One man told me that he found a small leather bag with two hundred sovereigns and some shillings in it, that had no doubt been washed out from a drain. He said that he had often found money, and that he was well satisfied with his luck in general. He had been for twenty years searching the sewers, and had amassed considerable property. He told me his story as follows:
THE SEWER-HUNTER.
A RAT STORY.
"The first night, ye know, that I went into a sewer, I had a pal with me, as is dead now. Steve Williams was his name—God rest his soul. I felt afeered when I went in and got lost two or three times, but Steve allers found me agin by hollering at me. I got the greatest fright that night I ever got in my life. We were somewhere in a sewer in old Smithfield, and there must have been a distillery somewhere there, for when I turned out of the main sewer into a branch one, I saw by the light of the lantern a thick steam beyond me. I was a little ahead of Steve, who had just got a haul of two silver table-knives and a watch chain of goold, and he was looking at the haul he made when I saw the steam a fillin of the sewer. I went along, when I got near it my head begun to get dizzy, and I fell back on my shoulders into the sewer. I got drunk in the steam from the distillery,—that's what ailed me—and it was so sudden like, that I would have lost my life if Steve hadn't been there.
"Well, Steve saved my life agin the same night. We were pretty near the mouth of the sewer on the Thames, near Wapping, where we had a boat to take us off, for in those times the peelers never meddled with us like they does now.
"Well, there was one place very ticklish in the sewer, that Steve had cautioned me about, and this place was all broken and in holes, and it was chuck full of rats. When we came by I was foolish enough to turn the light of my lantern on the broken place in the sewer, and sure enough, there was a reglar colony o' rats in a room—keeping house,—about two thousand of them—with a hall-way and a room gnawed out of the bricks, as large as the room I live in at home. There they were, all stuck together, with their eyes a glarin at me like winkin, and they all in a heap as big as a horse and cart. I never seed such a sight in my life. Steve told me to come on, and I was going, for the rats never said a word all the time, but looked at me and squealed—but just as I was turning around after Steve my foot slipped and I fell, and the lantern dropped into a pool and went out.
"I must have frightened the rats, for there was an awful squealing and scampering—but they didn't all run away, for I found a hundred of them fastened on my hands, legs, face, and body, when I fell. You may be sure I hollowed and yelled, for I wasn't used to these vermin then, and the more I hollowed and beat them, the more they squealed and bit me.
"In a few minutes Steve came running back with his lantern, and seeing I was down and couldn't get up, he drove at them with his pole and killed half a dozen of them, and then they left me and jumped at him. Then we went at it for a couple of minutes, battling for our lives, and when we did beat them off we were bitten all over our bodies. I am sure if it warnt for Steve and his lantern that time, I should have been eaten up by the rats. You see, Sir, they thought when I stumbled and fell that I attacked them, for I found out since that they never begin first if they can help it."
