“Be quiet and never despair,” was the answer of the bold-hearted rat.
I believe that that terrible journey did not last long, but to me the time appeared an age! Every turn of the grating wheel beneath me sent a pang of anguish through my frame! At last the truck, if such it were, stopped; in a few minutes the sack was again rudely moved, carried aloft, and then tumbled, with its living contents, down—down—we could not tell where!
What a shock it gave me, that tumble! I lay for some seconds quite stunned. My first impulse, when I recovered a little, was bitterly to bewail my condition, and to reproach him who had brought me into it.
“Oh that I had been content with my kwas and my shtshee! Oh that I had never left the kitchen! that I had never ventured forth with a reckless companion, who would, I believe, play at hide and seek with a cat, or nibble at the pocket of a rat-catcher!”
My tone was, I knew, both peevish and provoking; and many a brown rat, in the position of my companion, would have stopped my doleful squeaking at once by giving me something to squeak for. But Whiskerandos, whatever were his faults, was above that mean one of quarrelling with those who found them out, or attempting to screen and defend them.
“Ratto, I am sorry that I have led you into trouble,” said he. “I wish that I could suffer alone for my self-will and imprudence. But since no regrets can recall the past, let us not make our miseries greater by reproaches and dissension between those who may soon die, as they have lived, together.”
His mildness quite overcame any feeling of bitterness in my heart; and hope revived as some time elapsed without fresh cause for alarm occurring.
“I wonder where we are!” exclaimed I, shaking myself into a more easy position.
“I fancy that I hear the creaking of a windlass!” cried Whiskerandos.
“And the flapping of canvass!” added I. “And I smell tar.”