"Ben, Ben," Jubal said chidingly. "Wrong metaphor.  Not a canoe, but a tiger.  Or a throne.  By their own logic they had publicly crowned Mike.  Need I point out that, despite the old saw about uneasy heads and crowns, it is nevertheless safer to be publicly a king than it is to be a pretender in hiding?  A king can usually abdicate to save his neck; a pretender may renounce his pretensions but it makes his neck no safer - less so, in fact; it leaves him naked to his enemies.  No, Ben, Kung saw that Mike's position had been enormously strengthened by a few bars of music and an old sheet, even if you did not - and Kung did not like it a bit.