"Why not tell us now, while we are on the subject?" asked Con.
"Because you will not understand it so well now as you will then. But there is another matter that may be told now. From which side do we get the wind just now, Ben?"
"From the port-side. Give me something harder," replied he.
"I will: on what tack are we sailing?" asked the skipper sharply.
"I shall have to give it up: I never could get the hang of these tacks," pleaded Con.
"I think I can tell why you did not get the hang of the tacks," continued Thad. "It was because the meaning of the position was given to you in a lot of sea-slang, which you did not take in. I will tell you when a vessel is on the starboard tack: it is when the main-boom is out over the port-quarter, and the port jib-sheets are trimmed down. Now you know!"
"My definition is not beyond your comprehension; but you are not used to thinking in that sort of lingo, though you could take in the meaning of it if you gave the time and thought to it. Ben said just now that we are getting the wind from the starboard-side. Do you all understand that?" asked Thad very forcibly.
"That's easy enough," chimed in several others.
"Then, if we have the wind on the port-side, we are on the port-tack," almost shouted the skipper.
"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.
"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."