readily hauled up into the chains outside, or thrown down into the sea, as occasion may require.

“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.”

“Look aloft!” cried Starbuck. “The corpusants! The