Power Struggle

“For a moment the exhausted mutineer made a tremulous motion of his cramped jaws, and then painfully twisting round his head, said in a sort of hiss, ‘What I say is this—and mind it well—if you flog me, I murder you!’

“‘Say ye so? then see how ye frighten me’—and the Captain drew off with the rope to strike.

The captain presented a pistol. With one foot on each prow of the yoked war-canoes, the Lakeman laughed him to scorn; assuring him that if the pistol so much as clicked in the lock, he would bury him in bubbles and foam.

“‘What do you want of me?’ cried the captain.

“Oh, trebly hooped and welded hip of power! Oh, high aspiring, rainbowed jet!—that one strivest, this one jettest all in vain! In vain, oh whale, dost thou seek intercedings with yon all-quickening sun, that only calls forth life, but gives it not again.

“The rods! the rods!” cried Starbuck to the crew, suddenly admonished to vigilance by the vivid lightning that had just been darting flambeaux, to light Ahab to his post. “Are they overboard? drop them over, fore and aft. Quick!”

“Avast!” cried Ahab; “let’s have fair play here, though we be the weaker side. Yet I’ll contribute to raise rods on the Himmalehs and Andes, that all the world may be secured; but out on privileges! Let them be, sir.”