“I tell ye let go!” shouted the latter, “it won’t do! Wal, if ye wants to pull wid dis chile, why pull, an’ see who am de best feller!”
Inwood, in his apprehension for the safety of the negro, seized his leg, and endeavored with his utmost strength to stay his forcible departure, observing which, the gentleman in dispute turned his head:
“Nebber mind, George, nebber mind if dem darkeys
[Transcriber’s Note: Several lines of text are missing from the original here due to a printer’s error]
Jim was six feet three inches in height, and along his limbs was deposited an enormous quantity of muscle almost as hard as the bone itself; he was not quick, but he was a man of prodigious strength, and when he chose to exert it, there were few living men who could withstand it. If there could ever be a suitable occasion to exert it, that occasion was the present.
And Jim did call it into play. Closing his great fingers around the hand of the Mohave, he held it as firmly as if it were thrust into the jaws of a Numidian lion, and then bracing his feet against the sides of the cavern, he said:
“Now, my ’spectable friend, you pull an’ I’ll pull.”
At the first contraction of that muscular arm, the Mohave was drawn a foot forward; and, in dreadful alarm, he uttered a cry which brought several of his companions to his relief, and they, seizing him by his lower limbs, pulled as determinedly in the opposite direction.
“If yer gets dis feller back agin, I tinks he’ll be about a foot taller,” muttered Jim, as he gave another hitch with the hapless aborigine, which jerked not only him forward, but those who were clinging fast to his extremities. They, in turn, united in a “long pull, a strong pull, and a pull altogether,” with no effect, except to give the subject under debate a terrific strain.