“Look up now, then, and you’ll see them on the beams.”
Mark and Ebony both looked up, and beheld a row of rats on the beam overhead—their bead-like eyes glittering as they gazed over one side of the
beam, and their long tails just showing on the other.
“Das funny,” said the negro, who was in sympathy with the whole brute creation!
Mark thought it very much the reverse of funny, but held his peace.
“Dar’s a ole grey un, massa, right ober ’Ockins’s head—a tremenjous big ’un. Don’t you see ’im wid a griggy young un beside ’im?”
Whether the griggy young one was also larky we cannot tell, but while the negro was speaking it executed a flourish (whether intentional or otherwise who can say?) which knocked the big grey rat off the beam, and caused it to fall with a heavy flop on Hockins’s face. Three others fell off in their anxiety to observe the result.
Hockins leapt up with an indignant roar, and the rats leaped among the pots and pans with a horrified squeak, while Ebony and the others looked on with excruciating enjoyment.
The scurrying of many little feet among the household implements told that the grey rat’s friends were numerous though unseen, and the angry grunting of pigs proved that other slumbers had been broken. Of course the whole party were thoroughly awakened by this incident, but they took it good-humouredly, and, after replenishing the fire, lay down again, and resolutely shut their eyes and ears.