The Voyage of the Norman D.
a shelf of the bowsprit no more than three inches wide, holding on by a wire rope. "See, you just be careful to hold on to this rope—you must be careful to not grab anything that'll let you down." Then he reached the jibboom, and stepped down on to the footropes. "But these footropes are a good long stretch for a youngster," said he. "I tell you, this is a nasty place in bad weather; it certainly is. Imagine how it would be with waves running high, and washing up over you when you are out on there!" Then he told us how once he had managed to fall off the jibboom when a high sea was running, but, happily, had caught by his armpits among the bowsprit rigging and climbed up on again.I surely believed him: I had never known anything, even the topsail ratlines, look more insecure than those footropes. They jerked back and forth, and at every step they sagged 'way down. But I determined to be sailorly, and, though I didn't go out that evening, I secretly resolved that some day I should surprise everyone by going out on those frail, jogging footropes, where, if I should fall off, I should probably stick fast in nice, oozy harbor mud.
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How that schooner haunted me! I was like a caged lion all day, and at night I dreamed that I was
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