Ugh! how the water bubbled in our ears! What frantic efforts we made to free ourselves from the sack! Nor were those efforts without success, for we had long ago gnawed the string which fastened its mouth: it opened with the motion of the waves, and corn, rats and all, floated upon the surface of the raging billows!
Down in two seconds went the corn, swallowed up by the sea; still we struggled, drowning rats that we were, to save ourselves by desperate swimming. Of course our strength must soon have been exhausted, and the mighty green waves must have swept us to destruction, had not a barrel, thrown out from the ship, been happily floating near us!
Whiskerandos saw this little island of hope. As for me, I was too much frightened and confused to look around me; but I instinctively followed where he led, and soon found myself, shivering, shaking, dripping with wet, and looking as wretched as a rat can look, on the floating barrel beside my friend!
How we shook our glistening sides, and shuddered and gazed disconsolately round us on the wide waste of waters, lashed into long streaks of angry foam! Alas! there was no land in sight; but then the white mist rested on the horizon, which shut out the distant view.
“If we are not drowned we shall be starved!” exclaimed I, very piteously, to Whiskerandos. Alas! our barrel was empty.
Oh! the misery endured that day, and the terrible night which succeeded! We had no resource but to gnaw at the tasteless wood. We were surrounded with water, yet perishing with thirst! pinched by hunger, without hope of relief! Better to have been drowned at once; better to have fallen by the paw of a mouser, or to have been caught like my brothers in a trap, than to be dying thus by inches on a barrel, tossed in the midst of the sea!
But with the gray morning hope dawned! We perceived that our little island had drifted near to some shore. The waves were now much more quiet, and leapt on the beach with a pleasant murmur, and strove to roll on, each farther than the other, like children merrily racing together.
“Could we not swim to the shore?” said Whiskerandos.
But I recoiled from the dangerous attempt. “No, no; some wave will roll the barrel on the beach,” I replied; “no more struggling in the water for me!”
And the waves, bearing the barrel on their green backs, seemed often ready to land it safely on shore, but each time changed their minds, and kept it bobbing up and down, while they retired back with a grating noise over the pebbles, as if mocking our distress and impatience.