"Tack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... news from the Sibley?" shouted one of a group of officers who sat and lay upon the ground, cheerfully discussing hard tack and coffee in the camp of a grand picket reserve, near the Rappahannock. The man addressed would, in build, have made a good recruit for the armies of New Amsterdam in their warfare against the Swedes, so graphically described by Irving. Short and thickly set, with a ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... "I reckoned to tack it over this here hole in the bulwarks where the tide swung her up against the quay-end." Captain ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... be harnessed? In that case you are the man to tax the Affghans. Pigs can see the wind; and it is not less certain that Affghans can scent a tax-gatherer through the Hindoo Koosh: in which case, off they go on the opposite tack. But no matter if they stay—not the less with them to be taxed is to be robbed—a wrong to be remembered on death-beds, and to be avenged were it in the fourth generation. However, as the reckoning does ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... on the morrow took his speech into consideration. Harley and his allies complained that the King's answer was no answer at all, threatened to tack the Place Bill to a money bill, and proposed to make a second representation pressing His Majesty to explain himself more distinctly. But by this time there was a strong reflux of feeling in the assembly. The Whigs had not only recovered from their dismay, but were in high spirits and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... plaster is set hard, remove fish from mold, hold it upon palm of left hand and tack edges of skin to back-board. (For general details of ...
— Taxidermy • Leon Luther Pray
... stop the onward march of Bolshevism. Some governments had publicly stigmatized the Bolshevists as cutthroats; one had pledged itself never to have relations with them, but the Prinkipo invitation bespoke a resolve to cancel these judgments and declarations and change their tack as an improvement on doing nothing at all. The scheme was also an error in substance, because the sole motive that could warrant it was the hope of reconciling the warring parties. And that hope was doomed to disappointment ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... pace. He was requested to slacken speed; but suspecting his passengers to be afraid, he only flogged the brutes into a still more furious gallop. Observing this, Mr. Stephenson coolly said, "Let us try him on the other tack; tell him to show us the fastest pace at which Spanish mules can go." The rogue of a driver, when he found his tricks of no avail, pulled up and proceeded at a more moderate speed for the rest ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... Valentin Ulrich manufactures saddles, and P. Loesch keeps a meat-market, with a sign representing one gentleman holding a mad bull by a bit of packthread tied to his horns, while an assistant leisurely strolls up to annihilate the creature with a tack-hammer. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... think that Uncle Sam has a great deal to answer for on that tack; and I can say, too, that the love of rum that I acquired in the government service had pretty nearly fixed my flint, both for this world and the next. But still, Jack, it wont do for seamen to ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... earth was ours, Till our world-end strifes began wayside thrones and powers, Puppets that we made or broke to bar the other's path— Necessary, outpost folk, hirelings of our wrath. To this end we stormed the seas, tack for tack, and burst Through the doorways of new worlds, doubtful which was first. Hand on hilt (rememberest thou?), ready for the blow. Sure whatever else we met we should meet our foe. Spurred or baulked ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... minutes, yet after getting as far as Mr. Shylock's I remembered that I required what one's hatter (and no one else) calls a "boater," and back I went to order one in addition to the cap. And as the next tack fetches the buoy, so my next perambulation (in which, however, I was thinking seriously of a new bowler) brought me face to face ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... not a lady detective," she smiled back, taking a sudden keen delight in the knowledge that she had taken the right tack, and that she was puzzling Pollard. "But it is quite obvious that you've got your money back! Why didn't you ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... race, represent a higher state of evolution' (p. 232). No modern Jew would make so preposterous a claim. But when the same writer sees in the Jew a different stage of evolution, then he is on the right tack. Here is a passage which deserves to be quoted again and again: 'I have little taste, I confess, for uniformity; I leave that to the Jacobins. My ideal of a nation is not a monolith, nor a bronze formed at ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... through life never to question the age, name, or family of any lady of my acquaintance. Miss Yerba Buena came of age yesterday, and, as she is no longer my ward, she is certainly entitled to the consideration I have just mentioned. If she, therefore, chooses to tack to her name the whole Spanish directory, I don't see ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... here, why don't you go to see the mother? I judge she might convince you that you are on the wrong tack, even if ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... provisions and make a run for it to Sunset crossing. I wonder which way that blackguard of a greaser did go. He would hardly dare go back the way he came with every chance of running slap into the Tontos. He has taken hard tack and bacon enough to keep him alive several days. It's my belief he means to hide somewhere about Jarvis Pass until he sees the Indians following our trail and then, when they are fairly past, to make a run for the Verde. ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... looked around sharply. "Humph!" said she. "Those men are sailormen. You might see that in a twinklin' of an eye. Sailormen always drive that way, because that is the way they sail ships. They first tack in one direction and then ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... oft beat him back, And tempests make him half a wreck, And passions strong, with dangerous tack, Retard his course, Yet Christ the pilot all will check, And ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... draweth his rations from the commissary, and devoureth the same. He striketh his teeth against much hard tack, and is satisfied. He filleth his canteen with apple-jack, and clappeth the mouth thereof upon the bung of a whisky-barrel, and after a little while goeth ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... "That's the tack ter go about on, youngster," agreed the man of Topsail Island; "but if yer are goin' down ter his place at this hour uv night, we'd better take somebody else along. He's a bad character, and I'm only a feeble old man ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... her departure, the schooner, thwarted by strong breezes from the east, was obliged to tack to larboard to make headway against the wind. So, at the date of February 2d, Captain Hull still found himself in a higher latitude than he would have wished, and in the situation of a sailor who wanted to ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... ORSIN, th' hast Great reason to do as thou say'st, And so has ev'ry body here, As well as thou hast, or thy Bear. Others may do as they see good; 275 But if this twig be made of wood That will hold tack, I'll make the fur Fly 'bout the ears of that old cur; And the other mungrel vermin, RALPH, That brav'd us all in his behalf. 280 Thy Bear is safe, and out of peril, Though lugg'd indeed, and wounded very ill; Myself ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... friend, may not I smile at some jest between myself and my pipe, but thou must tack more meaning to it than Brewster says hung on Lord Burleigh's nod? And yet in sober sadness, Myles, 't is marvel to me how thou, born to a great name and to such observance as awaits the children of wealthy houses, and then, when hardly more than a boy, placed in authority ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... watch, the captain came on deck, and took to walking up and down with the second mate. The night was clear, though dark. The Chrysolite was close-hauled on the starboard tack, and was making good headway under a clinking breeze. She was an old-fashioned, frigate-built, full-rigged ship, such as one seldom happens on now, her quarter-galleries, chain-plates, to' gallant bulwarks, and single topsail-yards being all out of date among the ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... of the deep sea. It is not recreation; it is an essential part of the work. It mastheads the topsail yards, on making sail; it starts the anchor from the domestic or foreign mud; it 'rides down the main tack with a will;' it breaks out and takes on board a cargo; it keeps the pumps (the ship's, not the sailor's) going. A good voice and a new and stirring chorus are worth an extra man. And there is plenty of need ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... appeared to consist of three islands, all low and of small size. Beyond and around them the sea was smooth and to the southward another patch of breakers was observed. Preparations were now made to tack off, but I had scarcely reached the deck when the lookout man reported rocks under our lee bow, upon which the helm was immediately put up; and when the vessel's head was round upon the opposite tack the following bearings ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... time the Proserpine, for Ithuel was right as to the name of the stranger, had got within a league of the entrance of the bay and had gone about, stretching over to its eastern shore, apparently with the intention to fetch fairly into it on the next tack. The smoke of her gun was sailing off to leeward in a little cloud, and signals were again flying at her main-royal-mast-head. All this was very intelligible to Raoul, it being evident at a glance that the frigate had reached ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... not seem a great matter to you now—but it is, all the same. You stay here. You and I have to take life together, boy—though you're at one end of the ladder and I'm at t'other. Your name's your name right enough, but I want you to be good enough to tack mine on to it, and to do a bit of fighting for mine too if necessary. I've fought for it hard in my day too. And now, John Carew-Brown, we'll have a bit of lunch if it's ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... and being abreast of his warship, the Wolfe, he fired a few guns to ascertain whether he could reach the hostile fleet. The shot falling short, he wore, and hauled upon a wind to the starboard tack; the rear of his schooners being six miles astern. Sir James wore also, and hauled upon a wind on the same tack; but observing that the American fleet would be able to weather him in the next tack, he tacked again and made sail to the northward. Commodore Chauncey pursued him. He continued ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... him, it is only because I have seen him, from afar off, walk the quarter-deck with the other officers, a cigar in his mouth, after a good meal, while we in the forecastle had our salt fish, and broke our teeth with worm-eaten hard-tack." ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... called Peachy for short. Oh, yes, I knew all about you beforehand, although you happen to be the newest girl. Dad wrote me a whole page—wonderful for him!—and said he'd stayed at your house in London, and I was to tack myself on to you and show you round, and see you didn't fret and all the rest of it. Are you wanting a crony, temporary or otherwise? Then here I am at your service. Link an arm and we'll parade the place. I guess by the time we've ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... determined to let these last govern. Until we had made two-thirds of our distance across the ocean, the winds had stood very much at south-west; and, though we had no heavy weather, our progress was good; but in 20 deg. east from Greenwich, we got north-easters, and our best tack being the larboard, I stood for ten days to the southward and eastward. This brought us into the track of every thing going to, or coming from, the Mediterranean; and, had we stood on far enough, we should have made the ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... who were by no means sorry for a spell of work after going so long without shifting sail or tack, worked hard, and the white sheets of canvas were soon snugly furled. By this time all the sailors who had been to sea for any time recognized the utility of their work. The low bank had risen and extended the whole width of the ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... minds to a couple of days in this shanty—anyhow. I mostly live on 'sour-belly' and 'hard tack.' Don't sound ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... temperance school, and when I shipped before the mast I stuck to my principles, though everyone else on board drank excepting two boys whom I persuaded to abstain. In a very severe storm off a lee-shore, when it was so cold they had to break the icicles off the ropes to tack the ship, all drank but myself and these two boys. The men would work very well for a few minutes, and then slack off and take another drink, until they were all keeled up, and we three boys had all we could do to keep the ship from going ashore. If ...
— Object Lessons on the Human Body - A Transcript of Lessons Given in the Primary Department of School No. 49, New York City • Sarah F. Buckelew and Margaret W. Lewis
... Turner to his earliest impression of Portsmouth, given in the Southern Coast series. The buildings introduced differ only by a slight turn of the spectator towards the right; the buoy is in the same spot; the man-of-war's boat nearly so; the sloop exactly so, but on a different tack; and the man-of-war, which is far off to the left at anchor in the Southern Coast view, is here nearer, and ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... boards are inserted into the skin, (the latter with the fur side inward). The wedge is then inserted between the large ends of the boards and driven in sufficiently to stretch the pelt to its full capacity, securing it in the notches by slight cuts in the hide, or by a tack or two at the edge. It should then he hung in a cool, airy place, and the pelt left ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... constitutional withal, very stiff upon their Charter (PACTA CONVENTA, or whatever the name is); who wrangle much upon privileges, upon taxes, and are difficult to keep long in tune. Ten days ago (September 11th), her Majesty tried them on a new tack; summoned them to her Palace; threw herself upon their nobleness, "No allies but you in the world" (and other fine things, authentically, as above, legible in the Archives to this day):—so spake the beautiful ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Inlet, and for three days we were struggling with the young ice to little or no purpose, now and then gaining half a mile of ground to windward in a little “hole” of open water, then losing as much by the necessity of bearing up or wearing (for the ice was too strong to allow us to tack), sallying from morning to night with all hands, and with the watch at night, two boats constantly under the bows; and, after all, rather losing ground than otherwise, while the young ice was every hour ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... "Look here. If he kissed her—which is our tack—he is a cynically immoral hog, and his conduct is blatant indecency. Confer orationes Regis furiosissimi, when he collared me readin' ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... this island, having two long feathers in their tails. These birds, and various other kinds, accompanied us along with, such contrary winds and gusts that we often split our sails, and being obliged to lie to, or tack to and again, we rather went to leeward than gained way, having the wind strong ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... he replied. "Between us, we've managed to set them off on a false tack somewhere. The humming has ceased. It's gone—for the ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... his ships might, as represented by him, have prevented his coming up. Palliser rejoined by charging Keppel with having neglected to arrange his ships in such a manner as to ensure a general engagement; with having neglected to tack and double on the French with his van and centre, after these had passed the enemy's rear, whereby he, the vice-admiral, was exposed to be cut off; with having permitted the enemy to rally, and to claim a victory by standing after the English ships; and with ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... The most vehement Whigs were bent on finally passing it within forty-eight hours. The Lords, indeed, were not likely to regard it very favourably. But it should seem that some desperate men were prepared to withhold the supplies till it should pass, nay, even to tack it to the bill of supply, and thus to place the Upper House under the necessity of either consenting to a vast proscription of the Tories or refusing to the government the means of carrying on the war, [552] There were Whigs, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... mother at Richmond; a week in London: and now am come here to try and finish a money bargain with some lawyers which you heard me beginning a year ago. They utterly failed in any part of the transaction except bringing me in a large bill for service unperformed. However, we are now upon another tack. . . . ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... from the southeast, kicking up a nasty sea very soon. We double reefed the mainsail reefed the foresail and hauled the flying jib down. About 8 P.M. we laid to with the jib hauled down, on the starboard tack. The wind had backed to the east about four points and was blowing a gale. About 12 M. it suddenly dropped, a flat calm, leaving a tremendous sea running from the southeast, combined with a smaller one from the east. Our motions, jumps, ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... met Mary Wells, and, in a strange fit of jealousy, began to make hot protestations of love to her. He knew it was no use reproaching her, so he went on the other tack. ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... and another that very morning. Sure enough, Van was waiting, and the moment he saw me coming up the ravine he quit his munching at the scanty herbage, and, with ears erect and eager eyes, came quickly toward me, whinnying welcome and inquiry at the same instant. Sugar and hard-tack, delicacies he often fancied in prosperous times, he took from my hand even now; he was too truly a gentleman at heart to refuse them when he saw they were all I had to give; but he could not understand why ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... the name of Heaven, the truth! Do not flatter a dying man with a hope that may prove vain." There he stopped, a look from Colbert telling him that he was on a wrong tack. ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... is. Put the tin box of hard-tack in the middle. It's the heaviest thing we've got; weighs ten pounds. Now the bacon; that only weighs five. Now the other things. The guns ain't loaded; lay 'em along the sides. And the fishing-rods. ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... pennants, photographs, and college paraphernalia. Eagerly he pulled them all out and spread them over the bumpy little bed. Then he grabbed for his hat and rushed out. In a few minutes he returned with a paper of tacks, another of pins, and a small tack hammer. In an hour's time he had changed the atmosphere of the whole place. Not an available inch of bare wall remained with, its ugly, dirty wallpaper. College colors, pennants and flags were grouped about pictures, and over the unwashed window was draped Florida ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... the 1st of January, Napoleon inserted an official statement in the Moniteur to the effect that, although public opinion had been agitated by alarming rumours, there was nothing in the foreign relations of France to justify the fears these rumours tended to create. He continued on this tack, with more or less consistency, to the very verge of the outbreak of hostilities. 'The Empire was peace,' as it was always announced to be in the intervals when it was not war; there was no more harmless dove in Europe than the person enthroned ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... welcome voice that would call her away; she saw herself again examining its grave face and striving to calculate, with childish eagerness, if she would have time to build another Tower of Babel or put another tack in the doll's frock before the ruthless iron tongue struck the ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... three windows, each shaded by white cotton curtains. On the floor was a home-made carpet; no hand was employed in its manufacture save its owner's, from the time she commenced tearing the rags in strips, to the final blow given to the last tack that confined it to the floor. A very high post bedstead, over which were suspended white cotton curtains, gave an air of grandeur to one side of the room. No one had slept in it for ten years, though ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... happened to fetch out a long word which had had its day weeks before and its prepared meanings gone to her dump-pile, if there was a stranger there of course it knocked him groggy for a couple of minutes, then he would come to, and by that time she would be away down wind on another tack, and not expecting anything; so when he'd hail and ask her to cash in, I (the only dog on the inside of her game) could see her canvas flicker a moment—but only just a moment—then it would belly out taut and full, and she would say, as calm ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... her, and—if you want good advice—when you get indoors, stay in." With a kindly tolerance the policeman assisted the pedestrian across the street and watched him tack along until he ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... however, but began to feel the want of bread. I remember that in passing around to the left of the line on the 21st, a soldier, recognizing me, said in rather a low voice, but yet so that I heard him, "Hard tack." In a moment the cry was taken up all along the line, "Hard tack! Hard tack!" I told the men nearest to me that we had been engaged ever since the arrival of the troops in building a road over which ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... you know," said Stubbs, "I can't let a fellow like you - " And there he paused, feeling somehow or other on a wrong tack. ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Assembly took another tack, and by a vote of 45 to 29, passed Assembly Bill 14, the Anti-Japanese School bill. Leeds changed his vote from no to aye to give notice that he would the next legislative day move to reconsider ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... was a dreadful hour. A couple of humble-bees zoomed against the window pane, and the sound, with the ticking of the schoolroom clock, took possession of her brain. Z-zoom! Tick-tack, tick-tack! Would lesson-time never come to an end? She went about automatically correcting sums, copies, exercises, because the sight of the pencilled words or figures steadied her faculties, whereas she felt that if she called the children up in class her ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... southward as to permit her to lay her course, when she made a great run to the westward. When the wind again hauled, as haul it was almost certain to do, Captain Crutchely believed himself in a meridian that would admit of his running with an easy bowline, on the larboard tack. No one but a sailor can understand the effect of checking the weather-braces, if it be only for a few feet, and of getting a weather-leach to stand without 'swigging out' on its bowline. It has much the same influence on the progress of a ship, that an eloquent speech has on the practice of an ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... Hamilton, the gentlemanly and urbane proprietor of Wolfville's temple of terpsichoir (see ad, in another column) had changed whiskeys on us, and was dispensing what seemed to our throat a tincture of the common carpet tack of commerce. It is our hope that Mr. H., on seeing this, will at once restore the statu quo at his ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... could safely run in for a couple of hundred yards or so; but there were signs of surf beyond, and he had no anchor to hold on by. His only course was to tack back and forth as carefully as possible, and wait for daylight,—as the French sailors were doing, with ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... She was some miles inshore of us, and as the day brightened we made her out to be a brigantine (an uncommon rig in those days), standing across our bows, with all studding sails set on the starboard side, indeed everything that could pull, including water sails and save-all. We were on the same tack heading to the northward. We set everything that would draw, and kept off two points, bringing the wind abeam so as to head ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... church-members and their ways, including the utter failure of Justin Peabody, Nancy's hero, to make a living anywhere, even in the West. The Dorcas members leave the church for their Saturday night suppers of beans and brown bread, but Nancy returns with her lantern at nightfall to tack down the carpet in the old Peabody pew and iron out the tattered, dog's eared leaves of the hymn-book from which she has so often sung "By cool Siloam's shady rill" with her lover in days gone by. He, ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... but that infernal Internationale is doing a deal of mischief. There is not a trades-unionist in the country who does not know what is going on in France. A handful of irresponsible madmen trying to tack themselves on to the workmen's association—well, surely the men will have more sense than to listen. The congres ouvrier to change its name, and to become the congres revolutionnaire! When I first went to Jackson, Molyneux, and the others, I found they had a sort of suspicion that we ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... enough to let the full weight of his censure enter their minds. Then he began on a new tack. He had hoped that he might have their friendship. He had thought that they cared a little for his good opinion. But now they had betrayed him. All the town was looking to see whether he would succeed ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... determined to wrest Gibraltar from its English defenders, and were sending thither a powerful army under the command of Los Torres. The Duke had tried many trades with more or less success, and now thought that a little military glory would tack on well to his highly honourable biography. At any rate there was novelty in the din of war, and for novelty he would go anywhere. It mattered little that he should fight against his own king and own countrymen: he was not half blackguard enough yet, he may have ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... I can soon see the last of this chap: and him the last of all the rest. I'll be damned for ever if I see their Jims and Roberts and Julias and Scotts any more. Let them dance round their insipid hell-broth. Thin tack it is. ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... a piece of canvas and converted into a storeroom. We had almost to get down on our knees to the quartermaster before he would give us the canvas. He is in the quartermaster's department and is most arrogant; seems to think that every nail and tack is his own personal property and for ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... had travelled about two miles, we saw the smoke rise from our old camp. The Mormons, after taking what goods they wanted and could carry off, had set fire to the wagons, many of which were loaded with bacon, lard, hard-tack, and other provisions, which made a very hot, fierce fire, and the smoke to roll up in dense clouds. Some of the wagons were loaded with ammunition, and it was not long before loud reports followed in rapid succession. We waited and witnessed the ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... Shake the carpet well; tack it down, and wash it upon the floor; the floor should be very clean; use cold soap suds; to three gallons add half a tumbler of beef-gall; this will prevent the colors from fading. Should there be grease spots, apply ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... answered Bulger. "I was a gallant clerk and hers the fairest fingers that ever caressed a typewriter—" The intent attitude of Norcross, the fact that he neither turned nor smiled, checked Bulger. With the instinct of the courtier, he perceived that the wind lay in another tack. He racked the unused half of his mind for ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... 4th of August, when in latitude 59 deg. 58' N., longitude 59 deg. 53' W., we first fell in with large icebergs; and in the evening were encompassed by several of considerable magnitude, which obliged us to tack the ship in order to prevent our getting entangled amongst them. The estimated distance from the nearest part of the Labrador coast was then eighty-eight miles; here we tried for soundings, without gaining the bottom. The ship passed through some strong riplings, ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... strawberries in baskets very cheap, partly because the baskets cost very little for labor. The man who tacks them together uses a magnetized tack hammer. This magnetic tack hammer picks up the tacks of its own accord, and the man drives them in the basket as fast as he can touch the magnet to the heads of the tacks ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... the home counties as "luke," the largest as "great," and the intermediate sizes as "long small," "threepenny" and "middleboro." White and buff rods are more carefully sorted, the smallest, about 2 ft. or less, being known as "small tack," and rising sizes as "tack," "short small," "small," "long small," "threepenny," "middleboro" and "great." Rods of two to three years' growth, known as "sticks," are used to form the rigid framework of the bottoms ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... LE GEOGRAPHE was passing, so as to keep our broadside to her, lest the flag of truce should be a deception, and having come to the wind on the other tack, a boat was hoisted out, and I went on board the French ship, which ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... nail ca bal' dis tract' re flect' taint ca nal' ex pand' re fresh' trail cra vat' a bet' re lent' aim de camp' be deck' re ject' maim pro tract' be held' re quest' train re cant' be quest' re bel' strain re fract' de fect' re gress' chain re lax' e lect' re press' paint at tack' e rect' sub ject quaint at tract' ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... itself. For three months, during which a day seemed an age, the Abraham Lincoln furrowed all the waters of the Northern Pacific, running at whales, making sharp deviations from her course, veering suddenly from one tack to another, stopping suddenly, putting on steam, and backing ever and anon at the risk of deranging her machinery, and not one point of the Japanese or American coast was ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... stick pins through his mammae and tie them together by a string round the pins drawn so short as to cause great pain and then indulge himself in the sexual act. He used strong wooden clips with a tack fixed in them, so as to pierce and pinch the mammae, and once he drove a pin entirely through the penis itself, then obtaining orgasm by friction. He was never able to get an automatic emission in this way, though ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... looked away and paused. Once more he felt himself on a wrong tack. What was the use of laying out, so to speak, all that he had done in the sight of these angry eyes? Besides, a ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... two o'clock; they had marched with forty pound or "light" packs since daylight, lunching on cold pork and hard-tack as they worked; they had slept cold for weeks on brush under an open tent pitched over a hole in the snow; they must live this life of hardship and huge work for six weeks longer, but they hoped to get twice their ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... face convinced me that I had taken a wrong tack. It also showed me how deep Whit's trouble really was. I bade him good night and went to my berth, where sleep did not soon visit me. A saucy, sparkling-eyed woman barred Whit Hurtle's ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... that the one which was near setting fire to her became useless at the outset; whilst several others were kindled a mile and a half to the windward of this, or four miles and a half from the enemy. Of the remainder, many were at once rendered harmless from being brought to on the wrong tack. Six passed a mile to windward of the French fleet, and one ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... largest of the Spanish vessels would scarcely pass for third-rates in the present navy of England; yet were they so ill framed, or so ill governed, that they were quite unwieldy, and could not sail upon a wind, nor tack on occasion, nor be managed in stormy weather by the seamen. Neither the mechanics of ship-building, nor the experience of mariners, had attained so great perfection as could serve for the security and government of such bulky vessels; and the English, who had already had experience how unserviceable ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... of the yacht was something so terrible that it got to be hysterically funny. It couldn't seem dangerous with the sun streaming down the companion-way and past my state-room windows. About five o'clock on the second day they began to tack, and then I heard shrieks of laughter and the crash of china, and groans from the saloon settee, where young Bashforth was lying ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... empire of the Grand Khan. Steering along the coast of Honduras great hardships were endured, but nothing approaching his ideal was discovered. On September 13th Cape Gracias-a-Dios was sighted. The men had become clamorous and insubordinate; not until December 5th, however, would he tack about and retrace his course. It now became his intention to plant a colony on the River Veragua, which was afterward to give his descendants a title of nobility; but he had hardly put about when he was caught in a storm which lasted eight days, wrenched and strained his crazy, ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... fleet she went out The English Channel to cruise about, When four French sail, in show so stout Bore down on the Arethusa. The famed Belle Poule straight ahead did lie, The Arethusa seemed to fly, Not a sheet, or a tack, Or a brace, did she slack; Though the Frenchman laughed and thought it stuff, But they knew not the handful of men, how tough, ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... another Scoop," she said resignedly. "The Queen will have to tack with the wind for a while ...
— Traders Risk • Roger Dee
... received their rations. There could be no distribution of wood, however, the wagons having gone astray, and it had therefore been impossible for them to make fires and warm their soup. They had consequently been obliged to content themselves as best they might, washing down their dry hard-tack with copious draughts of brandy, a proceeding that was not calculated greatly to help their tired legs after their long march. Near the canteen, however, behind the stacks of muskets, there were two soldiers pertinaciously endeavoring to ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... Burns! to tack thy fine strains of sublime patriotism! Better take Tristram Shandy's vein. Hand me my cap and bells there. So now, I am equipped. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... White would disclaim any knowledge of the shooting until forced to admit it, took a new tack. "Where's ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... could not weather the reef off the south-west end of the bay, the wind having at that time very unfavourably shifted two points. The ship was then thrown in stays, which she missed, being with great difficulty wore clear of the breakers, and brought to the wind on the other tack, when every sail was again set. Finding that she still drifted fast upon the shore, another attempt was made to stay her; but being out of trim, it did not succeed. All the sheets and hallyards were then ordered to be let fly, and an anchor to be cut away; but before it reached ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... more I must trespass on your good-nature. It is essential to the success of my plans, that these two men should not be left together. Will you, can you, tack yourself on to them, and keep close to Pepito until ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... he saw GAWAIN'S head! With one wild bound toward the dark'ning skies, From out the garden gates he madly flies. But soon his mind it alters. Slipping back, His tune he changes—trying this new tack:"Howe'er it be, it seems to me 'Tis only noble to be good; Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith, than ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... was more calm. As to the payment of the debts,—yes, within a certain liberal limit. For the present, an income of five hundred pounds he thought would be almost as efficacious a bait as double the amount; and it would be well to tack to it the necessity of a residence abroad. It might, perhaps, serve to get the young man out of the country for a time. If the young man bargained on either of these headings, the matter could be ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... rifle. I could hear nothing but one continued roar of all my dogs, coming right towards me. Though I was an old hunter, the music made my hair stand on end. Soon after they first started, I heard one gun go off, and my dogs stopped, but not long, for they took a little tack towards where I had placed the strangers. One of them fired, and they dashed back, and circled round way to my left. I run down 'bout a quarter of a mile, and I heard my dogs make a bend like they were coming to me. While I was listening, I heard the bushes breaking still lower down, ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... abundant and excite no remark; but to the woodsman each article possessed a separate and particular value. The tent, an iron kettle, a side of bacon, oatmeal, tea, matches, sugar, some canned goods, a box of hard-tack,—these, in the woods, represented wealth. Wallace's rifle chambered the .38 Winchester cartridge, which was unfortunate, for Thorpe's .44 ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... his mouth, bent forward to shake the ashes out of it, and stared into the fire. Then he said, clearing his throat once or twice: "I've bothered her, 'trying,' I thought I'd start on a new tack." ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... and buntlines!" shouted the first lieutenant; and the hands sprang to their several stations. "Stand by tack and sheet." ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... tack, And on the square you flash your flag? At penny-a-lining make your whack, Or with the mummers mug and gag? For nix, for nix the dibbs you bag! At any graft, no matter what, Your merry goblins soon stravag: Booze and the blowens cop ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... different tack. "You have no reason to maintain a feeling of obligation to Voss and the others. You have obviously been abandoned. Had they any feeling for you there would have been more ...
— Status Quo • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... crowded and rudderless wreck of the steamship, and Death chasing it up and down the storm, How he knuckled tight and gave not back an inch, and was faithful of days and faithful of nights, And chalk'd in large letters on a board, Be of good cheer, we will not desert you; How he follow'd with them and tack'd with them three days and would not give it up, How he saved the drifting company at last, How the lank loose-gown'd women look'd when boated from the side of their prepared graves, How the silent old-faced infants ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... holy father," quoth the merry Beggar with a grin. "But look thee, thy gown is too short. Thou hadst best cut a piece off the top and tack it to the bottom, so that it may be long enough. But come, sit beside us here and take a taste of ale, if ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... cheerily. "Oh! Don't look like that. You're only a bit weak, messmate. Avast there! take a good grip o' the health tack; haul in your slack, and ahoy! you'll be full sail again in a week. I say, what do you think of that? I'm getting on with my nautical lingo, ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... on the right tack, Pelle," answered Morten seriously. "But let the young ones light the fire underneath, and it'll go all the quicker. That new eventualities crop up in this country is no disadvantage; the governing body may very well be made aware ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... is a wonderful comfort. Tick-tack, tick-tack! and I think of you stretched asleep and happy and growing up to be a man, and the minutes running and ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... know what Murray may have been saying or quoting.[14] I called Crabbe and Sam the fathers of present Poesy; and said, that I thought—except them—all of 'us youth' were on a wrong tack. But I never said that we did not sail well. Our fame will be hurt by admiration and imitation. When I say our, I mean all (Lakers included), except the postscript of the Augustans. The next generation (from the quantity and facility of imitation) will tumble and break their ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... as a brown glove ripped in over his guard and jerked his head back. But always he kept boring in, delivering an occasional right to the body with the pleased smile of an infant destroying a Noah's Ark with a tack-hammer. Despite these efforts, however, he was plainly getting all the worst of it. Energetic Mr. Wolmann, relying on his long left, was putting in three blows to his one. When the gong sounded, ending the first round, the house was practically solid for the Cyclone. Whoops and yells ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... board of which Nelson was killed. The wind was not strong enough to permit the passage of the Needles, so at midnight we succeeded in wearing back again into the channel, around the Isle of Wight. A head wind forced us to tack away towards the shore of France. We were twice in sight of the rocky coast of Brittany, near Cherbourg, but the misty promontory of Land's End was our last ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... light on it." And Mr. Oliver Fernald, president of the great city bank of which Sam Burnett was cashier, got promptly down on the knees of his freshly pressed trousers, and proceeded to tack the frazzled edge of the pulpit stair-carpet with interest and skill. That stair-carpet had been tacked by a good many people before him, but doubtless it had never been stretched into place by a man whose eye-glasses sat astride of a nose of the impressive, presidential ...
— On Christmas Day In The Evening • Grace Louise Smith Richmond
... sight of the prows," he exclaimed, "and is making more sail. They are, however, well to windward of her, and I am afraid she will have a hard job to catch them up. Perhaps she will make a tack in here; and if ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... the weather clears up, and a fresh breeze comes, it is generally from the southward, directly in the outward-bound navigator's teeth. He must have patience, however, and strive to make the most of it by keeping on that tack by which most southing is to be gained. It is now, I believe, generally held to be the best practice to place the ship between 18 deg. and 23 deg. of west longitude on losing the north-east Trade; ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... cold unimpressible nature: they are capable of many friendships and of a true dignity in danger, giving each other a sympathetic, if transitory, regret—one sorry that another "should be foolishly lost at a game of tick-tack." Words which seem to exhaust man's deepest sentiment concerning death and life are put on the lips of a gilded, witless youth; and the saintly Isabella feels fire creep along her, kindling her tongue to eloquence ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... for a moment, then continued on another tack. "Biology... Given the whole universe to experiment in, I suppose you can never know what it will come up with—or what is possible. These devils—you get to hate them in your sleep. If their flesh—or their methods—were something ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... herself laughing; and this only made her the more intense a second later, on a different tack. Now she would plead. ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... freed about that time, and for the first time in their lives they were free, and the entire family together. The father went to the governor for food. The government was allowing hard tack and pickled beef for the negroes. They received their allotment, and were well satisfied with hard tack because they were free. In telling about the pickled beef he says he never has seen any beef since that looked like it; he believed that it was horse meat. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... it carefully, I might be able to get upstairs without being heard; there were eight steps in all, and only the two top ones creaked under my tread. Down at the door I took off my shoes, and ascended. It was quiet everywhere. I could hear the slow tick-tack of a clock, and a child crying a little. After that I heard nothing. I found my door, lifted the latch as I was accustomed to do, entered the room, and shut the door ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... have the wind on their quarter, as the sun shone full in their faces, which they considered might be of disadvantage to them, and stretched out a little, so that at last they got the wind as they wished. The Normans, who saw them tack, could not help wondering why they did so, and said they took good care to turn about, for they were afraid of meddling with them. They perceived, however, by his banner, that the King was on board, which gave them great joy, as they were eager ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the other, "but you can tack it to my right here, and tell no lie. We can't dispute, so let's drop the matter. With that settled, I'm encouraged to pour out the story of why you see me here to-night, far from the madding crowd. Have you a stray tear? You'll need it. It's ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... it. Nearly every part of it has a very strong notion that it is better than any other part. As in the grocer's shop pictured by one of our best wits, so is it here—the tenpenny nail looks upon the tin tack and calmly snubs it; the long sixes eye the farthing dips and say they are poor lights; the bigger articles seem cross and potent in the face of the smaller; the little look big in the face of the less; and the infinitessimal clap their wings when they make ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... Lady Prevost, Queen Charlotte, and Hunter, raking them with her starboard guns, and engaged the Detroit, which, being raked in all directions, soon became unmanageable. The Niagara then bore around ahead of the Queen Charlotte, and hauling up on starboard tack, engaged that ship, giving at the same time a raking fire with her larboard guns to the Chippewa and the Little Belt, while the smaller vessels, closing to grape and canister distance, maintained a most destructive fire. This masterly and but too successful manoeuvre decided the contest. ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... starboard tacks aboard, we cast off our weather braces and lifts; we set in the lee braces, and hauled forward by the weather bowlings, and hauled them right, and belayed them, and hauled over the mizzen tack to windward, and kept her full and by as near as she would lie. During this storm, which was followed by a strong wind west-southwest, we were carried, by my computation, about five hundred leagues to the east, so that the oldest sailor aboard could not tell ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... son was as near like his father as one person could be like another. He was eighteen years old, and was an idle and dissolute fellow. Lawrence, the second son, inherited his mother's tack and energy. He was observing and enterprising, and had already made a good reputation as a boatman and pilot. He had worked in various capacities on board of steamers, canal-boats, sloops, and schooners, and in five years had visited every part of ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... vigilance, he was a model picket. Heard every sound, observed every moving thing, and was quick to shoot, and of steady aim. He was possessed of exceptionally good teeth, and, therefore, could bite his cartridge and hard tack. He had been trained to long periods of labor, poor food, and miserable quarters, and therefore, could endure extreme fatigue and ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... voice.] No. The Duchess and Mrs. Jack were coming to town shopping, and Lady Owbridge proposed that she and I should tack ourselves on ...
— The Gay Lord Quex - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... handle of the Perfect Automatic, stretched with our united strength, and pushed down on the lever. The spring-hammer drew back, a little trap or mouth at the end of the slotted tin barrel opened for the tack, the tack jumped out, turned over, landed point downward upon the right spot in the carpet, the crouching hammer ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... of criticism in your last letter to me, telling me that it will soon disappear. I think, on the contrary, that it is, at most, only at its dawning. They are on a different tack from before, but nothing more. At the time of La Harpe, they were grammarians; at the time of Sainte-Beuve and of Taine, they are historians. When will they be artists, only artists, but really artists? Where do you know a criticism? Who is there who is ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... buttonhole has been worked all around, the end is completed with a bar tack made by taking two or three stitches across the end of the buttonhole, drawing the edges closer together. This bar is covered with buttonhole stitches worked close together. The thread is fastened ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... of birth going to do about it? Struggle desperately? It took that tack at first. Bismarck ranged himself in its support for some time. He was himself an agrarian. But he was not long in installing paper mills on his estates at Varzin. It is said that the Emperor himself possesses ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... mouth of the river, when the wind veered to the South West; the captain, as by a kind of inspiration, said that they ought to go about, the winds blew towards the frigate; after they had run two hours on this tack, the man at the mast head, announced a vessel: when the brig was nearer to us, by the aid of glasses, they perceived that it was our raft. When we were taken up by the Argus, we asked this question: Gentlemen ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... schooner gradually fell off, and filled again upon another tack, sailed swiftly for a minute or so, and brought up once more dead in the wind's eye. Again and again was this repeated. To and fro, up and down, north, south, east, and west, the Hispaniola sailed by swoops and dashes, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... you are on the wrong tack. You see economic science in your day was a science of things; in our day it is a science of human beings. We have nothing at all answering to your rent, interest, profits, or other financial devices, and the terms expressing them have no meaning now except to students. ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... ha' known where it always come from. If their hearts had been full of the dinner He gave the five thousand hungry men and women and children, they wouldn't have been uncomfortable about not having a loaf. And so they wouldn't have been set upon the wrong tack when He spoke about the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees; and they would have known in a moment what He meant. And if I hadn't been too much of the same sort, I wouldn't have started saying it was but reasonable to ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald |
