"That's going about on the other tack," replied the Captain.
"What's going about on the other tack?" asked William, as wise as he was before.
"I'll show you," said the Captain. "Now see here: first I give the proper order, as if somebody else was giving it to me, and I was the man at the wheel: 'Hard-a-lee,' do you observe;--now look, I put the helm down as far as I can jam it,--there;--look now, how that turns the boat and brings her up into the wind,--you see the sails begin to shiver,--the wind is blowing right in your faces now;--now we have turned nearly round; the boat, you see, has come up on an even keel,--level, you know;--now look out sharp for your heads there,--the boom is going to jibe over to the other side;--there, don't you see we've turned round,--that house over there near the beach that was almost ahead of us is now behind us. There goes the boom,--bang! There fills the sail, see it bulging out,--the jib, you see, shakes a little yet,--but there she goes now filled out like the other; and now you see I've got the helm back where I had it before, in the middle, 'steady,' you know, and there goes the _Alice_ off on the starboard tack, and an easy bowline back towards the Mariner's Rest again. Wasn't that nicely done?"
"Splendid! splendid!" cried William; "I wish I could do it."
"I'll teach you,--it's easy learned," answered the Captain; "but look out there, or you'll go overboard; get up to windward, and trim the boat; you see we are leaning over to the other side now."
And thus 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 ran into shoal water, and brought his boat's head once more up into the wind; but this time, instead of letting her head "pay" off to starboard, he steered her right into the wind's eye, with the sails shivering all the time, until the boat stopped, when he cried out to Main Brace to "let go the anchor," which Main Brace did promptly, with an "Ay, ay, sir!" and then he "clewed" up the sails, and spread a white and red striped and red-fringed awning over the place where they were seated, and said he was now going on with the story. "Isn't this a tip-top place," said he, "for story-telling?" And the children all said it was "tip-top," and "jolly," and "grand," and made many little speeches about it, which to put down here would make this account so long that everybody would get tired before getting to the end of it.