mouse streaked out the door of the Captain's cabin and did not stop until it reached the farther end of the Vulture, where it hid quaking behind someone's old shoe. The little creature, quieting down at last and feeling its heart regain a more familiar rhythm, sniffed distastefully at the shoe. It was plain to see, it thought, that the Vulture was an untidy, ill-cared-for ship. Old shoes were never left lying about on the Mirabelle.
The thought of the Mirabelle brought Chris's mission on the pirate ship into sharper focus. He glanced up at the sky; there was little time left in which to work safely, for Claggett Chew's sharp eyes had noticed the infinitesimal scar on his cheek and his astute brain had put two and two together. Chris wondered, with a new start of horror, if Claggett Chew could read his thoughts, and if this was why he had stared at him with such intensity.
Well, he shrugged, he knew what had to be done and if he worked quickly, and Claggett Chew's swoon lasted long enough, not even he could stop him. Looking about to make sure he was unobserved, he took his own shape again with a sigh of relief. It was almost like holding one's breath for long periods of time, to be in the shape of a bird or a mouse, but to be himself, he knew, held even greater dangers.
For the first time he opened the leather bag at his neck and felt inside. The first thing his fingers closed on he pulled out. He turned the object in his palm toward the starlight to see what it might be.
It was a folding knife in a case of tortoise shell inlaid with strange signs in silver and mother-of-pearl. Chris opened it—the blade was razor-sharp—and put it experimentally point down on the wood of the deck. As if by itself the blade revolved with immense speed, sinking in so fast that only just in time did Chris snatch it out and hold it more tightly. Trying it out he found that the blade would go through anything, sometimes so easily as to scarcely seem to cut, leaving no trace of a mark, it was so keen. At other times when he pressed on it, the blade whirled around, boring a hole as deep as might be necessary.
What a useful gadget! Chris thought.
This is just what I need and now is the time! he said to himself, and sprang up the nearest of the Vulture's three masts.
What he had to do would take long, and there was little time left that night in which to do it. For he intended slitting the lines of the rigging here and there, not so deeply that they would give way at once and be soon repaired, but so that with the first hard blow the lines would break.
Growing daylight should have warned him long before he was done, for Chris wished also to slit the sails, very slightly, when they had been unfurled and the Vulture was under way. The sound of voices broke his absorption in his task. Looking down from the top of the mainmast where he clung, Chris saw a boatload of returning sailors and realized with a start that it was nearly sunup. In a moment a rat ran down the mast to disappear into the foul-smelling hold of the pirate vessel.
How long must he wait in the hold? Chris wondered. Although he might be in the shape of a rat, it was only his outward form that had changed. He could not eat grain or refuse that was not suitable for a human, and he did not relish having to hold his own in a fight with a true rat, there in the darkness. He contemplated boring a hole in the hull of the Vulture but decided to wait until the ship was under sail. He bitterly regretted not having brought food with him, feeling hungry after his exertions about the ship. There was nothing else for it but to hide as safely as he could in his own shape.