"Tacking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... it matter where he goes? Besides, you know what stupid things boats are. They always turn away from the place they want to go to. It's what they call tacking. Maurice must be tacking now. Let him manage his horrid boat himself. We needn't trouble ourselves about him. We will go for a walk on ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... Walter Scott were very agreeable to look upon." Stevenson is a master, but not a schoolmaster, of English. Of course bad grammar does not make a genius, any more than bad morals. (Note how much this sentence would lose in crispness if I made it grammatical by tacking on "do.") My friend the musician complained to me that when he studied harmony and form he was told he must not do this, that and the other; whereas, when he came to look into the works of the great composers he found they made a practice of all the three. "Am I a genius?" he queried ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... The two women followed him calling to the boy as they ran. But Loll, evidently deeply interested in his own small adventures, did not hear their shouts. Kobuk was now hobbling on ahead and despite his bandaged leg, was tacking hither and thither woofing in the manner of the huskie when he wishes to bark. As Loll neared the tree they saw him branch off the trail and a few minutes ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... tumbling over one another! At one moment the birds would wheel so as to bring their backs in shadow, and then would flash out the white of their breasts and under parts. It was like the opening and shutting of a giant hand, or the alternate rapid darkening and brightening of the sail of a tacking ice-boat. This is the spirit of the flock. When a hawk pursues a bird, the birds tack and turn as if linked together. When one robin dashes off in hot pursuit of another, behold how their movements exactly coincide! The hawk-hunted bird often escapes by reaching the cover of a tree or a bush, ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... The boat, tacking across stream, has sheered close in shore; so close that the tall forest trees shadow her track—the tips of their branches almost touching the hurricane-deck. They are cypresses, festooned with grey-beard moss, ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... see would there be another boat sailing in the week, and I'm thinking it won't be long till he's here now, for the tide's turning at the green head, and the hooker' tacking from the east. ...
— Riders to the Sea • J. M. Synge
... Friday we sailed from Portsmouth, and saw the fleet in the highest beauty—amongst them all while they were under sail tacking, &c.; the delay has not been lost time. I should observe before I quit the subject of Portsmouth events, that the Emperor could not find time to sail about for mere amusement two days, this he left to the P. ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... of winter; and now the slopes of another world arose green and inviting in the flush of spring. There was a bracing breeze; the dingy waters of the Mersey rolled up in wreaths of beauty; the fleets of ships, steamers, sloops, lighters, pilot-boats, bounding over the waves, meeting, tacking, plunging, swaying gracefully under the full-swelling canvas, presented a picture of wonderful animation; and the mingling hues of sunshine and mist hung over all. I paced the deck, solemnly joyful, swift thoughts pulsing through me of a dim far-off Margaret, of a near radiant ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... the letter should be divided into as many paragraphs as there are distinct subjects in the letter, or a new paragraph should be commenced at every change of the subject. The habit which some persons have of tacking one subject to the end of another, and thus making a letter one continuous paragraph of mixed up information, instructions and requests, is extremely objectionable. It destroys the force of what is said, instead of fixing each ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... captain made this last remark, his quick eye saw that the wind had hauled so far round to the westward, as to supersede the necessity of tacking, and that they were actually going eight knots in a direct line from Portsmouth. Casting an eye behind him, he perceived that the cutter had given up the chase, and was returning towards the distant roads. Under circumstances so discouraging, the attorney, who began to be ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... saw a sloop. Gave chase, but, the weather being calm, was forced to get out our oars. Fired our bow chase to bring her to; but as the people were in confusion, the ship tacking about, and the night coming on very foggy, we were unable to speak to her. By her course she was bound to the North'd. Lost sight of our prize. The two Englishmen, who were taken prisoners by the Spanish privateer, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... attended with serious inconveniences to the public service, in both Houses. He lamented the course of proceeding adopted by the Assembly, which had occasioned the loss of a productive revenue bill, to wit, tacking to the bill the clause for the payment of a London agent, which had caused its rejection by the Upper House, and a consequent misunderstanding by which the bill had been lost. He regretted that in sacrificing the liberal appropriations for the defence of the province they had ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... he emerged, wearing, to her surprise, a brilliant rosette, while more surprising still, in his hand he carried a flag of somewhat homely construction, formed by tacking one of the small Union Jacks, which abounded in the town to-day, to the end of a deal wand—probably the roller from a piece of calico. Henchard rolled up his flag on the doorstep, put it under his arm, and ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... been joined by a mole, or the makings of one, about thirty yards long; and well back in the bight of the shore, where it curved towards us, was a half-built town, all of new stone, with scaffoldings standing everywhere, yet not a soul at work on 'em. Out in the roadstead five small gunboats were tacking and blazing away, two at the mole and three at the town itself; and the town and the island blazing and banging back at the gunboats. We could not see the town battery, but the island one mounted three guns, and Sir John's ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... to the explorers than the navigation in which they were now engaged, day after day tacking off and on among large fields of ice, through which they in vain endeavoured to find a passage to the southward, with the constant risk, in thick weather, of running foul of icebergs, or of getting fast in the packed ice which might any moment ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... this sort of thing would not be so bad. As Bobolink sang out, the worst was yet to come when they made the Radway, and had to ascend against a head wind that would necessitate skilful tacking ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... me such an insight into what is truly good that I may not rest contented with making Christianity a mere addendum to my pursuits, or with tacking it as a mere fringe to my garments! May I seek to ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... As she ripped at this with a pair of scissors, I noticed there was a deep frilling to it. Also a bright blush came into her cheek at the curious glance I gave to the somewhat skimpy lines of her skirt. But the next instant she was busy stretching and tacking the ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... thus desperately tacking through the bog, children and cattle began to disperse, until only a pair of girls remained behind. From these I sought direction on my path. The peasantry in general were but little disposed to counsel a wayfarer. One old devil ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Calais towards the end of the sixth day. The duke's attendants, since the previous evening, had traveled in advance, and now chartered a boat, for the purpose of joining the yacht, which had been tacking about in sight, or bore broadside on, whenever it felt its white wings wearied, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the many others near, all similar in appearance? It cannot tell exactly save by the sign-board of certain details known to itself alone. Therefore, still on the wing, tacking from side to side, it examines the locality. The home is found at last: the Halictus alights on the threshold of her abode and ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... Africus. There are the eight great winds of the classical dictionary,—arsenal of mystery and terror and of the unknown,—besides the wind Euroaquilo of St. Luke. This is the wind that drives an apostle wishing to gain Crete upon the African Syrtis. If St. Luke had been tacking to get to Hyannis, this wind would have forced him into Holmes's Hole. The Euroaquilo is no ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the Tyne with a northerly wind through the shrewd and vicious sea. The men got the cargo of mussels, and at four in the afternoon prepared to beat their way northward. It was then blowing half a gale, but the wind had shifted round from the shore, so that very little tacking was required. As the shades fell lower and lower, the wind rose higher and higher. The blasts galloped down through the hollows, and struck the brown sail of the coble like the sound of musketry. The boat lay hard over, and the water leaped ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... we encountered bad weather, the first wind of the cruise. All hands were required for tacking, and I was stationed on the forecastle-head with one other man. Williams, the butler, succumbed to the weather, and at five o'clock Miss Lee made her way forward through the driving rain, and asked me if ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... month. With respect to money bills it was declared that the Lords were "prepared to forego their constitutional right to reject or amend money bills which are purely financial in character," provided that adequate provision should be made against tacking, that questions as to whether a bill or any provision thereof were purely financial should be referred to a joint committee of the two houses (the Speaker of the Commons presiding and possessing a casting vote), and that a bill decided ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... Flossie was tacking her way towards them. Joan acted on impulse. "I wish you'd give me your address," she said "where I could write to you. Or perhaps you would not mind my coming and seeing you one day. I would like you to tell me more ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... and it is possible the Battery may have carried such sails. Considering the stability and displacement of the Battery, the rig is very small and not sufficiently effective. Shrouds were not required; the masts were supported by runners that were shifted when the yards were reversed, and in tacking. Apparently the jibstays also could be slacked off so that the lateen yards would not have to be ...
— Fulton's "Steam Battery": Blockship and Catamaran • Howard I. Chapelle
... of Friday, the eight-and-twentieth day of November, two days before the feast of St. Andrew, that the cog and her two prisoners, after a weary tacking up the Gironde and the Garonne, dropped anchor at last in front of the noble city of Bordeaux. With wonder and admiration, Alleyne, leaning over the bulwarks, gazed at the forest of masts, the swarm of boats darting hither and thither on the bosom of the ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... India usually that of the mudar (Calotropis hamiltoni). The nest thus constructed forms a deep and narrow purse, about 3 inches in depth, an inch in diameter at top, and 1.5 at the broadest part below. The tacking together of the stems of the grass is commonly continued a good deal higher up on one side than on the other, and it is through or between the untacked stems opposite to this that the tiny entrance exists. Of course above the nest the stems and blades of the grass, meeting ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... one thing," said Grant. "It's lucky for you that the Josephine had been brought up into the wind. If we had been tacking or beating or something like that you'd never had hung so quietly ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... rather broken English, "Me try remember which nuts pollinized; no put on wire, no put on tag, no put on nothing; squirrel see that, see right straight, bite off one where you put sign for him." (Laughter.) The best way for keeping squirrels and white footed mice from ascending a tree, I find is by tacking common tin, slippery smooth tin, around the trunk of the tree and this may be left on only during the time when squirrels are likely to ascend the tree. They will begin long before the nuts are ripe. In the case of hazel nuts, I have surrounded the bushes with a wire fence or wire ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Third Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... and what was left over we threw on the floor like gentlemen. And then one day, as we saw San Huegedos, and wanted to sail in to spend our money, the wind changed round from behind us and beat us out to sea. There was no tacking against it, and no getting into the harbour, though other ships sailed by us and anchored there. Sometimes a dead calm would fall on us, while fishing boats all around us flew before half a gale, and sometimes the wind would beat us out to sea when nothing else was moving. All day ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... line as most convenient. The fleet then formed in the following order:—Goliath, Zealous, Vanguard, Minotaur, Theseus, Bellerophon, Defence, Orion, Audacious, Majestic, and Leander. The Culloden was then astern the Swiftsure, and the Alexander to leeward, tacking to clear the reef. The Admiral hove to, to pick up a boat, and also the four next ships astern of the Vanguard, which gave the Orion an opportunity, by standing on and passing them, to get up with the Zealous at about ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... their way to the sea with the tide that was running down, the lovely woman imagined all sorts of voyages for herself and Pa. Now, Pa, in the character of owner of a lumbering square-sailed collier, was tacking away to Newcastle, to fetch black diamonds to make his fortune with; now, Pa was going to China in that handsome threemasted ship, to bring home opium, with which he would for ever cut out Chicksey Veneering and ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... Pugsy undertook to do the honours. Pugsy as interpreter was energetic but not wholly successful. He appeared to have a fixed idea that the Italian language was one easily mastered by the simple method of saying "da" instead of "the," and tacking on a final "a" to any word that seemed to him ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... dim little postoffice lobby a man was busily tacking up posters. The whitewashed walls bloomed with them. They were gay, attractive-looking posters, done in red and blue and green, and after Eddie had dumped his mail into the slot, and had called ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... Poor Duncan took it much to heart. She saw more of the minister and his wife, who both flattered her, than anybody else, and was expecting the arrival of Lady Bellair and Lord Liftore with the utmost impatience. They, for their part, were making the journey by the easiest possible stages, tacking and veering, and visiting everyone of their friends that lay between London and Lossie: they thought to give Florimel the little lesson, that, though they accepted her invitation, they had plenty ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... spirit of "cheer up" generally prevailed. People tried to put vim into themselves by tacking the motto over their shops: "Business as Usual." They knew full well that business was nearly dead; but they were like the boy who whistled going through the graveyard in order to ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... beating about low over the fields. He, or rather she (for I see by the greater size and browner color that it is the female), moves very slowly and deliberately on level, flexible wing, now over the meadow, now over the oat or millet field, then above the pasture and the swamp, tacking and turning, her eye bent upon the ground, and no doubt sending fear or panic through the heart of many a nibbling mouse or sitting bird. She occasionally hesitates or stops in her flight and drops upon the ground, as if seeking insects or frogs or snakes. I have never yet seen her swoop or strike ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... foolish manoeuvre, for close at hand on the lee side of her the galleon came lumbering along. Her captain, too, had seen the peril, and had elected to meet it by tacking under his consort's stern. But he was too near, and the other ship fell off and was swept to leeward too rapidly. His own ship, cumbersome and unwieldy, as they always were, was slow in answering the helm. The frigate ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the wind blew easterly, but at three in the afternoon it shifted to the south and gave the enemy the weather gauge. In tacking we fetched within gunshot of the sternmost of them, and for half an hour or so we kept up a brisk bombardment; but our line was still much out of order, and some of our ships being even now three miles astern, nothing more ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... a reason additional to its economy why this practice should not die out. The tearing up into strips of old garments, and the tacking of their ends together with needle and thread is work eminently suited for children, and one in which they take great pride, as it gives them a share in the creation of a useful and beautiful ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... with a clear sky and a bright moon; the wind, however, not abating. The next three hours were spent in tacking, in beating towards the Jersey coast under seas which almost swamped them. They were standing off about a mile from the island, and could see lighted fires and groups of people upon the shore, when suddenly a gale came out from the southwest, the wind having again shifted. With an oath, Buonespoir ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of the playgoers of the time. But, concerning the scandalous condition of the stage of the Restoration, there is no need to say anything further. The ludicrous epilogue, which has been described as the unnatural tacking of a comic tale to a tragical head, was certainly popular, however, and long continued so. It was urged, "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 ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... eyes for a moment from one of the shades which she was tacking together while he held it in shape, ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... worship, which is much the same thing, than any body here; and I'm glad on't, mistress," continued the tar, pulling a quid of tobacco out of his mouth, and addressing himself to Mrs. Howard: then turning to the captain, "Wasn't she the Lively Peggy, pray?—it's no use tacking. Wasn't your mate one John Matthews, pray? Captain, your face tells truth, in ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... General? He reeled along the street with glazed eyes, having just sense enough to know whither he was bound, and to pursue his accustomed beat homewards. He went to bed not knowing how he had reached it, as often as any man in London. He woke and found himself there, and asked no questions, and he was tacking about on this daily though perilous voyage, when, from his station at the coffee-stall, Huxter spied him. To note his friend, to pay his twopence (indeed, he had but eightpence left, or he would have had a cab from Vauxhall to take him home), was with the eager Huxter the work ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... gulls, diving or preening their feathers in the warm sunshine. Masses of jagged rocks stretched far out from land, making a wide sweep necessary in order to get round the Point. Steering was Marjorie's special duty, and long practice had made her very skilful in avoiding dangerous spots, and tacking against cross-currents. She it was, too, who begged Estelle not to jump about in the boat, and so imperil the lives of the party by her delight in the new world ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... dash of native shrewdness, which he prized. And a pair of clever hands that were never idle. He had given her leave to make any changes she chose in the house, and she was for ever stitching away at white muslin, or tacking it over pink calico. These affairs made their little home very spick and span, and kept Polly from feeling dull—if one could imagine Polly dull! With the cooking alone had there been a hitch in the beginning. Like a true expert Mrs. Beamish had not tolerated understudies: ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... whoever should advise a dissolution would be guilty of high treason. A third gave utterance to a sentiment which it is difficult to understand how any assembly of civilised and Christian men, even in a moment of strong excitement, should have heard without horror. "They object to tacking; do they? Let them take care that they do not provoke us to tack in earnest. How would they like to have bills of supply with bills of attainder tacked to them?" This atrocious threat, worthy of the tribune of the French Convention in the worst days of the Jacobin tyranny, seems ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... commentary upon the Declaration, supplied by the committee by which the Declaration was drafted, does not yet appear. Of such a step I have already written that it "would be calamitous should a practice be introduced of attempting to cure the imperfect expression of a treaty by tacking on to it an equally authoritative reasoned commentary. The result would be obscurum per obscurius, a ...
— Letters To "The Times" Upon War And Neutrality (1881-1920) • Thomas Erskine Holland
... follow the enemy (Fig. 2, V). As the French column was running free, these ships, when about, fetched to windward of its wake. When the Victory drew out of the fire, at 1 P.M., Keppel also made a similar signal, and attempted to wear (c), the injuries to his rigging not permitting tacking; but caution was needed in manoeuvring across the bows of the following ships, and it was not till 2 P.M., that the Victory was about on the other tack (Fig. 2, C), heading after the French. At this time, 2 P.M., just ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... of wind, or little squall, had struck the schooner at the most unfavourable moment for her safety. She had just lost her way in tacking, and the hull not moving ahead, as happens when a craft is thus assailed with the motion on her, all the power of the wind was expended in the direction necessary to capsize her. Another disadvantage arose from the want of motion. The rudder, which acts solely by pressing ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... and no imaginative emotion. His "Lines to a Waterfowl" will last because of the simple, profound human emotion they awaken. The poem is marred, however, by the stanza that he tacks on the end, which strikes a note entirely foreign to the true spirit of the poem. You cannot by tacking a moral to a poem give it the philosophical breadth to which I have referred. "Thanatopsis" has a solemn and majestic music, but not the unique excellence of the waterfowl poem. Yet it may be generally said of Bryant that ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... models of these vessels, and the Italian terms were generally used in all European navigation till the northern nations took the lead in sailing ships. These sails are often clewed up, however, for the mariner of the sixteenth century was ill-practised in the art of tacking, and very fearful of losing sight of land for long, so that unless he had a wind fair astern he preferred to trust to his oars. A short deck at the prow and poop serve, the one to carry the fighting-men and trumpeters and yardsmen, and to provide ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... sure as a gun, For old Peter Patch is departed; And Eyres and Delaune, And the rest of that spawn, Are tacking about broken-hearted. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... is that?" cried Candace, as the "Cornelia," tacking again, opened one of the little bays on the south end of Conanicut, where a small steam vessel was lying. Two boats, which seemed to belong to her, were rowing in a parallel line with each other, and behind them appeared a long ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... Island, it would enable the owners to learn the whereabouts of their vessels fourteen hours sooner than at present. In the case of sailing ships the advantages are far greater. Captain Smith, of this ship, a commander of deserved eminence, informs me that he has known sailing ships to be tacking about at the entrance of the Channel, between the Mull of Cantyre and the north coast of Ireland, for eighteen days in adverse and dangerous winds, unable to communicate with their owners, who, if informed by telegraph, could at once send tugs to their relief. ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... enthusiastically for it, 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 more definite ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... westerly winds by the same route which we had 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. ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... itself, as I wished to surprise Sir Giles and my assistants. She said she would be most happy to help me, but when she saw how much was wanted, she did look a little dismayed. She went and fetched her work-basket at once, however, and set about it, tacking the edges to a strip of canvas, in preparation for some kind of darning, which would not, she ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... sailors call the independent little nautilus, sailed contemptuously past us in their fairy barks, as if they had been little steamers. A man fell overboard, but the weather being calm, was saved immediately. We have been tacking about and making our way slowly towards Havana, in a zigzag line. Yesterday evening the moon rose in the form of a large heart, of a red gold colour. This morning, about four o'clock, a fine fresh breeze sprung up from the north-east, and we are going on our course at a great rate, with ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... merry voices ceased. The young ladies were in awe. Miss Moore was not there to answer for them. No one dared act as spoksman. Young Jim Wheaton was on a step-ladder rather dangerously resting on the backs of two pews. He was tacking the letter G to the gallery. He noticed the silence and ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... down to see would there be another boat sailing in the week, and I'm thinking it won't be long till he's here now, for the tide's turning at the green head, and the hooker's tacking from the east. ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... Bill for Economical Reform, and passed it, though it was a money-bill, "containing extraneous enactments," and as such contravened one of their own standing orders which had been passed in the beginning of Queen Anne's reign, when the system of "tacking," as it was called, had excited great discontent, which was not confined to themselves. The propriety of rejecting the bill on that ground was vigorously urged by the only two lawyers who took part in the debate, the Chancellor, Lord Thurlow, and Lord Loughborough, whose object ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... approached the gulf, or bay, of Cagliari, in Sardinia, a strong north wind came from the shore, and we had a whole disagreeable day of tacking, but next morning, it was Sunday, we found ourselves at anchor near the mole, where we landed. Byron, with the captain, rode out some distance into the country, while I walked with Mr Hobhouse about the town: we left our cards for the consul, and Mr Hill, the ambassador, who invited us to dinner. ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... but disjointed sentences. He rose from his seat, brandished his horsewhip, and, seizing his nephew by the collar, cried, "Odd's heartlikins! sirrah, I have a good mind—Devil fire your running tackle, you landlubber!— can't you steer without all this tacking hither and thither, and the Lord knows whither?—'Noint my block! I'd give thee a rope's end for thy supper ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... It did. Tacking was, of course, out of the question, but with the gale astern the launch answered her helm and slid over the waves instead of rolling between them. I sighed in relief. Then I remembered my passenger sitting silent beside me. She did not deserve consideration, ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... dread of the press or some more than usually urgent occasion for wishing to avoid it. Watching his opportunity, he slipped into one of the galley's boats, sculled her rapidly to land, and there leapt out—just as a press-gang hove in sight ahead! It was a dramatic moment. The sailor, tacking at sight of the enemy, ran swiftly along the river-bank, but was almost immediately overtaken, knocked down, and thrown into the press-boat, which lay near by. "This gather'd a Mob," says the narrator of the incident, "who Pelted the Boat and Gang by throwing Stones and Dirt from the Shoar, ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... and by the morning and evening sights for the chronometers a current had set us to the North 81 degrees West at nearly one mile and a quarter per hour. The wind, hanging between South-East and South-South-East, prevented our tacking to the southward to get out of the current, which, on our first experiencing it, was thought to have been occasioned by a set through the strait of Rottee; it was however afterwards found that we were on the southern edge of the current that sets to the westward, down the north coast of Timor, ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... and a not much better reception on the Wednesday night, packed its baggage and moved to Syracuse, where it failed just as badly. Then for another two weeks it wandered on from one small town to another, up and down New York State and through the doldrums of Connecticut, tacking to and fro like a storm-battered ship, till finally the astute and discerning citizens of Hartford welcomed it with such a reception that hardened principals stared at each other in a wild surmise, wondering if these things could really be: and a weary chorus forgot its weariness ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... fatal ingenuity got the better of me. I was sitting by his fire drinking his whisky, and he was up in his favourite corner by the cornice, tacking a Turkey carpet to the ceiling, when the idea struck me. "By Jove, Pyecraft!" I said, "all ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... felt uncomfortable. Both thought of the repayment of the latter's friendly loan. The girl made her machine rattle still more hurriedly to prevent any further remarks trending in that direction. At last Mrs. Somerville, her tacking finished, got up and took ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... Bland desired him to lower his sails, and come on board. As no attention was paid to this demand, and the Genoese appeared to be attempting some manoeuvre, the Espoir poured in another broadside, which the Liguria returned; but on the Espoir tacking to fire her opposite ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... twine, and lace the sail, at intervals of a foot, to the boom and mast. Fasten a becket or loop of rope at a suitable position on the mast, to set the heel of the sprit into. Rig main-sheet over two sheaves, as shown; it brings less strain on the boom, and clears the skipper's head in tacking. Make a good, large wooden cleat ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... to the course he had sailed since leaving Kittery Point, he came to the conclusion that the land astern of them was one of the Isles of Shoals, for they never could have made Boon Island without tacking. But he could not see how, with the wind northeast, and the yacht close-hauled, she had brought up on the Isles of Shoals. Tom helped him solve this difficulty by declaring that he had not been very particular in keeping her ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... tacking slowly down the bay, I met the Marquis. He was pulling himself in a small skiff, and when he saw me he made haste to come alongside and hitch on. At first I wondered whether it would not be against his ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... the wind drew ahead, and we had to beat up the coast; so that, in tacking ship, I could see the regulations of the vessel. Instead of going wherever was most convenient, and running from place to place, wherever work was to be done, each man had his station. A regular tacking and wearing bill was made out. The chief mate commanded on ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... that tack. But there is a long leg and a short leg on the course, and I fancy Superintendent Snyder does the tacking on the long leg. Mr. Snyder builds New York's schools, and he does that which no other architect before his time ever did or tried; he "builds them beautiful." In him New York has one of those rare men who open windows for the soul of their time. Literally, ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... rough staffs, measured them off at just the right height for her, and spent the bulk of the evening in smoothing the rough sticks and tacking on bits of leather at the small ends of the canes in ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... She was just tacking to reach harbour when they mingled with the crowd of men and women already there. And Ann Trewillow was calling out: "Why, it is Tris Penrose at her wheel!" Then as she came closer a man shouted: "It be the Darling Denas. It ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Board, Conveniences for.—Try tacking a pocket on the under side of your ironing board to keep your holder, stand and ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... desirable; because a seaman has a pride in keeping on the honourable side of every thing he encounters but chiefly because, from the position of the stranger, it would be the means of preventing the necessity of tacking before the "Caroline" should reach a point more advantageous for such a manoeuvre. The reader will, however, readily understand that the interest of hear new Commander took its rise in far different feelings from those of professional pride, ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... necessitated his giving most of his attention to the management of his vessel, so that he could not permit himself to yield to the love of gossip that was inherent in him. The weather was perfect, and notwithstanding our constant shifting and tacking about to catch the erratic breeze, the gay little brig made merry and rapid way over the sparkling Mediterranean, at a rate that promised our arrival at Palermo by the sunset of the following day. As the evening came on the wind freshened, and by the time the moon soared like a large blight ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... bulky sailor as he moved slowly, like a ship leaving port in heavy weather, with many a lurch and much tacking against an adverse wind. By the expression on the Semitic face you might have thought that Isaac Zahn was beholding some new and interesting object of natural history, instead of a ponderous and grumpy ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... near enough to the ships, for Sacheuse to be heard, he hailed them in his own language, and they answered him; but neither party seemed to be intelligible. For some time the strangers remained silent; but, on the ships' tacking, they set up a shout, and wheeled off, with amazing swiftness, towards ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... said Harry. "Uncle Cornie is a lively companion—isn't he? He cant even blunder through a Joe Miller without tacking a moral to it, and then trying to persuade you that the joke of it ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... likely course seems to have been that, starting with a simple Egyptian tale, the resemblance to the shepherd of the Asiatic myth, led to a Ramesside author improving the story by tacking on the branches of the myth one after another, and borrowing the name. If this be granted, we have here in Bata the earliest indications of the elements of the Atys mysteries, a thousand years before ...
— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... baskets. She knew the house and its management at her fingers' ends, and supervised everything that went forward. Laurie Flagg coming to call upon her, on Wednesday afternoon, to remonstrate upon her sudden defection, found her in the act of tacking up a curtain ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... Miss Matty! and the minuets de la cour!); so I went on, not thinking of what I was about, when, all at once, I perceived that I was in the middle of the preparations for to-morrow night—the room being divided with great clothes-maids, over which Crosby's men were tacking red flannel; very dark and odd it seemed; it quite bewildered me, and I was going on behind the screens, in my absence of mind, when a gentleman (quite the gentleman, I can assure you) stepped forwards and asked ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... her class ever built, or it would not have happened. The schooner made a number of short tacks right away in the wind's eye. This would not have suited us, as we took longer to go about, so we had to stretch away to the eastward, while she, tacking once more, stood to the north-west. Sometimes we appeared to be a long way apart, then about we would go and be almost up with her again. What we had to fear was night coming on before we could get up to her, when very probably she would contrive to escape ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... crew seemed ever Wider-visioned, graver, More distinct of purpose, more sustained of will; With heads erect and proud, And voices sometimes loud; With endless tacking, counter-tacking, All things grasping, all things lacking, It would seem; Ever shifting helm, or sail, or shroud, Drifting on as in a dream. Hoarding to their utmost bent, Feasting to their fill, Yet gnawed by discontent, ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... eight varieties, of which I consider Fodermaier, Aloka, Rival, Mitchell, and Wright as the most promising, along with Goettler. Squirrels seem to prefer heartnuts to all other sorts. I have eliminated this trouble by tacking a length or two of ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Forty-Second Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... fine Woolen Cloth saturated with ink, makes an excellent pad, but it is customary to place sheet cotton underneath and muslin over the cloth, bringing the muslin down around the edges and fasten by tacking on a binding of ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... had been mutual, and Mr. Reynolds, tacking unsteadily around, brought himself to bear in such a position as to catch a fair view of Sophie's face, with the spot of blood on her chin. The first glance so terrified him, that he utterly, forsook his footing, and came abruptly to the ground, never once taking his eyes from ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... renewal of strength. The Warhorse put forth all his power, not to reach the hedge to the north, but over the open prairie eastward. The Greyhound followed, and within fifty yards the Jack dodged to foil his fierce pursuer; but on the next tack he was on his eastern course again, and so tacking and dodging, he kept the line direct for the next farm-house, where was a very high board fence with a hen-hole, and where also there dwelt his other hated enemy, the big black Dog. An outer hedge delayed the Greyhound for a moment and gave Jack time ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... by others' breath, and gets on to information by tacking between the two sides—like a hoy, not made to go ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... to avoid it is something altogether needless—nay, by implication, it is degrading. As to what you say of my influence, I am inclined to the opinion, that if every man will look to himself, every man will be looked to. This modern notion of tacking the whole responsibility of society on to every individual is one I am not at all inclined to adopt; for, first, I know it is a troublesome doctrine; and, secondly, I doubt if it be a true one. For both which reasons, I shall decline ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... do; then there is no necessity for tacking, you have only to rig your sails and smoke your pipe, or go to sleep; you may, in that way, run four thousand ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... discharging his brief song at intervals—a sound as of shattering glass. The whinchat was rarely seen, but I constantly met the small, prettily coloured stonechat flitting from bush to bush, following me, and never ceasing his low, querulous tacking chirp, anxious for the safety of his nest. Nightingales, blackcaps and white-throats also nested there, and were louder and more emphatic in their protests when approached. There were several grasshopper-warblers on the common, ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... English, but gray-haired and elderly, came tacking down the deck, bound somewhere or other. His was a zig-zag transit. He dove for the rail, caught it, steadied himself, took a fresh start, swooped to the row of chairs by the deck house, carromed from them, and, in company with a barrel or two of flying brine, came head first into ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... fortune, my boy Edward's, and my little Julia's: and so many have been trying to get it from me, that my blood boils up in a moment about it now.—My poor head!—You don't seem to understand what I am saying! There then, I am a sailor; I can't go beating and tacking like you landsmen, with the wind dead astern. The long and the short is, I don't feel It safe here: don't feel It safe anywhere, except in my wife's lap. So no more words: here's your receipt; ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... be known as Robin Fitzooth Montfichet—'tis but tacking on another name to him," said the Squire. "If he lives here, as I shall devise in my will, right soon will he be known as Gamewell, and that only! That fate has befallen me, and one might believe me now as Saxon as ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... cruise; that in order to catch the tide he had not time to go ashore at the bluff, but he would explain everything on his return. Her relief was only partial; she was already experienced enough in his vocation to know that the excuse was a feeble one. He could easily have "fetched" the bluff in tacking out of the Gate and have signaled to her to board him in her own boat. The next day she locked up her house, rowed round the Point to the Embarcadero, where the Bay steamboats occasionally touched and took ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... and he has amply proved it; but, my child, there is authority above the Marshal's—for instance, the whole Council of Ministers. With time and a little tacking, we shall get there. But, to succeed, I must wait till the moment when some service is required of me. Then I can say ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... before: writing plays, without thought of posterity, that are today the mine from which men work their poetry; producing comedies that are classic; sailing trackless seas and discovering continents; tacking proclamations of defiance on church-doors; hunted and exiled for the right of honest speech; welcoming fierce flames of fagots; falling upon blocks of marble and liberating angels; painting pictures ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... transition. The bright surface of the stream was furrowed by a hundred vessels; tiny rowboats creeping from shore to shore; knots of black barges following the lead of puffing tugs; sloops with languid motion tacking against the tide; white steamboats, like huge toy-houses, crowded with pygmy inhabitants, moving smoothly on their way to the great city, and disappearing suddenly as they turned into the narrows between Storm-King and the Fishkill Mountains. Down there was life, incessant, ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... him going like the wind up towards his own shack at the edge of the wood, looking back once or twice, doubling and tacking to keep himself screened by the haphazard, hillside cabins, out of sight of the lynchers down at ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... tacking, where there is not room for long boards, or from some other cause, as weather or tide, it is required to work to windward on short ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... tint did he work, but kept travishing back and forth, one time shading his eyes and gazing out to sea, and then looking far along the Plymouth road for minutes at a time. Out by Bradden Point there stood a little dandy-rigged craft, tacking lazily to and fro, with her mains'le all shiny-yellow in the sunset. Though I didn't know it then, she was the Preventive boat, and her business was to watch the Hauen: for there had been a brush between her and the Unity ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... rather than with measures of state, which belong to history alone. For example, at the close of the old queen's reign, it is known the Duke of Marlborough left the kingdom—after what menaces, after what prayers, lies, bribes offered, taken, refused, accepted; after what dark doubling and tacking, let history, if she can or dare, say. The queen dead; who so eager to return as my lord duke? Who shouts God save the king! so lustily as the great conqueror of Blenheim and Malplaquet? (By the way, he will send over ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of the bay. A gap in the reef appeared, and we made for it. But the fates had another rebuff for us. The wind shifted and blew from the east right out of the bay. We could see the way through the reef, but we could not approach it directly. That afternoon we bore up, tacking five times in the strong wind. The last tack enabled us to get through, and at last we were in the wide mouth of the bay. Dusk was approaching. A small cove, with a boulder-strewn beach guarded by a reef, made a break in the cliffs on the south side of the bay, and we turned in that ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... the top of the work tapers to a neck. The Spider, moving up and down, tacking first to one side and then to the other, from the very first spray marks out the graceful form as accurately as though she carried a ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... conquest) was liquid and actually tractile in the bank; the rest whirled beyond reach and even sight (save in the mirror of a balance-sheet) under the compelling spell of wizard Pinkerton. Dollars of mine were tacking off the shores of Mexico, in peril of the deep and the guarda-costas; they rang on saloon-counters in the city of Tombstone, Arizona; they shone in faro-tents among the mountain diggings; the imagination flagged in following them, so wide were they diffused, so briskly they span to the turning ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... with this interruption, as it in some measure relieved us, at least shortened the dangers and hardships inseparable from the navigation of the southern polar regions. Since, therefore, we could not proceed one inch farther to the south, no other reason need be assigned for my tacking and standing back to the north; being at this time in the latitude of 71 deg. 10' S., longitude ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... sitting in the shadow of Mme. Poulard's delightful inn at St. Michel when I first saw Baeader. Dinner had been served, and I had helped to pay for my portion by tacking a sketch on the wall behind the chair of the hostess. This high valuation was not intended as a special compliment to me, the wall being already covered with similar souvenirs from the sketch-books of half the ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... I had learned enough seamanship by this time fully to comprehend what Mr Henley meant. Tacking and wearing are both manoeuvres to get a ship's head round so as to have the wind on the side opposite to what it was at first. In tacking, the helm is put down, and the head comes up close to the wind, and then is forced ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... the case. Caesar made no far-reaching modifications in the government of the city, such as were afterwards carried out by Augustus, and the presence in the Lex Julia Municipalis of the clauses referred to is an example of the common process of "tacking" (legislation per saturam, as it was called by the Romans). The law deals with the constitution of the local senates, for whose members qualifications of age (30 years) and military service are laid down, while persons who have suffered conviction for various ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... again, and prepared for the start home. The wind was against us, and we had to pull. At 7.30 we went ashore for breakfast. We were very chilly, our things still being wet, and we lighted a large fire and got everything dry. After breakfast we managed to sail a little, tacking against the wind, and by 12.30 p.m. we had made Sugar Island. Here was the American channel, and we resolved to get dinner, and wait for a tow. In this we were very fortunate, for just as we were finishing dinner a propeller came along. ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... agreeing generally with those formerly obtained at Brierly Island, while the numerals were quite different and corresponded somewhat with those of my Brumer Island vocabulary. Two of the canoes—one of which carried sixteen people—were large and heavy and came off under sail, tacking outside of us and fetching under the ship's stern. In these large canoes the paddles are of proportionate size and very clumsy—they are worked as oars with the aid of cane grommets—the sail is of the large oblong shape formerly described. ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray |
