"Is that all?" demanded Con. "I understand that perfectly."
"Then, we won't say another word about it, if you all understand it."
"Of course we all understand it," said several of them.
"If you insist upon being a little more pickled in speaking it, you can say she has her starboard-tacks aboard; though that expression more properly applies to a square-rigged vessel."
"Starboard-tacks aboard," repeated about every one of the class.
"I don't see what it means," said Ash.
"Then, you don't remember what the principal told you in his lecture last fall. In a ship, the ropes at the clews of the lower square-sails, the courses, change their names," said Thad, picking up the boat-hook. "Call this the yard of a ship. It would be at this angle as we have the wind;" and he placed it at an angle with the keel, with the windward end farther forward than the lee. "The rope at the weather-clew, or corner of the sail, is the tack, and the one at the lee-clew is the sheet. Now, suppose the ship to come about, and go the other way;" and he changed the position of the boat-hook. "Then the weather-side would be on the port, instead of the starboard; and what was the sheet before, becomes the tack; and the ship has her port-tacks aboard."
"The Sylph is hailing the schooner," said Ash Burton.
"She is getting out a boat," added Thad. "She wouldn't do that if something was not going on. As we can study this lesson just as well in the river, we will go and see what is up."
The skipper put the Goldwing about.