resource to a regular government, which had three million of known, avowed, a great part of it territorial, revenue. But it is necessary, it seems, to piece out the lion's skin with a fox's tail,—to tack on a little piece of bribery and a little piece of peculation, in order to help out the resources of a great and flourishing state; that they should have in the knavery of their servants, in the breach of their laws, and in the entire defiance of their covenants, a real resource applicable ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to make a long tack, this time I guess,' continued the earl, as they both stood watching the still lessening ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker
... been sold in the harbor for a handsome figure. The brown sails of Tregenza's lugger flapped in the bay among a crowd of others, and every man was in a hurry to be off again at the earliest opportunity. Already the first boats home were putting to sea once more, making a wide tack across the mouth of the bay until nearly abreast of St. Michael's Mount, then tearing away like race horses with foam flying as they sailed before the eastern wind for the ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... steeples and the great town; it was the one in which they lived, and they went to the grandmother's door, and up the stairs, and into the room, where everything remained in its usual place. The big clock was going "Tick! tack!" and the hands were turning; but as they went through the rooms they noticed that they had become grown-up people. The roses out on the roof-gutter were blooming in at the open window, and there stood the children's chairs, and Kay and Gerda sat upon the chairs, and held each ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... rejoined the other, "but keep up a good heart, like a sailor hard upon a lee shore, and all 'll be bright and sunny in a day or two. And now we'll just make a tack down the bay-street-and sight the Maggy. There's a small drop of somethin' in the locker, that'll help to keep up yer spirits, I reckon—a body's spirits has to be tautened now and then, as ye do a bobstay,—and the wife (she's a good sort ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... took the right tack. So earnest was she that her lips quivered a little, and her eyes showed a pleading, pathetic expression, as she said, "Please don't misunderstand me, Mrs. Greene. If you would enjoy it, I want you to come to our party on Saturday ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... see you," he cried. "I thought I heard firing. They must have been pretty close—not much sea-way in your last tack, eh? But come below. You will find everything in my cabin. The owner said most particular that it was to be made all spick and span for you. Honoured I am to see you again ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... the cloth put over, neatly folded, and fastened with a tack at the corners, and another in the middle. The tack is crowed in about two-thirds of its length, it then presents the head convenient to pull out. If the bees are to go a great distance, and require to be shut up several days, the muslin ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... ago comin this May, I had a 'tack of fever-'n-ager, and by the advice of Miss Peasley who continues single and is correspondinly unhappy in the same ratios I consulted a Spiritul mejum—a writin' mejum. I got a letter from a cel'brated ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... life were running low in our commissary, no opportunity having presented itself to obtain a new supply since we left the ranch in Medina over a month before. Consequently, after crossing the San Saba, we made our first tack ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... Agnes before they came round on the first tack. Then, with the spray beating in their faces, they swung around and made for the opening between the two islands. For a time the business of sailing kept them both occupied. In two hours' time they were standing out towards Bishop Lighthouse. Job Rowsell took a long breath ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... on the moving rays as he held the launch on her seaward tack. The light was moving nearer, but its beams were paling. The cutter evidently had not moved from her anchorage. Doubtless she would be kept fully occupied at the goose-neck. The next instant the fog-wall ahead dripped in the rays of ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... her lower deck; loss fifty-five. The sixth, not injured. The seventh, a good deal damaged, with a loss of seventeen. The eighth had no loss. The ninth was so much injured that, "had there been a necessity for hauling the wind on the opposite tack, she must have gone down:" her loss was eight. The tenth lost twelve. The eleventh was much injured, with a loss of eight—making a total loss in repassing the Dardanelles, of one hundred and sixty-seven; and in the whole expedition two hundred and eighty-one, exclusive ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... for using slang, was, as usual, down with the paupers at the bottom. A town cad called Brown, who managed to conceal his cribs, came out first, and it was decided to tack Sarah on to him. Trimble, as might be expected, came a ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... near like his father as one person could be like another. He was eighteen years old, and was an idle and dissolute fellow. Lawrence, the second son, inherited his mother's tack and energy. He was observing and enterprising, and had already made a good reputation as a boatman and pilot. He had worked in various capacities on board of steamers, canal-boats, sloops, and schooners, and in five years had visited every part of the ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... stormy time;— All which deserve, in highest lyric, A rich and lofty panegyric; But no such thing wouldst thou desire, Whom pomp displeases, praises tire. Hence mine is simple, short, and plain; Yet, madam, I would fain Tack on a word or two Of homage to your country due,— A country well beloved ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... to perceive that he was on the wrong tack. The gentleman who addressed him was a regular and profitable customer, and he did not like to incur his ill will, which ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... against that universal wind Whereon like withered leaves all else is blown Down one wide way to death: the soul alone, Whether at last it wins, or faints and fails, Stems the dark tide with its intrepid sails. Close-hauled, with many a short tack, struggled and strained, North-west, South-west, the ships; but ever Westward gained Some little way with every tack; and soon, While the prows plunged beneath the grey-gold noon, Lapped by the crackling waves, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... buy strawberries in baskets very cheap, partly because the baskets cost very little for labor. The man who tacks them together uses a magnetized tack hammer. This magnetic tack hammer picks up the tacks of its own accord, and the man drives them in the basket as fast as he can touch the magnet to the heads of the tacks ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... the baker's boy glanced apprehensively into the depths of his cart, and then answered that in the wagon he carried nothing but fresh-baked bread. To the trained nostrils of the scout this already was evident. Before sunrise he had breakfasted on hard tack and muddy coffee, and the odor of crullers and mince pie, still warm, assailed him cruelly. He assumed a fierce ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... of dames To the kirtles whereof he would tack us; With his saints and his gilded stern-frames, He had thought like an egg-shell to crack us; Now Howard may get to his Flaccus, And Drake to his Devon again, And Hawkins bowl rubbers to Bacchus,— For where are ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... with the bark of the fox in place of the lion's roar, and good food in place of 'hard tack,' and perhaps the attentions of a suspicious keeper instead of a surprise attack by wild men of the woods. An explorer ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... you to-night at dinner," he said, beginning on the new tack. "Two of my Cambridge friends are here, and I wanted ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... said Dickie, in a low whisper; "you will soon hear the tack of a hammer that was never forged of earthly iron, for the stone it was made of was shot from the moon." And in effect Tressilian did immediately hear the light stroke of a hammer, as when a farrier is at work. The singularity ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... it veered to N.W. Being at this time in the latitude of 56 deg. 4' S., longitude 53 deg. 36' W., we sounded, but found no bottom with a line of one hundred and thirty fathoms. I still kept the wind on the larboard-tack, having a gentle breeze and pleasant weather. On the 8th, at noon, a bed of sea-weed passed the ship. In the afternoon, in latitude 55 deg. 4', longitude 51 deg. 43' W., the variation was 20 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... repugnant. Then to pretend that for sixty years, with all 'the varying weather of the mind,' he traversed in every zone the restless ocean of a great nation's shifting and complex politics, without many a faulty tack and many a wrong reckoning, would indeed be idle. No such claim is set up by rational men for Pym, Cromwell, Walpole, Washington, or either Pitt. It is not set up for any of the three contemporaries of Mr. Gladstone whose names live with the three most momentous transactions of his age—Cavour, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... would but get up into our Consolidator, and take a Journey to the Moon, and there, by the help of these Glasses, they would see the Allegorical, Symbollical, Hetrodoxicallity of all this Matter; it would make immediate Converts of them; they would see plainly, that to Tack and Consolidate, to make Exclusive Laws, to persecute for Conscience, disturb, and distress Parties; these are all Phanatick Plots, meer Combinations against the Church, to bring her into Contempt, and to fix and establish the Dissenters to the end of the Chapter: But of this I shall find occasion ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... forces of negroes in Sumter with the exception of the boys who carried messages to the different parts of the fort day and night, were locked up days, and turned out nights, to work. We drew our rations of hard-tack and salt pork twice a day; mornings when we ceased work and turned in for the day, and again, between three and four o'clock in the afternoon, so as to have supper eaten in time to go to ...
— My Life In The South • Jacob Stroyer
... we waz free an' de Yankees fed us. We didn' have nothin to eat 'cept hard tack an' middlin' meat. I never saw such meat. It was thin an' tough wid a thick skin. You could boil it allday an' all night an' it wouldn' cook dome, I wouldn' eat it. I thought 'twuz mule meat; mules dat done been ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... perhaps, but still genuinely pleased at the honesty of this crude devotion. She was touched, too; and, besides, she trusted him; for he was clearly as transparent as the spring air. Also most women lugged a boy about with them; she had had several, but none as nice as Gerald. To tie him up and tack his license on was therefore natural to her; and if she hesitated to conclude his subjection in short order it was that, far in a corner of her restless soul, there hid an ever-latent fear of Selwyn; of his opinions concerning her ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... were now gone to smash. Therefore I hated them. And straightway, remembering that the day was her birthday, and accepting the fact as a good omen, I rebuilt my air-castles and resolved to try on a new tack. So irrational is human nature at twenty-one, when in love. And isn't it good ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... he said, resuming his seat in the bow. "So Thinkright wants you to forgive everybody; love everybody, eh? I know that's his tack." ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... given over entirely to the demands of his ship-yard, and when his sons, Shem, Ham and Japhet came along he directed all their education along lines of seamanship. He fed them even in their tender years upon hard-tack and grog. Up to the time when they were two hundred years old he made them sleep in their cradles, which he kept rocking continuously so that they would get used to the motion, and would be able to go to sea when the time came without ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... layers along the sky, the sea was all in a foam, and patches of whitish upper clouds, beneath which the lower drift was scudding, threw a lurid light over the wide expanse of ocean. The wind, which had hitherto been favourable, now veered, and obliged them to tack. The captain, at this juncture, was on the poop, with ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... was made for the grand fleet to anchor, All in the Downs that night for to meet; So cast off your shank-painter, let go your cat's-topper, Hawl up your clew-garnets, let fly tack and sheet." ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... lady, when she wakes, that I will tack a strip of felt to the rocker, and then it will make no noise at all," said the low and wheedling voice; ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... would be to play billy with the labels!" chuckled Mr. Wickham. "By George, here's a tack-hammer! We might send all these things skipping about ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... him on a new tack. 'Fowl!' he cried grimly. 'Kosher, of course, but with bits of fried Wurst to ape the scraps of bacon. And presently we shall be having water ices to simulate cream. We can't even preserve our dietary individuality. Truly said Feuerbach, "Der Mensch ist was er isst." ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... not easy for men unaccustomed to manual labor. Still there was no complaint. In fact, the only growling heard so far had come from some of the men who had seen service in the regular navy. Burke, the fireman, declaimed loudly against the "shoe leather an' de terrer-cotter hard-tack which they do be tryin' to feed to honest workers. As for the slops they call coffee, Oi wouldn't give it to an ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... around sharply. "Humph!" said she. "Those men are sailormen. You might see that in a twinklin' of an eye. Sailormen always drive that way, because that is the way they sail ships. They first tack in one direction ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... method of the work. To a eulogium of the professional skill and successful [30] agricultural enterprise of Dr. Nichol, a medical officer of that Colony, with whom he became acquainted for the first time during his short stay there, our author travels out of his way to tack on a gratuitous and pointless sneer at the educational competency of all the elected members of the island legislature, among whom, he tells us, the worthy doctor had often tried in vain to obtain a place. His want of success, our author informs his readers, was brought about through Dr. Nichol ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... leeboard was fitted and secured to the hull with a short piece of line made fast to the centerline of the boat. With this arrangement the leeboard could be raised and lowered and also shifted to the lee side on each tack. This took the strain off the sides of the canoe that would have been created by the usual leeboard fitting.[3] Construction of such canoes ceased in the 1870's, but some remained in ...
— The Migrations of an American Boat Type • Howard I. Chapelle
... felt that he must make another tack to gain his point. Following letters noted no improvement in his health. Now, as the hunting season was near at hand, he found it convenient to bargain with a renegade doctor, who, for the consideration offered, wrote his parents that their son had recently consulted ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... we now shaped our course, alternately standing out to sea, and running in for the land, so as to get down ultimately to the Land's End, against the wind, in a series of long zig-zags, now in a westerly and now in an easterly direction. Our first tack from Hartland Point was a sail of six hours out to sea. At sunset, the little Tomtit had lost sight of land for the first time since she was launched, and was rising and falling gently on the long swells of the Atlantic. ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... was certainly surprising that Mary had not married. Lady Tranmore's thoughts were running on this tack when of a sudden her eyes were caught by the placard of ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... ahead of the Lady Prevost, Queen Charlotte, and Hunter, raking them with her starboard guns, and engaged the Detroit, which, being raked in all directions, soon became unmanageable. The Niagara then bore around ahead of the Queen Charlotte, and hauling up on starboard tack, engaged that ship, giving at the same time a raking fire with her larboard guns to the Chippewa and the Little Belt, while the smaller vessels, closing to grape and canister distance, maintained a most destructive fire. This masterly and ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... straight there, because the wind isn't right," explained Dolly. "We'll keep on this way for a spell; then we'll come about and tack to port, and then to starboard again. In that way we can beat the wind, you see, and make it work for us, even if it ...
— A Campfire Girl's Happiness • Jane L. Stewart
... Others opposed it, because the lords had already resolved by a vote, that they would never pass any bill sent up from the commons, to which a clause foreign to the bill should be tacked; and this clause they affirmed to be a tack, as an incapacity to hold employments was a circumstance altogether distinct from a settlement in money. The queen expressed uncommon eagerness in behalf of this bill; and the court influence was managed so successfully ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... wished me to write to her some time since, though I have nothing to say—I e'en put it off, day by day, till at last, fearing that she will 'curse me by her gods,' I feel constrained to sit down and tack a few lines together, which she may call a letter or not as she pleases. Now if the young woman expects sense in this production, she will find herself miserably disappointed. I shall dress her a dish of salmagundi—I shall cook a ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... pangs of hunger. But the patriotic people of Chippawa did their best to cater to their needs, and were unsparing in their efforts to provide the meals so urgently required, while the regular troops shared their rations of hard tack, cheese, meat and tea cheerfully with ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... efforts never slack, And though he twist, and twirl, and tack, Alas! still faithful to his back The pigtail hangs ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... his utmost at the same moment. This is regulated by the song. And here is the true singing of the deep sea. It is not recreation; it is an essential part of the work. It mastheads the topsail yards, on making sail; it starts the anchor from the domestic or foreign mud; it 'rides down the main tack with a will;' it breaks out and takes on board a cargo; it keeps the pumps (the ship's, not the sailor's) going. A good voice and a new and stirring chorus are worth an extra man. And there is plenty of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... Clary to attempt to lock the stable after the steed was stolen? What drove her off all of a sudden on this dreadfully candid and prudent tack? She only knew. Possibly it was to ease her own troubled conscience: but with Sam Winnington constantly dangling about her skirts, and receiving sufficient encouragement, too, it was hard for Dulcie to bear. She was in a fine passion; ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... fog set in, so that the vessels could only keep in company by constant firing, and were obliged to tack about continually, at the risk of running foul of each other. Upon the 5th of December, although it would have appeared impossible, the fog increased in density to such an extent that those on board the Aigle could hear the movement of the Marie, though they could ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... man I wished to follow. Besides, as they had been driven to Neuilly, the distance was so great that, if I went there in a cab, and found at last that I had made a mistake, I should have wasted a great deal of valuable time on the wrong tack. If the driver had remembered the name of the street, and the number of the house at which he had paused, I would have hired a motor and flashed out to the place in a few minutes; but, despite a suggested bribe, he could say no more than that, when he had come to a certain place, one of ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... back at Kelley's Ferry. I first knew Jim Shirley that night, although he remembered me from the time we had your regiment at our mercy. He brought me bacon and hard tack and coffee. We have been friends ever since. How long have ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... would not be identified, intended to crowd the Caribbee so as to oblige her to tack, and then, while she was in stays, to lay alongside, and board her. Mr. C. Augustus Ebenier stood, with his revolver in his hand, ready to follow his "excellent captain," who was similarly armed, to the deck of the chase. Three other men were also detailed to join the ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... fresh of wind came down the lake and they began to stretch across the bay with spreading canvas. The wind was contrary, but Odo welcomed it, for he saw at once that it would be quicker work to tack to the other shore than to depend on the oars. The scene underwent a sudden change. The silver mirror over which they had appeared to glide was shivered into sparkling fragments, and in the enveloping rush and murmur of the night the boat woke ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton |
