Early in the day the captain came on board with his son, and after he had given sundry orders on deck, they both descended to the cabin. Imagine my surprise when, on their entrance, I recognised my old acquaintance of the Zoological Gardens, the blue-eyed boy and his father! I instinctively looked, though in vain, to see if they were followed by Billy and Bob.
Soon afterwards the anchor was weighed, and the vessel began to move. It was to me a strange and new sensation. I had never before experienced any motion but that of my own little feet.
Towards evening the motion grew stronger. The vessel heaved up and down, rocked to and fro; the creaking sounds above grew louder, and were mingled with a constant splashing noise. Neddy, who had been very merry and active all day, now on deck, now in the cabin, asking questions, and examining everything upon which he could lay his hands, appeared now quite heavy and dull. He complained of headache, and lay down in his hammock. I thought that the boy was ill. However, he was lively as ever in the morning.
Our sea life was rather a same one, after the first excitement of starting was over. Neddy spent some hours every day in the cabin, poring over things which I found were called books. I could not at first comprehend why, when his eyes were fixed on the pages which to me seemed exactly alike, he should sometimes look grave, sometimes merry, and sometimes laugh outright, as though some one were talking with him out of the book. When, however, his father read aloud to the boy, or he read aloud to his father, I could imagine why they were amused, though I never could find out by what means the book could make itself heard. I have often snuffed round the volumes, and even touched them with my whiskers, but they seemed to me dead as clay. It must be some wonderful talent, possessed only by man, which enables him to hear any voice from them.
There was one large volume in particular, which Captain Blake called “Shakespeare,” from which he sometimes read extracts to his son. I heard him say once that this very Shakespeare had been dead for more than two hundred years. Is it not marvellous that his thoughts, preserved in leaves of paper in some manner inexplicable to a rat, should survive himself so long,—that he should make others both laugh and weep when he himself laughs and weeps no more?
As may be supposed, I took no great interest in the reading until my ear was caught one evening by an allusion to my own race in Shakespeare, “Rats, and mice, and such small deer.” We had then a place in the wondrous volume; this made me all attention, and more than once that attention was rewarded by hearing of the race of Mus. One mention both surprised and puzzled me. The rhyme still rests on my memory:
“But in a sieve I’ll thither sail,
And like a rat without a tail,
I’ll do—I’ll do—I’ll do!”
The do, of course, represents nibble, nibble, nibble; but the rat without a tail is of some species of which I had never before heard, and have certainly never met with.