"Tack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the soil had farms already marked down, bought and paid for as I had; and I sometimes talked in such a way as to show that I was a little on my high heels; but they were freer to tack, go about, and run before the wind than I; for some one was sure to stick to each of them like a bur and steer him to some definite place, where he could squat and afterward take advantage of the right of preemption, while I was forced to ferret out a particular square mile of this boundless ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... sail, 24 or 25 of which appeared to be of the line, and all standing down towards 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 82 ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... but babble; and I hardly ever yet saw that man who did not rather prate too much, than speak too little. And yet half of our age is embezzled this way: we are kept four or five years to learn words only, and to tack them together into clauses; as many more to form them into a long discourse, divided into four or five parts; and other five years, at least, to learn succinctly to mix and interweave them after a ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... say you don't know what 'aesthetic' means, etc.) aesthetic (detestable word) observation. With this the Swinburnes, Furnivalls, Athenaeums, etc., find fault: and a pretty hand they make of it when they try that tack. It is safest surely to give people all the Data you can for forming a Judgment, and then leave them to ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... 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
... is the same as westerly Variation. Leeway on the port tack is the same as easterly Variation. This is apparent ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper
... the wrong tack when we look for more or less complete resemblances between the 'Wisdom' of Proverbs and the 'Sophia' of Greek thinkers. It is much rather an anticipation, imperfect but real, of Jesus than a pale reflection of Greek ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... morning he learned that Marlin, who had been out late, saw Feltram get the boat off, and sail towards the other side. The night was so dark that he could only see him start; but the wind was light and coming up the lake, so that without a tack he could easily make the other side. Feltram did not return. The boat was found fast to the ring at ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... answer, madam!" he said angrily. "I could have sold both jackets ten times over, if they'd been here three days ago, as by rights they ought to have been. I can't give you work, if you are not, more punctual. You needn't think to get along at our tack, unless you plug it in a little faster ...
— Lizzy Glenn - or, The Trials of a Seamstress • T. S. Arthur
... Great Hall, because he said it was fairly mine, and never he took it down till De Aquila returned, as I shall presently show. For three months his men and mine guarded the valley, till all robbers and nightwalkers learned there was nothing to get from us save hard tack and a hanging. Side by side we fought against all who came—thrice a week sometimes we fought—against thieves and landless knights looking for good manors. Then we were in some peace, and I made shift by Hugh's help to govern the valley—for all ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... it doesn't need improvement. A lot of third-rate fellows have tried that tack with me, as if they'd flatter me into giving them a job. The fools never seemed to realise that when they said the paper didn't need improvement they were giving the best reason that could be given why they shouldn't be employed on it. ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... 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 its ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... corners of the vertical spars. These ropes in nautical language are called "sheets." The boy at the rear was the pilot and did the steering, because his position behind the sail gave him an unobstructed view in all directions. When changing tack the sail was lifted overhead to the other ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... his slime the toad doth float And th' spyder by, but seems his boat. And now the naumachie begins; Close to the surface her self spins: Arachne, when her foe lets flye A broad-side of his breath too high, That's over-shot, the wisely-stout, Advised maid doth tack about; And now her pitchy barque doth sweat, Chaf'd in her own black fury wet; Lasie and cold before, she brings New fires to her contracted stings, And with discolour'd spumes doth blast The herbs that to their center hast. Now to the neighb'ring henbane top Arachne ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... 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 ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... draws up the curtain of cloud by strands of rainy cordage, and men aloft are loosing the reefed topsail, bracing the after-yards and setting them for a run in on the larboard tack. They handle gaskets, bunt-lines, leech-lines, fix her best bib and spencer, like a country girl for a run up to town. Men are swarming about the yards and rigging. That is not all: Lascars, stevedores, supercargoes, the hong merchants, agents, are all busy breaking bulk. The India opium ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... 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 coming ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 sun in ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... the 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
... 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 ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... minute accuracy; and "got up" every case in which he was engaged as if his life had depended on the result. Nothing escaped him. He kept his mind constantly even with the current of the cause. He was a man to steer a leader, if ever that leader should get, for an instant, on the wrong tack, or be uncertain as to his course. His suggestion and interference—rare, indeed, with such a man as Mr. Subtle, incessant with Mr. Quicksilver—were always worth attending to, and consequently ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... boys were really moving over the level prairie in the wind wagon Russ had made. They could only go straight, or nearly so, and could not sail much to one side or the other, as their land ship was not like a water one. It would not "tack," or move ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Uncle Fred's • Laura Lee Hope
... a mine—not of their own, but for wages—and not feel so greatly abused or unhappy; that they will swing an axe all day in a forest and live on baked beans and bread without feeling like martyrs; that they will go to sea and grub on hard tack and salt pork and fish without complaint and then will turn Anarchists on the same fare in the East. It seems strange too that these men keep strong and healthy, and that our ancestors kept strong and healthy on even a still simpler diet. Why, my father fought battles—and the ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... were soon ordered aloft again to set the top-gallant-sails, for the breeze was so far favourable that the ship did not have to beat out of the bay; consequently, she was able to spread more canvas than if she had been forced to tack, or had to ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... trumpets, now of bells, Tabors, or signals made from castled heights, And with inventions multiform, our own, Or introduc'd from foreign land; but ne'er To such a strange recorder I beheld, In evolution moving, horse nor foot, Nor ship, that tack'd by ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... ridiculous affliction, dropped her: others became cordial. To her amazement she found that some "quite nice" people were saturated with Wells, and that this accessibility to ideas was the secret of their niceness. People she had thought deeply religious, and had tried to conciliate on that tack with disastrous results, suddenly took an interest in her, and revealed a hostility to conventional religion which she had never conceived possible except among the most desperate characters. They made her read Galsworthy; and ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... Man must have clothes for day and night, and must have provisions to keep his clothes properly filled out. These two articles we took in compact form, regretting even the necessity of guarding against a ducking by a change of clothes. Our provision, that unrefined pork and hard tack, presently to be converted into artist and friend, was packed with a few delicacies in a firkin,—a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... 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 rear: the ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... cross street. On the other side of this street was a row of shops which I was to follow until they joined the iron railings of Hyde Park. I was to keep to the railings until I reached the gates at Hyde Park Corner, where I was to lay a diagonal course across Piccadilly, and tack in toward the railings of Green Park. At the end of these railings, going east, I would find the Walsingham, and my ...
— In the Fog • Richard Harding Davis
... new by ripping them, washing the ticking, and picking the hair free from bunches, and keeping it in a dry, airy place, several days. Whenever the ticking gets dry, fill it lightly with the hair, and tack ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... exercise, and consequently (is it not?) necessarily improved sleep, and the projects for the fine days, the walking ... a pure bliss to think of! Well, now—I think I shall show seamanship of a sort, and 'try another tack'—do not be over bold, my sweetest; the cold is considerable,—taken into account the previous mildness. One ill-advised (I, the adviser, I should remember!) too early, or too late descent to the drawing-room, and all might be ruined,—thrown back so far ... seeing that our flight is to ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... 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 hand, ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... northeasterly," one of them said. "We can only just lay our course now, and it will be dead against us in some of the reaches. Still, I think we shall manage to make down to sea with only a tack or two, but when we are once fairly out of the river it will be a long leg and a short one, and going up round the Texel it will be dead against us. Except that it would be a bit worse if it had a little more east in it, it is about ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... in all manner of mechanics—he could not drive a tack through anything except his own fingers, and had given up shaving at the suggestion of his elders—and yet he boasted, with truth, that he had got three times as many books into the study as his predecessor possessed in all his house. For ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... of timber under the lower part of the beak-head, for the fore-tack to be hauled to, in some vessels, instead of a bumkin: it has the same use in bringing the fore-tack on board that the chess-tree has to the main-tack. Also, the notched scale of a wire-micrometer. Also, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... 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 early March the major's wife had hidden a ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... said Sir Francis, suddenly taking a tack in another direction, "you own that you beat my son—my stepson," he added correctively, ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... has arrived to relieve Major Young, orders every man at once to be made as comfortable as possible. Men build fires and warm and dry their clammy water-soaked feet, picture of which is shown in this volume. Bully and tea and hard tack revive a good many. It is well they do, for the fight is going against us and two detachments of volunteers from these men are soon, to be asked for to go ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... long 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. ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... Mother Cop! Her cooking knack Would conquer fifty Catos— The Queen of tarts, and tuck, and tack, And cream, and ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... placed on the top-gallant forecastle, to act as the lookout men, to be relieved after one hour's service. The rest of the boys were required to keep awake, but no special duty was assigned to them. There were hands enough on deck to "tack ship," or to take in the sails, one or two ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... get out o' 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 while ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... restrained 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
... 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 ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... said Philip, who was nettled by this implication. And Celia, who had shown her power of irritating, took another tack. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to dress it 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 Raffles ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... less from lack of the power to withstand, Than from lack of the resolute will to retain Those strongholds of life which the world strives to gain. Let this character go in the old-fashion'd way, With the moral thereof tightly tack'd to it. Say— "Let any man once show the world that he feels Afraid of its bark, and 'twill fly at his heels: Let him fearlessly face it, 'twill leave him alone: But 'twill fawn at his feet if he flings ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... be to him if you and I developed such ferocious appetites as to lick the platter clean before he showed up. But I reckon there's plenty all around, and we'll try and keep his share warm. Pull up here on this log, Owen, and try that platter. The coffee is ready too, ditto the hard-tack." ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... of our nation's natal day At the rise and set of sun, Shall boom from the far north-east away To the vales of Oregon. And ships on the seashore luff and tack, And send the ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... no 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 can ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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. The ship passed through some strong riplings, which evidently indicated ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... another military station, where as a stranger I tried another tack. The rifle ranges were surrounded by a belt of trees, outside of which was an unclimbable fence guarded by two sentries, one on either side. It seemed impossible to get into or even near ...
— My Adventures as a Spy • Robert Baden-Powell
... some more of your white Crows, Nat," said the Doctor, as they headed straight out after getting on the right tack. "The island where we are going is one of their ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... these coincidences that we were as nearly as possible going off on the wrong tack, and singing 'Io Paean' to Dame Nature herself at the expense of the bard; but we were soon brought back to our allegiance by a sense of the way in which all we saw tallied with the description of him who sang of nature so surpassingly well, who challenges posterity in charmed accents, ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... headland, lost steerage, and fell out of their sight 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
... such neat workers, will say that they never pin their work first. If you are not a tailor, it is much better to place your work, before you begin, with plenty of pins. You will never get straight lines or smooth corners if you do not plan and place it all first, just as it has got to be, and tack it there. ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low
... the irate face of his companion, in which the crow-feet of forty years were distinctly visible, and perceived that he had gone on a wrong tack. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... 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 ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... 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 "brief explanation" of the pamphlet ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... 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 ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... 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
... England whenever he feels so inclined. The legs of the other are by an invisible fatality prevented from carrying him beyond certain narrow limits. Neither rich nor poor as yet see the philosophy of the thing, or admit that he who can tack a portion of one of the P. & O. boats on to his identity is a much more highly organised being than one who cannot. Yet the fact is patent enough, if we once think it over, from the mere consideration of the respect with which we so often treat those who are richer ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... Liebig, the creator of the chemical theory of agriculture, often got on the wrong tack in their love of mere theories, unlettered agriculturists opened up new roads to prosperity. Market-gardeners of Paris, Troyes, Rouen, Scotch and English gardeners, Flemish and Lombardian farmers, peasants of Jersey, Guernsey, and farmers ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... 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 ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... out her shrillest laugh. "Behind the coffin as Chief Mourner, I suppose. And you'll tack on the orthodox black sleeve-band, and look out for Number Two. And choose the ordinary kind, who funks raw-head and all the rest of it, for the next venture. But I prophesy you'll be bored. It's settled ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... As bees come out of their hives when the rain ceases and the sun shines, so the vessels which have been lying-to in harbour, or under shelter of promontories, are now eagerly making their way down Channel, and, in order to get as long a tack and as much advantage as possible, they are brought to the edge of the shallow water. Sometimes fifteen or twenty or more stand in; all sizes from the ketch to the three-master. The wind is not strong, but that peculiar drawing breeze which ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... north of west. We can sail faster due west, however, and after awhile we'll tack to the north till we see land. It's about forty miles from the mouth of Pensacola Bay to the mouth of Mobile bay, and we're going, I think, about six ...
— Captain Sam - The Boy Scouts of 1814 • George Cary Eggleston
... prosecution of Van's designs upon the lady's hand and fifteen thousand florins, with "two months' conge and other advantages." No possible sophistry, to which I was equal, could prove the marriage to be against his interest; and as to trying him on the tack of delicacy—"imposition on an unprotected woman,—degrading dependence on her exertions," and so forth—I knew the thick skin and indomitable self-conceit of the cannonier would repel such feather-shafts without feeling ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... when she made a great run to the westward. When the wind again hauled, as haul it was almost certain to do, Captain Crutchely believed himself in a meridian that would admit of his running with an easy bowline, on the larboard tack. No one but a sailor can understand the effect of checking the weather-braces, if it be only for a few feet, and of getting a weather-leach to stand without 'swigging out' on its bowline. It has much the same influence on the progress of a ship, that an eloquent speech ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... pattered, and every now and then dabbed mortally into some head or breast. There ever closer and closer the blue boys dug and crept while they and the gray tossed back and forth the hellish hand-grenade, the heavenly hard-tack and tobacco, gay jokes and lighted bombs. There, mining and countermining, they blew one another to atoms, or under shrieking shells that tore limbs from the trees and made missiles of them hurled themselves to the ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... 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 ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... 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, ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... With trembling hearts and anxious gaze the lookers-on watched each movement of the two vessels, a dead silence prevailing among them so long as they both followed in the same course, but the instant a clever tack was made by which the pursuers were baffled, up rose the shout of many voices, and cries were heard and prayers uttered that the darkness would come quickly on and afford their friends ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... 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 so often, ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... evident that she spoke from an overflowing heart, and that she could speak for hours on the subject. But she cut herself short and took another tack ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... on the 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 ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... 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 ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... of the mechanical succession of day following day, day following day, AD INFINITUM, was one of the things that made her heart palpitate with a real approach of madness. The terrible bondage of this tick-tack of time, this twitching of the hands of the clock, this eternal repetition of hours and days—oh God, it was too awful to contemplate. And there was no escape ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... combined fleets were distinctly seen from the Victory's deck, formed in a close line of battle ahead, on the starboard tack, about twelve miles to leeward, and standing to the south. Our fleet consisted of twenty-seven sail of the line and four frigates; theirs of thirty-three, and seven large frigates. Their superiority was greater in size, and weight of metal, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... began to perceive that he was on the wrong tack. The gentleman who addressed him was a regular and profitable customer, and he did not like to incur his ill will, which would ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... 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 ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... month on account of commencement stunts. It is darned expensive sending nosegays to sweet girl graduates. I couldn't help going broke. Honest I couldn't, Uncle Phil." Then as his uncle did not leap at the suggestion offered, the speaker changed his tack. "Anyway, you would be willing to let me have my July money ahead of time, wouldn't you?" he ingratiated. "It is only ten days ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... tack, to enter the channel of the river; and, at that fatal moment, the wind struck the mainmast with a force which instantly threw it over-board; and the ship, cast on her beam-ends by the violence of the shock, lay exposed ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... to which the parishioners must be exposed through the inconsiderate conduct of the old mother-in-law, I could not but sympathise with my new acquaintance's indignation. My sympathy was, however, somewhat cooled when I perceived that I was on a wrong tack, and that the priest was looking at the matter from an entirely different point ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... short skirts, my piquant shoes, my audacious apron, am a conundrum, a pleasantry, an epigram." This would be very pretty on the stage, but a waiting-maid who calls herself an "epigram" passes our imagination under any other circumstances. In fact, Miss Howard seems to us to be altogether on a false tack in this novel,—to have utterly abandoned realism, and in its place to have imposed upon us scenes, characters, and actuating motives which have figured over and over again in book and play, and to which she has not succeeded in imparting any special vivacity or charm. The novel falls ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... evaporated eggs, pickled butter, hard-tack, chocolate, beef tea, coffee," Barney called off. "Not bad ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... bravely, we could see that she was being jammed down gradually towards the shore. My good man cried out, 'that her fore-tack was shot away and it would now ...
— Michael Penguyne - Fisher Life on the Cornish Coast • William H. G. Kingston
... and I doubt whether it will go round soon enough to save us. If it should go round a little more to the north, we must try and get her on the other tack; but I am afraid, in such a sea, she will not go about. Of course, our great aim is to reach Port Cornwallis; or, if we cannot get as far as that, I have just been having a look at the chart, and I see there are three narrow straits. How much water there is in them, ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... 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 ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... she faced it, and swept away like a sheet of paper when I banked her on the turn, skimming down wind at a greater pace, perhaps, than ever mortal man has moved. Yet I had always to turn again and tack up in the wind's eye, for it was not merely a height record that I was after. By all my calculations it was above little Wiltshire that my air-jungle lay, and all my labour might be lost if I struck the outer layers ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... brush 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 fast. Pattaquasset lights, a little ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... beautiful Palace here, in the middle of his gardens and of a brilliant Court. It is pity in truth; for he is a Prince with no end of wit (INFINIMENT D'ESPRIT), and has respectable qualites." Not Stadtholder, unluckily; that is where the shoe pinches; the Dutch are on the Republican tack, and will not have a Stadtholder at present. No help for it in one's beautiful gardens and avenues of oak ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... the old sea-cook to have suffered shipwreck; nor was it his first time to be cast away in mid-ocean. Once had he been blown overboard in a storm, and left behind,—the ship, from the violence of the wind, having been unable to tack round and return to his rescue. Being an excellent swimmer, he had kept afloat, buffeting with the huge billows for nearly an hour. Of course, in the end, he must have gone to the bottom, as the place where the incident occurred was hundreds of miles from any land. But just as he ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... but he ran at the same time to the bulwarks, and so did they all. I have never seen so many drunken men struck suddenly sober. The cruiser had gone about, upon our impudent display of colours; she was just then filling on the new tack; her ensign blew out quite plain to see; and even as we stared, there came a puff of smoke, and then a report, and a shot plunged in the waves a good way short of us. Some ran to the ropes, and got the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... even possibly Syria and Palestine, but Stamboul and the Straits were quite a different pair of shoes. H.I.H. gripped my hand and pressed it till I all but squealed. It was delightful to talk to a soldier who went straight to the point, said he, but he dashed off on another tack, asking what were our military objections to the Alexandretta plan; so I went over much the same ground as had already been gone over at Mohileff, promising to let him have ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... 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 spur of Ukerewe ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... were very cloudy, or at night when I could not see the sun, I should not be able to tell. Then after holding on till I felt sure that we were well past the mouth of this bay, I should put her about on the other tack, and should be sure to come upon the land sooner or later. Anyhow, even in the darkest night we should know if the wind had gone round to the north, as it would be so much colder. Besides, there is ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... and in ignorance of our intended departure, had evidently hired a good-sized boat for the day, and brought all the necessary appendages of his art. In a few seconds we slipped our moorings, and jib, foresail, and gaff-topsail were hauled out to the wind, and the main tack dropped, sooner ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... 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, and sing to ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... over on the other tack, and stood away from the shore a considerable distance. The wind was very light, and the current was against them; so the progress of the boat ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... attorneys must engross them, printers stamp and publish them, hawkers cry them, judges expound them, juries weigh and measure them with offences, then executioners carry them into effect. The farmer hath already sown the hemp, the ropemaker hath twisted it; sawyers saw the timber, carpenters tack together the shell, grave-diggers delve the earth. And all this truly for ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... wasn't long in coming. For three months, during which each day seemed like a century, the Abraham Lincoln plowed all the northerly seas of the Pacific, racing after whales sighted, abruptly veering off course, swerving sharply from one tack to another, stopping suddenly, putting on steam and reversing engines in quick succession, at the risk of stripping its gears, and it didn't leave a single point unexplored from the beaches of Japan to the coasts ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... and at the same time you were yourself, going about with him. You loved him with a passionate, self-immolating love. There wasn't room for both of you on the raft, you sat cramped up, huddled together. Not enough hard tack. While he was sleeping you slipped off. A shark got you. It had a face like Dr. Charles. The lunatic was running after him like mad, with a revolver. You ran like mad. Morfe Bridge. When he raised his ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... time, as a Captain of Patriot Volunteers,—'Independence of Poland! Shall Poland be dictated to!" cried Stanislaus and an indignant Public at one stage of the affair. His Uncles Czartoryski were piloting him in; and in that mad element, the cries, and shiftings of tack, had to be many. [In HERMANN, v. 362-380 (still more in RULHIERE, ii. 119-289), wearisome account of every particular.] He is Nephew, by his mother, of these Czartoryskis; but is not by the father of very high family. 'Ought he to be King of Poland?' ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... 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 ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... "Tack up your shelf paper while I'm gone, Lilly—your cupboards look so bare—and then come over to lunch with me and we'll go to the euchre together. It's your first afternoon at the Junior Matrons and I want you to look your best. ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... 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
... 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 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... son was as 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
... dejectedly, "that many people appear to like a drab-colored world, hung around with dusky shreds of philosophy"; but it is more obvious still that, whether they like it or not, the drapings grow a trifle dingier every year, and that no one seems to have the courage to tack up something gay. What is much worse, even those bits of wanton color which have rested generations of weary eyes are being rapidly obscured by somber and intricate scroll-work, warranted to oppress and fatigue. The great masterpieces ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... Tom Bullover, interrupting him, being always afraid of letting the other sail off on the tack of his home recollections, as he was doomed ever to hear the same old yarn, so that he was sick of its repetition. "I don't think you'll find your cave here; them old buccaneers wouldn't be sich fools to lug all ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... old chap," interrupted Mr. Gunthorpe. "Miss Jones is an expert in those things. She'll feed it the proper tack, believe me. Give her a chance, and don't blame ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... she go, Star of de Sout' from St. Malo, Never a tack, before she ran Out on de bank of Newfunlan'— Drop de anchor, an' let her down, Plaintee of comrade all aroun', Feeshin' away till night is fall, Singin' away wit' ev'ry haul, "Here 's to de win' dat lif' de fog, No matter how she 's blowin', Nort' or sout', eas' or wes', Dat is de win' we ...
— The Voyageur and Other Poems • William Henry Drummond
... were adjusted by the five sailors, aided by the stimulus of the captain's oaths. The MACQUARIE stood out to sea on the larboard tack, under all her lower sails, topsails, topgallants, cross-jack, and jib. By and by, the other sails were hoisted. But in spite of this additional canvas the brig made very little way. Her rounded bow, the width of her hold, and her heavy ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... dignified captain who never stooped to trifle with them; was always so precise and courteous, and yet so immeasurably distant. They were ten times more afraid of him than they had been of Lieutenant Rolfe, who was their "tack" during camp, or of the great, handsome, kindly-voiced dragoon who succeeded him, Lieutenant Lee, of the —th Cavalry. They approved of this latter gentleman because he belonged to the regiment of ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... scarce got under sail before we missed our longboat. We lost the whole tide in hunting for it, and so lay till the morning of Wednesday. Having then made sail again, with a pretty strong head wind, at the very first tack the Dutch horse fell overboard. The poor devil was at the time tied about the neck with a rope, so that he seemed to have only the alternatives of hanging or drowning (for the river is here about four miles wide, and the water was very rough); ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... avenue in a rolling gait, with an occasional tack from side to side—that almost fetches him up among the manzanitas—he at length reaches the front of the house. There stopping, and looking up to the roof, he salutes those upon it by removing his hat giving a back-scrape with his foot, ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... 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 ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... lady of France, Who taught little ducklings to dance; When she said, "Tick-a-tack!" they only said, "Quack!" Which grieved that ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear
... all were at their stations. The helm was put on the yacht, and she payed off on the opposite tack to that on which she had before been sailing. As soon as the jib filled, Tom gave two vigorous blows with his hatchet on the hawser, and, as he lifted his hand for a third, it parted. Then came the sharp rattle of the chains as they ran ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... inches wide between each two widths. Instead of reefing in a strong wind, a width is unlaced, so as to reduce the canvas vertically, not horizontally. Two blue spheres commonly adorn the sail. The mast is placed well abaft, and to tack or veer it is only necessary to reverse the sheet. When on a wind the long bow and nose serve as a head-sail. The high, square, piled-up stern, with its antique carving, and the sides with their lattice-work, are wonderful, together with the extraordinary size and ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... "Humph!" said she. "Those men are sailormen. You might see that in a twinklin' of an eye. Sailormen always drive that way, because that is the way they sail ships. They first tack in one direction and then ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... hammer and carried a pair of steps, while Harlow bore a large piece of wallpaper which the two of them proceeded to tack on the wall, much to the amusement of the others, who read the announcement ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... 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 ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... 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 of this kind often led ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... 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 were a dream, and the whole earth ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... 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 we've finished there's not much ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... by the buffet of 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, ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... as strong 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 ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... 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 ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... Head 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 ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... pole masts with leg-of-mutton sails stepped in thwarts. A 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 into ...
— The Migrations of an American Boat Type • Howard I. Chapelle
... cruel; and in England the piece is in acting so far altered that she remains victorious and happy. I must own, I cannot conceive what ideas of art and dramatic connexion those persons have who suppose that we can at pleasure tack a double conclusion to a tragedy; a melancholy one for hard- hearted spectators, and a happy one for souls of a softer mould. After surviving so many sufferings, Lear can only die; and what more truly tragic end for him than to die ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... are an honest young man. You believe in shielding the memory of a dead enemy. You are right. Continue on that tack and you'll do yourself credit. As executor of my late kinsman, I will trouble you to place this cheque for L200 to the credit of the estate, and never to say a word about the sum that was lost. Notes get lost every day; at least they do ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... more than I know; for no ship is always in the same tack. Men change their minds as often as girls; and if you coax the old boy handsomely, when you bid him good-night, my compass to your distaff, he'll let ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... Jesus Christ. Like a vessel that has a raw hand at the helm, you sometimes head one way, and then the puff of wind that fills your sails dies down, or the sails that were flat as a board belly out a little, or you are caught in some current, and round goes the bowsprit on another tack altogether. How many of us are pursuing the objects which we pursued five-and-twenty years ago, if we have numbered so many years? What has become of aims that were everything to us then? We have won some of them, and they have turned out not half as good as we ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... 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
... north-east, and gave the Spaniards the weather-gage. The English did their beat to get to windward, but the Duke, standing close into the land with the whole Armada, maintained his advantage. The English then went about, making a tack seaward, and were soon afterwards assaulted by the Spaniards. A long and spirited action ensued. Howard in his little Ark-Royal—"the odd ship of the world for all conditions"—was engaged at different times with Bertendona, of the Italian squadron, with Alonzo ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... 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 hypothetical marauders. ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... Noble ORSIN, th' hast Great reason to do as thou say'st, And so has ev'ry body here, As well as thou hast, or thy Bear. Others may do as they see good; 275 But if this twig be made of wood That will hold tack, I'll make the fur Fly 'bout the ears of that old cur; And the other mungrel vermin, RALPH, That brav'd us all in his behalf. 280 Thy Bear is safe, and out of peril, Though lugg'd indeed, and wounded very ill; Myself and TRULLA ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... devils of birds now began to find the uproar in the elements, for numbers, both of sea and land kinds, came on board of us. I took notice of some, which happening to be to leeward, turned to windward, like a ship, tack and tack; for they could not fly against it. When they came over the ship they dashed themselves down upon the deck, without attempting to stir till picked up, and when let go again, they would not leave the ship, but endeavoured to hide themselves ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... 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 every ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... 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," ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... 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 the southeast. ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... and quiet the house seemed! Nothing broke the silence but the solemn "tick-tack" of the big clock in the hall, which had been ticking in the same sedate manner since the days when Elsie's grandmother had been a little girl. Feeling her way down the length of the hall, not without an occasional bump against ...
— Under Padlock and Seal • Charles Harold Avery
... 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
... little past six away we steered for home, but with a head wind and rather choppy sea, so there was no help for it but to tack, which made a long trip of it; but to make it short to the reader we reached home about nine p.m., tired, wet, and hungry, for it began to drizzle at sundown. Still, I never enjoyed a trip better than this memorable one of about twenty-five miles, although ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... quiltin' frolics along with you no more, on no account, for you know how Polly Brown and Nancy White—' 'Now don't,' says he, 'now don't, Uncle Sam, say no more about that; if you knowed all you wouldn't say it was my fault; and besides, I have turned right about, I am on t'other tack now, and the long leg, too; I am as steady as a pump bolt now. I intend to settle myself and take a farm.' 'Yes yes, and you could stock it too, by all accounts, pretty well, unless you are much misreported,' says father, 'but it won't do. I knew ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... The following 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
... your powers of invention. You know there's no such story going about or everybody here would have cut me dead. Try another tack." ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... 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, ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... the amount of the tack duty payable by Hay & Co. for that estate?-Not exactly. I think it is somewhere about 130 or 140; but then they have to pay all public burdens, and they have no claim against the proprietor for repairs on the property. They do all the repairs ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... point of burying the first blow my resolution failed. I thought of all the hours of 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 ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... 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 by swoops and dashes, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... flowers. The church bells sounded, and they 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 ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... oh daughter mine!' - Shake her up! Wake her up! Try her with the topsail! 'Alas the day, oh daughter mine! Yon red, red flag is a fearsome sign!' Ho, the bully rover Jack, Reaching on the weather tack, Out upon the ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sailors as the condottiere from the loyal soldier. Let the navigation-laws be enforced first of all, and see that the due proportion of the crews of every ship be native-born. Let the custom-house protections be no longer the farce they are,—where a man who talks of "awlin haft the main tack" is set down as a native of Martha's Vineyard, and his messmate, who couldn't say "peas" without betraying County Cork, is permitted to hail from the interior of Pennsylvania. Let the ship-owners combine (it is for their interest) to do away with the whole ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... 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, putting out their lights at nine o'clock at night,—doing all this, week after week, ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... that they freed her of water,—that she was tight still. They cut away upon the masses of ice; and on the 23d of September, in the evening, she freed herself from her encumbrances, and took an even keel. This was off the west shore of Baffin's Bay, in latitude 67 deg. On the shortest tack she was twelve hundred miles from where Captain Kellett ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... a mistaken impression of Mr. Rogers' sense of humor, for really he has a keen sense of the ridiculous—after five o'clock on week-days and all day Sunday—you might think he would take the opportunity to order me to tack up his card on the Utah office door, inscribed, "We will return when you recoup," and transfer his milking machine to other udders. No, that is where you, old-fashioned reader that you are, have "sized up" Mr. Rogers ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... the great image contemplated the dead ages as calmly as ever, unconscious of the small insect that was fretting at its jaw. Egyptian granite that has defied the storms and earthquakes of all time has nothing to fear from the tack-hammers of ignorant excursionists—highwaymen like this specimen. He failed in his enterprise. We sent a sheik to arrest him if he had the authority, or to warn him, if he had not, that by the laws of Egypt the crime he was ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... said Dickie, in a low whisper; "you will soon hear the tack of a hammer that was never forged of earthly iron, for the stone it was made of was shot from the moon." And in effect Tressilian did immediately hear the light stroke of a hammer, as when a farrier is at work. The singularity of such a sound, in so very lonely a place, made him involuntarily ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... little too rigid; it overlooks the shades and instincts by help of which we are able to tack ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... 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. ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... that direction; but that infernal Internationale is doing a deal of mischief. There is not a trades-unionist in the country who does not know what is going on in France. A handful of irresponsible madmen trying to tack themselves on to the workmen's association—well, surely the men will have more sense than to listen. The congres ouvrier to change its name, and to become the congres revolutionnaire! When I first went to Jackson, Molyneux, and the others, I found they had a sort of ...
— Sunrise • William Black |
