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More "Tacking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... May found us in the river St. Lawrence, between the westernmost point of Anticosti to the north, and Cape Gaspe to the south, in the middle of the channel, surrounded by ships tacking up the stream, bound for Quebec and Montreal. We had plenty of sea-room, as the river was more than ninety miles in breadth, and it is supposed to be full ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... steered shorewards, the other clambering down the rock to meet him. After a brief parley, during which the old fellow closely scrutinized his intending passenger from head to foot, a bargain was struck, and they put forth, tacking diagonally across stream. For Balder, having charged his imagination with castles, warlike chieftains, and beautiful princesses, had finally arrived at the conclusion that the stone house was an enchanter's ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... to him which he had not cooked with his own hands. And so, sauntering out onto the veranda of the hotel, he saw a compact crowd on the other side of the square and the crowd focused on a man who was tacking up a sign. Andrew, still sauntering, joined the crowd, and looking over their heads, he found his own face staring back at him; and, under the picture of that lean, serious face, in huge black type, five thousand dollars reward for ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... retired farther and farther down until their ultimate passage becomes hopeless. If the bill of the independent member reaches a second reading, it may be killed by striking out the enacting clause or by tacking on an obnoxious amendment that makes it repulsive to its former friends. ... To carry out the will of the organization, the speaker declares amendments carried or the contrary by a viva voce vote. Demands for roll-calls are ignored by ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... and chairs covered the long bench, and round it sat the neat-handed little maidens gluing, tacking and trimming, while they sang and chatted at their work as busy and happy as ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... flew at me, and cry'd, I will pinch again, if I please;—papa and mamma says I shall,—and so does nurse; and I don't mind what any body else says.—I waited only for my revenge, till the two former withdrew; when sending the latter for a glass of water, I gave Miss such a glorious tacking, as I believe she has never tasted the like before or since.—In the midst of the fray, I heard nurse running up, which made me hasten what I owed on my own account, to remind her of the favours she had conferred on Lord ...
— Barford Abbey • Susannah Minific Gunning
... which may be called his "Last Blast," there is as sharp speaking as any in the "First Blast" itself. He is of the same opinion to the end, you see, although he has been obliged to cloak and garble that opinion for political ends. He has been tacking indeed, and he has indeed been seeking the favour of a queen; but what man ever sought a queen's favour with a more virtuous purpose, or with as little courtly policy? The question of consistency is delicate, and must be made plain. Knox never changed his opinion ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... crop, the shade required to blanch the stalks being much less. When only a few short rows are grown in a private garden, screens of lath may be made by driving stakes on each side of the row and tacking lath on, leaving spaces of an inch or more for the light to enter; or each head may be wrapped in paper, or a tile drain pipe may be set over the plant. In fact, any material that will exclude the light will render the stalks ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... looking at the ships and steamboats making 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 Stobbles, and to bring home silks and shawls without end for the decoration ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... down, but 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 ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and 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 before or just after wearing, the ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... 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 ...
— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... 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, he found barracks where he is leaving ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... of these boats comes nearer and nearer to us, tacking to perfection. Through our glasses we already seem to see the stalwart figure of the pilot standing in the stern. On his brow he wears a storm-defying cap, the badge of the warrior of the waves; the loose shirt, the ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... being desirous to get rid of his visitors, took an effectual method by tacking from the shore; our friends then departed apparently in high glee at the harvest they had reaped. They paddled away very swiftly, and would, doubtless, soon reach the shore though it was ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... 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 black material over ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... unfortunate circumstance, as there was little doubt but that she would prove a British cruiser; and, if not, they had equally reason to expect that she would assist in their capture. She had evidently perceived the two schooners, and had made all sail, tacking every quarter of an hour so as to keep her relative position. The Enterprise, who had also made out the frigate, to attract her attention, though not within range of the Avenger, commenced firing with ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... thought that ship alone carried force, and that the others could only be carrying the pretense of it. The enemy worked to get to windward of our fleet, and our flagship, which was an excellent sailer, did the same; but on tacking, the latter threw a rope to the galley of Don Alonso Enriquez and towed it a short distance. That allowed the enemy time to get to windward, and they came down upon our fleet to attack it in the following order: their flagship came first and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... that I thought we could only go along with the wind straight behind us, but he showed me how we could sail with the wind on either side, and sometimes with it almost facing us, by what he called tacking, which I found meant that, if the wind came from straight before us, say at a certain point in front, we could get there at last by zigzagging through the water, now half a mile to the left, now half a mile to the right, a common way of progressing which brought us nearer ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... looking man pinched the Fresh Air Fund, box and all. You know I'm not much for the bat cave, and to avoid such after-complications as patrol wagons and things, I blew the bunch and started up street. I guess the wind must have been against me, as I was tacking. ...
— Billy Baxter's Letters • William J. Kountz, Jr.
... 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 as ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... 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 must be John Penelles' boat. To be sure it be John's ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... full frontal attack on this hill was liable to failure, so on this occasion he followed his usual plan of making diagonal movements, crossing the road repeatedly from right to left and left to right, after the fashion of a sailing ship tacking against the wind, and halting about every twenty yards to rest and take breath. The distance he was to go was regulated, not so much by his powers of endurance as by the various objects by the wayside—the ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... 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 ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... is a poet's fate! Or who indeed would be a laureate, That must or fall or turn with every change of state? Poor bard! if thy hot zeal for loyal Wem[29a] Forbids thy tacking, sing his requiem; Sing something, prithee, to ensure thy thumb; Nothing but conscience strikes a poet dumb. Conscience, that dull chimera of the schools, A learned imposition upon fools, Thou, Dryden, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... shirt she was making for some charitable society and drew out some tacking threads with a loud noise which relieved her. Lady Winterbourne's old and ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... them and Europe save rolling waves and wave-crests like white plumes. The sea was of a diaphanous blue that shaded through a bold steel blue and a lucent blue enamel to a rich ultramarine which absorbed and healed the office-worn mind. The sails of tacking sloops were a-blossom; sea-gulls swooped; a tall surf-fisherman in red flannel shirt and shiny black hip-boots strode out into the water and cast with a long curve of his line; cumulus clouds, whose pure white was shaded with a delicious golden ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... 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 Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... Baffled by the unyielding wind off Cape Horn, sailing six weeks on opposite tacks, and ending just where they began, weather-bound in sight of the gloomy Horn. Then the terrors of a land-locked bay, and a lee shore; the ship tacking, writhing, twisting, to weather one jutting promontory; the sea and safety is on the other side of it; land and destruction on this—the attempt, the hope, the failure; then the stout-hearted, skillful captain would try ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... the two schooners were abreast, tacking together on the long leeward reaches and the short windward ones, as they made across the ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... had supper, thank you. Did you say there was goose? Thanks... yes. I've remembered the old days.... It's pleasant, young man! You sail on the sea, you have no worries, and [In an excited tone of voice] do you remember the joy of tacking? Is there a sailor who doesn't glow at the memory of that manoeuvre? As soon as the word is given and the whistle blown and the crew begins to go up—it's as if an electric spark has run through them all. From the captain to the ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... the route offered, they arrived, as we have said, at 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
... about thicky wreck. Likely as not 'twas the one I seed all yesterday tacking about: and if so be as I be right, a pretty lot of lubbers she must have had aboard. Jonathan, the coast-guard, came down to Lizard Town this morning, and said he seed a big vessel nigh under the cliffs toward midnight, or fancied he seed her: but fustly Jonathan's a buffle-head, ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Objectionable in itself, on account of the uncertainty and continual changes which it tended to introduce into legislation, this system of temporary laws derived its worst character from the facilities which it afforded to the practice of 'tacking' ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Our little boat confronted the gale fearlessly; with sails spread and ropes taut, she seemed to sit upon the wind. Now she swirled in the billows, now she spring upward on a gigantic wave, only to be driven down with angry howl and hiss. Down came the mainsail. Tacking and jibbing, we wrestled with opposing winds that drove us from side to side with impetuous fury. Our hearts beat fast, and our hands trembled with excitement, not fear, for we had the hearts of vikings, and we knew that our skipper was master ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... 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 old sailor, who ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... silent moment. The colts, topping a low dune, felt the pressure of the fills on the down-grade, and the nigh horse broke, turning the front wheel into a tangle of sage. "Mr. Tisdale," she cried a little tremulously, "do you think this is a catboat, tacking into a squall? Please, ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... position when first he saw her, Kirkwood could have fancied she was tacking out of the mouth of the Medway; but he judged that, leaving the Thames' mouth, she had tacked to starboard until well-nigh within hail of Sheerness. Now, having presumably, gone about, she was standing out toward the Nore, boring doggedly into ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... upper sails. I caught a glimpse of the fore-sheet, however, as the clew was first flapping violently, and then was brought under the restraint of its own proper, powerful purchase. The spanker had been hauled out previously, to help the ship in tacking. ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... sleep, for the air being hot a number of us slept beneath the trees. We safely got past the fourth and last of the rapids, floating out of a little canal into a large lake. The wind was still in the west, so we had to keep tacking, and it was afternoon when we passed Cornwall and steered for the south side of the St Lawrence. Allan was pointing out to Grannie what was British and what was American; she remarked, on comparing the houses on the two banks, 'That gin Canadians wad build houses ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... occupation,—some two hundred red cards a foot long and half as wide, a surveyor's field notebook for the preservation of miscellaneous information, tags for the tagging of canvassed buildings, tacks for the tacking of the same, the necessary tack-hammer, the medium soft black pencil, above all the awesome legal "Commission," impressively signed and sealed, wherein none other than our weighty nation's chief himself ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... republic. The February revolution had forthwith proclaimed direct and universal suffrage in place of the old law. The bourgeois republic could not annul this act. They had to content themselves with tacking to it the limitation a six months' residence. The old organization of the administrative law, of municipal government, of court procedures of the army, etc., remained untouched, or, where the constitution did change them, the change affected their index, not their ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... at ten o'clock, while the workmen were still tacking down the fireproof carpets in headquarters upstairs, and before even the advance guard of the armies had begun to arrive, the eye of the clerk was caught by a tall young man rapidly ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... "I was only tacking up my new banner," she answered crossly. "Here, Tib, put the hammer away. What are you going to do, Isobel?" Gyp's tone asked, rather: "What in the world have you found ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... the task of reaching the secure haven of the smoking-room was one of danger and difficulty; while the return voyage to the shabby little bed-room in the shabby little street could be accomplished in safety only by frequent tacking and much skilful pilotage, to avoid running foul of various rocks and quicksands by ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... excursion. They were waiting for the Paulsbergs, who were late. Irgens was growing impatient and sarcastic: Would it not be better to send the yacht up for them? When finally Paulsberg and his wife arrived, they all went aboard and were soon tacking out the fiord. ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... wind blowing. And thankful I am, and every mother's child of us, that Dorothy is approaching this room with her dust-pan and brush. Dorothy, I have a nice little sum for you to do. How many snippets of green and black silk go to a dust-pan? Count them, and subtract all the tacking-thread, and Dulce's pins." ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... at the thought of at last seeing one of those mutinies he had read so much about. But he contented himself with having a great deal to say about tacking on this leg and on that, and about how many points he could sail into the wind, and a lot of other gibberish that kept Reddy guessing, until the boat had gone far ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... to the south to reach the island, which was now concealed by a great mist. Another island was in sight from the poop, at a distance of eight leagues. Afterwards, from sunrise until dark, they were tacking to reach the land against a strong wind and head-sea. At the time of repeating the Salve, which is just before dark, some of the men saw a light to leeward, and it seemed that it must be on the island they first saw yesterday. ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... 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 ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... masts to their upright position. He then inserted the iron keys which kept them in their place, and hoisted the sails. By this time the boat had drifted to the lower extremity of the island; so, bracing her sharp up, he stood away across the river. Tacking before he reached the swift channel, which flowed close in shore, he laid the boat's course up the stream. The wind was blowing fresh, and, notwithstanding the contending force of the current, the boat ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... 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 ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... poor creature for a master, indeed, if much thinking were wanting in so simple a matter as tacking or veering. No—no—your real sea-dog has no occasion for much thinking, when he has ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... The tacking of the two schooners was an act as ill-judged as it was insubordinate, for which Chauncey was in no wise responsible. His bearing up was certainly an error, which unfortunately lent itself to the statement, contemporaneously made ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... of choosing seized her, and put her into a tremble of apprehension. And then, as it were mechanically, she murmured (but very clearly), tacking the words without a pause on to a sentence about the strikes: "Oh, I've lost my handkerchief, unless I've left it in your shop! It must have dropped out of ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... investigation, the wool and its needles were stowed away in a basket under the chair, in order that the lady might accept the invitation of the gentleman to walk with him on the deck; and as the wind had freshened by this time, and walking in skirts was like tacking in a stiff breeze, the gentleman offered his arm to the lady, and thus ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine
... you may put two each side, but not more, and you must be sure that the strain is even on both sides. Don't pull too much; for next you must do the same with the other end which should bear half of the whole stretch. Do just the same now with the two sides. Now continue stretching and tacking,—each side of the middle tacks on each end, then on each side, then to the ends again, and so gradually working towards the corners, when as you put in the last tacks the wrinkles will disappear, if you have done your work well. Don't hurry and ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... 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 ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... laps about it. The low-lying shore, the little uniform houses of the fishing-village, and the distant town are all shining in wonderful beauty. Out of the soft mist that hovers on the western horizon a fishing-boat comes gliding now and again. Tacking boldly, it steers towards the harbor. The water roars gaily past its bow as it shoots in through the narrow harbor entrance. The sail drops silently at the same moment. The fishermen swing their hats in joyous greeting, and ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... relating to the liberties of Dissenters. On the other hand, he indignantly resented the unworthy attempt of the more extreme Tories to force the occasional Conformity Act through the House of Lords by 'tacking' it to a money bill. He expressed the utmost displeasure against anything like bitterness and invective; he had been warmly in favour of a moderate comprehension of Dissenters, had voted that Tillotson should be prolocutor when the scheme was submitted to Convocation, and had himself ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... But this is how it happened. Lady Petherwin was very capricious; when she was not foolishly kind she was unjustly harsh. A great many are like it, never thinking what a good thing it would be, instead of going on tacking from side to side between favour and cruelty, to keep to a mean line of common justice. And so we quarrelled, and she, being absolute mistress of all her wealth, destroyed her will that was in my favour, and made another, leaving me nothing but the fag-end of the lease of the town-house ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... I count the passage round from Halifax as nothing. I had been kept in the cabin, it is true, but our work had been of the most active kind. The Sterling must have brought up, and been got under way, between fifty and a hundred times; and as for tacking, waring, chappelling round, and box-hauling, we had so much of it by the channel pilots, that the old barky scarce knew which end was going foremost. In that day, a ship did not get from the Forelands ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... Tacking from corner to corner, now and then hitching up his trousers, to give freer play to his feet, he at length comes out upon the street which fronts upon the bay. In his week's cruising about the town he has acquired some knowledge of its topography, and knows well ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... lot of things unpacked on the table; she had laid clean newspapers on the mantel-shelf—a slab on two pegs over the fireplace—and put the little wooden clock in the centre and some of the ornaments on each side, and was tacking a strip of vandyked American oil-cloth round the rough edge of ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... the 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 ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... of 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 thought clearly on the mind of the reader; it leaves him confused, ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... flitting and fleering And the vessel was tacking and veering; Bravo! Captain Findlay, Who foretold a fair wind Of a constant mind; For he knew which way the wind ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... this morning I went on deck and found we were a considerable distance outside the Kangertluksoak Fjord. We were much nearer the entrance for the greater part of yesterday, but a strong contrary wind kept us tacking to and fro the whole day, till the darkness made it impossible to reach Hebron, which lies in a little side bay to the north of the great fjord. There were many large icebergs around us, and we passed quite close to some floating fragments, which proved to be great ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe
... nearer view. A large extent of water presently became visible within side; and although the entrance seemed to be very narrow, and there were in it strong ripplings like breakers, I was induced to steer in at half-past one, the ship being close upon a wind and every man ready for tacking at a moment's warning. The soundings were irregular between 6 and 12 fathoms until we got four miles within the entrance, when they shoaled quick to 23/4. We then tacked; and having a strong tide in our ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... enough to gain for him any considerable national distinction. But that he made a good impression on the House appears from an extract of a letter I lately received from my classmate, Rev. Walter Mitchell, the author of the spirited and famous poem, "Tacking Ship off Fire Island." He says: "I heard your uncle, Mr. Eliot, say that when your father went to Congress the Southern members said, 'Where has this man been all his life, and why have we never heard of him? With us a man of his ability would be ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... bands stationed on the three decks of the ship at such times, but particular men of those bands are also assigned to particular duties. Also, in tacking ship, reefing top-sails, or "coming to," every man of a frigate's five-hundred-strong, knows his own special place, and is infallibly found there. He sees nothing else, attends to nothing else, and will stay there till grim death or an epaulette ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... was fitful. They traveled unsteadily, too, tacking back and across the estuary, because the breeze was so light, and no longer astern. Ten miles down the mouth of the stream they beheld an island where huge sheets of ice were piled one upon another, in an overhanging ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... from twenty-four to eight fathoms: the helm was instantly put down, and when head to wind, we had only five fathoms. While in stays the water was observed to wash on a rock not a hundred yards to leeward of us, on which we must infallibly have struck, had we bore up instead of tacking. ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... her cousin and the cousin replied with a nod and a significant glance toward a certain quarter of the same room in which they stood. Raising her eyebrows to show she understood the widow moved toward the place that had been indicated. From her path the gaily clad figures retreated, eddying and tacking in uncertain flight away from the jingle ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... nail her up against this big stub," he said to Bobby, tacking away with the handle of his heavy pocket-knife; "and then you can get a rest over that ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... at once placed at the top of the mast of Paulo da Gama; for so Vasco da Gama commanded. Discharging all their artillery, they loosened the sails, and went beating to windward on the river of Lisbon, tacking until they came to anchor at Belen, where they remained three days waiting for a wind to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... was tacking up some tarlatan at a window to keep the midges out. Rita offered to help her, as she had done for the past ten years. Nan's "No, thanks," cut ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... wish," 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 depends ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... you, Alfred looked like a grown man; coming towards you he looked more natural. Wherever there appeared a bunch or angle that seemed out of place, Lacy endeavored to modify the over abundance by tacking on one of the ornaments taken from the old uniform of which a great number were used. The shoulders of the jacket seemed to fit to suit Lacy, therefore she used the epaulets from the shoulders of the old soldier's ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... other folk, and fronted on a street than which nothing could have been more commonplace or less interesting. Its one redeeming feature in my eyes was its uncompromising steepness; nothing that ran on wheels ever ran that way, but toiled painfully to the top, tacking from side to side, forever and forever, ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... 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 ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... 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
... but as it came up, I saw by its motions that it was another antelope. It approached within a hundred yards, arched its graceful neck, and gazed intently. I leveled at the white spot on its chest, and was about to fire when it started off, ran first to one side and then to the other, like a vessel tacking against a wind, and at last stretched away at full speed. Then it stopped again, looked curiously behind it, and trotted up as before; but not so boldly, for it soon paused and stood gazing at me. I fired; it leaped upward and fell upon its tracks. Measuring ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... work, all around, whether blinding and topping off the half-wild ponies or throwing them and tacking cold-wrought "cowboy" shoes to their flint-like feet, and more than one enthusiast came away limping or picking the loose skin from a bruised hand. Yet through it all the dominant note of dare-devil hilarity ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... morning wore away he went out into the hills to look about him. The men were all busily enough engaged in chipping out the shallow troughs of their "discoveries," piling supporting rocks about their corner and side stakes, or tacking up laboriously composed mining "notices." They paid scant attention to the man who passed them a hundred yards away. Peter visited his own four claims. On one he found a small group anxiously examining the indications of the lead. He did not join ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... directly. My lads, there is no time for words—I am going to club-haul the ship, for there is no room to wear. The only chance you have of safety is to be cool, watch my eye, and execute my orders with precision. Away to your stations for tacking ship. Hands by the best bower anchor. Mr Wilson, attend below with the carpenter and his mates, ready to cut away the cable at the moment that I give the order. Silence, there, fore and aft. Quarter-master, keep her full again for stays. Mind you ease the helm down when I tell ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... stood and regarded Cytherea as if she had been a ship tacking into a harbour, nearly stopping the mill ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... shouted the master-pilot, who was standing at the helm. "We'll have a job in this sea, but we must try and get hold of her in tacking, and you, Victor, throw yourself into her rigging as soon as you get the chance ... bring the boat ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... the Captain kept on "tacking" across the harbor, going to and fro, for more than an hour, enjoying every minute of it just as much as the children did. When at length, however, the children began to quiet down a little (the sharp edge of novelty being worn off), the Captain ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... Jemmy," said one of the men to his nearest mate, "talk about 'tacking the enemy, if wrong's happened to our young gentleman, all I can say is, as I hopes it's orders to land every night to burn willages ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... 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 ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... 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 if I had any business ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... camp, made as above, calls for fifteen bits of timber, posts, rods, etc., a few shingle nails and some sixpenny wrought nails, with a paper of six-ounce tacks. Nails and tacks will weigh about five ounces and are always useful. In tacking the cloth, turn the raw edge in until you have four thicknesses, as a single thickness is apt to tear. If you desire to strike camp, it takes about ten minutes to draw and save all the nails and tacks, fold the cloth smoothly and deposit the whole in your knapsack. If you wish to get up a ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... misty darkness, close inshore, North-west, South-west, and ever Westward strained The little ships of England. All night long, As down the coast the reddening beacons leapt, The crackle and lapping splash of tacking keels, The bo'suns' low sharp whistles and the whine Of ropes, mixing with many a sea-bird's cry Disturbed the darkness, waking vague swift fears Among the mighty hulks of Spain that lay Nearest, then fading through the mists inshore North-west, then growing again, but farther down Their ranks to ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... bergs. He therefore put his helm down and felt his way through the weather by short boards, and so, with the most of his men stationed forward to keep a look-out, fenced, as it were, with the danger, steering and tacking, until by God's grace the fog lifted, and the wind blew ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... day. He was slowly turning to obey its summons, when his attention was attracted by the appearance of a vessel; and he again paused in curiosity and suspense. It was a pinnace of large size, and sailed slowly over the smooth waters, frequently tacking to catch the light breeze, which scarcely swelled the canvass. The waves curled, as if in sport, around the prow, leaving a sinuous track behind, as it came up through the channel, north of Castle Island, like a solitary bird, skimming the surface of the deep, and spreading ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... happy, rapidly visited door after door, shouted, "Hey, Billy!" and proceeded to the next one. He was getting pugnacious at his lack of success when he espied Mr. Billy Williams tacking along the accidental street as if he owned it. Mr. Williams was executing fancy steps and was trying to sing many songs ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... the morning, he found that the wind had shifted contrary during the night, and that the frigate was close hauled, darting through the smooth water with her royals set. At ten o'clock the master proposed tacking the ship, and the first lieutenant went down to report ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... they when, after an hour's tacking against the land breeze, the goleta got inside the estuary of the stream, and working up, brought to by ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... my 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, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... heard the master say to Mr Stormcock when the captain had disappeared. "The corvette was on the right of our line when we bombarded Odessa; and I recollect she missed stays when tacking, and pretty ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the "Battle of Scheveningen." The action began at six in the morning of July 30, 1653. Tromp had the weather gage, but Monk, instead of awaiting his onslaught, tacked towards him and actually cut through the Dutch line. Tromp countered by tacking also, in order to keep his windward position, and this maneuver was repeated three times by Tromp and Monk, and the two great fleets sailed in great zigzag courses down the Dutch coast a distance of forty miles, with bitter fighting going on at close range between the two lines. ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... 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 106 ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... they were straightway marched to prison, and it was thought that no other frigate would venture near the shifting dunes where she had laid her skeleton, as many a good ship had done before and has done since. It was November, and ugly weather was shutting in, when a three-decker, that had been tacking off shore and that flew the red flag, was seen to yaw wildly while reefing sail and drift toward land with a broken tiller. No warning signal was raised on the bluffs; not a hand was stirred to rescue. Those who saw the accident watched with sullen ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... special 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 ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... spread and ropes taut, she seemed to sit upon the wind. Now she swirled in the billows, now she spring upward on a gigantic wave, only to be driven down with angry howl and hiss. Down came the mainsail. Tacking and jibbing, we wrestled with opposing winds that drove us from side to side with impetuous fury. Our hearts beat fast, and our hands trembled with excitement, not fear, for we had the hearts of vikings, and we knew that our skipper ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... people were seen on the beach, who appeared to be hostile; as well as because he had yet no news of the army, without which he had orders not to do anything, and he had no forces for that. On that account the fleet kept tacking to windward on one tack and another for the space of three days. But at the end of that time, a felucca was seen to cross the bar of Lingayen headed toward the flagship. The father vicar of the said village ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... a general laugh all round. But the wind had set dead in the south-east again. There was no room for tacking in the narrow inlet. To get out we should have to tow the schooner a mile against the wind,—among ice too. Clearly we must lay here till the wind favored. We concluded, however, to change our position for one a little lower down, and nearer the middle of the cove. ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... 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, he ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... third day the Lizard was under our lee, Where the Ajax and Thunderer joined us at sea, But what with foul weather and tacking about, When we sighted the Fleet ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... that! Ease her, Dick! It's blowing pretty fresh. We'll have a tough time tacking home against such a breeze as this. May be it'll change ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... the long bench, and round it sat the neat-handed little maidens gluing, tacking and trimming, while they sang and chatted at their work as busy and happy as a hive ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... all the provinces he had feared for his master's son. Then, not knowing where to hide him, he had come along the coasts in a sloop, and for three days Iddibal had been tacking about in the gulf and watching the ramparts. At last, that evening, as the environs of Khamon seemed to be deserted, he had passed briskly through the channel and landed near the arsenal, the entrance to the ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... sail; but counting already at ten o'clock from fifteen to eighteen of the enemy's ships, besides several frigates, I ordered our squadron to form immediately the line of battle, in the best manner possible, on the larboard tack, to maintain the weather gage. In tacking, the ships Principe, Conde-de-Regla, and Oriente, fell so much to leeward, that they were unable to join in the line without the risk of being cut off by the enemy, that now, but at a short distance and under a press of sail, met us in the most regular order: ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez. Vol II • Sir John Ross
... THE THREAD.—Except for tacking, your thread should never be more than from 40 to 50 c/m. long.[1] If the thread is in skeins, it does not matter which end you begin with, but if you use reeled cotton, thread your needle with the end that points to the reel, when you ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... Seamew, tacking for the channel into Big Wreck Cove, wings full-spread, skimming the heaving blue of the summer sea, looked like a huge member of the tern family. From Wreckers' Head and the other sand bluffs guarding this roadstead ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... to pass on her weather-beam. The measure was 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 ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... right," was the reply. Immediately after this short dialogue the captain proceeded to give the orders for tacking in a stentorian voice, as the wind ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... 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
... as we caught sight of The Mountains, we ran up our flag. It was about noon, and the skipper calculated on dropping anchor in the channel by sundown, at the farthest. And so we should, but the wind hauled, and we couldn't lay our course. Tacking is slow work, especially all in sight of home. About ten o'clock in the evening we made Wimple's Creek. Then we had the tide in our favor, and so drifted into the channel. Our bounty wasn't quite out, or we should have gone straight in to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... across the landscape—their swift flight reduced by distance to a leisurely 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. ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... House 47 I gathered together the legion paraphernalia of this new occupation,—some two hundred red cards a foot long and half as wide, a surveyor's field notebook for the preservation of miscellaneous information, tags for the tagging of canvassed buildings, tacks for the tacking of the same, the necessary tack-hammer, the medium soft black pencil, above all the awesome legal "Commission," impressively signed and sealed, wherein none other than our weighty nation's chief himself did expressly authorize me to search out, enter, and question ad libitum. All ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... sing a hymn which he had composed. The two lines of poetry were undoubtedly his. Furthermore, although he had been a chapel-goer all his life, he muddled, invariably, passages from the Bible. They had no definite meaning for him, and there was nothing, consequently, to prevent his tacking the end of one verse to the beginning of another. Mr. Snale, too, continually "failed to see." Where he got the phrase I do not know, but he liked it, and was always repeating it. However, I had no external evidence ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... to, came first, when Fletcher succeeded in doing what no one had ever done before. There can be no doubt that the lateen sail, which goes back at least to the early Egyptians, had the germ of a fore-and-after in it. But the germ was never evolved into a strong type fit for tacking; and no one before Fletcher ever seems to have thought it possible to lay a course at all unless the wind was somewhere abaft the beam. So England can fairly claim this one epoch-making nautical invention, which ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... I have in recollection, Paul Tichlorne had been mooning all morning in my study over a current scientific review. This left me free to my own affairs, and I was out among my roses when Lloyd Inwood arrived. Clipping and pruning and tacking the climbers on the porch, with my mouth full of nails, and Lloyd following me about and lending a hand now and again, we fell to discussing the mythical race of invisible people, that strange and vagrant people the traditions of which have come down to us. Lloyd warmed to the talk in his nervous, ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... Mate would put the windlass in gear and set everything in readiness for breaking out the anchor; but when we saw no tug putting off, and no harbour cat-boats tacking out from the shore with sailors' bags piled in the bows, he would undo the morning's work and put us to 'stand-by' jobs on the rigging. There were other loaded ships in as bad a plight as we. The Drumeltan ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... 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)
... clear about thicky wreck. Likely as not 'twas the one I seed all yesterday tacking about: and if so be as I be right, a pretty lot of lubbers she must have had aboard. Jonathan, the coast-guard, came down to Lizard Town this morning, and said he seed a big vessel nigh under the cliffs toward midnight, ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Galloping to the grass plot on which we were standing she suddenly stopped short and deposited Lapworth ignominiously at our feet. The other animal followed suit, but did not succeed in clearing itself, and after some tacking Bob and the boatswain got under weigh again and steered for the "White Hart," where they ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... 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 ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... 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 dives ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... Tom in regard 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 close ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... 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
... the wind is easy enough. It is in tacking and beating up against the wind that skill and care are required. Jibing, that is changing the boom and sail when tacking, requires the greatest care, particularly if the wind is stiff, and beginners should never be permitted to ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... before us; and, the ship promising to weather it, we held on our way. It was just ten o'clock as we approached this cape, and we found a passage westward that actually led into the ocean! All hands gave three cheers as we became certain of this fact, the ship tacking as soon as far enough ahead, and setting seaward ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... danger." He went back feeling better, but the storm increased his alarm. Disconsolate and unassisted, he managed to stagger to the forecastle again. The ancient mariners were swearing as ever. "Mary," he said to his sympathetic wife, as he crawled into his berth after tacking across a wet deck, "Mary, ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... is approaching this room with her dust-pan and brush. Dorothy, I have a nice little sum for you to do. How many snippets of green and black silk go to a dust-pan? Count them, and subtract all the tacking-thread, and Dulce's pins." ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... Erica made her way to the work room where Elspeth was tacking frilling into one of Rose's dresses. The old woman started up with a quick exclamation when she ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... there? Why, I was sent, sir, by the Company of Undertakers, says he, and they were employed by the honest gentleman, who is executor to the good Doctor departed; and our rascally porter, I believe, is fallen fast asleep with the black cloth and sconces, or he had been here, and we might have been tacking up by this time. Sir, says I, pray be advis'd by a friend, and make the best of your speed out of my doors, for I hear my wife's voice, (which by the by, is pretty distinguishable) and in that corner of the room stands a good cudgel, which somebody has felt ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... the land, though a gentle northerly breeze is on the water, just enough to fill the sails of Lord Mavourneen's little yacht, so that by making many short tacks he may beat up to the mouth of the Black Sea before sunset. But his excellency the British ambassador is in no hurry; he would go on tacking in his little yawl to all eternity of nautical time, with vast satisfaction, rather than be bored and worried and harrowed by the predestinating servants of Allah, at the palace of his majesty the commander of the faithful. Even Fate, the universal Kismet, procrastinates ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... required impetus, and the direction to be given to his canoe to effect it, he sharply bid Claud be on his guard, and sent the light craft like an arrow into the boiling eddies before him. And now, by sudden and powerful shoves, he was seen shooting obliquely up one rapid; tacking with the quickness of light, and darting off zigzag among the rocks and eddies towards another, which was in turn surmounted; while the boat was forced, surging and bounding forward, with increasing impetus, now up and now athwart the rushing currents, till he had gained a resting-place ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... steered parallel to—"with"—the French, who had the wind nearly abeam. The mischief was that the ships ahead of him in passing were successively more and more distant from the enemy, and if they too, after tacking, steered with the latter, they would never get any nearer. The impasse is clear. Other measures doubtless would enable an admiral to range his fleet parallel to the enemy at any chosen distance, by taking ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... about town.' Merely say, 'written to be spoken at Drury Lane.' To-morrow I dine at Copet. Saturday I strike tents for Italy. This evening, on the lake in my boat with Mr. Hobhouse, the pole which sustains the mainsail slipped in tacking, and struck me so violently on one of my legs (the worst, luckily) as to make me do a foolish thing, viz. to faint—a downright swoon; the thing must have jarred some nerve or other, for the bone is not injured, and hardly painful (it is six hours since), ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... set out toward the Old Forest, which lies beyond the mountains that are visible upon the other side of the plain stretching out before Lustadt. At the same time other troopers rode in many directions along the highways and byways of Lutha, tacking placards upon trees and fence posts and beside the doors of every ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... be sure, our course had now turned, and we were setting in our first direction. In this manner, after tacking to the right and left and putting backwards and forwards during the greater part of two hours, we at length reached the little landing, on which the assembled party ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... so does nurse; and I don't mind what any body else says.—I waited only for my revenge, till the two former withdrew; when sending the latter for a glass of water, I gave Miss such a glorious tacking, as I believe she has never tasted the like before or since.—In the midst of the fray, I heard nurse running up, which made me hasten what I owed on my own account, to remind her of the favours she had conferred on Lord Eggom and her brother.—If such a termagant ...
— Barford Abbey • Susannah Minific Gunning
... ungovernable spirits, full of indescribable fun and mischief, and making indescribable uproar. John has been by no means the least merry of the party, and seeing a game at "my lady's toilet" going on yesterday evening, could not resist tacking himself to its tail and being dragged through as many passages and round as many windings as Pemmy ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... 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 spy-glass showed the people there ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... from all these facts! They may be slow-moving ponderous facts. They may be contradictory and inconsistent. What that moves ever is consistent? But like a fleet tacking to sea, though the course shift and veer, it is ever forward. Forward whither—do you ask ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... bluewater—nothing between them and Europe save rolling waves and wave-crests like white plumes. The sea was of a diaphanous blue that shaded through a bold steel blue and a lucent blue enamel to a rich ultramarine which absorbed and healed the office-worn mind. The sails of tacking sloops were a-blossom; sea-gulls swooped; a tall surf-fisherman in red flannel shirt and shiny black hip-boots strode out into the water and cast with a long curve of his line; cumulus clouds, whose pure white was shaded with a delicious golden tone, were baronial above; and out on the sky-line ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... she slowly went back to the house; and yet more, when her aunt set her to tacking her stockings together by two ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... 4 PM. Saw a Sloop. Gave Chase but the Weather being Calm was forced to Gett out Our Oars. fired our Bow Chase to bring her too, but we tacking about and the people in Confusion, Night Coming on, it being very Foggy, Coud not Speak to her. by her Course she was bound to the Northw'd. Lost Sight of Our prize. The two Englishman that were taken prisoners By the Spanish privateer Signed ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... 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 before ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... apparently to the complete satisfaction 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 ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... day's sail was against a light, ominously warm head-wind, and we only made any way at all by keeping up a complicated system of tacking. The start had not been an early one, so darkness found us but little advanced on our voyage, and we passed the night in a rough shanty, on beds of fern-leaves, wrapped in our red blankets. Tired as we were, none of us could sleep much. The air was dry and parched; every now and then ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... mind easy, cutaneous disorders, such as love, etc., shall never kill a patient of mine with a stomach like yours. So, now to cure you!" And away went the spherical doctor, with his hands behind him, not up and down the room, but slanting and tacking, like a knight on a chess-board. He had not made many steps before, turning his upper globule, without affecting his lower, he hurled back, in a cold ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... 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
... with the block-house nigh, The two fair rivers, the flakes thereby, And, tacking to windward, low and crank, The little shallop from Strawberry Bank; And he rose in his stirrups and looked abroad Over land and ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... I heard of this vessel and the remembrance of it always haunted me; what eventually became of her I never learned; at any rate: he never reached home, and I suppose she is still regularly tacking twice in the twenty-four hours somewhere off Desolate Island, or the ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... I have taught in the second rule above, should be needlessly converted into a compound word, either by tacking its parts together with the hyphen, or by uniting them without a hyphen; for, in general, a phrase is one thing, and a word is an other: and they ought to be kept as distinct as possible.[113] But, when a whole phrase takes the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... from the atmosphere. If it begins to fall, it can easily steer itself upward by means of its tail, till the motion it had acquired is nearly spent, when it must be renewed by a few more strokes of the wings. On alighting, a bird expands its wings and tail fully against the air, as a ship, in tacking round, backs her sails, in order that they may meet with ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... glory of the day. If one could see nothing, it was good to be there to hear the shouting—one would understand the better when Tonio should be taking his bit of supper and free to talk—for he was no good to his old mother now, with watching the tacking and the people. And one might as well be dead as to stay far off in Burano on a day like this! Cielo, but the bells and the shouting were divine! It made one ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... our journey was the pull up the long mountain road, ascending zig-zag, as sailors make way against a head-wind, by tacking. I forget the name of the pretty little group of houses—it did not amount to a village—buried in trees, where we got our four horses and two postilions, for the work was severe. I can only designate ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... The rest sit here under hatches; reverend Petion with his grey hair, angry Buzot, suspicious Louvet, brave young Barbaroux, and others. They have escaped from Quimper, in this sad craft; are now tacking and struggling; in danger from the waves, in danger from the English, in still worse danger from the French;—banished by Heaven and Earth to the greasy belly of this Scotch skipper's Merchant-vessel, unfruitful Atlantic raving round. They are for Bourdeaux, if peradventure ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... was not all. This bill for the civil and diplomatic service, being thus amended by tacking the Military Academy to it, was sent back by us to the House of Representatives, where its length of tail was to be still much further increased. That house had before it several subjects for provision, and for appropriation, upon which it ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... 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 ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Agony. "All I have to do is cut the threads where the top is tacked on to the foundation. It's really two pairs of bloomers." She was already cutting the tacking threads with her ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... matinee 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 ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... promoted from the steerage to the after cabin were in the dark in regard to their duty, though in these instances the parties had a general idea of what was required of them. But it was necessary to have the crew ready to work together, for the seaman who had hauled on the weather-brace in tacking was now an officer, and the stations of many were new ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... twenty-four to eight fathoms: the helm was instantly put down, and when head to wind, we had only five fathoms. While in stays the water was observed to wash on a rock not a hundred yards to leeward of us, on which we must infallibly have struck, had we bore up instead of tacking. ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... these were earned. Nightly, this river of girls flows down Oxford Street, to return in an hour or two, when the human tide can be seen flowing in the contrary direction. Meantime, men of all ages and conditions were skilfully tacking upon this river, itching to quench the thirst from which they suffered. It needed all the efforts of the guardian angels, in whose existence Mavis had been taught to believe, to guide the component parts of this stream from the oozy marshland, ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... could bring our broadside to bear upon them; but the moment we passed a battery, it was re-animated, and a constant, heavy fire kept up from all that we could not point our guns at. We suffered most when wearing or tacking; it was then I most sensibly felt the want of another frigate. At half-past four, the wind inclining to the northward, I made the signal for the bombs and gunboats to retire from action, and, immediately after, the signal to ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... and when we got there Raffles would pass on. I could see no soul in sight, no glimmer in the windows. But Raffles had my arm, and on we went without talking about it. Sharp to the left on the Notting Hill side, sharper still up Silver Street, a little tacking west and south, a plunge across High Street, and presently we ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... community, the master who dares kick against the parental goads soon finds the town too hot to hold him. He has but one choice, either to sail with the parental wind, or to lower his canvas altogether; and though a man of tact may make some progress by trawling and tacking, at the best he must feel disappointed at heart and his interest in his ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... one of these boats comes nearer and nearer to us, tacking to perfection. Through our glasses we already seem to see the stalwart figure of the pilot standing in the stern. On his brow he wears a storm-defying cap, the badge of the warrior of the waves; the loose shirt, the top boots, ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... heavy 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
... 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 ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... over the shirt she was making for some charitable society and drew out some tacking threads with a loud noise which relieved her. Lady Winterbourne's old ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... scenes of their successes or failures, daring, comic, and sometimes tragic, are undisturbed save by nature's sights and sounds. Man-o'-war sailors (fine fellows though they be), with ribboned caps, and trousers that flap like sails of a ship tacking, have replaced the trim, gentlemanlike civilian of old. Some of the latter are still remembered with affection, and even veneration, by people who were young when the last ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... 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 ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... arrived, as we have said, at 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, within cannon-shot of ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... mad, Bastiano; we have not been able ever since the morning to get near Vico, and have been obliged to keep tacking about; your skill and strength have been able to do nothing against this frightful hurricane which has driven us back to ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... evidently from the Ital. "Corsaro," a runner. So the Port. "Cabo Corso," which we have corrupted to "Cape Coast Castle" (Gulf of Guinea), means the Cape of Tacking. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... 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: ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... being made aware of the exact position of the ship, ordered the course to be altered to "north-half-east." As this was almost dead in the eye of the light breeze that was blowing, the Talisman had to proceed on her course by the slow process of tacking. ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... day out, 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 the forecastle, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... the mourning takes place after an interval which may be anything between one and six months. This is a special ceremony, and will not be postponed for the purpose of tacking it on to some other ceremony, as in the case of an ordinary person's mourning removal; but other ceremonies will often be tacked on to it. The guests invited are from only one other community. Here again the person actually dealt with is the chief ...
— The Mafulu - Mountain People of British New Guinea • Robert W. Williamson
... and the farthest pillar of Diego Cam, he reached a headland where he set up his first new pillar at what is still known as Diaz Point. Still coasting southwards and tacking frequently, he passed the Orange River, the northern limit of the present Cape Colony. Then putting well out to sea Diaz ran thirteen days before the wind due south, hoping by this wide sweep to round the southern point of the continent, which could not now ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... and pant and swear. While they were affectionate they always spoke of each other as "ladies," but while they were fighting "strumpet" was the mildest name they could think of—and they could only make that do by tacking some sounding profanity to it. In their last fight, which was toward midnight, one of them bit off the other's finger, and then the officer interfered and put the "Greaser" into the "dark cell" to answer for it because the woman that did it laid it on him, and the other woman did ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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 up passengers to San Francisco. Captain Simmons had not seen her husband this ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Because of the use of the sprit and heel tackle, the conventional method of reefing was not possible. The reef bands of the sails were parallel to the masts, and reefing was accomplished by lowering a sail and tying the reef points while rehoisting. The mast revolved in tacking in order to prevent binding of the sprit under the tension of the heel tackle. The tenon at the foot of the mast was round, and to the shoulder of the tenon a brass ring was nailed or screwed. Another brass ring was fastened around the mast step. These rings acted as bearings on which the ...
— The Migrations of an American Boat Type • Howard I. Chapelle
... north point of Yalmal and Bieloi-Ostrov (White Island). There was no ice to be seen in any direction. During the days that followed we had constant strong east winds, often increasing to half a gale. We kept on tacking to make our way eastward, but the broad and keelless Fram can hardly be called a good "beater"; we made too much leeway, and our progress was correspondingly slow. In the journal there is a constantly recurring entry of "Head-wind," "Head-wind." ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... coast, tacking close to shore, slowly swam a little sloop, white-winged like some snowy sea fowl. Its course lay within twenty points of the wind's eye; so it veered in and out again in long, slow strokes like the movements of ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... the jetty on the day of the excursion. They were waiting for the Paulsbergs, who were late. Irgens was growing impatient and sarcastic: Would it not be better to send the yacht up for them? When finally Paulsberg and his wife arrived, they all went aboard and were soon tacking out ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... Siberian Rifles, strolling along the deck. It was obvious that, although it still lacked three hours of noon, these gentlemen had been quite frequently to the shrine of Bacchus. I had no fault to find with that, as long as they did not interfere with my own personal comfort. When they began tacking along, talking at the top of their voices on that part of the deck known by experienced travelers to be reserved for repose and reading, however, they began to irritate me. When one of them threw himself into the Baron's chair and displayed that beastly annoying habit of ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... long enough to gain for him any considerable national distinction. But that he made a good impression on the House appears from an extract of a letter I lately received from my classmate, Rev. Walter Mitchell, the author of the spirited and famous poem, "Tacking Ship off Fire Island." He says: "I heard your uncle, Mr. Eliot, say that when your father went to Congress the Southern members said, 'Where has this man been all his life, and why have we never heard of him? With us a man of his ability would be ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... lighthouse is Ocracoke inlet, and next is the inlet of Hatteras. There are also three others known as Logger Head inlet, New inlet, and Oregon inlet. The Ocracoke was the one nearest the Ebba, and she could make it without tacking, but the Falcon was searching all vessels that passed through. This did not, however, make any particular difference, for by this time all the passes, upon which the guns of the forts had been trained, were guarded by ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... start, according to Arab superstition. In a few minutes we reached the acute angle round which we had to turn sharply into the White Nile at its junction with the Blue. It was blowing hard, and in tacking round the point one of the noggurs carried away her yard, which fell upon deck and snapped in half, fortunately without injuring either men or donkeys. The yard being about a hundred feet in length, was a complicated affair to ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... have tacked in preference to waring, and it would have been much wiser to do so; but it was clearly expedient to get the ship on the other tack, and he lent all his present exertions to the attainment of that object. Waring is much easier done than tacking, certainly; when it does not blow too fresh, and there is not a dangerous sea on, no nautical manoeuvre can be more readily effected, though room is absolutely necessary to its success. This room ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... through the misty darkness, close inshore, North-west, South-west, and ever Westward strained The little ships of England. All night long, As down the coast the reddening beacons leapt, The crackle and lapping splash of tacking keels, The bo'suns' low sharp whistles and the whine Of ropes, mixing with many a sea-bird's cry Disturbed the darkness, waking vague swift fears Among the mighty hulks of Spain that lay Nearest, then fading through the mists inshore North-west, then growing again, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... when, after an hour's tacking against the land breeze, the goleta got inside the estuary of the stream, and working up, brought to by the ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... chance" the two ships that remained beat up and down tacking with the wind, Sir Humphrey hoping always that the weather would clear up and allow him once more to get near land. But day by day passed. The wind and waves continued as stormy as ever, and no glimpse of land did the weary ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... his fine black eyes seemed to encompass her. She moved backward a little, shaking her head. 'Not this morning,' she said. 'Oh dear, no, not this morning! I am afraid you don't know anything about tacking or fixing, or the abominable time they take. Well, it could hardly be expected. There is nothing in the world'—and she shook her serge vindictively—'that I hate ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 thought clearly on the mind of the reader; it leaves him confused, and ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... had spent the summer of his fifteenth year wandering about alone in the South, giving violin concerts in little towns. He traveled on horseback. When he came into a town, he went about all day tacking up posters announcing his concert in the evening. Before the concert, he stood at the door taking in the admission money until his audience had arrived, and then he went on the platform and played. ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... 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 enclose them, while all the time they were ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... club, a person who always deferred to me; who, seeing my whim for writing, fancied that my experiences had somewhat superior; whilst I saw that his experiences were as good as mine. Give them to me and I would make the same use of them. He held the old; he holds the new; I had the habit of tacking together the old and the new which he did not use to exercise. This may hold in the great examples. Perhaps if we should meet Shakspeare we should not be conscious of any steep inferiority; no, but of a great equality,—only that he possessed a strange skill of using, of classifying, his facts, which ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... work 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 ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... wet or soiled. It can be drawn away from under the child, and a portion still clean and dry brought under it, while the soiled part is rolled together and wrapped up in macintosh at one side of the bed until a new draw sheet is substituted, which is easily done by tacking a fresh sheet to that which is about to be withdrawn, when the fresh one is brought under the child's body as that which is soiled is removed. The greatest care should always be taken that the under sheet is perfectly free from ruck or wrinkle; ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... From the East Gate you look up to the East Law, pine trees, grey walls, green terraces; in the Highgate you don't go many yards without coming to a pend with a view of blue distances that takes your breath, just as in Edinburgh when you look down an alley and see ships tacking for the Baltic.... But I wish I had known Priorsford as it was in my mother's young days, when the French prisoners were here. The genteel supper-parties and assemblies must have been vastly entertaining. It has changed ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... do. In her hands there was no danger that he would be tempted to excesses in golf. She was really afraid of all boats, but she was willing to go out with him in the sail-boat of a superannuated skipper, because to sit talking in the stern and stoop for the vagaries of the boom in tacking was such good exercise. She would join him in fishing from the rotting pier, but with no certainty which was a cunner and which was a sculpin, when she caught it, and with an equal horror of both the nasty, wriggling things. When they went a walk ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells
... British than in the British Isles—the United States of the World in the Making! Was it any wonder crime was rampant; and Democracy rocked to the shock of collision and miscalculation and inexperience; and Righteousness became a tacking to progress, not a straight line, like the zig-zag of the ship making headway all the time, but tacking back and forward to wind and current? It was good to be alive and take part in the making of the United States of ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... Lorne crept down the bank, tacking, and dodging, and all the time laughing softly to himself; and sometimes winking with a horrid, wily grimace at Stanley, who fervently wished him at ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... some made of skins, some of woven cloth, some even of wooden slats. But no ancient sail was more than what sailors call a wind-bag now; and they were of no use at all unless the wind was pretty well aft, that is, more or less from behind. We shall presently find out that tacking, (which is sailing against the wind), is a very modern invention; and that, within three centuries of its invention, steamers began to oust sailing craft, as these, in their turn, had ousted ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... You've all put down carpets at home; what's the use of pretending you don't know how to do it? Oh yes—I know, bigger building, and all that, but there are more of us, and the principle of carpet-tacking is the same, big building or little one. Now my scheme is this—Every fellow his own carpet-tacker! The Governor's office puts down the Governor's carpet; the Secretary's office puts down the Secretary's carpet; the Senate puts down the Senate carpet—and ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... undone, As sure as a gun, For old Peter Patch is departed; And Eyres and Delaune, And the rest of that spawn, Are tacking ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... indeed, you bell by the sea-reefs ringing, Ringing, ringing, to warn the ship from its wreck-place. For, as on the alert, O steersman, you mind the bell's admonition, The bows turn,—the freighted ship, tacking, speeds away under her grey sails; The beautiful and noble ship, with all her precious wealth, speeds away gaily ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... minutes 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 went down ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... to be farmer's right-hand man or anything like that. He was a humble creature, faithful unto death, but no use away from hedge-tacking and such rough jobs; yet he'd done his duty according to his limits, however narrow they might be, and so he got his way on his death-bed, and, in the sudden surprise that such a landmark as Noah was going home, Farmer ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... water was even more plentiful than the year before, and we grazed nearly the entire distance. The antelope were unusually tame; with six-shooters we killed quite a number by flagging, or using a gentle horse for a blind, driving the animal forward with the bridle reins, tacking frequently, and allowing him to ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... 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
... "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 he has a broad human outlook on life and is free from the subtleties ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... pursuing our voyage, we came in sight of the island of Chaneph, where Pantagruel's ship could not arrive, the wind chopping about, and then failing us so that we were becalmed, and could hardly get ahead, tacking about from starboard to larboard, and larboard to starboard, though to our ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... them. Nursery nut trees are not being produced in very great quantities except by Mr. Jones, and they are unlisted in the nursery catalogues, or only listed in an incidental way, very much as though they were tacking on something in the way of citrus fruit, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various
... 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
... valleys of New England. It is four o'clock in the evening, and I am sitting on a cigar-box outside of our cabin. From this spot not a person is to be seen, except a man who is building a new wing to the Humboldt. Not a human sound, but a slight noise made by the aforesaid individual in tacking on a roof of blue drilling to the room which he is finishing, disturbs the stillness which fills this purest air. I confess that it is difficult to fix my eyes upon the dull paper, and my fingers upon the duller pen with which I am soiling ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... are particular bands stationed on the three decks of the ship at such times, but particular men of those bands are also assigned to particular duties. Also, in tacking ship, reefing top-sails, or "coming to," every man of a frigate's five-hundred-strong, knows his own special place, and is infallibly found there. He sees nothing else, attends to nothing else, and will stay there till grim death ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... too puffy for making the sheet fast. I held it with one hand and tried to fish with the other. In order not to stop the way of the boat and risk losing the lead on the sea-bottom, I wore her round to lew'ard, instead of tacking to wind'ard. A squall came down, the sail gybed quickly, and the boom slewed over with a jerk, just grazing the top of my head. Had that boom been a couple of inches lower, or my head an inch or two higher.... I should have been prevented from sailing the Moondaisy home, ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... interior is then closely felted with silky down, in Upper 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 ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... deg. 59' N. latitude. Though calm, there was a great swell from the sea, and the rolling of the boat affected our brave captain not a little, to the diversion of the other Esquimaux. About two P.M. the wind shifted to the N.W. By tacking we got to Kupperlik, about the middle of Kaumayok, but having the skin-boat in tow, could not weather the point, and were at length obliged to return to our former ...
— Journal of a Voyage from Okkak, on the Coast of Labrador, to Ungava Bay, Westward of Cape Chudleigh • Benjamin Kohlmeister and George Kmoch
... so sure but that they are going to try it on, though," answered Paul, eyeing the distant fleet of the French with no friendly eye. "But I'll tell you what: Admiral Rodney is not the chap to let 'em off so easily. Ah, look! they are tacking again; they see it won't do. Hurrah! lads, we'll be at them ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... said one of the men to his nearest mate, "talk about 'tacking the enemy, if wrong's happened to our young gentleman, all I can say is, as I hopes it's orders to land every night to burn willages and sack ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... he was at a loss; yet he was not ready to leave his charge to be gazed upon by untried eyes. His breast swelled nigh to bursting at sight of the schooner. The Feu Follette was but half a mile away in a straight line from the cliff; she had been tacking against a light breeze and flood tide around the Point, and while she had sailed several miles through the water, she had but just gained past the face of the cliff. And far from returning, she sailed farther and farther away as he watched, nursed with such skill of sheet and helm as proved ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... most prudent to sail peaceably on, contenting herself with calling something to us through a trumpet, which we could not understand. Pursuing our course in an opposite direction, we were soon at a considerable distance from the corvette, and then saw the frigate tacking to follow us; but having already greatly the advantage, and the mouth of the bay clear before us, we rehoisted our sails, and without waiting for further evidence of Chilian hostility, stood out to sea; thus escaping attempts ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... immoderate Ambition, stops Wars, Navies and Expeditions; especially it prevents Members making long Speeches when they have nothing to say; it keeps back Rebellions, Insurrections, Clashings of Houses, Occasional Bills, Tacking, &c. ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... wore away he went out into the hills to look about him. The men were all busily enough engaged in chipping out the shallow troughs of their "discoveries," piling supporting rocks about their corner and side stakes, or tacking up laboriously composed mining "notices." They paid scant attention to the man who passed them a hundred yards away. Peter visited his own four claims. On one he found a small group anxiously examining the indications of the lead. He did not join it. The parting words ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... this thing into your head?" inquired Mr. Eldridge. "You were in full sail for party this morning, liquor and all; this sudden tacking for a new course is a ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... pause here to describe the picturesque confusion that ensued—the arriving, congregating, tacking, crossing, and re-crossing of smacks; the launching of little boats, and loading them with "trunks;" the concentration of these round the steamer like minnows round a whale; the shipping of the cargo, and the tremendous hurry and energy ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... there danger of moralizing in making an application?" or "What is the difference between an application and moralizing?" Genuine and natural application ought to be inherent in the material presented. A good story ought to drive home its message without further comment. Moralizing consists of "tacking on" some generalized exhortation relative to conduct. Moralizing is either an unnecessary and unwelcome injunction to be or to do good, or it is an apology for a lesson that in and of itself drives home no message. The school boy's definition of ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... his next outburst, but Bannon prevented him. "There ain't many jobs, if you leave out tacking down carpets, where a man don't risk his life more or less. MacBride don't compel men to risk their lives; he pays 'em for doing it, and you can bet he's done it himself. We don't like it, but it's necessary. Now, if you saw men out there ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... very long, and the wave in it is natural. The little boy is Peter. He is the loveliest and the dearest of all of us. The second picture is of me tying up the crimson rambler. I thought you would like to see what a wonderful rose it is. I was standing in a chair, training the long branches and tacking them against the house, when a gentleman drove by with a camera in his wagon. He stopped and took the picture and sent us one, explaining that every one admired it. I happened to be wearing my yellow muslin, and I ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... he saw her, Kirkwood could have fancied she was tacking out of the mouth of the Medway; but he judged that, leaving the Thames' mouth, she had tacked to starboard until well-nigh within hail of Sheerness. Now, having presumably, gone about, she was standing out toward the Nore, boring doggedly into the wind. He would have given a deal for glasses wherewith ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... floor of the mouth frequently originates in the mucous membrane between the frenum of the tongue and the inner aspect of the gum. It develops insidiously, grows slowly, and gradually spreads to the mandible and to the substance of the tongue, tacking it down so that it cannot be protruded. The glands are early involved, and their enlargement not infrequently first draws attention to the condition. It is to be regarded as a particularly unfavourable site, as local recurrence is frequent. For the complete ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... 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, ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... wonders as men never worked 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 that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
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