Feeling Power 25 



Many dangerous crises have been encountered by 

 me since then, but in none of them have I felt so near 

 my end as on that occasion. Had it not been for my 

 chief, I must have been drowned. I, the child of the 

 deep sea, born to sport with the wild waves in their 

 utmost fury, or sink far beneath them into the darksome 

 profundities of ocean caverns — I should have been 

 drowned ! But I was not, and when in the sweet 

 moonlight all our company foregathered on the surface, 

 full fed, to lie in peace, lulled by the gentle rocking 

 of the wavelets, I no longer regretted the peaceful 

 tepid waters of the Red Sea. I had learned the 

 delights of struggle and conquest. And I had been 

 noticed by the chief ! 



Thenceforward I grew with amazing rapidity. 

 I felt the gigantic power twisting the cable-like sinews 

 of my flukes, knitting the columnar masses of my 

 vertebrae, and piling up the cushions of muscle around 

 my bones. A great joy filled me. I needed an outlet 

 for it. To show what I could do, to hurl myself venge- 

 fully into the closely packed mass of advancing enemies, 

 to lead the ranks of my fellows, . . . Why, oh why, 

 was all the accumulated wisdom of my thousands of 

 ancestors surging in my brain, but to impel me to 

 great deeds ? And here, frantically, I hurled myself 

 out of the sea thirty feet into the air, unable longer to 

 control the raging forces within. When I fell back 

 into the foaming vortex beneath, I was relieved, yet 

 still with that sense of superiority over all living things 

 surging within me. Perhaps it was the bracing effect 

 of that chill sea. For we were now well south, on the 

 outskirts of the beautiful isles of New Zealand, and 

 every nerve in our bodies was strung tense with the 

 springing of new life. Day broke and showed us the 

 towering precipices of the South Island, against which 



