Nor was she, I ween, the first woman that ever led men into zigzags.
For the reasons above stated, I had many spare hours to myself At times, I mounted aloft, and lounging in the slings of the topsail yard--one of the many snug nooks in a ship's rigging--I gazed broad off upon the blue boundless sea, and wondered what they were doing in that unknown land, toward which we were fated to be borne.

Or feeling less meditative, I roved about hither and thither; slipping over, by the stays, from one mast to the other; climbing up to the truck; or lounging out to the ends of the yards; exploring wherever there was a foothold.

It was like climbing about in some mighty old oak, and resting in the crotches.
To a sailor, a ship's ropes are a study.

And to me, every rope-yarn of the Parki's was invested with interest.

The outlandish fashion of her shrouds, the collars of her stays, the stirrups, seizings, Flemish-horses, gaskets,--all the wilderness of her rigging, bore unequivocal traces of her origin.
But, perhaps, my pleasantest hours were those which I spent, stretched out on a pile of old sails, in the fore-top; lazily dozing to the craft's light roll.
Frequently, I descended to the cabin: for the fiftieth time, exploring the lockers and state-rooms for some new object of curiosity.