"What's that?" one of them snapped. "Didn't it sound like a rat?"
"Sure enough!" cried another. "A rat! That's what's stuffed up the ventilation!"
"Most likely a whole colony of rats!" added a fourth. "They grow big down here, you know!"
"And here's the very place!" took up the first. "Right in this air-tube! Well, we'll fix them all right!" And I could hear the man rattling at the iron lid above my head.
Never before had I wished so ardently for the power of invisibility. Never had I had such a desire to compress myself to a thimble's size. Hopelessly I huddled against my iron ledge; then, fearing that I would be seen, I resorted to the desperate expedient of hanging over the brim, holding on to the ledge with both hands, while my body lay along an iron surface sloping at an angle of forty-five degrees.
No sooner had I gained this position than I heard the lid heavily clanging out of place; and a flood of light burst upon me. In the glare above, several chalk-faces were staring down at me!
"There it is! A big rat! A mighty big one! One of the biggest I ever saw!" exclaimed one of the men, in awed tones.
Evidently, because of their inability to see things near at hand, they had mistaken me for a rodent!
"Well, we'll get rid of him fast enough!" a second man declared. "Just one minute there! Let me have that brush! I'll spray him with poison!"