The Boy Tar

by Mayne Reid

I could hear nothing, and I concluded it had made a retreat to some other part of the ship. Most probably it was as badly scared as I—though that could hardly have been—and in proof that I was the more frightened of the two, the rat had the presence of mind to use its teeth and bite me, while I was for the moment quite driven out of my senses.

In the brief encounter my antagonist had certainly proved victorious; for in addition to the fright he had given me, he had inflicted a severe and painful wound, that was every moment growing more painful. I perceived that my thumb was bleeding freely, for I could feel the blood running over my fingers, and glueing them to the very tips.

I could have borne my discomfiture calmly enough, for what signified the bite of a rat? but that was not the whole question. The thought that troubled me was, whether the creature had quite gone away, or whether it was still near, and would return?

The thought of its coming back again, perhaps emboldened by having got off without punishment, caused me very great annoyance.

You may wonder at this, but it was really the case. During all my life I have had a sort of instinctive antipathy to rats—I might even say a dread of them. This feeling was stronger while I was only a boy; but, although I have since encountered animals of a much more dangerous character, and fought with some, I do not remember any that ever inspired me with more fear than I have felt in coming in contact with that common and ubiquitous creature—the rat. It is a fear blended with a feeling of disgust; and it is a fear not altogether unfounded—for I know of many well-authenticated cases, in which rats have attacked human beings, and not a few where children, and even men, wounded or otherwise disabled, have actually been killed and devoured by these hideous omnivora.

Many such stories had been told me while I was a boy; and it was but natural I should remember them at that moment. I did remember them; and under the influence of such memories, I felt a fear upon me very much akin to terror. The rat, too, was one of the largest I had ever encountered, so large that for a moment I could scarce believe it to be a rat. It felt as bulky as a half-grown cat.

As soon as I became a little composed, I tied up my thumb with a rag torn from my shirt. The wound in a few minutes’ time had grown exceedingly painful—for the tooth of a rat is almost as poisonous as the bite of a scorpion—and small as was the scratch, I anticipated a good deal of suffering from it.

I need not add that the incident had banished sleep, at least for a time. In reality I did not go to sleep again till nearly morning; and then I awoke every minute or two with a start—from fearful dreams, in which the vision was either a rat or a crab making to seize me by the throat!

For hours before I slept at all, I lay listening to see if the brute would return; but I did not note any signs of his presence for the remainder of that night. Perhaps the squeeze I had given him—for I had come down rather heavily upon him—had frightened him enough to hinder a repetition of his visit. With this hope I consoled myself, else it might have been still longer before I should have slept.

Of course, the presence of the rat at once accounted for the disappearance of my half biscuit, as well as for the damaged upper leather of my buskin, which latter had been lying at the door of his milder cousin the mouse. The rat, then, must have been prowling around me all the while, without my having known of it.