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More "Tack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... forefathers, when there was nothing but wretched boats up in Nordland, and folks must needs buy fair winds by the sackful from the Gan-Finn, it was not safe to tack about in the open sea in wintry weather. In those days a fisherman never grew old. It was mostly womenfolk and children, and the lame and ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... you ought to have done something to delay, if you could not stop it. Of course, you had the settlements, and devil's in it if you could not have beat about a while—it was not so quick with me—and not doubled the point in a single tack; and you know the beggar has next to nothing. Any way, it was your duty to have printed some notice that the thing was thought of. If you had put it, like a bit of news, in "Galignani," I would have seen it, and known what to do. Well, that ship's blew up. But I won't let all ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... did the kanakas sleep through that long hot day that they did not see the cutter run out through the passage and head south, close-hauled on the southeast trade. Nor was the cutter ever sighted on that long tack to the shores of Ysabel, and during the tedious head-beat from there to Malaita. He landed at Port Adams with a wealth of rifles and tobacco such as no one man had ever possessed before. But he did not stop there. He had taken a white ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... its long passages and large rooms, was full of those nameless sounds which fill the air in the quiet of night. He heard his father's footsteps as he paced up and down in his study, he heard the tick-tack of the old clock on the stairs, the bureau creaked, the candle spluttered, but there was no human voice to break the silence, With a yawn he rose, stretching his long legs, and, throwing back his broad shoulders, made his way along the dark ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... four," he resumed imperturbably, "Mrs. Kershaw was never requested to produce a specimen of her husband's handwriting. Why? Because the police, clever as you say they are, never started on the right tack. They believed William Kershaw to have been murdered; they looked for ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... by no means a coward, screamed out, "We are lost!" She flung herself into the bottom of the boat and laid her head in Greenleaf's lap like a frightened child. He soothed her and denied that there was danger; he did not venture to tack again, however, for fear of being swamped, but determined to run northwardly along the coast in the hope of getting ashore on some sandy beach before the fury of the storm should come. The boat now careened so far that her gunwale was under water; he saw that he must take in the mainsail. With ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... the handle of the Perfect Automatic, stretched with our united strength, and pushed down on the lever. The spring-hammer drew back, a little trap or mouth at the end of the slotted tin barrel opened for the tack, the tack jumped out, turned over, landed point downward upon the right spot in the carpet, the ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... could form a regular order of battle, Sir J. Jervis, by carrying a press of sail, came up with them, passed through their fleet, then tacked, and thus cut off nine of their ships from the main body. These ships attempted to form on the larboard tack, either with a design of passing through the British line, or to leeward of it, and thus rejoining their friends. Only one of them succeeded in this attempt; and that only because she was so covered with smoke that her intention was not discovered till she had reached ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... Tick, tack, tick, tack! the old clock filled the night air with its measured beat. "Surely it does not tick so loudly in ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... being now on the dealing tack, commenced in the poverty-stricken strain adapted to the occasion. Having deposited his hat on the floor, taken his left leg up to nurse, and given his hair a backward rub with his ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... Fate had created for them both an atmosphere charged with unspoken possibilities. He had turned her words over again and again, reflecting upon the abrupt angles her speech had taken. In their few minutes' conversation three times she had had to make a sudden tack to safer subjects. What had she meant by that reference to Eastern and Western flowers? His answer reminded him how well he knew. And the confession about her husband, the worshipper of success—"what he calls success"—how much tragedy ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... amid 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 ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... of Clare's childhood had scarcely altered, and it now shone full on the captain. He turned away, and made a tack or two on the quarter-deck. He was a tall, thin man, with a graceful carriage, and a little stoop in the shoulders. He had a handsome, sad face, growing old. His hair was more than half way to gray, and he seemed somewhere about fifty. He had the sternness of a man used to command, ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... support measures which he considered doubtful, he did, now and then, "tack a provision" on a bill to please a friend, as the following ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... drawn and shaded, and cross each other; where one makes out, at times, a hat bound and befeathered, swaying as it goes; a little boy with sky-blue tie and buttoned boots, and tubular knickers hanging round his thin, bare calves; a couple of gossiping dames in swollen and somber petticoats, who tack hither and thither, meet, are mutually attracted and dissolve in conversation, like rolling drops of ink. In the foreground of this colored cinema which goes by and passes again, Brisbille, the sinister, is ranting away, as always. He ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... these swampers down to the levee where the men are working. As long as this flood keeps rising we're safe. Then the other three of us will go for the house. We may be seen that way, but there's no use spending any more time here playing tick-tack-toe on that wood up there. We locate what we want, and if we're cornered we can come out through here to the bayou. ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... come dey called us to de wagons an' tole us we wus free. Dey give each of us a cap full of hard-tack. Dey took clothes an' provisions an' give us nothin'. One crowd of Yankees would come on an' give us something an' another would come along an' take it away from us. Dey tole us to call marster an' missus Johnny Rebs, that we wus free an' had no marsters. Dat wus a ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... soon got her cargo on board, and we then put to sea, to return to the brig. We had to make a long reach off-shore to weather a headland, which ran out towards the north, and we were just about to tack when the wind, which had been very light, failed us altogether. There we lay, with our sides lazily lapping up the burnished water, and throwing it off again in showers of sparkling drops, as we rolled away helplessly in the swell. At the same time a strong current ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the days when I used to swab the deck. There's nothin' more elevatin', to my mind, than just that sort of thing. I do it sometime when I am eatin' my meals at the hotel, and the better I can bring to mind the bad coffee and hard tack, the better I ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... had three great pans of bacon sizzling, a young mountain of brown sugar piled upon a Poncho, a big can of hard-tack broken open, and the coffee had come to boil under his hands—three gallons at least. The watered mules had to do just so much kicking, so much braying at the young moon; had to be assured just ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... 227, vary in size and shape according to their use; as, flat-headed, gimp, round-headed, and double-pointed or matting tacks, a sort of small staple. Their size is indicated by the word "ounce." For example, a two-ounce tack is 1/4" long, a three-ounce tack is 3/8" long, a four-ounce tack is 7/16" long, a six-ounce tack is 1/2" long, etc. This term once meant the number of ounces of iron required ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... time. I thought the night would be over and the daylight come before it was all done; it was so slow. I could hear the tick-tack of his iron every time he knocked one of the spikes in. Of course he went higher every time. They were just far enough apart for a man to get his foot on from one to another. As he went up he had one end of the coil of the rope round his wrist. When ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... chief of state: Queen ELIZABETH II (since 6 February 1952); represented by Governor General Louisse LAKE-TACK (since 17 July 2007) head of government: Prime Minister Winston Baldwin SPENCER (since 24 March 2004) cabinet: Council of Ministers appointed by the governor general on the advice of the prime minister elections: the monarch is hereditary; governor general chosen by the monarch on the advice ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... and impure water to drink, and that not in sufficient quantities to sustain life. Their allowance was, nominally, two pounds of hard tack and two of pork per week, and this was often uncooked, while either the pork, or the biscuit, or both, were usually ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... or accident, the bows of the Good Hope were liberated; and the ever-ready Lawless, who had maintained his place at the helm through all the hurly-burly by sheer strength of body and a liberal use of the cold steel, instantly clapped her on the proper tack. The ship began to move once more forward on the stormy sea, its scuppers running blood, its deck heaped with fallen men, sprawling and struggling in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... Proctor, called Peachy for short. Oh, yes, I knew all about you beforehand, although you happen to be the newest girl. Dad wrote me a whole page—wonderful for him!—and said he'd stayed at your house in London, and I was to tack myself on to you and show you round, and see you didn't fret and all the rest of it. Are you wanting a crony, temporary or otherwise? Then here I am at your service. Link an arm and we'll parade the place. I guess by the ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... when they come to them two boxes. The sale is just about startin' now. Go as high as you think you can in order to get the ginseng at a profitable figger, an' pay the auctioneer fifty dollars down to hold the sale; that will give you boys time to rush around to dig up the balance o' the money. Tack right along now, lads, while I go down the street an' get me some breakfast. I don't want Blumenthal to see me around that sale. He might get suspicious. After I eat I'll meet you here aboard th' Maggie, an' ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... free, 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
... council, who were gazing with deep interest at a solitary vessel dimly discernible through the fog in the offing. As she neared us we found her to be a barque of apparently considerable burthen, making a tack to weather the Torhead, which lay several miles under her lee, with a strong breeze from windward. She was evidently quite out of her reckoning from the indecision and embarassment displayed in her movements; and the captain seemed not sufficiently aware of the hazard ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... a merciful Providence the lives of his gallant crew, all now depending upon one of the many accidents to the masts and rigging which there was so much reason to apprehend. Happily, the sails stood well; the Indefatigable continued to gain by every tack; and at eleven o'clock, with six feet water in her hold, she passed about three-quarters of a mile to windward of the Penmarcks; enabling her officers and men, after a day and night of incessant exertion, at length to rest from their toil, and to ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... did," replied the sergeant, "and I went off on another tack. Hate 'em? Well, it's this way. At the beginning I don't know that I hated 'em so much. Yes, what you call Belgian atrocities were hellish; but 'twasn't that, and as long as they fought fair that was all I cared about. But when they got using that poisonous ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... in no way my argument), leaves me the absolute control of this wood, and I proceed to lay an English lever watch on several places of it, keeping my ear near to that nodal point where I know will come the inner bout, or D of the violin, consequently the bridge, which I mark with a X. The tick-tack of the watch varies in strength as I get farther from or nearer to a nodal point, as, of course, it was bound to do; but, from experience, it is a fine-toned piece of wood. I detach it from the glass rod, and I try it by my finger and thumb test, and the vibrations and their quality are all ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... enthusiastic labour I had spent upon those eighteen feet of oak ribs and planking; I thought of all the thrilling hours of the race, when we had squeezed her into the wind past Perry's Point and saved a precious tack; I thought of the dreamy hours when she had borne us down the Pond in the summer sunshine, or through the gray, mysterious fog, or under the stars above the black water. So instead, I laid my hand gently on her rotting tiller, and then took the axe back to the woodshed. She will never ride the waves ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... which 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 ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... score—ah! maybe out of a hundred, Pretty, has been saved by the mercy of God, and come home, after being given over for dead, and told of all hands lost, I—I know a story, Heart's Delight," stammered the captain, "o' this natur', as was told to me once; and being on this here tack, and you and me sitting by the fire, maybe you'd like to hear me tell it. Would ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... with plenty of stewed rice, Indian meal cake, and maple sugar, was to make their dinner. She was weary and warm, for the day had been hot and sultry. Seating herself on the threshold of the door, she leaned her tack against the doorpost, and closed her eyes. Perhaps the poor child's thoughts were wandering back to her far-off, never-to-be-forgotten home, or she might be thinking of the hunters and their game. Suddenly a vague, undefinable ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... stroll backwards and forwards by the lakeside. Encouragement was all very well; but... "Shall I—shall I not? Shall I—shall I not? Shall I—shall I not?" The eternal question went tick-tack, tick-tack, to the rhythm of his march. He glared at vacancy, and tried hard ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... September, when we were all enjoying a smoke in the "evening," and conversation had dragged somewhat, John started us off on a fresh tack and gave us something to talk about ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... the Nation's battlefield commanders have been anything but shrinking violets; we have had now and then a hero who could boast with such gusto that this very characteristic somehow endeared him to his men. But that would be a dangerous tack for all save the most exceptional individual. Instead of speaking of modesty as a charm that will win all hearts, thereby risking that through excessive modesty a man will become tiresome to others ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... appeared to render an exclusively literary life a hopeless impossibility, he immured himself in the woods of Georgia and gave himself wholly to his pen." When Simms visited him here in 1866, the poet had for supplies "a box of hard tack, two sides of bacon, and fourscore, more or less, of smoked herring, a frying-pan and a grid-iron." He and his wife lived as simply as the Hawthornes did in the Old Manse. His writing desk was a carpenter's work-bench. ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... of the yacht was something so terrible that it got to be hysterically funny. It couldn't seem dangerous with the sun streaming down the companion-way and past my state-room windows. About five o'clock on the second day they began to tack, and then I heard shrieks of laughter and the crash of china, and groans from the saloon settee, where young Bashforth was lying ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... pemmican, hard-tack, pea soup and tea. We all wanted plenty of sugar in our tea and drank large quantities of it. Experience on Mt. McKinley had led Tucker to believe heartily in the advantages of pemmican, a food especially prepared for Arctic explorers. Neither Coello nor Gamarra nor I had ever tasted ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... these pleasant dreams by stepping on a tack that penetrated his shoe at a place where a patch was much needed, and then he appeared to see for the first time his friends, who were anxiously waiting for him to complete his ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis
... 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 "being ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... one night, Lucy—I should not hurt it, love—you would not like to fetch down your Brussels point scarf, and see how it would look, would you? We need not cut the lace, dear; we could tack it on again the next morning; you are not so particular as I am—you look ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... with a floating menagerie. Twice a day the bugles sounded the call for breakfast and dinner, and the soldiers ceased to sprawl, and squatted on the deck around square tin cans filled with soup or red wine, from which they fed themselves with spoons and into which they dipped their rations of hard tack, after first breaking them on the deck with a blow from a bayonet or crushing them with ...
— Cuba in War Time • Richard Harding Davis
... out, my daughter dear, Gang out an' tack the air; Gang out an' walk i' the good green wood, An' ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... Mr. Leyden," he said. "Try another tack. Sorry I can't stay to talk with you; I'm busy." He mounted the gangway without a further glance at Leyden, leaving that gentleman staring up after him with tight lips drawn back from grinning teeth and a quivering of the arm which was bent back ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... Archivarius, in proof of his ability to do what he wished. All prospered with the student; a peculiar happy star seemed to be presiding over him; his neckcloth sat right at the very first trial; no tack burst; no loop gave way in his black silk stockings; his hat did not once fall to the dust after he had trimmed it. In a word, precisely at half-past eleven, the student Anselmus, in his pike-gray frock, and black satin lower habiliments, with a roll of calligraphics and pen-drawings ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... burst forth Lancelot, adding, with his whimsical look: "There's rhyme, as well as reason. How on earth did we get on this tack?" ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... always do me such great injustice. You lawyers always have to be doing something, even if it is only holding down a chair so that it won't blow out of your office window. If you haven't any justice to mete out, you take another tack and dispense injustice with lavish hand. However, I'll forgive you if you'll tell me one thing. What's libel, ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... Beetle. "Look here. If he kissed her—which is our tack—he is a cynically immoral hog, and his conduct is blatant indecency. Confer orationes Regis furiosissimi, when he collared me ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... was seen to be viewing the proceedings from a distant gateway. He would undoubtedly expect the law to be carried out, and dogs that ran sheep to be either broken to better ways or shot. It made no difference that the sheep were not his but "on tack" in his fields. What was the lot of these might be the lot of his another day. A thrashing was, therefore, now imperative. But how was this to be administered, when the only weapon was a shooting-stick, and the site was the middle of a large grass field? The best ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... 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. I want a scrubby, ornery, low-down, snuff-dipping, back-woodsy, piebald gang, ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... was half over they thought themselves in luck to have fallen in with such a chance acquaintance. Murphy fired away jokes, repartees, anecdotes, and country gossip, to their delight; and when the eatables were disposed of, he started them on the punch-drinking tack afterwards so cleverly, that he hoped to see three parts of them tipsy ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... you doing?" Jim demanded fiercely, but the man only drove another tack. It was Mr. Harbison who stepped outside and ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the mistake of heading directly for the shore, but sought to make it by a long tack, moving half with the current and half against it. The lad had made up his mind that the cowboys would never reach them and that what was to be done must ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... Clerk, as you understand this tack-hammer language, and as I could see you've been following all the messages that's been sent, just tell me the whole lot of it, please, as ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... saw the ships of England even so Run at the Spaniards on a wind, lay to, Bespatter them with hail of battle, then Take their prerogative of nimble steerage, Fly off, and ere the enemy, heavy in hand, Delivered his reply to the wasteful wave That made its grave of foam, race out of range, Then tack and crowd all sail, and after them Again. So harassed they that mighty foe, Moving in all its bravery to the east. And some were fine with pictures of the saints, Angels with flying hair and peaked wings, ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... weather clears up, and a fresh breeze comes, it is generally from the southward, directly in the outward-bound navigator's teeth. He must have patience, however, and strive to make the most of it by keeping on that tack by which most southing is to be gained. It is now, I believe, generally held to be the best practice to place the ship between 18 deg. and 23 deg. of west longitude on losing the north-east Trade; and likewise to endeavour, if possible, to cross the equator somewhere between these ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... than the one that means hours of time spent in cutting around the petals of an intricate flower picture, or printing painstakingly on a difficult cardboard surface what her local newspaper would be glad to print for her, thus making a slip to thumb tack on her board without ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... rather a stiff appearance, tulle or crepe lisse frilling are expensive and frail, so it is a good idea to purchase a few yards of really good washing lace, about an inch and a half in depth; quill or plait and cut into suitable lengths to tack around the necks of dresses. This can be easily removed and cleaned when soiled. A piece of soft black Spanish lace, folded loosely around the throat close to the frillings, but below it, looks very pretty; or you may get three yards of scarf lace, trim the ends with ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... nervous and jumpy by nature," he observed. "I've seen dead men before. Still, next time you want to leave one in my office after dark, I wish you'd put a light with him, or tack up a sign, or even leave somebody to tell me about it. I'm sorry it's Starr and not that thoughtful old horned toad in ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... should be commiserated by those among whom their parents had lived, and she returned but brief thanks to the farewells offered her. She would far rather have been left to pursue her way without interruption. "Fare-ye-weel, neighbours, just tack Miss Margaret's, and the laddies, and my ain thanks, but we canna delay, for Jock will be spearing for us, and we ha' a lang journey to make before nightfall," she said, bending her head towards one and ...
— Janet McLaren - The Faithful Nurse • W.H.G. Kingston
... gambrel-roofed house, only smaller at the base than at the point where the roof would begin. The outline of all these kites was given, and the sticks stayed in place by a string carried taut from stick to stick, which was notched at the ends to hold it; sometimes the sticks were held with a tack at the point of crossing, and sometimes they were mortised into one another; but this was apt to weaken them. The frame was laid down on a sheet of paper, and the paper was cut an inch or two larger, and then pasted and ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... that I had only to wait for Claire to tell me the rest of the story. But her mind went off on another tack. "Sylvia's going to have a baby," she remarked, ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... seemed to have got hold of the clue to the riddle. She imagined herself to have been in the wrong to some extent in the past. She should not have kept Edward on such a tight rein with regard to money. She thought she was on the right tack in letting him—as she had done only with fear and irresolution—have again the control of his income. He came even a step towards her and acknowledged, spontaneously, that she had been right in husbanding, ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... on the open sea, with all sail set; whilst my little barque did little more than tack about near the shore. One day I received the following letter; it was in a pleasant and careful handwriting, and orthography was observed with complete regularity, which suggested that a man had been ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... was published yesterday; it is equal to the rest. I hope 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; but ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... about my birth For I'm as old as the big round earth; Ye young Immortals clear the track, I'm the bearded Joke on the Carpet tack." ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... answered Foster, "I'll tell you what I am going to do: brace sharp up on the larboard tack and run down to her. I am not going to run away from one infernal Dutchman, and I can ...
— Foster's Letter Of Marque - A Tale Of Old Sydney - 1901 • Louis Becke
... us. At 8.30 our signal was made to reconnoitre the enemy—as we were now certain they were. A frigate of their's was likewise looking at us. At noon the enemy's fleet south-west to west-south-west, on the larboard tack under an easy sail in line ahead, and distant 3 or 4 leagues. Our fleet 3 or 4 leagues to leeward in the order of sailing or under a press of sail. Ushant north ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... to Gallipoli? Here are some excellent white-tailed mules, good enough for Pindar, whom Colvocoressis has just brought in from the monastery. 'Transportation for one!' Is there anything to be brought back? Nitre, powder, lead, junk, hard-tack, mules, horses, pigs, polenta, or olla podrida, or other of the stores ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... office of his astounded charge d'affaires, reached the Commercial Bank before the messenger boys. While waiting in the balm of the spring morning for the doors to open he circumnavigated the block nine times—he counted them. Coming in on the last tack he sighted the portly form of the banker careening with dignified speed around the corner. Another instant he had crossed the mat and disappeared into his financial harbor. Mr. Strumley steered rapidly in ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... another tack. He knew such a good story, which, having told, he seemed to have forgotten all about the clock, for he said nothing more about it, and not much more about ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... the Rev. James McKenzie. The mutual though qualified respect which they felt for each other dated from their first meeting, when Mr. McKenzie had walked into the saloon and asked permission to tack up some bills advertising his ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... that but little could be seen on the broad river. Dave turned the craft towards Robber Island and made a long tack. He was just coming around on the other tack when there came a ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... 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 ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... the ship, which is now, full in sight, were to tack about again, and sail away from us as fast as she approached just now what do you ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... repeating a form of words after a gentleman in a glazed cap and black raiment, we had suffered change into base assassins, the offscouring of society, starving for want of employment, and willing to "imbrue our coarse fists in fraternal blood" for the sum of eleven dollars a month, besides hard tack, salt junk, and the hope of a Confederate States bond apiece for bounty, or free loot in the treasuries of Florida, Mississippi, and Arkansas, after the war. How carefully from that day we watched the rise and fall of United States stocks! If they should go low among the nineties, we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... it is enough sight easier getting wives than housekeepers, and I'm some of a mind to try that tack," replied Captain ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... reported moving toward our left. For this reason, or in carrying out the original programme, we marched in the same direction, starting just after dark. As we fell back in the afternoon, I found a haversack containing some hard-tack. This our mess divided. We did not fail to commiserate the unlucky chap whose loss was our gain. This was a very unsatisfactory fight. It always seemed to me like a scrub race. The rebels plunged in as if they thought it was a 2.20 affair, at the ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... tell you what I've noticed: People are quite on the wrong tack in offering less than they can afford to give; they ought to offer more, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a worn black dress, was waiting for him in the midst of a floor strewn with wreckage. The curtain at the window had been pulled by a heavy hand and hung by one tack, dangling to and fro in the draft through the cracks at the sash. The knots of blue ribbons appeared like violated flowers. The fire in the stove had gone out. The displaced lids and open doors showed ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... "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 of a body, though I say it) will do the best ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... unless in constant use. Take out the tacks from these, fold the carpets back, wash the floor in strong suds with a tablespoonful of borax dissolved in it. Dash with insect powder, or lay with tobacco leaves along the edge, and re-tack. Or use turpentine, the enemy of buffalo moths, carpet worms and other insects that injure and destroy carpets. Mix the turpentine with pure water in the proportion of three tablespoonfuls to three quarts of water, and then after the carpet has been well swept, go over each breadth carefully ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... morning, just after daylight, when Smoke went to the bulletin-board outside the A. C. Company store and tacked up a notice. Men gathered and were reading and snickering over his shoulder ere he had driven the last tack. Soon the bulletin-board was crowded by hundreds who could not get near enough to read. Then a reader was appointed by acclamation, and thereafter, throughout the day, many men were acclaimed to read in loud voice the notice Smoke Bellew had nailed up. And there were numbers of men who stood in ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... Our tack was toward the eastern distance, and no glimpse of land or cloud made us aught but solitary travelers in illimitable space. The sun was beneath the deep, but in the hush of the pale light one felt the awe of its coming. Slowly a faint glow began to gild a line that circled the farthest ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... doubt he is by far the best preacher we ever had in Glen St. Mary church," said Miss Cornelia, veering a tack or two. "I suppose it is because he is so moony and absent-minded that he never got a town call. His trial sermon was simply wonderful, believe ME. Every one went mad about it— and ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... "All right. Tack or nail, only let's see you get back where we started from." Lincoln was skeptical of sailboats. He had heard about sailing "just where you wanted to go," but he had his ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... 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
... 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 ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... into a bustle and confusion. Captain Jonathan Wellsby was in haste to catch a fair wind and make his offing before nightfall. His sailors ran to and fro, jumping at the word, active and cheery. Stately and slow, the high-pooped merchant trader filled away on the larboard tack and pointed her ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... not heed. "Grace used to be so busy every day, with fixing a curtain here and driving a tin-tack there; but she cares for no ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... you cannot sail against it. You must then get the sail in as flat as you can, and sail as near as you can to the wind. Then when you have gone some distance you must bring her head round, till the sail goes over on the other side; and sail on that tack, and so make a zigzag course: but if the wind should come dead ahead, I think your best course would be to lower the sail and row against it. However, at present, with the wind from the east, you will be able to sail free on ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... defined that it is difficult to go wrong; and a farmer who does his own wiring and takes pride in its appearance is more apt to be right than a professional electrician who is careless at his task. After the work has been passed, tack on the moulding capping, with brads, and paint the ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson
... that rules the sea or sky, The perjured villains promise to comply, And bid me hasten to unmoor the ship. With eager joy I launch into the deep; And, heedless of the fraud, for Naxos stand: They whisper oft, and beckon with the hand, And give me signs, all anxious for their prey, To tack about, and steer another way. 80 "Then let some other to my post succeed," Said I, "I'm guiltless of so foul a deed." "What," says Ethalion, "must the ship's whole crew Follow your humour, and depend on you?" And straight himself he seated at the prore, And tacked about, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... absently. She was staring into the fire, wondering what tack would be best to take with Ned, when she did get hold of the boy. 'Have you been talking to Ned, Goody, as you promised you would?' she turned ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... destination, was crossing the "Guerriere's" bows, her course was changed, in order to learn the character of the stranger. By half-past three she was recognized to be a large frigate, under easy sail on the starboard tack; which, the wind being northwesterly, gives her heading from west-southwest to southwest. The "Constitution" was to windward. At 3.45 the "Guerriere," without changing her course, backed her maintopsail, ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... etc. This I suppose was written after the reception of my first cargo of specimens. Not having heard from you until March of this year I really began to think that my collections were so poor, that you were puzzled what to say; the case is now quite on the opposite tack; for you are guilty of exciting all my vain feelings to a most comfortable pitch; if hard work will atone for these thoughts, I vow it shall not be spared. It is rather late, but I will allude to some ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... was absolutely unreportable, and they were all more or less flushed with beer. I had been almost a total abstainer all my life, and though I drank a little of it out of complaisance I thought the canteen tack the nastiest stuff I had ever tasted The depot barrack-room in which the recruits slept until the time of their deportation echoed morning, noon, and night with unmeaning ribaldries and obscenities, and was stale ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... I would rather that the wind had been either north or south, so that we could have laid our course all round; as it is, we shall have the wind almost dead aft till we are round the Nab, then we shall be close-hauled, with perhaps an occasional tack along the back of the island, then free again back. There is no doubt that the cutters have a pull close-hauled. I fancy with this wind the schooners will be out of it; though if it had been a reach the whole way, they would have had ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... likely to be disappointed in that respect, although I have been out and home without having had to lift tack or sheet for weeks together," observed ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... Until we had made two-thirds of our distance across the ocean, the winds had stood very much at south-west; and, though we had no heavy weather, our progress was good; but in 20 deg. east from Greenwich, we got north-easters, and our best tack being the larboard, I stood for ten days to the southward and eastward. This brought us into the track of every thing going to, or coming from, the Mediterranean; and, had we stood on far enough, we should ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... personal interest? was it in order to stain the reputation of another? and if so, was the person calumniated a man or a woman? and was that person married or single? a member of the civil authority, or one of the clergy?" This introductory part being ended, the priest begins a fresh tack, and interrogates the penitent upon infractions not specified in any of the commandments. For example: If the penitent is accustomed to pray the rosary; if she frequents churches; if she contributes her money towards the support of divine worship; if she knows, and omits to denounce, ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... Duke," said he, taking another tack. "This property belongs to another John Merrick. It is a common name, and that is doubtless why you mistook me for the rich ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... aside to go along the water-side and show me where the large trout commonly lay, underneath an overhanging bank; and he was much disappointed, for my sake, that there were none visible just then. Then he wandered off on to another tack, and stood a great while out in the middle of a meadow in the hot sunshine, trying to make out that he had known me before, or, if not me, some friend of mine, merely, I believe, out of a desire that we should feel more friendly and at our ease with one another. At last he made a little speech to ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... up and the sails expanded to the breeze; and then, the outer jib being hoisted at the same time and the lee- braces hauled in, the man at the wheel putting the helm up the while, the ship payed off on the port tack, making over towards the French coast so as to take advantage of the tide running down Channel on that side. At the same time, the towing-hawser which had up to now still attached us to the tug, was dropped over the bows ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Shake the carpet well; tack it down, and wash it upon the floor; the floor should be very clean; use cold soap suds; to three gallons add half a tumbler of beef-gall; this will prevent the colors from fading. Should there be grease ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... had some pretty tidy ones, if you come to read your histories. But I don't know so much about those chaps being brave. It was a very clever bit of seamanship, mind you, that taking the brig out in the teeth of the storm with hardly room to tack. I am not a bad pilot in my way when I like to try, but I will be honest over it; I daren't have tried that job. It was a very clean thing. But look here, my lad. It's no use for you to try and crack that up, because him ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... Pember of ours, late of Trinity Hall, calls out from the darkness, "Here you are, mate," and forthwith the man of the Fighting Fifth and the Imperial Yeoman sit down together and chat of Heaven knows what, and the latter gives the former half of his prized hard tack ration (he wouldn't give me a biscuit for his soul's salvation), for the Northumberlands do not fare well at their quartermaster's hands, at least they did not the last time we were on the trek. Then, at about the same time Nobby is leaving us, the Fusilier ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... the application of a similar process to the Paradise Lost of Milton, or the tragedies of Shakespeare; the effect indeed may be seen by comparing, with some of the noblest speeches of the latter, the few couplets which he seems to have considered himself bound by custom to tack on to their close, at the end of a ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... and there was no movement of the troops. The ardor of their patriotism died out. It was a monotonous life, waking early in the morning to answer roll-call, to eat breakfast of salt pork and hard-tack, drilling by squads, by companies, by battalion, marching and countermarching, going through the same manoeuvres every day, shouldering, ordering, and presenting arms, making believe load and fire, standing on guard, putting out their lights at nine o'clock ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... subject, the strain deserted it, and went on to show that the Miss Pecksniffs were nearly related to Rule Britannia, and that if Great Britain hadn't been an island, there could have been no Miss Pecksniffs. And being now on a nautical tack, it ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... the petticoats all thinking. They saw that in studying fashion plates and practising expressions they had been going upon the wrong tack. The card for them to play was 'the poor.' But here a serious difficulty arose. There was only one poor person in the whole parish, a cantankerous old fellow who lived in a tumble-down cottage at the back of the church, and fifteen ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... out-door one, and heavy, and the boot is a light one. Worn together, they make one walk a little one-sided, and the ladies, in particular Miss Slowcum, don't like it, but, lor', that don't matter nothing to speak of; they can't do nothing to me except tack on a few more names to Sarah. It don't fret me, Miss Jasmine, and it needn't ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... Yalmal. Though not very high, it was a hilly country, with patches and even large drifts of snow here and there, some of them lying close down by the shore. Next morning I sighted the southernmost of the Kamenni Islands. We took a tack in under it to see if there were animals of any kind, but could catch sight of none. The island rose evenly from the sea at all points, with steep shores. They consisted for the most part of rock, which was partly solid, partly broken up by the action of the weather into heaps ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... burst in front of them. Why, it would be sheer madness! They would have to crawl, to run, to jump—then to crawl again! That wasn't what they were doing when every morning on the parade-ground one heard a continual tack—tack—tack—tack, as if a thousand telegraph clerks were hard at work. What was the good of all this senseless show, ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... overpowered that from the land, so that where the river met the influx of the sea-water and the opposition of the waves, it was extremely rough and angry; and the current was beaten back with such a violent swell, that the master of the boat could not make good his passage, but ordered his sailors to tack about and return. Caesar, upon this, discovers himself, and taking the man by the hand, who was surprised to see him there, said, "Go on, my friend, and fear nothing; you carry Caesar and his fortune in your boat." The mariners, when they heard that, forgot ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... he is doing?" said John, starting off on a new tack. "I don't suppose he can get a ...
— Andy Grant's Pluck • Horatio Alger
... I watched and watched, never feeling a bit like sleep though my eyes burned something cruel and my feet—they were lumps of prickly wood, not feet. Dull lumps with every now and then a stab as if a tin tack had been driven into them. Beyond me in the open alley-way the light was strong, and I could see men pass frequently, but no one came into my corner till the end, and no one saw me. I heard six bells go in the first watch ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... of getting away from the idea of its being a joke. Senator Arnold was past seventy. Slowly he extended his right arm and tested his muscle. "Not very much," he said, "but enough to drive a tack or two." That brought applause and they drew closer together, and the atmosphere warmed perceptibly. "I've fought for the State in more ways than one,"—Senator Arnold was a distinguished veteran of the Civil War—"and if I can serve her now by tacking down carpets, ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... girl had held off some distance from the line. Number Fifteen had just crossed and was now swooping away on her first tack toward the distant stake-boat. The momentum the Coquette obtained racing down to the ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... 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 ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... soldier in Maney's and Polk's brigades loaded himself down with rations. It was a laughable looking rear guard of a routed and retreating army. Every one of us had cut open the end of a corn sack, emptied out the corn, and filled it with hard-tack, and, besides, every one of us had a side of bacon hung to our bayonets on our guns. Our canteens, and clothes, and faces, and hair were all gummed up with molasses. Such is the picture of our rear guard. Now, reader, if you were ever on ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... I'd try her on another tack. So I placed my hands on my shakey knees, and bendin' over in this guise, so she could see me plainly, while my teeth rattled in my skull as I shook my head at ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... say," he cried cheerily. "Oh! Don't look like that. You're only a bit weak, messmate. Avast there! take a good grip o' the health tack; haul in your slack, and ahoy! you'll be full sail again in a week. I say, what do you think of that? I'm getting on with my nautical ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... from the names of things. You are deluding yourself with a name. Because the law, which is always rigid and sometimes stupid, says that a man who takes that which does not belong to him is a thief, you've got your mind fixed on the name 'thief,' and the idea of theft. If I had gone off on that tack I shouldn't have the interesting privilege of introducing to you Mr. Harvey M. Greene, who now ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... stays," came the raucous bark of the Captain, who had taken on the heel. The sails slatted furiously as the schooner came about. Then the "Bertha Millner" caught the wind again and lay over quietly and contentedly to her work. The next tack brought the schooner close under Alcatraz. The sea became heavier, the breeze grew stiff and smelled of the outside ocean. Out beyond them to westward opened the Golden Gate, a bleak vista of ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... Crackers, or "hard tack" as they were called, are notoriously poor eating, but in the hands of the Confederate soldier were made to do good duty. When on the march and pressed for time, a piece of solid fat pork and a dry ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... 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
... hearts had been full of the dinner He gave the five thousand hungry men and women and children, they wouldn't have been uncomfortable about not having a loaf. And so they wouldn't have been set upon the wrong tack when He spoke about the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees; and they would have known in a moment what He meant. And if I hadn't been too much of the same sort, I wouldn't have started saying it was but reasonable to be in the doldrums because they were ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... she knew it, but she had not the smallest intention of giving in. She had started on the wrong tack, that was all. Of course the boy was too chivalrous to go back on a friend, particularly as he believed he was under some obligation to her. Her plan of mercilessly tearing the lady to pieces had not been a good one, but she would think of something ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... as to his escape through the passage, which he had made his utmost exertions to effect, in pursuance of the peremptory orders which he had received. He now hauled his wind on the same tack as the Aspasia, pouring in his starboard broadside as he rounded-to. The manoeuvre was good, as he thereby retained his weather-gage—and the wreck of his top-mast having fallen over his larboard side, he had his starboard broadside, which was all clear, ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... your wedding-silver for Mrs. Dubbadoe and her pretty daughter, when they drive in from Milton to see you,—of the ice-cream you ate last night at the summer party which the Bellinghams gave the Pinckneys,—of the hard-tack and boiled dog which dear John is now digesting in front of Petersburg,—the real business, I say, is to supply the human frame with carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen in organized forms. It must be in organized matter. You might pound your wedding-diamonds ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... 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 ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... ready to come in for a share of the salvage. Get out! Clear out! Beat it! Take 'em away, Captain, and leave me the Admiral. She can give everyone of you the lead by a mile and then overhaul you on the first tack. Get out, for I'm going to take a riding lesson and I'm going to pay extra and have a ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... William, all swagger and confidence, started on a new tack. "Fans and fan-esses," he said, addressing the crowd through the megaphone, "why don't you root? Make a noise like you meant it. The Torontos have simply gotter win this game; they need it, but you gotter help 'em. Now then, every-body—ROOT," and "root" they did, arduously, ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... the ball by sticking a carving fork into the great joint, and waving the knife in a general way round the company; then as the gravy sizzed out in a steaming gurgle he added invitingly: "Come on, chaps! This is VEAL prime stuff! None of your staggering Bob tack"; and the Maluka and the Dandy bidding against him, to Cheon's delight, every one "came on" for some of everything; for veal and ham and chicken and several vegetables and sauces blend wonderfully together when a Cheon's hand has ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... dreadful hour. A couple of humble-bees zoomed against the window pane, and the sound, with the ticking of the schoolroom clock, took possession of her brain. Z-zoom! Tick-tack, tick-tack! Would lesson-time never come to an end? She went about automatically correcting sums, copies, exercises, because the sight of the pencilled words or figures steadied her faculties, whereas ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... hated him, discussing him floridly once with Querida at the Thumb-tack Club in the presence of a dozen others, characterised him as "one of those passively selfish snobs whose virtues are all negative and whose modesty is the mental ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... of the sea, So hard-a-port upon your lee! A ship on starboard tack! She's bound upon a private cruise - (This is the kind of spice I use To give ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... should persuade them better when I should come to talk with them. So the next morning I weighed and stood towards the fort. The winds were somewhat against us so that we could not go very fast, being obliged to tack 2 or 3 times: and, coming near the farther end of the passage between Timor and Anabao, we saw many houses on each side not far from the sea, and several boats lying by the shore. The land on both sides was pretty ...
— A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... 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 ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... a different tack, laughing) Oh, you're a romantic girl, Madeline—skunk and all. Rather nice, at that. But the thing is perfectly fantastic, from every standpoint. You speak as if you had millions. And if you did, ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... of a kind of pleased curiosity. He considered their bargain a thing to be carried out to the letter so long as she held him to it, like a debt of honour, not legally binding but morally, and he was prepared, with gentlemanly tack, to keep faith without further discussion of the subject. The arrangement did not trouble him at all. It was original, and therefore somewhat piquant, and ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... December they succeeded in getting to windward of the island, but the signal to the Discovery to tack having been omitted she stood on, and it was some days before she rejoined company. January 1779 was ushered in with heavy rain, but clearing away before noon they were able to approach to about five miles from the shore, where they lay to and traded with the natives. The next three ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... me, don't they, missy?" exclaimed Mancy, beaming with delight, as she took another tack from her mouth, and pounded it into place. "I got 'em from de grocer man, and co'se I has to tack 'em, else ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells
... float a while," 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
... which time, he took a ship bound to London, to whom he gave out, that he designed to go to the southward; which Colonel Rhet hearing, sailed over the Bar the 15th with the two Sloops, and went after the Pirate Vane; but not meeting with him, tack'd and stood for Cape Fear, according to his first Design; and on the 26th following he entered the River, where he saw Bonnet, and the three Sloops his Prizes, at anchor; but the Pilot running the Sloops a-ground, hindered their getting up that Night. The Pirates seeing the Sloops, and not ...
— Pirates • Anonymous
... Philo house of the Curtis pattern, take a box 5 in. deep and 18 in. to 24 in. square. Cut a hole in one side for a chick door, run a strip of screen around the inside of the box to round the corners. Now take a second similar box. Tack a piece of cloth rather loosely across its open face. Bore a few augur holes in the sides of either box. Invert box No. 2 upon box No. 1. This we will call a Curtis box. It costs about fifteen cents and should accommodate fifty ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... Tommy Tonga for him, and that's all you've got to say about that. Next thing is to ask 'em to sling Tommy a fiver over and above his wages—for saving of the boat and trade, mind, Joe. Don't say for potting the nigger, Joe; boat and trade, boat and trade, that's the tack to go on with owners, Joe. Well, let's see now.... My old woman. See she gets fair play, wages up to date of death, eh, Joe? By God, old man, she won't get much of a cheque—only four months out now from Sydney. Look here, Joe, the Belgian's all right. He won't go telling tales. So don't ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... the Yang-tse-boo, Where the Yuletide runs cold gin, And the rollicking sign of the Lord Knows Who Sees mariners drink like sin; Where the Jolly Roger tips his quart To the luck of the Union Jack; And some are screwed on the foreign port, And some on the starboard tack;— Ever they tell the tale anew Of the chase for the kipperling swag; How the smack Tommy This and the smack Tommy That They broached each other like a whiskey-vat, And the Fuzzy-Wuz took ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... upon a long tack for the French coast: and as the sun declined, we found it most prudent to put the Captain's advice, of going below, into execution. Then commenced all the miseries of the voyage. The moon had begun to assert her ascendancy, when, racked with torture and pain in our respective ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... gentlemen; it is understood that we push Coralie, eh? Put a few lines about her new engagement in your papers, and say something about her talent. Credit the management of the Gymnase with tack and discernment; will it do ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... 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
... town to our house, where I went in, leaving him outside so as not to disturb mother. There I got me a hammer and nails with the heavy lead sinker offen my fishnet, and it wasn't long before the finest tick-tack you ever saw was working against the Spiegelnails' parlor window, with me in a lilac-bush operating the string that kept the weight a-swinging. Before the house was an open spot where the moon shone full and clear, where Robert J. walked up and down, about two feet off the ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... decks were washed, to give it a scrub. So, as there was no one on the poop, I left the wheel, and stepped aft to the taffrail. It was thus that I came to see something altogether unthought of—a full-rigged ship, close-hauled on the port tack, a few hundred yards on our starboard quarter. Her sails were scarcely filled by the light breeze, and flapped as she lifted to the swell of the sea. She appeared to have very little way through ...
— The Ghost Pirates • William Hope Hodgson
... may glide along for weeks without starting tack or sheet, hardly moving the helm a spoke, so mild and constant are the Trades. At night, the watch seldom trouble themselves with keeping much of a look-out; especially, as a strange sail is almost a prodigy in these lonely waters. In some ships, for weeks in and weeks out, you ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... conceal'd purpose, and close meaning sure; Else, being urg'd so much, how should he choose But lend an oath to all this protestation? He's no precisian, that I'm certain of, Nor rigid Roman Catholic: he'll play At fayles, and tick-tack; I have heard him swear. What should I think of it? urge him again, And by some other way! I will do so. Well, Thomas, thou hast sworn not to disclose:—- Yes, ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... dignity—what is known in England as 'respectability'—struggling with poverty. Perhaps the ancient clock, whose worm-eaten case reaches from the floor to the ceiling, and whose muffled but cheery tick-tack is like the voice of an old friend, impressed me in favour of this poor home as ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... 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 ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... thread of it must not be broken by the intervention of any such extraneous matter. Neither will it do to separate my peroration from the main body of my argument. I must, then, give up the opportunity of retorting at all, or tack it on after the whole, and take the risk of destroying the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... you what, gentlemen,' replied Brass, in a very grave manner, 'he'll not serve his case this way, and really, if you feel any interest in him, you had better advise him to go upon some other tack. Did I, sir? ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... nature. There are evidently two actions in it; but it will be clear to any judicious man, that with half the pains I could have raised a play from either of them; for this time I satisfied my humour, which was to tack two plays together; and to break a rule for the pleasure of variety. The truth is, the audience are grown weary of continued melancholy scenes; and I dare venture to prophecy, that few tragedies, except those in verse, shall succeed ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... mustn't talk like that, you've nearly cracked his skull as it is. Don't you go on that tack, or it'll ...
— Sarreo - 1901 • Louis Becke
... Spaniard would gladly enough have stood across the Rose's bows, but knowing the English readiness, dare not for fear of being raked; so her only plan, if she did not intend to shoot past her foe down to leeward, was to put her head close to the wind, and wait for her on the same tack. ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... Stubbs, "I can't let a fellow like you - " And there he paused, feeling somehow or other on a wrong tack. ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wounded the mainmast, while the rest cut holes through the sails and struck the water a quarter of a mile to windward. With an oath the captain of the privateer brought his vessel up into the wind, and then payed off on the other tack. ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... Julian, you are on the wrong tack. You see economic science in your day was a science of things; in our day it is a science of human beings. We have nothing at all answering to your rent, interest, profits, or other financial devices, ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... device by which a camp, baseball grounds, running track, tennis court or any distance may be quickly and accurately measured. The first thing to do is to get an inch board and cut a round disc (a) about 12 inches in diameter. Cut two of them and tack them together. The diagram "b" is easier to cut out and will serve the purpose just as well. When the two are temporarily tacked together, bore a hole through the centre for the axle. The eight spokes should be of light material and not too pointed or they will sink in the ground and prevent ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... have wide gates!" Chilcote laughed again unpleasantly. "That was six years ago. I had started on the morphia tack four years earlier, but up to my father's death I had it under my thumb—or believed I had; and in the realization of my new responsibilities and the excitement of the political fight I almost put it aside. For several months ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... you understand this tack-hammer language, and as I could see you've been following all the messages that's been sent, just tell me the whole lot of it, please, as ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... the dealing tack, commenced in the poverty-stricken strain adapted to the occasion. Having deposited his hat on the floor, taken his left leg up to nurse, and given his hair a backward rub with his ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... to the beach, when, all of a sudden, after a shrill whistle, and a brief half minute of commotion among the crew, she wore round and stood out to sea. I turned to the south, and saw a square-rigged vessel shooting out from behind one of the rocky headlands, and then bearing down in a long tack on the smuggler. "The sharks are upon us," said one of the countrymen, whose eyes had turned in the same direction—"we shall have no sport to-night." We stood lining the beach in anxious curiosity; the breeze freshened as the evening fell; and the lugger, as she lessened to ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... Court took a different tack. There the Rev. James Maury, Jefferson's field school teacher and hard-pressed father of 11 children, sued the vestry of Fredericksville Parish for his salary. The county court upheld his right to sue for claims and called for a jury trial to set the damages. Ironically, ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... or south-west, it would be better if bound to Boston Bay, to beat up between Boston Island and the promontory of Cape Donnington. The shores are steep on both sides, so that a vessel may stand close in on either tack. Should the wind be so strong as to prevent a vessel beating in, she may run up under easy sail to a bay on the north-east end of Boston Island, and bring up in seven fathoms opposite a white sandy beach, three-quarters of a mile off shore. ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... broad loops and swirls this dot swings round and round and round, coming a little closer to earth at every turn and always with one particular spot upon the earth for the axis of its wheel. Out of space also other moving spots emerge and grow larger as they tack and jib and drop nearer, coming in their leisurely buzzard way to the feast. There is no haste—the feast will wait. If it is a dumb creature that has fallen stricken the grim coursers will sooner or later be assembled about it and alongside it, scrouging ever closer and ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... least foundation in the facts, and upon the occurrence in both stories of the phrase, "Villain, unmuffle yourself!" In the latter half of his review, written a little later, Mr. Poe takes quite another tack:— ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... law, which is always rigid and sometimes stupid, says that a man who takes that which does not belong to him is a thief, you've got your mind fixed on the name 'thief,' and the idea of theft. If I had gone off on that tack I shouldn't have the interesting privilege of introducing to you Mr. Harvey M. Greene, who now sits ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... prosperous farm was 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 suffering from sea-sickness. All clocks ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... me tell you a naked fac'; (Raise a rucus to-night.) You mought a been cullud widout bein' dat black; (Raise a rucus to-night.) Dem 'ar feet look lak youse sh[o]' walkin' back; (Raise a rucus to-night.) An' y[o]' ha'r, it look lak a chyarpet tack. (Raise a rucus to-night.) ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... single 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 use ...
— The Migrations of an American Boat Type • Howard I. Chapelle
... following month Fielding's inexhaustible energies were off on a new tack, producing, in startling contrast to Miss Lucy, a classical work, executed in collaboration with his friend the Rev. William Young, otherwise Parson Adams. The two friends contemplated a series of translations of all the eleven comedies of Aristophanes; adorned by notes containing ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... on her, but we had been tricked so often before that we hardly dared to hope. Now we were close to her bows, and we heard the great yard creaking and straining, and the dull flapping of the loose canvas of both tack and clew which had blown inboard. The ship lurched and staggered under the uneasy strain, but the tackle held, and we had her. Bertric went to our halliards and lowered the sail as I luffed alongside, and then ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... quietly approaching them. Before getting any fun out of him it was necessary to see what kind of boy he was; and as Jones hardly knew what line to take, he began on the commonest and most vulgar tack of catechising him about his family and ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... "because I am a fool, who have gambled away my land in thse times. My grand-aunt, Lady Girnington, has taen a new tack of life, I think, and I could only hope to get something by a change of government. Craigie was a sort of gambling acquaintance; he saw my condition, and, as the devil is always at one's elbow, told me fifty lies about his credentials ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... was apparently taking the same tack. He looked up as the boys entered, grunted, then continued working on ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... and fried pork, with maple syrup and hard-tack, made their meal of the time, after which there was a long smoke. Quonab took a stick of red willow, picked up-in the daytime, and began shaving it toward one end, leaving the curling shreds still on the stick. When these were ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... over his spectacles at the sign. "I don't know," he drawled. "If I thought he'd go wherever that sign was I ain't sure but I'd tack it on the cover of the well out in ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... and heard for the first time the growing anger of the surf on the shore, and had no more doubt. We were then running with the wind on the port quarter, and it was useless to haul closer to the wind on that tack, whereas if we could wear safely we should be leaving the shore at once by a little ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... resolve themselves into air. Fisher boats are bringing their owners home from night-work over in the shallows of Indjerkeui. Gulls and cormorants in contentious flocks, drive hither and thither, turning and tacking as the schools of small fish they are following turn and tack down in the warm blue-green depths to which they are native. The many wings, in quick eccentric motion, give sparkling life ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... been lacking in chivalry. He hadn't shown himself altogether considerate or even kind. But she challenged him—perhaps unconsciously—and once or twice had come near making him feel small.—Oh! there were excuses for his behaviour! Now however he would sail on another tack. Would placate, discreetly cherish her until she couldn't but be softened and consent to make it up. After all maidens of her still tender age are not precisely adamant—such at least was his experience—where a personable youth is concerned. It only needed a trifle of refined cajolery ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... official restrained himself with an effort and, disregarding the allusion, decided to take another tack. "But ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... answered that I couldn't use one if I tried and hoped he didn't want me to learn, as I was sure I'd only make a mess of it. He seemed rather relieved at that and later in the afternoon, when I heard the "tick-tack" of his machine drifting out from the room in which he had locked himself, I began to wonder just what he had ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... newspapers was always saying how extraordinary it was that The Avenger chose such a peculiar time to do his deeds—I mean, the time when no one's about the streets. Now, doesn't it stand to reason that the fellow, reading all that, and seeing the sense of it, said to himself, 'I'll go on another tack this time'? Just listen to this!" He pulled a strip of paper, part of a column cut from a newspaper, out ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... Frequent recurrence of but makes the reader's thought "tack" or change its course too often. There are ways to avoid an excessive use of but and however. When one wishes to write about two things, A and B, which are opposed, he need not rush back and forth from one idea to the other. ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... boat. A post so fill'd on nature's laws entrenches: Benches on boats are placed, not boats on benches. And yet our Boat (how shall I reconcile it?) Was both a Boat, and in one sense a pilot. With every wind he sail'd, and well could tack: Had many pendants, but abhorr'd a Jack.[4] He's gone, although his friends began to hope, That he might yet be lifted by a rope. Behold the awful bench, on which he sat! He was as hard and ponderous wood as that: Yet when his sand was out, we find at last, That ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... "south-east" was to Pipe Spring along the foot of the Vermilion Cliffs, then his "north-east" was up toward Kanab and through Nine-Mile Valley to the head of the Kaibab, where a trail led him over to House Rock Valley, on his "south-east" tack, skirting the Vermilion Cliffs again. But they lost it and struck the river at Marble Canyon, through a misunderstanding of the course of the trail, which bore easterly and then northerly around the base of the cliffs to what is now Lee's Ferry, where there was an ancient ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... up but in vain. In the afternoon staggered up on deck—men stretched out on all sides looking as wretched as I felt—glad to get back to bed. Captain sent some frizzled ham and hard tack, with his compliments. Sea growing heavier all ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... in stays before the sail was furled, with the result that she heeled over and Desmond had narrowly escaped being flung into the sea. Seeing the boy's plight, Bulger had sprung forward, and, knocking Parmiter from the wheel, had put the vessel on the other tack, thus giving Desmond the one chance of escape which, fortunately, he had been able to seize. The captain had been incensed to a blind fury, first with Parmiter for acting without orders and then ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... high sea was running on Thunder Bay when, on July 30, having parted with the Bishop, I started off in The Missionary with my seven Indian boys. A stiff south-east wind was blowing, and, as our course lay in a southerly direction, we had to tack. We managed, however, to run across Thunder Bay within five or six miles of our point, and then tacked about to reach it; and about three miles further ran into a nice little sheltered bay, where we camped for the night. The boys were merry, and ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... 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, though rarely expressed, is always ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... Jim demanded fiercely, but the man only drove another tack. It was Mr. Harbison who stepped ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... it's sad to think that the sea should swallow up so many fine fellows as she does every year, and yet we couldn't very well do without her, so I suppose it's all right. Mind your head-sheets, Jerry, or she'll not come about in this bobble," he observed, as we were about to tack round ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... Christmas tree that stood in the centre of the ring in the schoolroom. The whole place was pervaded with a pungent, piney odor. Trina had been very busy since the early morning, coming and going at everybody's call, now running down the street after another tack-hammer or a fresh supply of cranberries, now tying together the ropes of evergreen and passing them up to one of the grand ladies as she carefully balanced herself on a step-ladder. By evening everything was in place. As the last grand lady left the school, she gave Trina an extra dollar for ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... and as soon as he was sure it was no go, put an end to his own existence. I said that would be wrong, and besides, he couldn't do it. He said, oh yes, he could—he could inject air into a vein, and lots of things. He went on a physiological tack, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... a long tack, this time I guess,' continued the earl, as they both stood watching the still lessening sails ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker
... day, couldn't raise her head; Frank and Lulu were sick in bed; The dog and cat were a used-up pair, And all of them needed the doctor's care. The children themselves can hardly fail To tack a moral upon this trail; And I guess on rather more level grounds They'll play their next game ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... the Dutch conduct the greater part of their trade, would be secure with the galleys, for there are no winds there, as a rule. The tide allows the ships to enter and leave by three straits, the broadest of which is very narrow, for only one ship can tack in it. That strait is not the one generally used, but the other two. I am assured that in both the ends of the yards of the galleons brush through the trees ashore. I wrote in regard to this matter, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... suddenly taken it into her head that she was Cesar Borgia or St. Elizabeth of Hungary. That sort of thing would make one unpleasantly conspicuous even at a private view. However, she merely meant to say that it was Wednesday, which at the moment was incontrovertible. Well, she's on quite a different tack to the Klopstock. She doesn't visit anywhere very extensively, and, of course, she's awfully keen for me to drag in an incident that occurred at one of the Beauwhistle garden-parties, when she says she accidentally hit the shins of a Serene Somebody or other with a croquet mallet ...
— Reginald • Saki
... because on the whole it will do good. So with Socialism. The evils of Capitalism are so monstrous that any remedy is better than none. Socialism may not be the direct course: it may be a tremendously awkward tack, but it is only by tacking that we get along. So with positive education, but I have enlarged upon this already. What a sermon to my dear godfather! Forgive me, but you will have to take sides, and do, please, be a little ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... dropped the tack-hammer within an ace of my head. "By Jove!" he said, "I shall be able to come back to the ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... turn out not to be the 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 ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... ablest of the Nation's battlefield commanders have been anything but shrinking violets; we have had now and then a hero who could boast with such gusto that this very characteristic somehow endeared him to his men. But that would be a dangerous tack for all save the most exceptional individual. Instead of speaking of modesty as a charm that will win all hearts, thereby risking that through excessive modesty a man will become tiresome to others and rated as too timid for high responsibility, it would be better to dwell upon the importance ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... him, thus continues: "He describes a ship at sea, bound for the port of Heaven, when the man at the head sung out, 'Rocks ahead!' 'Port the helm,' cried the mate. 'Ay, ay, sir,' was the answer; the ship obeyed, and stood upon a tack. But in two minutes more, the lead indicated a shoal. The man on the out-look sung out, 'Sandbreaks and breakers ahead!' The captain was now called, and the mate gave his opinion; but sail where they ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... manner in which she steered, too, was remarked by all of us, even excited as we were. She yawed about so considerably, that once or twice we thought it impossible she could see us, or imagined that, having seen us, and discovered no person on board, she was about to tack and make off in another direction. Upon each of these occasions we screamed and shouted at the top of our voices, when the stranger would appear to change for a moment her intention, and again hold on toward us—this singular conduct being repeated two or three times, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... of the gospel," said the minister, taking another tack. "Christ said if any man smite you on the right cheek, turn ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... of our forefathers, when there was nothing but wretched boats up in Nordland, and folks must needs buy fair winds by the sackful from the Gan-Finn, it was not safe to tack about in the open sea in wintry weather. In those days a fisherman never grew old. It was mostly womenfolk and children, and the lame and halt, ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... "Well, 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 ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... using marking ink or a regulation tag. If a tag, tack with small tacks on the top of the box. Write your own name and address on the tag distinctly as the sender. Be as careful of the tacks as you were of the nails. Always get a receipt from your express agent if shipping by express as this will be necessary in ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... going to him? In short, what is your intention in writing with all this affection to a man from whom you have separated yourself?" Upon this view of her epistle, which did not appear to have struck her, M. de la Forest said, she would (instead of rewriting it) tack on to it, with the most ludicrous inconsistency, a sort of revocatory codicil, in the shape of a postscript, expressing her decided desire that her husband should remain where he was, and her own explicit determination never again to enter into any more intimate ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... know—Ladislaw's sentiments in every way I am sure are good—indeed, we were talking a great deal together last night. But he has the same sort of enthusiasm for liberty, freedom, emancipation—a fine thing under guidance—under guidance, you know. I think I shall be able to put him on the right tack; and I am the more pleased because he is a relation ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... some of Eugene's parting donations in candy. Half the mail bag and more was for the Squire, the post-mistress said, and it made a large bundle, so that she had to tie it up in a huge circus poster, which, being a very religious woman, she had declined to tack up on the post-office wall. "Marjorie," whispered Mr. Terry, so that the post-mistress could not hear, "I wudn't buoy any swates now, for I belave there's a howll box iv thim in the mail for yeez." Accordingly, they left without a purchase, to the ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... sold and eagerly bought all over Germany showing the Zeppelins bombing towns. When some German father sits by the hospital bed of his dying daughter, who sobs out her life torn with a fatal wound, let him tack one of these postcards over the bed and in looking on it remember that "he who lives by the sword shall perish by the sword," that it was at the command of the Kaiser and the Crown Prince when they thought only the German Zeppelins could make a successful air raid that ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... Tryon may try on. Battle's not always to the strong; The race, though, must be to—the Fleet, With us at least. We can't go wrong In making safety there complete. And by St. George we can't go right On any other tack whatever, Until that Fleet is fit to fight With all our foes though strong and clever. Insurance may be all serene, But the insurance JOHN must measure Is safety on all roads marine For him, his men, his food, his ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, September 13, 1890 • Various
... her. Instantly those on board endeavoured to hoist the mainsail of the Smeaton, with the view of working her up to the buoy from which she had parted; but it blew so hard, that by the time she was got round to make a tack towards the rock, she had drifted at least ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... Tack this to my other fragment, and then, I trust, I shall not be a defaulter in correspondence. I own I am become an indolent poor creature: but is that strange? With seventy-five years over my head, or on ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... you!" he chirped, as Dave worked the ailerons to counteract the leaning of the machine. A swing of the rudder had caused the biplane to bank, but quick as a flash Dave righted it by getting the warping control on the opposite tack, avoiding a ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... be able to get upstairs without being heard; there were eight steps in all, and only the two top ones creaked under my tread. Down at the door I took off my shoes, and ascended. It was quiet everywhere. I could hear the slow tick-tack of a clock, and a child crying a little. After that I heard nothing. I found my door, lifted the latch as I was accustomed to do, entered the room, and shut the door noiselessly ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... they hoisted their sails to have the wind on their quarter, as the sun shone full in their faces, which they considered might be of disadvantage to them, and stretched out a little, so that at last they got the wind as they wished. The Normans, who saw them tack, could not help wondering why they did so, and said they took good care to turn about, for they were afraid of meddling with them. They perceived, however, by his banner, that the King was on board, which gave them great joy, as they were eager to fight with him; so ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the wind, that ready waits For Sicily, shall bear you to the straits Where proud Pelorus opes a wider way, Tack to the larboard, and stand off to sea: Veer starboard sea and land. Th' Italian shore And fair Sicilia's coast were one, before An earthquake caus'd the flaw: the roaring tides The passage broke that land from land divides; And where the lands retir'd, the rushing ocean rides. Distinguish'd by ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... may overlap at the saddle-flap, and yet be loo'd on the tape: And it all depends upon changing ends, how a seven-year-old will shape; It was tack and tack to the Lepe and back—a fair ding-dong to the Ridge, And he led by his forward canvas yet as we shot ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... under which myself and staff were seated, drinking a cup of coffee and chewing "hard tack" when word of the surrender came, was torn down for mementoes. Meade and Wright did not escape, being almost dragged from their horses ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... for the change in the following note:—"'Rapid,' indeed;—he topographised and typographised King Priam's dominions in three days. I called him 'classic' before I saw the Troad, but since have learned better than to tack to his name what don't belong ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... plucky and a able young feller, by the name of Graham, and he kep' her a-dancin' as well as the old man would have done. Constant she had everythin' put to her that she'd bear, and always were she kep' on the tack where she'd make the most westin', and so she struggled along till we was as far as thirty degrees west, we bein' thirty days out and not yet half way. Every day we asked the steward how old Wiggins were ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 9 • Various
... said I, "the time you put a tack in the seat of Cap'n Charles's stool, in his little shoemaker's shop out behind the house, and he gave you five cents, to return good for evil; so the next day you did it again, in the hope of a quarter, but he decided there were ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... you're going to take that tack, there's no more to be said. It's easy enough to say that,—but how can the dead send messages if the human beings ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... 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 one ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... made a rush upon Dan'l as he let go the helm and turned to face them; while the second boat's crew opened with a dozen musket-shots, firing high at the sails and rigging. In this they succeeded: for the second or third shot cut through the trysail tack and brought the sail down with a run; and almost at the same moment the boarders overpowered Dan'l and bore him down on deck, where they beat him silly with the flat of their cutlasses and so passed on to drive the rest of the lugger's crew, that were running ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... delirium, coma, death. It was impossible for the white soldiers to perspire unless they were near marshes where they might quench their intolerable thirst in the brackish waters. Owing to the lack of fresh vegetables and improper food, the rations of bully beef and hard-tack, and the assaults of blood-sucking insects, many deaths occurred. Even the Northwest Indian troops, accustomed to the desert and life in a hot climate, suffered intensely in Mesopotamia. It is necessary to consider the climatic conditions the British forces had to contend ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... FEJEVARY: (trying a different tack, laughing) Oh, you're a romantic girl, Madeline—skunk and all. Rather nice, at that. But the thing is perfectly fantastic, from every standpoint. You speak as if you had millions. And if you did, it wouldn't matter, not really. You are going against the spirit ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... consumed, it will effect a great impetus to our petroleum trade. Pit-Hole, Tack, and Oil Creek stock will go up exceedingly, and an immense revenue will thereby accrue to the numerous possessors of oil lands, who will be able to pay such a large tax that the national debt can be ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... said, 'you mustn't talk like that, you've nearly cracked his skull as it is. Don't you go on that tack, or ...
— Sarreo - 1901 • Louis Becke
... ceaseless worry to his little mother, who firmly believed that its fame must have inspired every burglar and miscellaneous thief in Victoria with an unholy longing to possess it, was continually devising new hiding-places for the treasure, and arose three or four times a night to at tack ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... is black, In puling prose and rhyme, Talk hatefully of love, and tack Hypocrisy to crime; Who smile and smite, engross the gorge Or impotently frown; And call us "rebels" with King George, As if ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... carefully using marking ink or a regulation tag. If a tag, tack with small tacks on the top of the box. Write your own name and address on the tag distinctly as the sender. Be as careful of the tacks as you were of the nails. Always get a receipt from your express agent if shipping by express as this will ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... her close. "Listen to me," she said. "You're going on quite a wrong tack with that brother-in-law. You are, Jan—I grieve to say it—standing between him and his children—you don't allow him to see his children, especially his adored daughter, nearly enough. Now that he is well enough to take the air with Mr. Withells I propose ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... said about their respect for the weaker sex. I guess we'd better keep off that tack or we'll hatch up a duel or two. They seem to be fire-eaters. We must content ourselves witch searching out her home and without assistance, too. I've cooled off a bit, Harry, and, now that I've seen her, I'm willing to go slowly and deliberately. Let's take our ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... 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 the wind strong ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... every tack, just as it's wanted. But there was Moffat, yesterday, in a room behind the milliner's shop near Cuthbert's Gate; I was with him. The woman's husband is one of the choristers and an elector, you know, and Moffat went to look for his vote. Now, there was no one ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... he hath lately been observed to tack about at Court, and to endeavour to strike in with the persons that are against the Chancellor; but this he says of him, that he do not say nor do anything to the prejudice of the Chancellor. But he told me that the Chancellor was rising again, and that of late ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... doesn't know a word of French!" "Baia?... Not a word of French?... Where have you come from?" And the Captain began to laugh again, more than ever. Then noticing the long face of poor Sidi Tart'ri, he changed tack. "Well perhaps it isn't the same one," He said, "I've probably got her mixed up with someone else... only look here, M. Tartarin, you would be wise not to put too much trust in Algerian Moors, or Montenegrin princes." Tartarin ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... enemy as to have a shell come into whizzing or screaming competition with the clear and ringing tones of his voice; at other times, he has cheered with "The American Flag," "Old Ironsides," or "The Union," audiences shivering with cold and famishing on a short allowance of hard-tack. He has seen the American soldier under all circumstances, and practically understands all the avenues to his heart and brain. Many of the poems in the volume which have obtained a national popularity were originally written at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... to be married, is he? Well, his wife elect appeared to me to be a clever and amiable lady, as far as I could judge from the little I saw of her, and from your account. Now to that flattering sentence must I tack on a list of her faults? You say it is in contemplation for you to leave —-. I am sorry for it. —- is a pleasant spot, one of the old family halls of England, surrounded by lawn and woodland, speaking of past times, and suggesting (to me at least) happy ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... gradually fell off, and filled again upon another tack, sailed swiftly for a minute or so, and brought up once more dead in the wind's eye. Again and again was this repeated. To and fro, up and down, north, south, east, and west, the Hispaniola sailed ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had properly divided the fleet, they hoisted their sails to have the wind on their quarter, as the sun shone full in their faces, which they considered might be of disadvantage to them, and stretched out a little, so that at last they got the wind as they wished. The Normans, who saw them tack, could not help wondering why they did so, and said they took good care to turn about, for they were afraid of meddling with them. They perceived, however, by his banner, that the King was on board, which gave them great joy, as they were eager to fight with him; so they put their vessels ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... now adopted another tack. He pleaded that the sea-route was beset with dangers to which it would be unseemly to expose the person of an imperial envoy, but he accommodatingly sent the Emperor's letter on to Japan by an envoy of his own. This Corean envoy was detained half a year by the Japanese, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... islands and a little rock near the shore. These islands are about half a league from the Esquemin, which is a very bad harbor, surrounded by rocks and dry at low tide, and, in order to enter, one must tack and go in behind a little rocky point, where there is room enough for only one vessel. A little farther on, is a river extending some little distance into the interior; this is the place where the Basques carry on the whale-fishery. [242] To tell the truth, ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... midst of the confusion, when it seemed positive that the whole school must be aroused, there came a commanding rap upon the window pane. It was not the gentle signal of the tick-tack—no, indeed! ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... the worst of it any way, for there is a pin in that rose, and if he goes to smell the mayflowers underneath he will find a thorn to pay for the tack he put in my rubber boot. I know he will play me some joke to-night, and I mean to be first if I can," answered Molly, settling the artificial wreath round the orange-colored canoe which held ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... an end, and early in the morning one of our black boys found us, bringing with him on horseback a haversack full of hard-tack, and in his hand a kettle of coffee which we soon made piping hot at the camp-fire, and found the world looking much more cheerful. The storm continued, however, and made the pursuit slower and more difficult than it would have been in better weather. The ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... 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
... interested in adapting the library to my requirements instead of Father's, and I am emptying the billiard room and furnishing it to make a workroom. I have a small talent with a brush and pencil, and I need some bare walls to tack my prints on to dry, and I need numerous places for all the things I am always dragging in from the desert and the canyons; and since I have the Bear Cat running, what I have been doing in that line with a knapsack won't be worthy ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... of secession had left the South in a condition which appeared to render an exclusively literary life a hopeless impossibility, he immured himself in the woods of Georgia and gave himself wholly to his pen." When Simms visited him here in 1866, the poet had for supplies "a box of hard tack, two sides of bacon, and fourscore, more or less, of smoked herring, a frying-pan and a grid-iron." He and his wife lived as simply as the Hawthornes did in the Old Manse. His writing desk was a carpenter's work-bench. He wrote continually for the magazines, corresponded ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... think that Uncle Sam has a great deal to answer for on that tack; and I can say, too, that the love of rum that I acquired in the government service had pretty nearly fixed my flint, both for this world and the next. But still, Jack, it wont do for seamen to drink grog because the government supplies ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... it. You must then get the sail in as flat as you can, and sail as near as you can to the wind. Then when you have gone some distance you must bring her head round, till the sail goes over on the other side; and sail on that tack, and so make a zigzag course: but if the wind should come dead ahead, I think your best course would be to lower the sail and row against it. However, at present, with the wind from the east, you will be able to sail free on your ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... will not willingly mention the names of birds 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 ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... I hardly knew you when I saw you first!" responded Larry, his sails filling on a fresh tack with characteristic speed. "It's not as light as it used to be. I'm not sure ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... tell the world to its face that if anybody gets this kid now they've pretty near got to fight for him. It ain't right, and it ain't honest. It's stealing to keep him, and I never stole a brass tack in my life before. But he's mine as long as I live and can hang on to him. And that's where I stand. I ain't hidin' behind no kind of alibi. The old squaw did tell me his folks was dead; but if you'd ask me, I'd say she was lying when she said it. ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... Culpepper, hastily. "Now, look here; you go on a different tack. Take a glass of ale like a man or a couple o' glasses; smoke a cigarette or a pipe. Be like other young men. Cut a dash, and don't be a namby-pamby. After you're married you can be as miserable as ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... 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
... superior nimbleness of his own ship would more than counterbalance the advantage conferred upon the other by her greater weight of metal. The stranger, when she cleared the land, was close-hauled on the larboard tack, heading about south-south-east, and it was judged, from her position relative to the land, that she had not actually touched at the island, but had simply availed herself of its presence to gain a few miles by turning to windward in the smooth water under its lee. The discovery ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... respectable theory of living. For what can be more untoward than the occurrence, at a critical period and while the habits are still pliable, of such a sweeping transformation as the return of Charles the Second? Round went the whole fleet of England on the other tack; and while a few tall pintas, Milton or Pen, still sailed a lonely course by the stars and their own private compass, the cock- boat, Pepys, must go about with the majority among "the stupid starers and the ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hungry til 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 shot on ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... hundred acres, part holm, part croft-land, of which the former yielded good wheat, the latter oats and potatoes. The lease was for nineteen years, and the rent fifty pounds for the first three years, seventy for the rest of the tack. The laird of Dalswinton, while Burns leased Ellisland, was Mr. Patrick Millar, not an ordinary laird, but one well known in his day for his scientific discoveries. There was no proper farm-house or offices on the farm—it was part of the bargain that Burns should build ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... ter persume ter tech Trypheeny, Square, an' I'll be along in a half tack," replied ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... all now depending upon one of the many accidents to the masts and rigging which there was so much reason to apprehend. Happily, the sails stood well; the Indefatigable continued to gain by every tack; and at eleven o'clock, with six feet water in her hold, she passed about three-quarters of a mile to windward of the Penmarcks; enabling her officers and men, after a day and night of incessant exertion, at length to rest from ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... words came with intense deliberation. There was no mistaking their significance. Henson deemed it wise to try another tack. ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... beneath. By this time Benita was confident that, whatever might lie below, it was not the treasure, since it was evident that the poor, dying Portuguese would not have had the time or the strength to cement it over. When she told the others so, however, Meyer, convinced that he was on the right tack, answered that doubtless it was done by the Makalanga after the Portuguese days, as it was well known that they retained a knowledge of the building arts of their forefathers until quite a recent period, when the Matabele ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... "Ariel," and drove her nearly backwards at a rate of six knots. The towing hawser wound round her screw and stopped her engines. No sooner had she recovered from this shock than she was again taken aback on the other tack, and driven stem on towards the "Lady Nyassa's" broadside. We who were on board the little vessel saw no chance of escape unless the crew of the "Ariel" should think of heaving ropes when the big ship ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... sailor—a sailor bold and bluff— Calling out, "Ship ahoy!" in manly tones and gruff. I'd learn to box the compass, and to reef and tack and luff; I'd sniff and snifff the briny breeze and never get enough. Perhaps I'd chew tobacco, or an old black pipe I'd puff, But I wouldn't be a sailor if . . . The sea was very rough. ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... rushing on deck in nothing but their unmentionables and started to haul. Chance willed it that at the same moment an iceberg came out of the fog, right in front of our bows. It was not many minutes, either, before we were on the other tack, and the watch below did not linger long on deck. With so few clothes on it was no pleasure to be out in that cold, foggy air. They slept so lightly, then, that it took no more noise than that to wake them. When I afterwards asked one of them — I think it was Beck ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... eels. Heat is what the worms are fond of; but cold—cold will kill them. Now I'll cure you. Quarter-master, come here. Walk this boy up and down the weather-gangway, and every time you get forward abreast of the main-tack block, put his mouth to windward, squeeze him sharp by the nape of the neck until he opens his mouth wide, and there keep him and let the cold air blow down his throat, while you count ten; then walk him aft, and when you are forward again, proceed as before.—Cold kills worms, my poor boy, ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... rapidly exhausting itself and tried one more tack. "Yes, it's simpler than I supposed," I admitted, "but it doesn't seem quite an every-day thing to sell the Balaklava Coronal to ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... goods man, sailing on our old tack of conversation, "sometimes makes it hard for us, you know. I once had a case like this: One of my customers down in New Orleans had failed on me. I think his muhulla (failure) was forced upon him. Even a tricky merchant ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... something at her feet. Five ragged strips of pink calico lay along the floor, each held fast at one end by a rusty tack driven into the puncheons. Ivy had grown tired of her bondage, and had tugged and twisted until she got away. The faithful tacks had held fast, but the pink calico, grown thin with long wear and many washings, tore in ragged strips. Mammy glanced from the floor to Ivy's ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... imitating Foulet. But instantly I wondered if we were taking the right tack for Fraser's eyes grew red ...
— The Floating Island of Madness • Jason Kirby
... answered. "It's rather on the religious tack, you know. That's why I'm reading it." ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... light; they resented it bitterly, as an insult in the hour of their misfortune from the man who had shown their enemies where to strike. When, however, the Bill, after passing the Commons, was opposed and modified by the Lords, Defoe suddenly appeared on a new tack, publishing the most famous of his political pamphlets, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, which has, by a strange freak of circumstances, gained him the honour of being enshrined as one of the martyrs of Dissent. In the ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... another Englishman. We were not long in starting. The wind was from the west, which is a head wind for sailing to Achter Kol. The sky began to be heavily overcast, and the wind to freshen up more, so that we had to tack. Ephraim being afraid the wind might shift to the northwest, and blow hard, as it usually does when it is from that quarter, wished to return, and would have done so, if the skipper had not tried to go ahead more than he did. The tide running out, and the boat advancing ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... was far from being as shrewd as the father, or he would have instantly chosen the proper tack; but he was like a vessel caught in stays, and experienced considerable internal pitching and jostling. In one sense it was a relief that the old man supposed him to be worth much more than was actually the case, but long experience hinted that a favorable assumption ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... Shilka, which runs into the Amur at the Pokrovskaya Stanitsa. The river is not broader than the Psyol, it is even narrower. The shores are stony: there are crags and forests. It is absolutely wild.... We tack about to avoid foundering on a sandbank, or running our helm into the banks: steamers and barges often do so in the rapids. It's stifling. We have just stopped at Ust-Kara, where we have landed five or six convicts. There are mines ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... lot o' lifting," said he. "Yet we've just got to lift it every time, and tack it down again before morning. You might try your hand over yonder on the ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... escape, when, looking over the ramparts, I beheld the enemy so close that I could see their teeth as they bit the cartridges, and General Pike, on the right wing, cheering them on—so gallant and bold. I was a-feared I would be nabbed as a prisoner, and sent to eat Uncle Sam's hard-tack in the hulks at Sackett's Harbour, when, all of a sudden, the ground trembled like the earthquakes I have felt in the West Indies; then a volcano of fire burst up to the sky, and, in a minute, the air seemed raining fire and brimstone, as it did at Sodom and ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... Bulger. "I was a gallant clerk and hers the fairest fingers that ever caressed a typewriter—" The intent attitude of Norcross, the fact that he neither turned nor smiled, checked Bulger. With the instinct of the courtier, he perceived that the wind lay in another tack. He racked the unused half of his mind for ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... tragic, all over resembling a ridiculous face, that, at the same time, laughs on one side, and cries on the other. The only defence, I think, I have ever heard made for this, as it seems to me the most unnatural tack of the comic tail to the tragic head, is this, that the minds of the audience must be refreshed, and gentlemen and ladies not sent away to their own homes with too dismal and melancholy thoughts about them: for who knows the consequence of this? We are much obliged indeed ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... and took me along its narrow ways to his room. A small room of about fifteen feet square, with a single window looking out on the barren solitudes of the island; a small cot; a wash-stand with a little looking-glass hung over it from a tack in the wall; a pine table with pen, ink, and paper on it; an old line-engraving representing Bacchus, hung on the wall, and opposite a similar one of Silenus: these constituted the visible environments of Walt Whitman. ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... then, on the open sea, with all sail set; whilst my little barque did little more than tack about near the shore. One day I received the following letter; it was in a pleasant and careful handwriting, and orthography was observed with complete regularity, which suggested that a man had been ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... scratched his head, for the silence of the tramp convinced him that there had been, after all, a good deal of truth in the rumor. He ran back on another tack and ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... in that respect," cried Anne, taking another tack. "If Leslie had asked you if anything could be done for him, THEN it might be your duty to tell her what you really thought. But you've no ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... swept out, but accept them as suitable straw or matting for the bottom of my carriage. When I turn up into the mouth of the Assabet, which is wooded, large fleets of leaves are floating on its surface, as it were getting out to sea, with room to tack; but next the shore, a little farther up, they are thicker than foam, quite concealing the water for a rod in width, under and amid the Alders, Button-Bushes, and Maples, still perfectly light and dry, with fibre unrelaxed; and at a rocky bend where ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... sailors at their usual council, who were gazing with deep interest at a solitary vessel dimly discernible through the fog in the offing. As she neared us we found her to be a barque of apparently considerable burthen, making a tack to weather the Torhead, which lay several miles under her lee, with a strong breeze from windward. She was evidently quite out of her reckoning from the indecision and embarassment displayed in her movements; and the captain seemed not sufficiently aware of the hazard he ran. I waited sometime ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 375, June 13, 1829 • Various
... the conversation, which thus was renewed from time to time in the pauses of the noise. The room being "tidied," Mrs. Somerville sat down on the bed and taking up some pieces of cloth began to tack them together with needle and thread, ready for the machine. It never seemed to occur to her to rest ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... wind blew have mark'd; nor loos'd my sails, "Him flying, to pursue, and the wide main "In all directions plough: now bellies out "My canvas; not a single course explor'd. "Hence am I borne against the rocks; hence 'whelm'd "In the wide depth of ocean; nor my sails "Know I to tack returning. Did not heaven "Check the indulgence of my love, by marks "Obvious to all? when from my hand down dropp'd "The tablet, which the boy was bade to bear. "Mark'd that my falling hopes not? More deferr'd "Thy wishes, or the day should sure have been; "Surely the day. For heaven ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... two miles, we saw the smoke rise from our old camp. The Mormons, after taking what goods they wanted and could carry off, had set fire to the wagons, many of which were loaded with bacon, lard, hard-tack, and other provisions, which made a very hot, fierce fire, and the smoke to roll up in dense clouds. Some of the wagons were loaded with ammunition, and it was not long before loud reports followed ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... did intervene. A Duke, and a young Duke, is an important personage; but he must still be introduced. Even our hero might make a bad tack on his first cruise. Almost as important personages have committed the same blunder. Talk of Catholic emancipation! O! thou Imperial Parliament, emancipate the forlorn wretches who have got into a bad set! Even thy omnipotence must ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... day; and the wind was very powerful, so that the sea was very fearful to see, without ever being smooth either by day or night, but they always met with storms, so that the crews suffered much hardship. After a month that they had run on this tack, they stood into shore and went as long as they could, all praying to the Lord that they might have doubled beyond the land; but when they again saw it they were very sad, though they found themselves much advanced ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... Because of the light and shifting airs the Seamew, in spite of her wonderful sailing qualities, had only then raised the northern extremity of the Cape and, turning on her heel, was now running out to sea again on the long leg of a tack into the southeast. ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... d'Aiglemont with her own abilities and virtues, flattering herself that thus she might enjoy the happiness lacking in her lot. All her woman's ingenuity and tack was employed in making the best of the situation; pure waste of pains unsuspected by him, whom she thus strengthened in his despotism. There were moments when misery became an intoxication, expelling all ideas, all self-control; but, fortunately, sincere piety always brought her back to one supreme ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... 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 premises ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... noticed till that moment), and said to the Prince, who was with me: 'The man has talent.' But genius—why, it's his wife who has genius! Have you never heard Grace play the violin? Poor Violet, as usual, is off on the wrong tack. I've given Fulmer my garden-house to do—no doubt Violet told you—because I wanted to help him. But Grace is my discovery, and I'm determined to make her known, and to have every one understand that she is the genius ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... Colonel, now thinks better Of his rash vow his gift to "demonstrate," Receiving a "precipitated letter" Warning him not to be—precipitate. Many a Betting Man who'd hedge or tack Must wish he had Mahatmas at ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... expelled 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 cropper in ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... bound up with my dreams of Elizabeth that 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 that ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... the strange observation that the dog, when on the poop, would always walk on the windward side; and afterwards, when the brig was at sea and under sail, this singular animal would shift his position to the other side after every tack, so as to be windward, as the captain of the ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... "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
... issued might be: 1 carton of hard-tack, 1 ration of bacon, 1 potato, 2 tablespoons of rice, 1 heaping tablespoon ...
— Military Instructors Manual • James P. Cole and Oliver Schoonmaker
... the lunch which followed. He reserved till the moment of parting a supreme expression of good-will. When he had got a hand of Lydia's and one of Staniford's in each of his, with his wrists crossed, he said, "Now, I ain't one to tack round, and stand off and on a great deal, but what I want to say is just this: the Aroostook sails next week, and if you two are a mind to go back in her, the ship's yours, as I said to Miss Blood, here,—I mean Mis' Staniford; well, I hain't had much time to get used to it!—when ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... brought up at the same moment as the St. Magnus, and steered westward on the starboard tack, with a southwesterly breeze swelling our sails. The Curlew now bent over to leeward, our bow plunging into the waves, dashing them aside and sending the foam surging in a long track far astern. With a strong outrunning current in our favour we sped ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... make a cloth cover for your pail in the shape of a tall hat. The rim of the hat must reach out to the edges of your case and be tacked there. Take out your pail, fit this cloth cover into the hole and tack the edge ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... board the brig having been hit, her crew left the gun, and after firing muskets for twenty minutes, finding that they were unable to weather the land or tack without being boarded by the boat, they ran the brig on shore. Here her crew, to the number of eighteen, including three wounded men, abandoned her, leaving ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... my argument, and the thread of it must not be broken by the intervention of any such extraneous matter. Neither will it do to separate my peroration from the main body of my argument. I must, then, give up the opportunity of retorting at all, or tack it on after the whole, and take the risk of destroying ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... camp-fires, with their minds on the rack, Eating salt pork with a little hard-tack, Wading through snow or fording a river, Or asleep on the ground without ...
— Our Little Brown House, A Poem of West Point • Maria L. Stewart
... end, and in a continued subject, which in my opinion, afforded very agreeable representations. But when I proposed this idea at the opera-house, nobody would so much as hearken to me, and I was obliged to tack together music and dances in the usual manner: on this account the divertissement, although full of charming ideas which do not diminish the beauty of scenes, succeeded but very middlingly. I suppressed the recitative ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... gone where they crop one of everything—even of his good works, the parsons say, but I shan't be much the barer for that! It's hard, confounded hard, though, when they're all a fellow has got!—Now don't say a word! I don't like being contradicted!—not at all! It sends one round on the other tack, I tell you—and there's my gout coming! Only mind this: if once you say who you are as long as you're at college, or before I give you leave, I have done with you. I won't have any little plan of mine forestalled for your vanity! Don't any of ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... was for time or tide or for one of those mysterious movements in the Pentland Firth that our one-masted boat was waiting we never knew. We had only just finished our breakfast when a messenger appeared to summon us to rejoin the sloop, which had to tack considerably before we reached what the skipper described as the Scrabster Roads. A stiff breeze had now sprung up, and there was a strong current in the sea; at each turn or tack our boat appeared to be sailing on her side, and we were apprehensive that she might be blown over into the sea. ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... we sailed along we saw coming towards us another vessel, the Luisa, which suddenly executed a very extraordinary tack; and in a minute or two its crew sent up a loud shout of joy, having succeeded in stealing a fishbox which the fishermen of Marinduque had sunk in the sea. They had lowered a hook, and been clever enough to grapple the rope ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... proud and subservient, I know you,' he retorted dryly. 'Proud and subservient, then subservient to the proud—I know you and your love. It is a tick-tack, tick-tack, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... a carving fork into the great joint, and waving the knife in a general way round the company; then as the gravy sizzed out in a steaming gurgle he added invitingly: "Come on, chaps! This is VEAL prime stuff! None of your staggering Bob tack"; and the Maluka and the Dandy bidding against him, to Cheon's delight, every one "came on" for some of everything; for veal and ham and chicken and several vegetables and sauces blend wonderfully together when a Cheon's hand has been at ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... was discovered from the masthead bearing E. by S. or E. S. E., but at such a distance we could not tell what she was. All sail was instantly made in chase, and we soon found we came up with her. At 3 P.M. could plainly see that she was a ship on the starboard tack, under easy sail, close on a wind; at half past 3 P.M. made her out to be a frigate; continued the chase until we were within about three miles, when I ordered the light sails taken in, the courses hauled up, and the ship ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... 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 ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... now on such occasions. The reason was obvious. Success depended on speed and sailing power. The art of building big square-rigged ships which would work to windward had not been yet discovered, even by Mr. Fletcher of Rye. The fore-and-aft rig alone would enable a vessel to tack, as it is called, and this could only be used with ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... Wellington in that tone of insolent sarcasm which is so familiar to him, when in the midst of his harangue the Duke from the opposite side lifted up his finger, and said loud enough to be heard, 'Now take care what you say next.' As if panic-struck, Brougham broke off, and ran upon some other tack. The House is so narrow, that Lords can almost whisper to each other across it, and the menacing action and words of the Duke reached Brougham at once. This odd anecdote rests upon much concurrent evidence. ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... Malaca, which is the place where the Dutch conduct the greater part of their trade, would be secure with the galleys, for there are no winds there, as a rule. The tide allows the ships to enter and leave by three straits, the broadest of which is very narrow, for only one ship can tack in it. That strait is not the one generally used, but the other two. I am assured that in both the ends of the yards of the galleons brush through the trees ashore. I wrote in regard to this matter, in the year of 30, by Admiral Diego Lopez Lobo, whom I was sending to that court to treat of that ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... chance to split the diference. We came back to this little town for what they call a rest. That word "rest" dont mean the same thing as the one we use. For instance when an oficer comes into the room everybodys supposed to jump up like theyd been sittin on a tack. Then he says "Rest." Youd naturally think he meant lie down an take it easy for an hour or so. All he means is that you dont have to stand ...
— "Same old Bill, eh Mable!" • Edward Streeter
... seven-up going on in the cabin, and the sun striking down the companionway was bothering Andie Howe. He began to complain. "Hi, up there to the wheel! Hi, Eddie—can't you put her on the other tack?—the sun's in my eyes. How can a man see the cards with the sun in ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... schoolfellows was Alfred Tennyson. He then went on to the University of Cambridge, which he left without taking a degree. Painting was the profession that he at first chose; and he studied art both in France and Germany. At the age of twenty-nine, however, he discovered that he was on a false tack, gave up painting, and took to literary work as his true field. He contributed many pleasant articles to 'Fraser's Magazine,' under the name of Michael Angelo Titmarsh; and one of his most beautiful and most pathetic stories, The Great Hoggarty Diamond, ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... out. So long as you can head east-and-by-north, you are doing well, and you can stand on till you open the light from that northern headland, when you can heave to and fire a gun; but if, as I dread, you are struck aback before you open the light, you may trust to your lead on the larboard tack; but beware, with your head to the southward, for no lead will ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the mode of navigation is inexplicable, or at least obscure. Perhaps it is meant to express that they do not tack, but sail with either end foremost as suits the change of wind ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... her to take this tack. He scowled and looked disconcerted, shifting uneasily in his big chair, but when Juli did not continue, obviously awaiting his answer, he said, "Juli, he left me no choice. I never knew how his mind worked. ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... said he soothingly, holding up his hand, 'don't do that! You're on the wrong tack, Mister, 'deed you are. There's another guess a comin' to you. It ain't money we want this time, no, siree! Money don't cut no ice this trip, though it is a mighty handy thing to have a jinglin' in your jeans—ain't it? No, ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... you're on that tack, you're hopeless. What have you been reading? 'The Young Maiden's Own Ruskin,' or ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... 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. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... time gave him much less trouble than the day before, when he had frequently to change his tack. The steady, strong breeze came off the land, to which he was too close for any waves to arise, and hour after hour passed without any necessity to shift the sail, further than to ease or tighten the sheets as the course of ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... 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
... We had to tack toward Muanza for a quarter of a mile with fear in our arms to make them clumsy before I dared believe we were clear of the reefs; but when I put the helm down at last there was neither launch in sight nor any other boat that might contain an enemy. The southern ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... calculating that a few minutes' run, at two or three miles a minute, would bring them to their destination on the outskirts of Portsmouth. But a few miles south the baffling mist had made its appearance, and Smith found himself bereft of landmarks, and compelled to tack to and fro in utter uncertainty of his course. He was as much at a loss as if he were navigating a vessel in a sea-fog. To sail through the mist was to incur the risk of striking a tree, a chimney, or a church steeple; to ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... spoke 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
... it seems to me that his first course "south-east" was to Pipe Spring along the foot of the Vermilion Cliffs, then his "north-east" was up toward Kanab and through Nine-Mile Valley to the head of the Kaibab, where a trail led him over to House Rock Valley, on his "south-east" tack, skirting the Vermilion Cliffs again. But they lost it and struck the river at Marble Canyon, through a misunderstanding of the course of the trail, which bore easterly and then northerly around the base of ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... of late?" he asked, that being a natural question to follow her reference to her studio. He was, indeed, relieved that the conversation had got on so definite a tack and that she had not alluded to his avoidance of her family ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... the same is the same as an increase of the excise on whisky—the people get a meaner grade of goods at a higher price. If an ordinary man cooked up such a scheme as that for the benefit of the people, I'd feel justified in calling him a "crank," and I cannot conceive how a man like Dr. Slavin can tack his signature to such tommy-rot. Before we can make the Single Tax "a go" we've got to have government ownership of telegraphs, railways, pipe-lines, etc., etc., and use the taxing power to regulate prices just as the Republicans do the tariff—and ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... six weeks at sea, without discovering Amboyna; the pilot was of opinion they had passed it, and was in pain concerning it, not knowing how to tack about, because they had a full fore-wind. Xavier perceiving the trouble of the pilot, "Do not vex yourself," said he, "we are yet in the Gulph; and to-morrow, at break of day, we shall be in view of Amboyna." In effect, at the time mentioned, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... sorts of people there, a moving heap of frayed velvet and shabby plush. Lily passed by with great dignity. Next, she came to the big agent, with offices in Berlin and London ... the ting-ting of telephones, the tick-tack of typewriters all day ... business pure and simple, an exchange for supple loins, swelling biceps, muslin skirts, pigeon's eggs ... a sheaf of stars who, from there, radiated over Australia, America, England, the Eastern and Western Trusts, Bill and ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... no more, but ran the boat down the river some little distance and then began to tack up again, running across from side to side, so as to make sure that the junks did not slip by us in the darkness. But hour after hour glided on, and the lights ashore and on the boats gradually died out, till, with the exception of a few lanterns on vessels at anchor, river and shore ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... van, which had been discomfited. The English admiral gave chase; but the French ships being clean, he could not come up and close them again, so they retired at their leisure. Then he put his squadron on the other tack, in order to keep the wind of the enemy; and next morning they were ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... We go tack to look a little at the fortunes of the Meeker family. Twenty-three years have passed since we introduced it to the reader, on the occasion of Hiram's birth. Time has produced his usual tokens. Mr. Meeker is already an old man of seventy, but by no means ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... know why Fate had created for them both an atmosphere charged with unspoken possibilities. He had turned her words over again and again, reflecting upon the abrupt angles her speech had taken. In their few minutes' conversation three times she had had to make a sudden tack to safer subjects. What had she meant by that reference to Eastern and Western flowers? His answer reminded him how well he knew. And the confession about her husband, the worshipper of success—"what he calls success"—how much tragedy lay under ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... conductor had left, the men took the opposite tack and were very fulsome in their praise of Jim. Wanted him to drink with them and all that sort of cheap comradeship, but he would have none of their game and got out as soon ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... 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 uppers, pull it smoothly and evenly into place, and drive a tack ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... as Mr. Walters did, get a cup of coffee and a hard-tack; that'll go way ahead of nothin' if you're ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... impediment to our passage through the Strait, until we got abreast of Wallis Isles, Cape Cornwall bearing East by North 1/2 North; when the water shoaled to four fathoms and a half. Finding by hauling up on either tack, that we were on a ridge extending from the Cape, we ran to the westward, until we could cross it, which we did in three and a half fathoms, North Wallis Island bearing ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... you're on the right tack, Pelle," answered Morten seriously. "But let the young ones light the fire underneath, and it'll go all the quicker. That new eventualities crop up in this country is no disadvantage; the governing body may very well be made ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... with what they had left. Of course I had to write my little copy of verses with the rest; here it is, if you will hear me read it. When the sun is in the west, vessels sailing in an easterly direction look bright or dark to one who observes them from the north or south, according to the tack they are sailing upon. Watching them from one of the windows of the great mansion, I saw these perpetual changes, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... the kanakas sleep through that long hot day that they did not see the cutter run out through the passage and head south, close-hauled on the southeast trade. Nor was the cutter ever sighted on that long tack to the shores of Ysabel, and during the tedious head-beat from there to Malaita. He landed at Port Adams with a wealth of rifles and tobacco such as no one man had ever possessed before. But he did not stop there. He had taken a white man's head, and ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... in getting to windward of the island, but the signal to the Discovery to tack having been omitted she stood on, and it was some days before she rejoined company. January 1779 was ushered in with heavy rain, but clearing away before noon they were able to approach to about ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... surprised at any outbreak of ill-temper on the part of Miss Squeers. Having a half-perception of what had occurred in the course of the evening, she changed her mode of making herself agreeable, and proceeded on the indirect tack. ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... forecastle; the tormentor of waking moments, the disturber of dreams. We looked to windward for signs of change. Every few hours of night and day we put her round with the hope that she would come up on that tack at last! She didn't. She seemed to have forgotten the way home; she rushed to and fro, heading northwest, heading east; she ran backwards and forwards, distracted, like a timid creature at the foot ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... Archbishop of Glasgow, had the Abbacy in commendam. On 15th May of that year he granted Anthony Murray a tack of 4 merk lands of the "Raith" "for furnishing of our bulls"—probably for the expense of his confirmation. Before the tack had run out the tenure was made perpetual by a free charter of the same lands of "Raith" and of the Moor of Maderty, ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... the island of Teneriffe became perceptible amidst the mist and clouds which veiled its heights. During the night we reached the high black rocks of lava which form its northern points; and at break of day I determined to tack, in order to run into Santa Cruz, the only place in the island where ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... 2ND PIRATE whispers to him.) Excellent. (To her) If you really are a teacher as you say, answer me this question. The brigantine Cocktail is in longitude 40 deg. 39' latitude 22 deg. 50', sailing closehauled on the port tack at 8 knots in a 15-knot nor'-nor' westerly breeze—how soon before she sights ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... them in place. Such windows and doors should be properly marked, like the screens that replace them in summer, with numbering tacks so that, each fall, they may be put in proper place without confusion. The system is simplicity itself. A duplicate tack bears the same number on the sill of each window and on the upright of each door. This is a real saver of time, for so small a variation as half an inch in width or height can make the difference between doors and windows that really fit and those that leak air. Such proportions vary ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... example is useful, as illustrating to the eye how a decrease of extension is accompanied by an increase of intension. At each step of the descent here we visibly tack on a fresh attribute. [Footnote: This example is borrowed from ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... 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 all out of date among ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... than this morning. I went to my work as usual at ten o'clock, but the door was shut and locked, with a little square of cardboard hammered on to the middle of the panel with a tack. Here it is, and you can read ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... on back to her, and—if you want good advice—when you get indoors, stay in." With a kindly tolerance the policeman assisted the pedestrian across the street and watched him tack along until he ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... how would it do to try the other tack and practice a careful but significant restraint?" ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... an excellent method of bending small pipes. Fig. 42 will almost describe itself. A is a brass or gun metal ball having a copper or wire rope running through it, and pulled through the flattened part of the pipe as shown. It will be quite as well to tack the bend down to the bench, as at B, when pulling the ball through; well dress the lead from front to back to thicken the back. I have seen some plumbers put an extra thickness of lead on the back before beginning to bend. Notice: nearly ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 315, January 14, 1882 • Various
... box carefully using marking ink or a regulation tag. If a tag, tack with small tacks on the top of the box. Write your own name and address on the tag distinctly as the sender. Be as careful of the tacks as you were of the nails. Always get a receipt from your express agent if shipping by express as this will be necessary in case of non-receipt ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... could accomplish, he could only commit to a merciful Providence the lives of his gallant crew, all now depending upon one of the many accidents to the masts and rigging which there was so much reason to apprehend. Happily, the sails stood well; the Indefatigable continued to gain by every tack; and at eleven o'clock, with six feet water in her hold, she passed about three-quarters of a mile to windward of the Penmarcks; enabling her officers and men, after a day and night of incessant exertion, at length to rest from their toil, and to ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... and portions measured out, while the diners distributed themselves on odd boxes lying about on the ice. Many who were accustomed to restaurants built tables of kerosene cases and dined al fresco. After the limited stew, the company fared on cocoa, biscuits—"hard tack"—and jam, ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... Apply Drag Ropes to the Wagons and Aid the Mules in Pulling Them up the Mountain. Lieutenant Bradley and His Scouts Scale the Divide by Night and Locate the Indian Camp. The March Down Trail Creek. Soldiers' Fare. Hard Tack and Raw Pork. A Brief Sleep Without Blankets. Perils of the Situation. Less Than 200 Soldiers and Citizens to Attack 400 Trained Indian Warriors. Implicit Confidence of Officers and Men in One Another Nerves Them to the ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields
... we were hugging the land as near as we could, first on one tack, then on the other, hoping that the weather would moderate, but hoping in vain, for the sky was now a dull leaden hue, and the sea was so bad, even in our somewhat sheltered situation, that we were all more or less sea-sick. I got my chart and studied the thing out. Sixty miles due south of us ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... of time Jim Ferrers, with such help as Alf was able to give, had supper ready to serve. It was a rough meal, of hard tack, pilot bread, potatoes, canned meats and vegetables, but outdoor life had given all a good appetite and the meal did not long ...
— The Young Engineers in Nevada • H. Irving Hancock
... of her good name!" he said hotly. "It seems to me that's about the first thing to be considerate of, in being considerate of a person! And look here: it strikes me you're taking a pretty different tack from what ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... activity but at a reduced level or 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 2.9.10
... It is a mere hovel, but it has a wooden floor, and there are signs of personal dignity—what is known in England as 'respectability'—struggling with poverty. Perhaps the ancient clock, whose worm-eaten case reaches from the floor to the ceiling, and whose muffled but cheery tick-tack is like the voice of an old friend, impressed me in favour of this poor home ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... of Wapping, observing that most part of his audience were in the seafaring way, very naturally embellished his discourse with several nautical tropes and figures. Amongst other things, he advised them "to be ever on the watch, so that on whatsoever tack the evil one should bear down on them, he might be crippled in action." "Ay, master," said a son of Neptune, "but let me tell you, that will depend upon your having ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... what the North-countrymen call bairns o' mine: I've none o' my own. My wife was a barren woman. I've none but my old mother at home. Have your sulks out, lads; you'll come round like the Priscilla on a tack, and discover you've made way ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... admiration, or whether some true instinct had told him that a woman's love may be gained in many ways sooner than by mere learning, he was only angry with himself for his past folly in making himself her school—nay, her taskmaster. To-night, though, he would start off on a new tack. He would not even upbraid her for her conduct the night before; he had shown her his displeasure at the time; but she should see how tender and forgiving he could be. He would lure her to him rather than find ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... filled on the starboard tack, and the West Wind went off to the south-east as Christy put up the helm. The fog lifted just enough to enable the officer at the stern of the steamer to see the West Wind as she went off on her new course. No one on the former could have suspected that the latter ...
— A Victorious Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... while the reefs were taken in. It was blowing considerably more than half a gale of wind, and the sea was very heavy. Soon, however, the effect of the sails made itself felt; the yacht was a good sea-boat, and when she fairly heeled over on the port-tack and began to cut the waves again, the ladies downstairs agreed that sailing was much pleasanter and steadier than steam, and that the next time they crossed in a yacht they would like to sail all the way. But in spite of their courage, and notwithstanding that ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... contradictory to the meaning of the act. 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 that it passed through both houses, though not without an obstinate opposition, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... have to put you upon allowance.' And then Taylor—he was an old man-o'-warsman, you see, and he couldn't get along without his grog—he jest ups and says—'that's enough, capt'n. You may haul aft the sheet, tack ship, and go home. I shall tell you nothing more. As soon as the money is safe—I see how 'tis—old Taylor'll have to go overboard.' And he stuck to what he said, though he went ashore with them, just to show them that he knew every point of the compass—for ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... 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 ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... be disappointed in that respect, although I have been out and home without having had to lift tack or sheet for weeks together," observed ...
— Owen Hartley; or, Ups and Downs - A Tale of Land and Sea • William H. G. Kingston
... the disagreeable habit of introducing certain words or meaningless syllables into their speech, where these do not at all belong; or they tack on diminutive endings to their words. The syllables are often mere sounds, like eh, uh; in many cases they sound ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... wedding-silver for Mrs. Dubbadoe and her pretty daughter, when they drive in from Milton to see you,—of the ice-cream you ate last night at the summer party which the Bellinghams gave the Pinckneys,—of the hard-tack and boiled dog which dear John is now digesting in front of Petersburg,—the real business, I say, is to supply the human frame with carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen in organized forms. It must be in organized matter. You might pound your wedding-diamonds for carbon, you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... anywhere else for the future. All this must have taken up the most of twenty minutes, yet after getting as far as Mr. Shylock's I remembered that I required what one's hatter (and no one else) calls a "boater," and back I went to order one in addition to the cap. And as the next tack fetches the buoy, so my next perambulation (in which, however, I was thinking seriously of a new bowler) brought me face to face with ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... workers were ready to return to the room, the men had finished the arrangements at which they had been at work before lunch, and were beginning to tack festoons of evergreens along the walls, the dull paper of which had been covered with fluting of soft pink muslin. The effect was heavy and clumsy in the extreme, and Rosalind stamped her foot with ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... Operation, that Member of the Circle towards whom he is so rude as to turn his Back first, runs his Sword directly into that Part of the Patient wherein School-boys are punished; and, as it is very natural to imagine this will soon make him tack about to some other Point, every Gentleman does himself the same Justice as often as he receives the Affront. After this Jig has gone two or three times round, and the Patient is thought to have sweat sufficiently, he is very handsomly rubb'd down by some ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... yer can't always read them," said Journeyman; "an accident will send you off on the wrong tack, so it all comes to the same thing, ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... altered the course sufficiently to keep the plane in view on the new tack, but not to bring them so close to it as to arouse suspicion. In a few moments, all could see the tiny speck coasting down on a long slant and Bob, watching through the glasses, ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... had something else then? what've you been doing with yourselves for 'long while'? what d'ye mean, coming here starved to death, making a fellow sick to look at you? Hold your gab, and eat up that pork," pushing over his tin plate, "'n' that bread," sending it after, "'n' that hard tack,—'tain't very good, but it's better'n roots, I reckon, or berries either,—'n' gobble up that coffee, double-quick, mind; and don't you open your heads to talk till the grub's gone, slick and clean. Ugh!" he said to the Captain,—"sight o' them fellows just took my appetite away; ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... are, my lads; and Bosun Jones has sent you up some hot slops and soft tack. There you are. Find your own tablecloth and ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... considerations did intervene. A Duke, and a young Duke, is an important personage; but he must still be introduced. Even our hero might make a bad tack on his first cruise. Almost as important personages have committed the same blunder. Talk of Catholic emancipation! O! thou Imperial Parliament, emancipate the forlorn wretches who have got into a bad set! Even thy ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... the aristocracy of birth going to do about it? Struggle desperately? It took that tack at first. Bismarck ranged himself in its support for some time. He was himself an agrarian. But he was not long in installing paper mills on his estates at Varzin. It is said that the Emperor himself possesses porcelain factories. A part of the nobility for a long time tried to ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... towards the east before a steady breeze. Often for days together not a sheet nor tack was started; the crew had seldom to go aloft, except to serve some of the rigging, or to keep ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... were 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 its kind ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... under our stern, and avoiding our broad-side. As this would never do, and the wind freshened so as to give us four or five knot way, a most fortunate circumstance for us, the captain determined to tack while he had room. The John behaved beautifully, and came round like a top. The proas saw there was no time to lose, and attempted to close before we could fill again; and this they would have done with ninety-nine ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... impression. At first, indeed, I felt that not one of my words went into the man's brain—that, though silent, he was not listening. It seemed almost hopeless to present my views in such a light that he could grasp them. I felt as if I were expounding and arguing at a rock. But when I got on to the tack of his duty towards his wife and himself, and appealed to his moral and religious notions, I felt that ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... only my own wishes, I should not have allowed this hasty at tack on Dr. Todd to have made its appearance in this Collection; being now fully convinced that the charge brought against that reverend gentleman of intending to pass off as genuine his famous mock Papal ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... operation of fixing on the book is begun, it will always be found best to mount the embroidered work on a backing of strong fine linen. The stage at which it is best to add the linen will vary according to the kind of work it is to strengthen. In the case of canvas it will only be necessary to tack it on quite at the last; with velvet a backing from the first may be used with advantage, all the stitches being taken through both materials. As to satin, it will be best to do all the very fine work, if any, in coloured silks first, and when the stronger work in cord or braid ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... market-place, and advanced in an irregular zig-zag fashion towards the Palace, wildly tacking from side to side, like a sailing vessel making way against an unfavourable wind so that the head of the procession was often further from us at the end of one tack than it had been at the end of ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... forget his name, or to misapprehend you in some respect or other; and this merely to have an opportunity of slily gratifying their malice by mentioning some unhappy defect or personal infirmity he labours under; and not contented "to tack his every error to his name," they will, by way of farther explanation, have recourse to the faults of his father, or the misfortunes of his family; and this with all the seeming simplicity and candor in the world, merely ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... 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
... hand, in haste to rhyme, Should tack an empty couplet at a time, Great names who do the same I might adduce; Nay, some who keep such hirelings for their use. Need blooming Phyllis be described in prose By any lover who has seen a rose? Who can forget heaven's masterpiece, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... the right, in order to avoid the shoals of the east bank, and so sailed to the Hoofden. We had a good flood tide, and four to five fathoms of water at the shoalest part; but the wind shifted again to the north, and we were compelled to tack, which rendered our progress slow, for it was quite calm. Coming to the Hoofden, and between them, you have 10, 11, and 12 fathoms of water. As soon as you begin to approach the land, you see not only woods, hills, dales, green fields and plantations, but also the ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... you are!" he said again; but she did not mind it in the least. With a sweep of her bare arm she had put the tiller hard aport, intending to tack back to Peel, but the wind had freshened and the sea was rising, and by the swift leap of the boat the boom was snapped, and the helpless sail came napping down upon the mast. Then they tumbled into the trough, and Glory had not strength to pull them out of ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... war I felt that I owed a grudge to the medical faculty. Having a romantic temperament and a taste for heroics, I had wished to fight and eat hard tack for my country. But whenever I presented the feeble frame in which I then dwelt, the medical man stood in my path with the remonstrance, "Why should you fill another cot in a hospital and another strip in ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... facts, of which the great men were to make use. And even as to the value of his collections he seems to have had much doubt, for he wrote to Henslow in 1834:—"I really began to think that my collections were so poor that you were puzzled what to say; the case is now quite on the opposite tack, for you are guilty of exciting all my vain feelings to a most comfortable pitch; if hard work will atone for these thoughts, I vow it ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... have the wind on their quarter, as the sun shone full in their faces, which they considered might be of disadvantage to them, and stretched out a little, so that at last they got the wind as they wished. The Normans, who saw them tack, could not help wondering why they did so, and said they took good care to turn about, for they were afraid of meddling with them. They perceived, however, by his banner, that the King was on board, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... presence. Whereupon the man conceives a new idea of his own perspicacity in detecting a thing at once so agreeable and so little advertised. He may, with a woman of this kind, go long upon the third 'tack'—may, indeed, never know it was she who gently 'shunted' him, still unenlightened, and left him side-tracked, but cherishing to the end of time the soothing conviction that he 'might an' if he would.' To the more robust ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... sir—so long as you treat him well, and he gets treated right enough with soft tack and mutton. He comes to see our other two ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... 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 ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... the wind blew have mark'd; nor loos'd my sails, "Him flying, to pursue, and the wide main "In all directions plough: now bellies out "My canvas; not a single course explor'd. "Hence am I borne against the rocks; hence 'whelm'd "In the wide depth of ocean; nor my sails "Know I to tack returning. Did not heaven "Check the indulgence of my love, by marks "Obvious to all? when from my hand down dropp'd "The tablet, which the boy was bade to bear. "Mark'd that my falling hopes not? More deferr'd "Thy wishes, or the day should sure have been; "Surely the day. For heaven itself ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... 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 port was always there, ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... should form the basis of infantile discipline. He was in a tremendous hurry to push on my spiritual growth, and he fed me with theological meat which it was impossible for me to digest. Some glimmer of a suspicion that he was sailing on the wrong tack must, I should suppose, have broken in upon him when we had reached the eighth and ninth chapters of Hebrews, where, addressing readers who had been brought up under the Jewish dispensation, and had the formalities of the Law of Moses ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... easily as a pair of cheap boots. There is nothing left, not a scrap. It's as though I hadn't been suffering then, but had been dancing a mazurka. Everything in the world is transitory, and that transitoriness is absurd! A wide field for humorists! Tack on ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Wittgenstein occupied a height which entirely commanded that miry country; that it would be necessary for us to tack about, within his sight and within his reach, by following the windings and turnings of the road, in order to ascend to the Russian camp; that thus our column of attack would be long exposed to their fire, first its left and then its right flank; that this ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... and this only made her the more intense a second later, on a different tack. Now she ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... of warnings was due to the fact that Aunt Lizzie already had fallen fourteen times in transit, a tack-head seeming sufficient to trip her up, and now, quite as though they had shouted the reverse, Aunt Lizzie stumbled and dropped the onyx apple upon old ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... a game of seven-up going on in the cabin, and the sun striking down the companionway was bothering Andie Howe. He began to complain. "Hi, up there to the wheel! Hi, Eddie—can't you put her on the other tack?—the sun's in my eyes. How can a man see the cards with ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... conceall it. To witt that neyther Doht our soueraine so greatlie fear her owen estate by reasson of that book, neyther yet Doth she so vnfeanedlie fauour the tranquilitie of your maiesties reing and realme that she wo[u]lde tack so great and earnest paines onles that her crafty counsall in so Doing ...
— The First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous regiment - of Women • John Knox
... the author of this book encountered the Pompadour, and Lady Castlemaine, and some other executive heads of that kind; these were found so difficult to work into the scheme, that it was judged better to take the other tack in this book (which must be issued this fall), and then go into training and settle the question in another book. It is, of course, a thing which ought to be settled, and I am not going to have anything particular to do next ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... now on the dealing tack, commenced in the poverty-stricken strain adapted to the occasion. Having deposited his hat on the floor, taken his left leg up to nurse, and given his hair a backward rub with his right ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... not expected her to take this tack. He scowled and looked disconcerted, shifting uneasily in his big chair, but when Juli did not continue, obviously awaiting his answer, he said, "Juli, he left me no choice. I never knew how his mind worked. That final deal he engineered—have ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... called Peachy for short. Oh, yes, I knew all about you beforehand, although you happen to be the newest girl. Dad wrote me a whole page—wonderful for him!—and said he'd stayed at your house in London, and I was to tack myself on to you and show you round, and see you didn't fret and all the rest of it. Are you wanting a crony, temporary or otherwise? Then here I am at your service. Link an arm and we'll parade the place. I guess by the time ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... breeze; —— en popa before the wind, with a wind from astern. vigor m. vigor, strength, force. vil adj. vile, base, despicable, mean, paltry. villano m. low-born one, rustic, villain. vino m. wine. violento, -a violent, impetuous, furious. virar tack, put about. virgen adj. virgin, chaste. virgen f. virgin. virginal adj. virginal. virtud f. power, virtue. visin f. vision, sight, apparition, phantom. vislumbrar descry, glimpse. ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... seems that, while I was helping Timmy Finbrink out of his difficulties, and afterwards tried to fool you with the fake window-breaking, some of the Central fellows had been down at Ritchie's playing tick-tack on one of his front windows. Tick-tack is a stupid game, and it got me into ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... 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
... adventure in her first voyage; but she was well built, a fair ship, of a good burden, and had mounted in her forty pieces of brass cannon, two of them demy cannon, and she was well manned and of good force and strength for war; she was a good sailer, and would turn and tack about well; she held a hundred persons of Whitelocke's followers and most of his baggage, besides her own mariners, about two hundred. The cabins wherein Whitelocke was were of a handsome make; the breadth of the ship was the length of his bed-cabin, and it was ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... I watched the ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the sportsman; tricks which they will have less need to practise in Louisiana bayous. When compelled to rise they would sometimes circle round and round and over the pond at a considerable height, from which ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... how about this brutal policeman?" began Kelly, on a new tack. "Assaulting a peaceful citizen is a serious matter, and I am ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... it was to come from. But they ought to ha' known where it always come from. If their hearts had been full of the dinner He gave the five thousand hungry men and women and children, they wouldn't have been uncomfortable about not having a loaf. And so they wouldn't have been set upon the wrong tack when He spoke about the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees; and they would have known in a moment what He meant. And if I hadn't been too much of the same sort, I wouldn't have started saying it was but reasonable to be in ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... know what you'd call too horrible; I kinda think it wouldn't be what I'd tack those words to. Anyway—what is it?" He went close, and ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... eight o'clock; then lashed the wheel and let her take care of herself while I got steam up in the donkey and hauled in my spanker and mainsail; then I slacked off my foreyard and topsail yards, hove her to on the port tack, hung three red lights on the forestay to show she wasn't under command, set my alarm clock and turned in. I have to smile at the ease with which one man—provided he is a sizable man and able to stand strain—can sail a barkentine before the wind in fair weather. I am not worried. ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... adventure during this summer, it was nothing for her to unmoor a boat, enter it, and lift the oars, not pausing to observe that it was the Arrow. Just then, however, a little wind ruffled down and shook the sail, a wind not quite favorable, but in which she could tack across and back; she drew in the oars, put to the proof all her new boat-craft, and recklessly dashed through the dark element that curled and seethed about her. She had to make but two tacks in that hour's ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... to him? If I know him, it is only because I have seen him, from afar off, walk the quarter-deck with the other officers, a cigar in his mouth, after a good meal, while we in the forecastle had our salt fish, and broke our teeth with worm-eaten hard-tack." ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... filling his pipe. 'Davy will have to take the helm himself, if he would keep you on the right tack. Clear the decks now, and be off to your bed. If the gale lulls, I shall ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... some Bovril and biscuits, and Major Marshall, who also kept to his bunk on my advice, began feeding upon hard tack to get into trench practice. Bye-and-bye Perry came back and reported that Sergeant McMaster had fallen and broken his arm. Capt. MacLaren was up and he was a good surgeon and hastily set the injured limb. The sergeant had fallen and struck his elbow on ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... hard voice.] No. The Duchess and Mrs. Jack were coming to town shopping, and Lady Owbridge proposed that she and I should tack ...
— The Gay Lord Quex - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... Saxish ambassador, is here seeking to tack us to the Schmalkaldner heresies. Yesterday he was with Privy Seal, who loveth the Lutheran alliance. So Privy Seal takes him to his house, and shows him his marvellous armoury, which is such that no prince nor emperor hath ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... squadron before night, ordered his prizes to continue their course without regard to any lights or apparent signals from the "Alfred." When darkness fell upon the sea, the Yankees were scudding along on the starboard tack, with the Englishman coming bravely up astern. From the tops of the "Alfred" swung two burning lanterns, which the enemy doubtless pronounced a bit of beastly stupidity on the part of the Yankee, affording, as it did, an excellent ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... said the sailing-master. "I'm afraid we shan't get round the point this tide, unless we lay her off on the other tack." ...
— Miss or Mrs.? • Wilkie Collins
... of Hamlet's is one of the few points in which Shakespeare has kept close to the old story on which he founded his play; and as he never decided without deliberation, so he never acted without unerring judgment, Hamlet drifts through the whole tragedy. He never keeps on one tack long enough to get steerage-way, even if, in a nature like his, with those electric streamers of whim and fancy forever wavering across the vault of his brain, the needle of judgment would point in one direction long enough to strike a course by. The scheme ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... examined the room once more; but as it was far neater than her own, she could not reasonably find any fault there, so started on a new tack. ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... till midnight, after which 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 deg. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... parlor, and I would like to sit in it a while and think of the days when I used to swab the deck. There's nothin' more elevatin', to my mind, than just that sort of thing. I do it sometime when I am eatin' my meals at the hotel, and the better I can bring to mind the bad coffee and hard tack, the better I like what's set ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... afternoon watch. Because of the light and shifting airs the Seamew, in spite of her wonderful sailing qualities, had only then raised the northern extremity of the Cape and, turning on her heel, was now running out to sea again on the long leg of a tack into ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... as the hour of its convalescence. In consequence, every speech, even those from dry and desiccated lips, was coloured with the melody of hope. Even hoary jokes and ancestral stories, kept for tea-meetings as hard tack is kept for the army and navy, were disinfected by the kindly flavour which brooded like an ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... days than bright ones, and more contrary winds than fair breezes. We left Hebron on Tuesday, September 25th, and on the following Sunday found ourselves among Greenland icebergs and fogs. So we had to turn southwards and run on that tack for two days. Then a moderate side wind followed the strong contrary gale, and we made good steady progress eastward. This was undoubtedly pleasant after the heavy rolling and pitching of the previous days. For ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe
... the feeder and keep the bees in, and at the same time allow the bee-keeper to see when they have consumed all their food. The feeder is now complete, with one important exception; it has, as yet no way of admitting the bees. On the outside corners of one of the ends, glue or tack two strips, inch and a half wide, extending down to the bottom of the box, and half an inch from the top; fasten over them a piece of thin board, (paste-board will answer.) You have now a shallow ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... Billy. Terry can't drive a carpet tack, nor draw a straight line with a ruler." Ted was always in a bantering mood and eager for a laugh at anybody. "I'll bet Cora's radio will radiate royally and right. You going to ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... statement in the 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 more credence ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... or four leagues. The wind was now at E., and blew a fresh gale. With it I stood to the S., till half an hour past six o'clock the next morning, when a sudden squall, from the same direction, took our ship aback; and, before the sails could be trimmed on the other tack, the main-sail and the top-gallant ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... indissolubly bound up with my dreams of Elizabeth that 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 ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... use. To make the seat, first fit boards in the bottom and nail them to the side rails as shown. Fill the space with hair or elastic cotton felt to about 3 in. above the edge of the rails. Bind this down tightly with a piece of burlap and tack the edges to the rails. Cut out the corners of the burlap so that it will fit about the posts. Put the leather on over this and tack the edges to the bottoms of the rails. Then finish with the ornamental ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part 3 • H. H. Windsor
... point. Now and then, I think I see; but then I go off on a wrong tack: I get a silly fit, and a hopeless one, and lose my clue. And yet, after all, there is a highway; and wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein,' murmured Louis, as he gazed on the first star ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... author of the Ardintoul manuscript says, that the lands of Kenlochewe were held by Kenneth Mackenzie "and his predecessors by tack, but not as heritage, for they had no real or heritable right of them until Alexander of Kintail got heritable possession of them from John, Earl of Ross," at a much later date. Ellandonnan Castle, however, held out during ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... 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 do you know a criticism? ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... upon him eyes sharp enough to make a less acute person than the captain feel that honesty, rather than flattery, was the safest tack to go upon. ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... 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, ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... minutes. Then Phoebe ventured to repeat the words "out West," and her companion went off on a new tack. She had just been West herself. She had been on a visit to her husband's niece, who lived in Arizona. In Blazeton, Arizona. "It's the nicest town ever you see," she continued. "And the smartest, most up-to-date place. Talk about the West bein' oncivilized! My land! you ought to see that town! Electric ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... warning," he said quietly. "But I expect to come in occasionally, just the same. You've taken the wrong tack by trying to frighten me off. You see, Miss Platanova, I'm actually looking for something dangerous—if that's ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... they are again on the wrong tack. They cannot make out what the disease is. O Cytherea! how I wish they knew! This suspense is wearing me out. Could not Miss Aldclyffe spare you for a day? Do come to me. We will talk about the best course then. I am sorry to complain, but I ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... schooner was running with the wind on her starboard quarter when we boarded her. We are now close-hauled, and of course we can't make the shore on the other side while we are on this tack." ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... Jack, I think that Uncle Sam has a great deal to answer for on that tack; and I can say, too, that the love of rum that I acquired in the government service had pretty nearly fixed my flint, both for this world and the next. But still, Jack, it wont do for seamen to drink grog because the government supplies it, and think to excuse themselves ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... 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 already had experience ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... several minutes, but finally gave place to a smile, for a consideration of the present position had led him to a comfortable conclusion. The Runkle would be on a wrong tack this time! If he scented any attraction among the members of Mrs Hilliard's house-party, it would of a certainty be attributed to the pretty American heiress, Honor Ward. No one would suspect for a moment that the fastidious Stanor Vaughan had been laid captive by a ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... places Much skill in grimaces, And feels your pulse running tic tack—O! Would you know his chief skill? It is only to fill And smoke ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... other. "I was driving her to work off it with the sea getting up when the breeze burst on us. She put her rail right under, and we had to let go most everything before she'd pick it up. She's pointing somewhere north, jammed right up on the starboard tack just now, but ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... it, for the Laocoon's helm was put down, her great sails shivered and threshed, and she stood off on the other tack. As she stood away we saw an officer leap on to the taffrail, holding on by the mizen backstays. "Tar my wig," said Marah, "if he isn't bowing ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... One more tack through alder copse and juniper jungle—hard indeed, and terribly vexatious—and he saw with delight the great open slope, covered with an unbroken surface of glittering snow. The sun (which at midwinter is but a few hours above the horizon) had set; and the stars were flashing forth with ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... the tack-hammer within an ace of my head. "By Jove!" he said, "I shall be able to come back to the ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... Mrs. Costello shone supreme. Her brisk, big figure, with skirts turned back, and a blue apron still further protecting them, was everywhere at once; laughter and encouragement marked her path. She wore a paper of pins on the breast of her silk dress, she had a tack hammer thrust in her belt. In her apron pockets were string, and wire, and tacks. A big pair of scissors hung at her side, and a pencil was thrust through her smooth black hair. She advised and consulted and directed; even with the priests it was to be observed that her mild, "Well, Father, ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... pulling certain cordages in cadence; those crying, swearing, whistling, and filling the air with barbarous and unknown sounds. The officer on duty, in his turn, roaring out these words, starboard! larboard! hoist! luff! tack! which the helmsman repeated in the same tone. All this hubbub, however, produced its effect: the yards were turned on their pivots, the sails set, the cordage tightened, and the unfortunate sea-boys having received ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... the enemy so close that I could see their teeth as they bit the cartridges, and General Pike, on the right wing, cheering them on—so gallant and bold. I was a-feared I would be nabbed as a prisoner, and sent to eat Uncle Sam's hard-tack in the hulks at Sackett's Harbour, when, all of a sudden, the ground trembled like the earthquakes I have felt in the West Indies; then a volcano of fire burst up to the sky, and, in a minute, the air seemed raining ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... and mouths open, as if spell-bound in listening to him, thus continues: "He describes a ship at sea, bound for the port of Heaven, when the man at the head sung out, 'Rocks ahead!' 'Port the helm,' cried the mate. 'Ay, ay, sir,' was the answer; the ship obeyed, and stood upon a tack. But in two minutes more, the lead indicated a shoal. The man on the out-look sung out, 'Sandbreaks and breakers ahead!' The captain was now called, and the mate gave his opinion; but sail where they could, the lead and the eye showed nothing but dangers all ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... an accident," shouted the other, suddenly off on another tack. "It was awful. Trina was in the swing there—that's my cousin Trina, you know who I mean—and she fell out. By damn! I thought she'd killed herself; struck her face on a rock and knocked out a front tooth. It's a wonder she didn't kill herself. It ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... Mulvaney changes his tune an' axes her solemn-like if she'd thought o' t' consequences o' gettin' two poor but honest soldiers sent t' Andamning Islands. Mrs. DeSussa began to cry, so Mulvaney turns round oppen t' other tack and smooths her down, allowin' 'at Rip ud be a vast better off in t' Hills than down i' Bengal, and 'twas a pity he shouldn't go wheer he was so well beliked. And soa he went on, backin' an' fillin' an' workin' up t'awd ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... seen such scarecrows. I'll not march through Coventry with them, that's flat: nay, and the villains march wide betwixt the legs, as if they had gyves on; for, indeed, I had the most of them out of prison. There's but a shirt and a half in all my company; and the half-shirt is two napkins tack'd together and thrown over the shoulders like a herald's coat without sleeves; and the shirt, to say the truth, stolen from my host at Saint Alban's, or the red-nose innkeeper of Daventry. But that's all one; they'll find linen ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... a long time," sneered Cliff. "The fact is, Kay, you're a little too elementary in your ideas to suit me. It's due to you that I kept hammering away on the wrong tack for years. The ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... West. There was, in reality, not enough to keep one man busy, and surely Old Mizzou considered himself quite competent to attend to that. Finally, he concluded that it must be to watch him—Old Mizzou. Acting on that supposition, he tried a new tack. ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... behind the promontory. The sloop of war crowded all sail to pursue, but she had stood too close upon the cape, so that they were obliged to wear the vessel for fear of going ashore, and to make a large tack back into the bay, in order to recover sea-room ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... now desperate,' 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 ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... 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 fluttering ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... of the vicar intoning at the little church she had attended in the old Lovell Court days. Only there were no responses! Everybody was engrossed in watching the ball as it dodged in and out amongst the numbers, hesitating maddeningly, then starting gaily off on a fresh tack as though guided by some invisible spirit ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... and jam," burst forth Lancelot, adding, with his whimsical look: "There's rhyme, as well as reason. How on earth did we get on this tack?" ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... personal dignity—what is known in England as 'respectability'—struggling with poverty. Perhaps the ancient clock, whose worm-eaten case reaches from the floor to the ceiling, and whose muffled but cheery tick-tack is like the voice of an old friend, impressed me in favour of this poor home as soon ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... to begin life on a wrong tack, in regard to which the best that you can say is that you do not mean to continue it. If you do not, then the wise thing is to get at once on to the road on which you do mean to continue, and to save the weary work of retracing steps ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... screamed out, "We are lost!" She flung herself into the bottom of the boat and laid her head in Greenleaf's lap like a frightened child. He soothed her and denied that there was danger; he did not venture to tack again, however, for fear of being swamped, but determined to run northwardly along the coast in the hope of getting ashore on some sandy beach before the fury of the storm should come. The boat now careened so far that her gunwale was under water; he saw that he must take in the mainsail. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... wrong tack altogether. I'm not a criminal. All your moralizings have no value for me. I don't believe in morality. I'm a disciple of ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... to find a fluttering, fearful youngling, somewhat impressed with his graces and courage. This businesslike disposal of his case caused his active mind to change its tack, as soon as it sensed the ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... that's me, and I sail the deep blue sea from Maine to Afrikee, and round again on an even keel to Cochin China for cochineal, and back to Chili for Chili sauce, and home again to Banbury Cross—that's me! Lemuel Mizzen, able seaman! Fed on hard tack or soft tack, or a starboard tack or a port tack, it's all the same to me! Now then, skipper, you piped me up, ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... 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 ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... the flax, came the big hard-tack baking, the sheep shearing, and the servants' moving time. In November there were busy slaughter days, with salting of meats, sausage making, baking of blood pudding, and candle steeping. The seamstress who used to make up their homespun ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... cause is black, In puling prose and rhyme, Talk hatefully of love, and tack Hypocrisy to crime; Who smile and smite, engross the gorge Or impotently frown; And call us "rebels" with King George, As ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... tried to fasten it open again the catch refused to catch, so he was compelled to shut the window and leave the swinging blind at the mercy of the wind. He then improvised a screen from a high-backed chair and an extra blanket, and again betook himself to bed. Stepping on a tack that had been left over when the floor matting was laid provoked certain exclamations calculated to exorcise the demon—or should I say alarm the angel?—of decorative art, and he was soon wrapped in the slumber of the ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner
... gentlemen,' replied Brass, in a very grave manner, 'he'll not serve his case this way, and really, if you feel any interest in him, you had better advise him to go upon some other tack. Did I, sir? Of course I ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... some people hold, when in a bitter mood, is that inexorable circumstance only tries to prevent what intelligence attempts. Renounce a desire for a long-contested position, and go on another tack, and after a while the prize is thrown at you, seemingly in disappointment that no more tantalizing ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... marvellous way. On one occasion our own vessel in the North Sea was run into by another. The latter's cutwater went through her side and deck almost to the combing of the hatch, and the water began to pour in. By immediately putting the vessel on the other tack, the rent was largely lifted out of water. A heavy topsail was hastily thrown over her side, and eventually hauled under the keel—the inrushing water keeping it there. Then sacks of flour were rammed into the breach. The ship in this ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... of Sherban Lane Cox sid of the post house? boath bound In A bond of A hundred pound for the parish of Ockley to pay one pound for the bewrall of William Drew In case he dy In bed lam and Ly wise to pay the Surgant for Cure of his sore Legs and Lychwise to tack Drew out when cured which sayed Drew was put In by Henry Worsfold and Edward Bax overseers this ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... and lost no time in starting. Robert J., he followed me like a dog, up through town to our house, where I went in, leaving him outside so as not to disturb mother. There I got me a hammer and nails with the heavy lead sinker offen my fishnet, and it wasn't long before the finest tick-tack you ever saw was working against the Spiegelnails' parlor window, with me in a lilac-bush operating the string that kept the weight a-swinging. Before the house was an open spot where the moon shone full ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... high gale which had carried the Falcon so rapidly through the Menai, had baffled the smuggler in her attempt to go to the northward; for that was obviously her intention; and she still continued to tack in that direction. We expected that, as soon as she descried the Falcon, she would wear and run: but, greatly to our surprize, she took no notice of her—but continued standing on her tack in the evident design of running to the outside of the isle ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... recognized the high 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 other by ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... aristocracy of birth going to do about it? Struggle desperately? It took that tack at first. Bismarck ranged himself in its support for some time. He was himself an agrarian. But he was not long in installing paper mills on his estates at Varzin. It is said that the Emperor himself possesses porcelain factories. A part of the nobility for a long time tried to adapt ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... she said, in answer to my question. "I reckon you think a fine-lookin' rose like that ought to have a fine-soundin' name. But I never saw anybody yet that knew enough about roses to tell what its right name is. Maybe when I'm dead and gone somebody'll tack a French name on to it, but as long as it grows in my gyarden it'll be jest grandmother's rose, and this is how it come ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... days oot frae the Clyde—a sair wark we had had—gaun north wi' seeds an' braws an' things for the Macleod. We had got in ower near under the Cutchull'ns, an' had just gane about by Soa, an' were off on a long tack, we thocht would maybe hauld as far's Copnahow. I mind the nicht weel; a mune smoored wi' mist; a fine-gaun breeze upon the water, but no steedy; an'—what nane o' us likit to hear—anither wund gurlin' ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wrath, and tried a new tack. 'What will you take to hold your tongue? I'll make you a rich man if you'll come in with me.' And then he started with offers which showed that he had been making a good thing out of ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... churchly chaps, Whom, to prevent a religious debate, The Warden had banished outside of the gate. The fiddler, fiddling his hardest the while, "Called off" in the regular foot-hill style: "Circle to the left!" and "Forward and back!" And "Hellum to port for the stabbard tack!" (This great virtuoso, it would appear, Was Mate of the Gatherer many a year.) "Ally man left!"—to a painful degree His French was unlike to the French of Paree, As heard from our countrymen lately abroad, And his "doe cee doe" was ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... saved you!" he replied. "Between us, we've managed to set them off on a false tack somewhere. The humming has ceased. It's gone—for the ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... and its prepared meanings gone to her dump-pile, if there was a stranger there of course it knocked him groggy for a couple of minutes, then he would come to, and by that time she would be away down wind on another tack, and not expecting anything; so when he'd hail and ask her to cash in, I (the only dog on the inside of her game) could see her canvas flicker a moment—but only just a moment—then it would belly out taut and full, and she would say, as calm as a summer's day, "It's synonymous with supererogation," ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... about to relate;— Jinin' each other—belongin' to Brown, And jest at the edge of a flourishin' town. Brown was a man, as I understand, That allus had handled a good 'eal o' land, And was sharp as a tack in drivin' a trade— For that's the way most of his money was made. And all the grounds and the orchards about His two pet farms was all tricked out With poppies and posies And sweet-smellin' rosies; And hundreds o' kinds Of all sorts o' vines, To tickle the most horticultural minds And ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... 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 ...
— On Christmas Day In The Evening • Grace Louise Smith Richmond
... Augsburg. Kur-Brandenburg, Kur-Mainz, high cousins of George, were at this Diet of Augsburg; Kur-Brandenburg (Elector Joachim I., Cicero's son, of whom we have spoken, and shall speak again) being often very loud on the conservative side; and eloquent Kur-Mainz going on the conciliatory tack. Kur-Brandenburg, in his zeal, had ridden on to Innspruck, to meet the Kaiser there, and have a preliminary word with him. Both these high Cousins spoke, and bestirred themselves, a good deal, at this Diet. They had met the Kaiser on the plains of ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... a new tack. He tried to imagine the delight of his companion if only he could suddenly remember having thrust a little box of safety matches into his haversack before starting out; but he knew it was useless to look, for he had certainly done nothing of ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... and finish a money bargain with some lawyers which you heard me beginning a year ago. They utterly failed in any part of the transaction except bringing me in a large bill for service unperformed. However, we are now upon another tack. . ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... did not quite agree with them; but as he seemed to enjoy the experience, the other three bore their condition as well as they could without grimace or complaint, till the young man, observing their discomfort, gave immediate directions to tack about. On the way back to port they sat silent, facing ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... the invitation, and with some cold meat and hard-tack placed on the locker where it could not slide off, and mugs of steaming coffee in their hands, all made a remarkably jolly meal under the ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... day the wind came gradually round to the east, and increased to so strong a gale, as obliged us to strike our top-gallant yards, and brought us under the lower sails, and the main top-sail close-reefed. Unfortunately we were upon that tack, which was the most disadvantageous for our leak. But as we had always been able to keep it under with the hand-pumps, it gave us no great uneasiness till the 13th, about six in the afternoon, when we were greatly alarmed by a sudden ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... see," Samson assured him, "what tack I mean to take. They want to let the thing play itself out, They're inquisitive—and they're cautious, because now they are bucking the State ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... locker. Indeed, our hero could want nothing which he did not immediately find ready for use, just as though a multitude of fairies stood at his elbows to meet his every wish. In another locker he found a kid of cold potatoes, and there was an abundance of hard-tack in a keg on the transom. The slice of bacon hissed and sizzled in the pan on the stove, and the odor was delightful to the hungry boy. It was soon "done to a turn," and the fried potatoes were as brown and nice as those prepared by his mother. He might ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... reserved till the moment of parting a supreme expression of good-will. When he had got a hand of Lydia's and one of Staniford's in each of his, with his wrists crossed, he said, "Now, I ain't one to tack round, and stand off and on a great deal, but what I want to say is just this: the Aroostook sails next week, and if you two are a mind to go back in her, the ship's yours, as I said to Miss Blood, here,—I mean Mis' Staniford; ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... just leave my card," said Deweese, dismounting. Taking a brown cigarette paper from his pocket, he wrote his name on it; then pulling a tack from a notice pasted beside the office door, he drew his six-shooter, and with it deftly tacked the cigarette paper against the office door jamb. Remounting his horse, and perfectly conscious that Oxenford was within hearing, he remarked to the ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... or before the wind Wind abeam Port tack Wind abeam Starboard tack Pointing into the wind Port tack Pointing into the ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... off on one tack, we on the other, and by and by we lost her below the horizon; but standing in, after some hours found her again; and finding her, were pleased to see that we had made up something on her. We filled away once more, and by and by ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... months of the new year. An unspoken horror was staring them all in the face: navigation did not open when expected, and supplies were running low, pitifully low. The smoked and dried meats, the canned things, flour, sealed lard, oatmeal, hard-tack, dried fruits—everything was slowly but inevitably giving out day upon day. Before and behind them stretched hummocks of trailless snow. Not an Indian, not a dog train, not even a wild animal, had set foot in that waste for weeks. In ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... bring them to be harnessed? In that case you are the man to tax the Affghans. Pigs can see the wind; and it is not less certain that Affghans can scent a tax-gatherer through the Hindoo Koosh: in which case, off they go on the opposite tack. But no matter if they stay—not the less with them to be taxed is to be robbed—a wrong to be remembered on death-beds, and to be avenged were it in the fourth generation. However, as the reckoning does not come before ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... soft things. If you must carry anything breakable, do it up carefully, and put it in the center of the trunk, packing clothing closely about it. Bottles should have the corks tied in with strong twine. Put them near articles which cannot be injured by the contents, if a breakage occurs. Tack on your trunk a card with your permanent address. As this card is to be consulted only if the trunk is lost, it is not necessary to be constantly changing it. Take in the traveling-bag, pins and a needle and ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... 8 or 10 ft., the smallest being known in London and the home counties as "luke," the largest as "great," and the intermediate sizes as "long small," "threepenny" and "middleboro." White and buff rods are more carefully sorted, the smallest, about 2 ft. or less, being known as "small tack," and rising sizes as "tack," "short small," "small," "long small," "threepenny," "middleboro" and "great." Rods of two to three years' growth, known as "sticks," are used to form the rigid framework of the bottoms and lids of square work. In every case, except the last, the stuff is soaked ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... the long winter evenings they would gather around a smoking fire of peat, while Tennyson read aloud the Idylls of the King to the rude old cottager. Not to show his rudeness, the old man kept awake by sitting on a tin-tack. This also kept his mind on the right tack. The two found that they had much in common, especially the old cottager. They called each other "Alfred" and ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... her, but we had been tricked so often before that we hardly dared to hope. Now we were close to her bows, and we heard the great yard creaking and straining, and the dull flapping of the loose canvas of both tack and clew which had blown inboard. The ship lurched and staggered under the uneasy strain, but the tackle held, and we had her. Bertric went to our halliards and lowered the sail as I luffed alongside, and then Dalfin had gripped the rail between two of the shining shields. ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... little too rigid; it overlooks the shades and instincts by help of which we are able to tack ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... 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 ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... can be curled by holding them over the stove or range, not near enough to burn; withdraw and shake out; then hold them over again until they curl. When swansdown becomes soiled, it can be washed and look as good as new. Tack strips on a piece of muslin and wash in warm water with white soap, then rinse and hang in the wind to dry. Rip from the muslin and rub carefully between the fingers to soften ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... well built, a fair ship, of a good burden, and had mounted in her forty pieces of brass cannon, two of them demy cannon, and she was well manned and of good force and strength for war; she was a good sailer, and would turn and tack about well; she held a hundred persons of Whitelocke's followers and most of his baggage, besides her own mariners, about two hundred. The cabins wherein Whitelocke was were of a handsome make; the breadth ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... you in some respect or other; and this merely to have an opportunity of slily gratifying their malice by mentioning some unhappy defect or personal infirmity he labours under; and not contented "to tack his every error to his name," they will, by way of farther explanation, have recourse to the faults of his father, or the misfortunes of his family; and this with all the seeming simplicity and candor in the world, merely for the sake of preventing mistakes, and to clear ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... or leave the place. If I go, what will be allowed me for the improvements I have made? Not a shilling; he had gone on making them without the landlord's consent. You saw me making them and encouraged me, said the master, and I made them in the belief I would be given another tack to get some of the profit out of them. The factor replied, Tut, tut, that's not the law of Scotland. The master felt very sore at the injustice done him. On his lordship's arrival from London, accompanied by a party of his English friends, for the shooting, ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... letter from New York came for Aileen. Mrs. Champney tried another tack: the next time her nephew came to Flamsted, later on in the autumn, she asked him to write her in detail concerning his intimacy with her cousins, the Van Ostends, and of their courtesies to him. Champney, nothing ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... a hurly-burly is here! Smick smack, and all this gear! You will to tick-tack,[132] I fear, If you[133] had time: Well, wanton, well; I-wis, I can tell, That such smock-smell Will set your nose out ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... assembled in the infinitesimal photograph which you view through one of those little half-inch lorgnettes; and you had the satisfaction of knowing that to any lovely infinitesimality yonder you showed no bigger than a carpet-tack. The whole performance now seemed to be worked by those tireless figures pumping at the organ, in obedience to signals from a very alert figure on the platform below. The choral and orchestral thousands sang ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... departure. Colonel Passford, after repeating some of his admonition to the captain, shook hands with him, and stepped down upon the wharf. Lonley gave the order to stand by the jib, and cast off the fasts. The two principal sails filled on the starboard tack, the jib went up in the twinkling of an eye under the direction of Flint, and the schooner began to gather headway. The captain was at the helm, for he would trust no other there, ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... planted another seed. He did not know it. He started off on the good old tack of worshipping his woman while his heart was honest, and profaning her in his fits of temper and revolt. But he made a bad show. Born in him was a spirit which could not worship woman: no, and would not. Could not and would not. It was not in him. In early days, he tried to ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... They were indissolubly bound up with my dreams of Elizabeth that 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 ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... strong tower of a cold unimpressible 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 the shadow deepens: death ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... the character of that extraordinary town will be surprised when I say that, within an hour after the occurrences related in the last chapter, Troy had resumed its workday quiet. By two o'clock nothing was to be heard but the tick-tack of mallets in the ship-building yards, the puffing of the steam-tug, the rattle of hawsers among the vessels out in the harbour, and the melodious "Woo-hoo!" of a crew at capstan or windlass. Troy in carnival and Troy sober are as opposite, you must know, as the poles. Fun is all very well, but ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... course was east- northeast, the wind was at southwest. We got the starboard tacks aboard, we cast off our weather braces and lifts; we set in the lee braces, and hauled forward by the weather-bowlings, and hauled them tight, and belayed them, and hauled over the mizzen tack to windward, and kept her full and by as near as she would lie. During this storm, which was followed by a strong wind west- southwest, we were carried, by my computation, about five hundred leagues to the east, so that the oldest sailor on ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... by, spring became summer, and summer lengthened into autumn, and there was no movement of the troops. The ardor of their patriotism died out. It was a monotonous life, waking early in the morning to answer roll-call, to eat breakfast of salt pork and hard-tack, drilling by squads, by companies, by battalion, marching and countermarching, going through the same manoeuvres every day, shouldering, ordering, and presenting arms, making believe load and fire, standing on guard, ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... she let out 'at she wanted to tek Rip away wi' her to Munsooree Pahar. Then Mulvaney changes his tune an' axes her solemn-like if she'd thought o' t' consequences o' gettin' two poor but honest soldiers sent t' Andamning Islands. Mrs. DeSussa began to cry, so Mulvaney turns round oppen t' other tack and smooths her down, allowin' 'at Rip ud be a vast better off in t' Hills than down i' Bengal, and 'twas a pity he shouldn't go wheer he was so well beliked. And soa he went on, backin' an' fillin' an' workin' up t'awd lass wal she fell as if her life warn't ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... that time that when Mr. Cazalette relapsed into his native Scotch he was most serious, and that his bantering tone was assumed as a cloak. It was clear that we were not going to get anything out of him just then. But Mr. Raven tried another tack, fishing ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... later than this morning. I went to my work as usual at ten o'clock, but the door was shut and locked, with a little square of cardboard hammered on to the middle of the panel with a tack. Here it is, and you ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... treasure, since it was evident that the poor, dying Portuguese would not have had the time or the strength to cement it over. When she told the others so, however, Meyer, convinced that he was on the right tack, answered that doubtless it was done by the Makalanga after the Portuguese days, as it was well known that they retained a knowledge of the building arts of their forefathers until quite a recent period, when the Matabele began ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... face convinced me that I had taken a wrong tack. It also showed me how deep Whit's trouble really was. I bade him good night and went to my berth, where sleep did not soon visit me. A saucy, sparkling-eyed woman barred Whit Hurtle's baseball career ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... man and beast, and we all felt that unless Providence listened to the prayers and imprecations which the whole town set to work with frantic zeal to hurl at it, or that abominable comet in the sky sheered off on another tack with the least possible delay, we should all be reduced to cinders in a very ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... each shaded by white cotton curtains. On the floor was a home-made carpet; no hand was employed in its manufacture save its owner's, from the time she commenced tearing the rags in strips, to the final blow given to the last tack that confined it to the floor. A very high post bedstead, over which were suspended white cotton curtains, gave an air of grandeur to one side of the room. No one had slept in it for ten years, though it was made with faultless ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... fairest fingers that ever caressed a typewriter—" The intent attitude of Norcross, the fact that he neither turned nor smiled, checked Bulger. With the instinct of the courtier, he perceived that the wind lay in another tack. He racked the unused half of his mind for ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... "danger to delight." They passed several vessels at a distance, who did not observe them; and before sunset the English coast was in sight. At ten o'clock the double lights on the Lizard were on their starboard bow. They hauled up upon the larboard tack with the ebb tide, and having passed the Lizard, kept away for Mount's Bay, to avoid the chance of falling in with any of the king's vessels, and being again impressed. At daylight they ran in under St. Michael's Mount and once more stepped upon ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... toward the Bridgewater, a light was perceived at her mast head, by which we knew she had cleared the reef; and our first sensations were, that the commander would certainly tack, and send boats to our assistance; but when a little reflexion had enabled us to put ourselves in his place, it became evident that he would not choose to come so near the reef in the night, blowing fresh as it did; and still less to send his ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... night on, Baird changed his tack. Although soon busy with the plans for the hospital, to be built at once, he said little about it to Deborah. Instead, he insisted on taking her off ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... while," 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
... Paul, seeing his plans for the time frustrated. Gazing in audacious tranquillity upon the decks of the enemy, and amicably answering her hail, with complete self-possession, he commanded the cable to be slipped, and then, as if he had accidentally parted his anchor, turned his prow on the seaward tack, meaning to return again immediately with the same prospect of advantage possessed at first—his plan being to crash suddenly athwart the Drake's bow, so as to have all her decks exposed point-blank to his musketry. But once more the winds interposed. It came on with a storm of snow; ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... her. "I am not laughing at you, but at the eternal feminine, dear," he said. "There is something very funny about the eternal feminine. It is so earnest on the wrong tack, and hurts itself and others so cruelly, and gets no ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... tuition under the able auspices of my friend Horace had brought me into tolerable good trim in this particular; I already knew the difference between fore and aft, a gib, a mainsail, and a mizen;could hand a rope, or let go the foresail upon a tack; and having gained the good opinion of the sailing captain, I was fast acquiring a knowledge how to box the binnacle and steer through the Needle's Eye. But, my conscience! as the Dominie says, I could never learn how to distinguish the different ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... met the influx of the sea-water and the opposition of the waves, it was extremely rough and angry; and the current was beaten back with such a violent swell, that the master of the boat could not make good his passage, but ordered his sailors to tack about and return. Caesar, upon this, discovers himself, and taking the man by the hand, who was surprised to see him there, said, "Go on, my friend, and fear nothing; you carry Caesar and his fortune in your ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... just for that night. I grasped the handle of the Perfect Automatic, stretched with our united strength, and pushed down on the lever. The spring-hammer drew back, a little trap or mouth at the end of the slotted tin barrel opened for the tack, the tack jumped out, turned over, landed point downward upon the right spot in the carpet, the crouching hammer ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... a Dutch-built fleet, On port and starboard tack, While through their ranks, with ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... Banker Lindsley; and see them reporters. And there's the editor of the Whistler. Say, this aint no bloody church meeting; there aint a preacher on the stage. Them fellers mean business. We've got to watch out if they keep on this tack. And would you look ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... August, when in latitude 59 deg. 58' N., longitude 59 deg. 53' W., we first fell in with large icebergs; and in the evening were encompassed by several of considerable magnitude, which obliged us to tack the ship in order to prevent our getting entangled amongst them. The estimated distance from the nearest part of the Labrador coast was then eighty-eight miles; here we tried for soundings, without gaining the bottom. ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... needless to say that he required no pressing in this direction. "Hard tack" and "salt horse," with potatoes, soft bread, and chicory coffee sweetened with molasses, seemed food fit for the gods, after the greasy meat-diet of the last eleven days; and his companions considerately refrained from questioning him until his hunger was satisfied. ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... "tack on to the handle, and when I give the word fling wide the gates. Then watch that beast beyond the door get ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... could safely run in for a couple of hundred yards or so; but there were signs of surf beyond, and he had no anchor to hold on by. His only course was to tack back and forth as carefully as possible, and wait for daylight,—as the French sailors were doing, with what ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... sigh and wiped her eye And ran o'er hill and dale, oh. And tried what she could As a shepherdess should, To tack to each ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... often wonder why men tie themselves up to a wife when they might be free to move about like you, and see the world. What does a man want to tack a wife on to him when he can always carry her image about?" She laughed, ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the old gentleman, rising as he spoke, "it strikes me you're getting on a wrong tack. But we'll have some more talk about all this. I don't want to keep your mother waiting, as I promised to talk some more to her this evening. So we'll go upstairs. Some day, perhaps, I'll tell you some of the experiences of my boyhood. I'm glad, by-the-by, to see that ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... Prosy was. Said he should try his best, and as soon as he was sure it was no go, put an end to his own existence. I said that would be wrong, and besides, he couldn't do it. He said, oh yes, he could—he could inject air into a vein, and lots of things. He went on a physiological tack, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... for awhile, and then Arthur went off on another tack. "Look at the literature of Hymns, now. How cankered it is, through and through, with selfishness! There are few human compositions more utterly degraded than some ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... regard them as litter, to be swept out, but accept them as suitable straw or matting for the bottom of my carriage. When I turn up into the mouth of the Assabet, which is wooded, large fleets of leaves are floating on its surface, as it were getting out to sea, with room to tack; but next the shore, a little farther up, they are thicker than foam, quite concealing the water for a rod in width, under and amid the Alders, Button-Bushes, and Maples, still perfectly light and dry, with fibre unrelaxed; and at a rocky bend where they are met and stopped ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... the water far short of the mark, ricocheted along the surface a few hundred yards farther, and finally exploded, throwing up a cloud of spray, but doing no harm to the brig, which never loosened tack or sheet, but held gallantly on her way. A moment after the shrapnel exploded, her flag—the old flag—fluttered out from under the lee of her spanker, and little puffs of smoke arose from her port quarter. Some of her crew were firing at the privateer with rifles. Of course, the distance was so ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... struggling with the young ice to little or no purpose, now and then gaining half a mile of ground to windward in a little "hole" of open water, then losing as much by the necessity of bearing up or wearing (for the ice was too strong to allow us to tack), sallying from morning to night with all hands, and with the watch at night, two boats constantly under the bows; and, after all, rather losing ground than otherwise, while the young ice was ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... Marshall therefore confidently reckoned that, should the two vessels come to blows, the superior nimbleness of his own ship would more than counterbalance the advantage conferred upon the other by her greater weight of metal. The stranger, when she cleared the land, was close-hauled on the larboard tack, heading about south-south-east, and it was judged, from her position relative to the land, that she had not actually touched at the island, but had simply availed herself of its presence to gain a few miles by turning to windward in the smooth ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... was not a sound. The half-hour struck. The pendulum gave but a feeble tick-tack amid the general drowsiness that brooded over the whole chamber. Everything was sleeping, night-lamp and furniture alike; on the table, near an extinguished lamp, some woman's handiwork was disposed also in slumber. Helene in her sleep retained her air of ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... 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
... then he 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 faith, than ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... through the abdominal wall in the center of the triangular space where the ribs converge. From here cut a slit downward to the lower portion of the abdomen, and sideward as far as convenient. Tack the loosened abdominal walls to the board, and proceed to study the exposed parts. Observe the muscles in the abdominal walls, and the fold of the peritoneum which forms an apron-like ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... cheerily. "Oh! Don't look like that. You're only a bit weak, messmate. Avast there! take a good grip o' the health tack; haul in your slack, and ahoy! you'll be full sail again in a week. I say, what do you think of that? I'm getting on with ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... right is Sir Henry Fallowfield, already established on the broad tack of his shooting pony, an invaluable animal, that can leap or creep wherever a man can go, and steady under fire as old Copenhagen. The baronet is very gouty. The whip made out of his favorite vices cuts him up sharply at times, and he does not like it alluded to. I never ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... divided the fleet, they hoisted their sails to have the wind on their quarter, as the sun shone full in their faces, which they considered might be of disadvantage to them, and stretched out a little, so that at last they got the wind as they wished. The Normans, who saw them tack, could not help wondering why they did so, and said they took good care to turn about, for they were afraid of meddling with them. They perceived, however, by his banner, that the King was on board, which gave them great ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... moment. Evidently the man's pride would keep him from telling anything about himself. He would try him on a new tack. The man had a long fit of coughing. When it had subsided, Quincy said, "It wearies you to talk. I will do the talking, and if what I say is true you can nod your head." Quincy continued, "Your name is James Edward Sawyer, your brother's name was Nathaniel." The man opened his ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... railways. He criticized industrial progress, and he declared that the automobile was going to kill the appreciation of nature. I fundamentally disagreed with him. I thought that his emotions had taken him on the wrong tack and so I sent him an automobile with the request that he try it out and discover for himself whether it would not help him to know nature better. That automobile—and it took him some time to learn ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... no means sorry for a spell of work after going so long without shifting sail or tack, worked hard, and the white sheets of canvas were soon snugly furled. By this time all the sailors who had been to sea for any time recognized the utility of their work. The low bank had risen and extended the whole width ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... after daylight, when Smoke went to the bulletin-board outside the A. C. Company store and tacked up a notice. Men gathered and were reading and snickering over his shoulder ere he had driven the last tack. Soon the bulletin-board was crowded by hundreds who could not get near enough to read. Then a reader was appointed by acclamation, and thereafter, throughout the day, many men were acclaimed to read in loud voice the notice Smoke Bellew had nailed up. And there were numbers of men who stood in ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... and she was counselled on all sides to think no more about it till she should hear of success or failure. But this was easier said than done, and she was left in her tired state with a general sense of being on a wrong tack, and of going on amiss, whether due to her aunt's want of assimilation to herself, or to her mother's absence, she did not know, and with the further sense that she had not been the motherly sister she had figured to herself, but that both the children ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... warmed to his subject, and laid his hats aside to go along the water-side and show me where the large trout commonly lay, underneath an overhanging bank; and he was much disappointed, for my sake, that there were none visible just then. Then he wandered off on to another tack, and stood a great while out in the middle of a meadow in the hot sunshine, trying to make out that he had known me before, or, if not me, some friend of mine—merely, I believe, out of a desire that we should feel more friendly and at our ease with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... by the Rev. S. Hall Young, of Fort Wrangell, visited it in 1879. They were the first white men to explore this region, and they went thither by canoe. Muir, with blankets strapped to his back and his pockets stuffed with hard-tack, spent days in rapturous speculation. Of all glacial theorists he is doubtless the most self-sacrificing and enthusiastic. I believe, as yet, no one has timed this glacier. It is dissolving away more rapidly than it travels; so that although it is always ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... first-rate article can be made from a section of a rounded timber, either natural or turned. It may be of any size, but from two to three inches in diameter, and about a half inch or more in length is the best. Whittle this, with care, to a blunt point, into which drive a smooth-headed tack, and there you are. With colored crayons, or paint, the top may be decorated, so as to add to its ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... Jonson; which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war: master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in learning; solid, but slow, in his performances. Shakespeare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention. He died Anno Domini 1616, and was buried at Stratford-upon-Avon, ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... houses, a narrow side-light on either side of its front-door, and a row of panes across the top, can make a pretty effect by preparing a series of these transparencies to fit the door-glasses, and fastening them on by driving a stout tack into the sashes so as to support the four corners of each pane. The transparencies could be prepared secretly and put into place overnight, or on Christmas morning, before any one is up, so as to give mother a pleasant ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... did, get a cup of coffee and a hard-tack; that'll go way ahead of nothin' if you're ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... you may glide along for weeks without starting tack or sheet, hardly moving the helm a spoke, so mild and constant are the Trades. At night, the watch seldom trouble themselves with keeping much of a look-out; especially, as a strange sail is almost a prodigy in these lonely waters. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... the mast I stuck to my principles, though everyone else on board drank excepting two boys whom I persuaded to abstain. In a very severe storm off a lee-shore, when it was so cold they had to break the icicles off the ropes to tack the ship, all drank but myself and these two boys. The men would work very well for a few minutes, and then slack off and take another drink, until they were all keeled up, and we three boys had all we could do to keep the ship from going ashore. If we had drank with the rest, ...
— Object Lessons on the Human Body - A Transcript of Lessons Given in the Primary Department of School No. 49, New York City • Sarah F. Buckelew and Margaret W. Lewis
... 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
... I sailed away into this wonderful world of romance aboard our gallant vessel, which, like any other pirate ship that ever existed—in books or out of them—"luffed, and filling upon another tack, stood away in pursuit of the Spanish treasure galleon in ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... day out, I think (we were then working down the east side of the Gulf of Siam, tack for tack, in light winds and smooth water)—the fourth day, I say, of this miserable juggling with the unavoidable, as we sat at our evening meal, that man, whose slightest movement I dreaded, after putting down the ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... Those whom the 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 ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... capture than shooting. It was not for the mere desire of destruction, but for a special purpose, that we turned our attention to wiring. The punt, though much beloved, was, like all punts, a very bad sailer. A boat with a keel that could tack, and so work into the wind's ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... will of the officers, stewards, cooks, and a few of the hands that could be spared from the windlass, busy in a way to spread sail after sail with a rapidity little short of that seen on board of a vessel of war. The rattling of the clew-garnet blocks, as twenty lusty fellows ran forward with the tack of the mainsail, and the hauling forward of braces, was the signal that the ship was clear of ground, and ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... sets for sail, The sun is her masthead light, She tows the moon like a pinnace frail Where her phospher wake churns bright, Now hid, now looming clear, On the face of the dangerous blue The star fleets tack and wheel and veer, But on, but on does the old earth steer As if her port ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... your two edges, whether straight or slanting, exactly even, tack them together with stitches 2 c/m. long, distant 1 to 2 c/m. from the edge, and then back-stitch them by machine or by hand, following the tacking-thread. Cut off half the inner edge, turn the outer one in, as for a hem and sew it down ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... foremast. Her sails were in ribbons, and she was labouring heavily in the sea, each wave that struck her breaking over her bows and sweeping along her deck. There was no hope for her. She could neither tack nor wear, and no anchor would hold for a moment on that rocky bottom, in ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... for it but to 'bout ship and haul off on the other tack; the crew were therefore piped to stations and the helm eased down, when the ship swept grandly up into the wind and went round like a top, holding her way in a style that delighted as much as it surprised us, and staying almost as quickly ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... remote enough, a vague blue mantle from the delicate air. Sail-boats glide in the distance,—each a mere white wing of canvas,—or coming nearer, and glancing suddenly into the cove, are put as suddenly on the other tack, and almost in an instant seem far away. There is to-day such a live sparkle on the water, such a luminous freshness on the grass, that it seems, as is so often the case in early June, as if all history ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Robert's evident determination to withhold the respect which he considered his due, Halbert tried him on another tack. ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... eyes,—eyes that widened first with wonder, then with fear. For there, far down the shoreline to the south, her sails gleaming white against the walls of rock behind her as she rounded a distant point, a ship came slowly into view. With wildly beating heart the young girl watched the vessel tack to clear the long curve of the coast. But once before in all her life had she seen such another monster winged canoe, and that had been when Senor Don Cabrillo first cast anchor in the Bay of Moons below, now almost a year ago. For many a week had the young man lingered, ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... beak stoke back sack lick beck stock take slake pike Luke smoke tack slack pick luck smock rake stake peak duke croak rack stack peck duck crock lake dike speak coke cloak lack Dick speck ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... to outdoor life, with excellent hearing, wonderful eyesight, and great vigilance, he was a model picket. Heard every sound, observed every moving thing, and was quick to shoot, and of steady aim. He was possessed of exceptionally good teeth, and, therefore, could bite his cartridge and hard tack. He had been trained to long periods of labor, poor food, and miserable quarters, and therefore, could endure ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... go on in ignorance, and get on a wrong tack; but you know God pardons our mistakes, and I do believe that you will be wiser for all this sorrow, and better able to rise to your work. I am sure, however it ends, that is the reason that such blows are ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... that the sloop is moving on the new tack. She may be going faster than I can swim. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... and the whole demeanour of Bugs Butler showed that he had laid this truth to heart. It would be too little to say that his bearing was confident: he comported himself with the care-free jauntiness of an infant about to demolish a Noah's Ark with a tack-hammer. Cyclone Mullinses might withstand him for fifteen rounds where they yielded to a K-leg Binns in the fifth, but, when it came to beating up a sparring-partner and an amateur at that, Bugs Butler knew his potentialities. He was there forty ways and he did not attempt to conceal it. Crouching ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... that, though not so well shod as our men, they were shod, and they had provisions in their haversacks. The rebels have flour dealt out to them as rations on the march, and they have to cook it. Our troops have hard biscuit, called 'tack;' it is made in squares, and some which was fresh was very good; but it often comes to the regiments with maggots. This is not so much objected to; but when, in addition, it is mouldy, the men grumble. By the side of the fresh tack were some ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... form the line as they could come up without regard to their specified stations and put to sea. The British fleet entering the bay and the French leaving it, they were necessarily sailing in different directions, but Admiral Graves put his ships on the same tack with the French and about four in the afternoon a battle began between the van and centre of the fleets which continued till night. Both sustained considerable damage. The fleets continued in sight of each other for five days, but de Grasse's object was not to fight unless to cover Chesapeake Bay, ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... a counter sea, which struck us forward just as the regular swell caught us astern; the boat heeled almost on her beam ends, and he fell over the cabin door into the hold; the man at the helm was preparing for the tack as he saw his messmate's danger, and started forward to save him: he was too late; the poor fellow pitched upon his head and shoulders among the ballast; at the same instant the mainsail caught the wind, the boom swung across, and striking the helmsman on the back of the neck, swept ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... 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 worry ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... schooner, after standing for a moment, all flapping, answered another flaw, and went wide about on the opposite tack. ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Theo absently. She was staring into the fire, wondering what tack would be best to take with Ned, when she did get hold of the boy. 'Have you been talking to Ned, Goody, as you promised you would?' she turned ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... a shape, I wist! And still it ner'd and ner'd; And, an it dodg'd a water-sprite, It plung'd and tack'd and veer'd. ...
— Lyrical Ballads 1798 • Wordsworth and Coleridge
... the furnishing goods man, sailing on our old tack of conversation, "sometimes makes it hard for us, you know. I once had a case like this: One of my customers down in New Orleans had failed on me. I think his muhulla (failure) was forced upon him. Even a tricky merchant does ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... incorrigible. The sons-in-law muttered, and the brothers glanced at their wives with mocking smiles. From that moment every one ceased to take any interest in the haughty girl's prospects of marriage. Her old uncle was the only person who, as an old sailor, ventured to stand on her tack, and take her broadsides, without ever troubling himself to return ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... Pardiggle stage. I do not in my heart believe it. Mrs. Pardiggle seems to me to be not part of the cure of the disease, but rather one of the ugliest of its symptoms. I think that she is on the wrong tack altogether, and leading other people astray. I do know some would-be social reformers, whom I respect and commiserate with all my heart, who see what is amiss, and have no idea how to mend it, and who lose themselves, like Hamlet, in a sort of hopeless ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... eager to get after it in the boats; but Captain Rogers knew a better way than that to attack a lone whale. We reefed down again and left little canvas exposed while the Scarboro kept on her tack under the momentum she had already gathered. The captain went forward where the gun had been made ready. He swung it about on its pivot and got the ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... for a long time," sneered Cliff. "The fact is, Kay, you're a little too elementary in your ideas to suit me. It's due to you that I kept hammering away on the wrong tack for years. The ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... not being even cast loose, she did not fire a single shot, while the Culloden passed triumphantly through. Scarcely had she broken the enemy's line, than the commander-in-chief signaled the order to tack in succession. Troubridge's manoeuvre was so dashingly performed, that the admiral could not restrain ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... and which, previous to 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, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... matter how dense the fog, these walrus herds on the ice, braying and roaring till the surf shook, acted as a fog-horn to Cook's ships, and kept them from being jammed in the ice-drift. Soon two-thirds of the furs got at Nootka had spoiled of rain-rot. The vessels were iced like ghost ships. Tack back and forward as they might, no passage opened through the ice. Suddenly Cook found himself in shoal water, on a lee shore, long and low and shelving, with the ice drifting on his ships. He called the place Icy Cape. It was their farthest point north; and the third week of August ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... of August, when in latitude 59 degrees 58 minutes North, longitude 59 degrees 53 minutes West, we first fell in with large icebergs; and in the evening were encompassed by several of considerable magnitude, which obliged us to tack the ship in order to prevent our getting entangled amongst them. The estimated distance from the nearest part of the Labrador coast was then eighty-eight miles; here we tried for soundings without gaining the bottom. ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... was a dreadful hour. A couple of humble-bees zoomed against the window pane, and the sound, with the ticking of the schoolroom clock, took possession of her brain. Z-zoom! Tick-tack, tick-tack! Would lesson-time never come to an end? She went about automatically correcting sums, copies, exercises, because the sight of the pencilled words or figures steadied her faculties, whereas she felt that if she called the children up in class her wits would wander ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... best endeavors for its success, and have a common right to the merits of its acquisition. So also in the civil revolution of 1801. Very many and very meritorious were the worthy patriots who assisted in bringing back our government to its republican tack. To preserve it in that will require unremitting vigilance. Whether the surrender of our opponents, their reception into our camp, their assumption of our name, and apparent accession to our objects, may strengthen or weaken the genuine principles of republicanism, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... is "drawing the long bow"—that is, that he is putting the prices at which he buys full low enough! Do not dispute him. Never argue with him. Accept all he says as gospel. Very soon he will be on the other tack. You will be talking, and you can judge whether he has told the truth or not. Now you are both on excellent terms. He thinks you are a very ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... to the beach to be once more a mast, and in nervous haste, yet with skill and thoroughness, the tent was ripped up and remade into a sail, and even a rude centreboard was rigged in order that one might tack against unfavorable winds. ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... islands. Capt. Bruce says that a vessel should keep to the northward until she gets a start of wind before bearing for her destination. In his passage between them in November, 1837, he had no variables near the line in coming south, and never could make easting on either tack, though he endeavoured by every means to ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... sails are trimmed with the same regularity day after day, with never a tack nor sheet started, existence does not offer much of variety, so that, like Columbus' sailors, we were glad to welcome even a gale of wind. Now, a rolling and pitching ship is capital fun if you can manage to stay ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... below, it was not the treasure, since it was evident that the poor, dying Portuguese would not have had the time or the strength to cement it over. When she told the others so, however, Meyer, convinced that he was on the right tack, answered that doubtless it was done by the Makalanga after the Portuguese days, as it was well known that they retained a knowledge of the building arts of their forefathers until quite a recent period, when the Matabele began to kill ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... her. He contented himself with winking behind the old woman's back, and turning over on his other side—the only movement of which he was now capable. He called this exercise a "tack to the north" or a "tack to ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... she unwittingly 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 ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... nothing to quench settled down on man and beast, and we all felt that unless Providence listened to the prayers and imprecations which the whole town set to work with frantic zeal to hurl at it, or that abominable comet in the sky sheered off on another tack with the least possible delay, we should all be reduced to cinders in a very brief space ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... later we were hove to on the port tack under upper-topsails and foresail. The wind had come out of the south-west, and our leeway was setting us down upon the land. Captain West gave orders to the mate to stand by to wear ship. Both watches had been taking in sail, so that both ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... as well as alarmed. Another bomb exploded close behind them, and started them off on a new tack. Run which way they might, it seemed as though that terrible enemy in the air kept hovering above them, sending a little black object shooting earthward every half dozen seconds, to be followed by a sudden crash, many times magnified ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Flying Squadron • Robert Shaler
... and tried a new tack. 'What will you take to hold your tongue? I'll make you a rich man if you'll come in with me.' And then he started with offers which showed that he had been making a good thing out ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... hold, when in a bitter mood, is that inexorable circumstance only tries to prevent what intelligence attempts. Renounce a desire for a long-contested position, and go on another tack, and after a while the prize is thrown at you, seemingly in disappointment that ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... grasped the handle of the Perfect Automatic, stretched with our united strength, and pushed down on the lever. The spring-hammer drew back, a little trap or mouth at the end of the slotted tin barrel opened for the tack, the tack jumped out, turned over, landed point downward upon the right spot in the carpet, ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... aren't you?" inquired his grandfather. "A man that you've seen all the politicians catering to the last day or so, and small enough to bandy insults with a snippet of a girl! Well, bub, there's a lot of childishness in human nature. It breaks out once in a while. Cuss a tack, and grin and bear an amputation! We'll let the girl alone. I don't seem to get in right when she is mentioned. But I wanted to have you tell me that you don't intend to marry Dennis Kavanagh's daughter. You can't afford to do that, boy! Not with your prospects. ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... girl, who was clearly his daughter. The two proceeded to an old stump concealed under some logs in a thicket, and out of the hollow, of the stump Gillsey fished a lump of salt pork, together with a big bundle of "hard-tack," and a parcel or two of some other ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... 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 before. She at ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... yourself that yer can't always read them," said Journeyman; "an accident will send you off on the wrong tack, so it all comes to the same thing, ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... happen to live in a house which has, like many old houses, a narrow side-light on either side of its front-door, and a row of panes across the top, can make a pretty effect by preparing a series of these transparencies to fit the door-glasses, and fastening them on by driving a stout tack into the sashes so as to support the four corners of each pane. The transparencies could be prepared secretly and put into place overnight, or on Christmas morning, before any one is up, so as to give mother a pleasant ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... hole in the roof to give egress to the stovepipe. From Madame Saugrain I got some strips of warm, bright carpet and some clean warm bedding, and I set Yorke to work, under my careful supervision, to make the two beds for mademoiselle and her maid, to tack down the strips of carpet, to put up some white ruffled curtains (also Madame Saugrain's gift) at the square bit of window, and to polish up the brass handles of the portable locker that was to hold mademoiselle's wardrobe. I thought, when all was ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... not support measures which he considered doubtful, he did, now and then, "tack a provision" on a bill to please a friend, as the following letter, ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... Boatswain, but we are not the very humblest. Sir Joseph has explained our true position to us. As he says, a British seaman is any man's equal excepting his, and if Sir Joseph says that, is it not our duty to believe him? ALL. Well spoke! well spoke! DICK. You're on a wrong tack, and so is he. He means well, but he don't know. When people have to obey other people's orders, equality's out of the question. ALL (recoiling). Horrible! horrible! BOAT. Dick Deadeye, if you go for to infuriate this here ship's company too far, I won't answer ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... answered Bulger. "I was a gallant clerk and hers the fairest fingers that ever caressed a typewriter—" The intent attitude of Norcross, the fact that he neither turned nor smiled, checked Bulger. With the instinct of the courtier, he perceived that the wind lay in another tack. He racked the unused half of his mind for ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... followed in the boats to the settlement at Woollya. We did not see many natives until we were near Ponsonby Sound, where we were followed by ten or twelve canoes. The natives did not at all understand the reason of our tacking, and, instead of meeting us at each tack, vainly strove to follow us in our zigzag course. I was amused at finding what a difference the circumstance of being quite superior in force made, in the interest of beholding these savages. While ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... of her had been lacking in chivalry. He hadn't shown himself altogether considerate or even kind. But she challenged him—perhaps unconsciously—and once or twice had come near making him feel small.—Oh! there were excuses for his behaviour! Now however he would sail on another tack. Would placate, discreetly cherish her until she couldn't but be softened and consent to make it up. After all maidens of her still tender age are not precisely adamant—such at least was his experience—where a personable youth is concerned. It only needed a trifle ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Elizabeth THREE-PILED, of finest quality, exaggerated THRIFTILY, carefully THRUMS, ends of the weaver's warp; coarse yarn made from THUMB-RING, familiar spirits were supposed capable of being carried about in various ornaments or parts of dress TIBICINE, player on the tibia, or pipe TICK-TACK, game similar to backgammon TIGHTLY, promptly TIM, (?) expressive of a climax of nonentity TIMELESS, untimely, unseasonable TINCTURE, an essential or spiritual principle supposed by alchemists to be transfusible ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... ticking is a wonderful comfort. Tick-tack, tick-tack! and I think of you stretched asleep and happy and growing up to be a man, and the minutes running and trickling ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... time Jim Ferrers, with such help as Alf was able to give, had supper ready to serve. It was a rough meal, of hard tack, pilot bread, potatoes, canned meats and vegetables, but outdoor life had given all a good appetite and the meal did not long remain ...
— The Young Engineers in Nevada • H. Irving Hancock
... hand. The bronzed face, the hard agate blue of the eyes that met his own, the utter absence of visible agitation, took the wind out of Dennison's sails and left him all a-shiver, like a sloop coming about on a fresh tack. He had made his entrance stormily enough, but now the hot words stuffed his ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... said Gerald, with modest pride. "I can 'gleek upon occasion.' I can also sling a syllable with the next man. It is only at monosyllables that I draw the line. When I call him Ape, I have to tack an adjective to it, or things happen. Miss Montfort, you don't know how glad I was to come. It was awfully kind of Mr. Montfort to ask us. I've always wanted to come again, and I didn't know when I should have a chance. There—there isn't any other place like this ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... and fruit are bulky and likely to spoil, on the long voyages of sailing vessels before steamships were invented bottles of the juice of limes (a small kind of lemon) were added, instead, to the hard-tack and "salt-horse" of the ship's stores. Because of this custom, the long-voyage merchantmen who carried cargoes round the Horn or the Cape were ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... instantly to the path they had quitted, saying aloud at the same time, "Why, Jack, what sends you on this tack?" ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... tobacco until they grow as large as conger eels. Heat is what the worms are fond of; but cold—cold will kill them. Now I'll cure you. Quarter-master, come here. Walk this boy up and down the weather-gangway, and every time you get forward abreast of the main-tack block, put his mouth to windward, squeeze him sharp by the nape of the neck until he opens his mouth wide, and there keep him and let the cold air blow down his throat, while you count ten; then walk him aft, and when you are forward ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... white-tailed mules, good enough for Pindar, whom Colvocoressis has just brought in from the monastery. 'Transportation for one!' Is there anything to be brought back? Nitre, powder, lead, junk, hard-tack, mules, horses, pigs, polenta, or olla podrida, or other of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... soon as he was sure it was no go, put an end to his own existence. I said that would be wrong, and besides, he couldn't do it. He said, oh yes, he could—he could inject air into a vein, and lots of things. He went on a physiological tack, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... that the workers were ready to return to the room, the men had finished the arrangements at which they had been at work before lunch, and were beginning to tack festoons of evergreens along the walls, the dull paper of which had been covered with fluting of soft pink muslin. The effect was heavy and clumsy in the extreme, and Rosalind stamped her foot with an ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... a joke. The head of each hammer so used is a magnet, and is used to pick the tacks from the mouth of the banner man. The tack sticks to the head of the hammer and is thus ready to be driven. An expert banner man will drive tacks almost as rapidly as you could fire a ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... him was nothing flash nor green— A Seneschal confessed; Most people deemed his reverend mien Some family bequest. And yet but three short, happy years Had seen him on our tack, And made us verge on VERE DE VERES— ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 20, 1892 • Various
... padre, but look here, I'm not a Christian, and I take a common-sense view of these things, but I'm bound to say I think you're on the wrong tack, too. Didn't Christ have compassion on people like that? Didn't He eat and drink with ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... staying away from school was the first tug that he gave the line that caught him. Mr. Bright let him run. He ran for three days, and then gave up on that tack. The fisher reeled in the line and watched for ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... full, my hearty. We must take in our light sails and go on the other tack soon. If we don't catch it before daylight, I'll miss my calculation. She's an unlucky old craft as ever I sailed in, and if the skipper a'n't mighty careful, he'll never get her across. I've sworn against sailing in her several times, but if I get across ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... young man. Don't you git into the way of doin' that, else you'll be for ever sailin' on the wrong tack. Take my advice, an' never look as if you thought a man gave you more than he could afford. Nobody ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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
... fellows, we are not making much on this tack," Howe began, as he joined the group at the door of the mess-room. "We are going to have a meeting abaft the foremast, to decide what shall be done next. ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... th' way, my Lady Plyant's coming, and I shall never succeed while thou art in sight. Though she begins to tack about; but I made love a great ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... observing that most part of his audience were in the seafaring way, very naturally embellished his discourse with several nautical tropes and figures. Amongst other things, he advised them "to be ever on the watch, so that on whatsoever tack the evil one should bear down on them, he might be crippled in action." "Ay, master," said a son of Neptune, "but let me tell you, that will depend upon your having the weather gage ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... flow of the Caribbean Sea, that one of those noblest results of man's handiwork, a fine ship, might have been seen gracefully ploughing her course through the sky-blue waters of the Atlantic. She was close-hauled on the larboard tack, steering east-southeast, and to a sailor's eye presented a certain indescribable something that gave her taut rig and saucy air a dash of mystery, which would have set him to speculating at once as to her character ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... gladly enough have stood across the Rose's bows, but knowing the English readiness dare not for fear of being raked; so her only plan, if she did not intend to shoot past her foe down to leeward, was to put her head close to the wind, and wait for her on the same tack. ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... the South a wider berth, for there the tide-race roared, But every tack we made we brought the North Head close aboard; So's we saw cliffs and houses, and the breakers running high, 15 And the coast-guard in his garden, with his ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... doubting but I should persuade them better when I should come to talk with them. So the next morning I weighed and stood towards the fort. The winds were somewhat against us so that we could not go very fast, being obliged to tack 2 or 3 times: and, coming near the farther end of the passage between Timor and Anabao, we saw many houses on each side not far from the sea, and several boats lying by the shore. The land on both sides was pretty high, appearing very dry and of a reddish colour, but highest on the Timor ...
— A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... caught herself quickly. It came to her suddenly that she must not let these men see that she was apprehensive. Her voice was a trifle shrill and her eyes glistened with a strange new light as she went on, changing her tack completely: "How romantic! I've often wanted ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... and stir of "coming about" again claimed their attention, and in a minute more they were stretching away on a new tack, with another set of constellations opposite to them in the sky. The breeze was fresh, though as mild as May; the boat made good speed; and in spite of beating down the river the mouth of the Mong was neared ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... by night, he had traversed one hundred miles with a rope round his neck, and without the prospect of special reward. For he was but a private, and received but a private's pay—thirteen dollars a month, a shoddy uniform, and hard-tack, when he could ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... as an oak knot, and you are, too; no, we can't make them think we are in need of a month in Wyoming. We shall have to try another tack. Now, there is no doubt that if we spend the month of September putting in extra work on our studies, we can stand the following month in laying off. We shall come back with new vigor and appetite, and soon catch up with ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... the maneuver, Saxon obeyed, and found herself sitting beside him on the opposite side of the boat, while the boat itself, on the other tack, was heading toward Long Wharf where the coal bunkers were. She was aglow with admiration, the more so because the mechanics of boat-sailing was to her a complex ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... 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 at the bottom ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... that Uncle Sam has a great deal to answer for on that tack; and I can say, too, that the love of rum that I acquired in the government service had pretty nearly fixed my flint, both for this world and the next. But still, Jack, it wont do for seamen to drink grog because the government supplies it, and think to excuse themselves by blaming it. ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... slack each reef an' tack, Gae her sail, boys, while it may sit; She has roar'd through a heavier sea afore, An' she'll roar through a heavier yet. When landsmen sleep, or wake an' creep, In the tempest's angry moan, We dash through the drift, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... had finished the coffin one of the fossicker's wives said it looked too bare, and she ripped up her black riding-skirt, and made Bob tack the ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... strange 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 even ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... disgraced himself—some infernal cruelty which has forced the poor thing out on the world as a governess. Well, turning it over in my mind, it struck me that the major might be able to put me on the right tack. It is quite possible that he might have been informed of Miss Gwilt's family circumstances before he ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... thing I think my self assured and therefor I Dar[e] not conceall it. To witt that neyther Doht our soueraine so greatlie fear her owen estate by reasson of that book, neyther yet Doth she so vnfeanedlie fauour the tranquilitie of your maiesties reing and realme that she wo[u]lde tack so great and earnest paines onles that her crafty counsall in so Doing ...
— The First Blast of the Trumpet against the monstrous regiment - of Women • John Knox
... eyes till the detective explained with that display of friendliness which all policemen show to suspected persons whom they do not at heart suspect, it was not an uncommon process for criminals to tack the proceeds of bank-note robberies to the underside ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... Varney, whose present tack was diplomacy, "that I have some loose money which I want to stow away in ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... tack: Admitting that neither side could rub me out without losing, why in heck didn't they just collect me and put me in a cage? Dammit, if I had an organization as well oiled as either of them, I could collect the President right out of the New White House and put him ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... never hungry til 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 shot on de battle field den dried. I ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... DIBDIN in our day. Oh, I know that arter dinner your M.P.'s can up and quote Tasty tit-bits from old CHARLEY, which they all reel off by rote; But if there is a cherub up aloft to watch poor JACK, That there cherub ain't a poet,—bards are on another tack. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 31, 1891 • Various
... do me such great injustice. You lawyers always have to be doing something, even if it is only holding down a chair so that it won't blow out of your office window. If you haven't any justice to mete out, you take another tack and dispense injustice with lavish hand. However, I'll forgive you if you'll tell me one thing. ...
— The Idiot • John Kendrick Bangs
... disappeared into the hood of the companion like a rabbit's tail into its burrow. There was a great volley of cracks from the loose sails, and the ship came to. At the same time the schooner, now on our beam and stripped of her light kites, put in stays and remained on the other tack, with her ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... you are on the wrong tack. You see economic science in your day was a science of things; in our day it is a science of human beings. We have nothing at all answering to your rent, interest, profits, or other financial devices, and the terms expressing them have no meaning now except to students. If you wish Edith and her ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... 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
... such as it stands engraved, was to be in action from the beginning to the end, and in a continued subject, which in my opinion, afforded very agreeable representations. But when I proposed this idea at the opera-house, nobody would so much as hearken to me, and I was obliged to tack together music and dances in the usual manner: on this account the divertissement, although full of charming ideas which do not diminish the beauty of scenes, succeeded but very middlingly. I suppressed the recitative of Jelyotte, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... pretty good, I think; for he would often tell stories to his little friends by the hour, about what happened to him when he was a boy. Some of these stories were funny enough; but the old gentleman usually managed to tack on some good moral to the end of them. By your leave, boys and girls, I will serve up two or three of these stories for an evening's entertainment. They will bear telling the second time, I guess, and I will repeat ...
— Wreaths of Friendship - A Gift for the Young • T. S. Arthur and F. C. Woodworth
... All this must have taken up the most of twenty minutes, yet after getting as far as Mr. Shylock's I remembered that I required what one's hatter (and no one else) calls a "boater," and back I went to order one in addition to the cap. And as the next tack fetches the buoy, so my next perambulation (in which, however, I was thinking seriously of a new bowler) brought me face to face with ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... more respectable name, as being a synonym for the Kapu cultivating caste. Chetti really means a trader, and is, Mr. Francis says, [442] "One of those occupational or titular terms, which are largely employed as caste names. The weavers, oil-pressers and others use it as a title, and many more tack it on to their names to denote that trade is their occupation." Marriage is regulated by exogamous groups, the names of which are said to be derived from those of villages. Girls are generally married ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... . . If I didn't know you, Jukes, I would think you were in liquor. Steer four points off. . . . And what afterwards? Steer four points over the other way, I suppose, to make the course good. What put it into your head that I would start to tack a steamer as if ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... Hippy, and don't fall off the ladder, please," cautioned Grace, as she assisted Hippy Wingate to tack up an evergreen garland ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... 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, ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... which they went in pursuit was far away over near the other shore, taking long tacks across the bay. Buttons headed his boat so as to meet the other on its return tack. ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... said he, filling his pipe. 'Davy will have to take the helm himself, if he would keep you on the right tack. Clear the decks now, and be off to your bed. If the gale lulls, I shall ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... Evangeline," said he, wrapping a lady's shawl about him and sitting on the arm of a chair in a collapsed attitude. "No, on second thought, I want to be Basil the blacksmith." He made imitations of tremendous muscular power with a tack-hammer that happened in his way for a sledge. Everybody on such occasions has his own notions of the picturesque. A deal of talking was required in arranging the various scenes. Evangeline must manifest a "celestial brightness," according to the lines. "I don't think you do it quite ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... reef'd—the tack held freely in my hand— With ballast snug—I put about, and scudded for the land. Loud hiss'd the sea beneath her lee—my little boat flew fast, But faster still the rushing storm came borne upon the blast. Lord! what a roaring hurricane beset the straining ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... 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 ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... the Clyde—a sair wark we had had—gaun north wi' seeds an' braws an' things for the Macleod. We had got in ower near under the Cutchull'ns, an' had just gane about by Soa, an' were off on a long tack, we thocht would maybe hauld as far's Copnahow. I mind the nicht weel; a mune smoored wi' mist; a fine-gaun breeze upon the water, but no steedy; an'—what nane o' us likit to hear—anither wund gurlin' ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and 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 uppers, pull it smoothly and evenly into place, and drive ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... the Seamew, in spite of her wonderful sailing qualities, had only then raised the northern extremity of the Cape and, turning on her heel, was now running out to sea again on the long leg of a tack into ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... you hate, Jenny. Now tack this strip in place, child, and then paste on the muslin. We must finish this before night, and there is more than a day's work ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... use for bran," murmured Sin Sin Wa. "Gotchee no use for tin-tack. Gotchee no use ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... If I know him, it is only because I have seen him, from afar off, walk the quarter-deck with the other officers, a cigar in his mouth, after a good meal, while we in the forecastle had our salt fish, and broke our teeth with worm-eaten hard-tack." ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... overtake his squadron before night, ordered his prizes to continue their course without regard to any lights or apparent signals from the "Alfred." When darkness fell upon the sea, the Yankees were scudding along on the starboard tack, with the Englishman coming bravely up astern. From the tops of the "Alfred" swung two burning lanterns, which the enemy doubtless pronounced a bit of beastly stupidity on the part of the Yankee, affording, as ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... Sunday before until again they sat by the rushing water. Dave had again been filled with a sense of Reenie Hardy, and his conversation was disjointed and uninteresting. She tried unsuccessfully to draw him out with questions about himself; then took the more astute tack of speaking of her own past life. It had begun in an eastern city, ever so ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... warlike genius of the first order Cochrane added a certain weird and impish ingenuity which his enemies found simply resistless. Was there ever a cruise in naval history like that of Cochrane in his brig misnamed the Speedy, a mere coasting tub that would neither steer nor tack, and whose entire broadside Cochrane himself could carry in his pockets! But in this wretched little brig, with its four-pounders, Cochrane captured in one brief year more than 50 vessels carrying an aggregate of 122 guns, took 500 prisoners, kept the whole Spanish coast, off which he ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... way of getting away from the idea of its being a joke. Senator Arnold was past seventy. Slowly he extended his right arm and tested his muscle. "Not very much," he said, "but enough to drive a tack or two." That brought applause and they drew closer together, and the atmosphere warmed perceptibly. "I've fought for the State in more ways than one,"—Senator Arnold was a distinguished veteran of the Civil War—"and if I can serve her now by tacking down carpets, then it's tacking down ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... judgment; we went to bed very early and made a good start just at daylight. It's been a lovely mornin' on the water. William thought he'd better fetch across beyond Bird Rocks, rowin' the greater part o' the way; then we sailed from there right over to the landin', makin' only one tack. William'll be in again for me to-morrow, so I can come back here an' rest me over night, an' go to meetin' to-morrow, and have a nice, ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... hours of sunlight in the day; and the wind was very powerful, so that the sea was very fearful to see, without ever being smooth either by day or night, but they always met with storms, so that the crews suffered much hardship. After a month that they had run on this tack, they stood into shore and went as long as they could, all praying to the Lord that they might have doubled beyond the land; but when they again saw it they were very sad, though they found themselves much advanced by the signs of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... until it reached 29.32—at 6 A.M. its lowest point. The wind has hauled to the south. We are evidently in a cyclone, having taken it in its northern quarter, the gale travelling north. On the starboard tack, its centre has passed to the west of us. Ordered the donkey engine to be got ready for use last night, in case the ship should make more water than the small bilge pumps could throw out. Carried away ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... country.—[Aside.] The devil's in 't, if I han't said enough to encourage him to declare! But I'm afraid he's not right; I must tack ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
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