BY LIEUTENANT-COMMANDER J. D. JERROLD KELLEY, U.S.N.
(In Two Instalments.)
II.
A ship rat is not usually a cherished object of affection, but I knew of one, and here is the outline of his story: Once, in the quarterly overhauling of a frigate's main hold, a rat but a few days old was the only inmate found of a predatory colony which had scurried, been captured, or been carried away when the invaders entered. The ship's doctor, a tender soul, took nest and all to his room, rigged a crude but adequate feeding arrangement, and nursed and strengthened the baby rat into a healthy childhood. Nothing could have been tamer than the little gray creature, and it thrived lustily. It slept in the doctor's room, but made rambling adventures through the civilized plains of the ship, fearsomely avoiding the wilderness and deserts closed to man in the frames and timbers of her hull. At night it always awoke when the doctor came on shipboard, waited for a little food and fondling, and then slept peacefully until reveille sent it scampering to the steward for its breakfast. It kept the doctor's quarters clear of all winged insects, and made such a riot among the ants and roaches of the ward-room that the executive officer and mess caterer numbered it among their most efficient aids. It is unnecessary to say that no cats were allowed aft, and that the license and liberties of the officers' quarters were the cherished pleasure and hunting preserves of the rodent. Its affection for the doctor was unbounded, and it shared a particular fondness for the photographs of his children, peering through the glass at their innocent faces, and making a vantage-ground for its mid-day naps upon one of the largest of the frames which hung against the after-bulkhead of the officer's bunk.
One night, after a shore-going in a tropical port, the doctor lighted his candle at the ward-room lantern, and entering his room, heard a whirring note of anger over his bed. Looking up, he saw the little rat in a strange state of fury, its eyes burning like points of fire, its hair ruffled, and its legs gathered for a jump. Wondering at this unwonted excitement, the doctor called and whistled to it, and then turned to his bunk to throw back the bedclothes.
Just as his hand reached the upper covering he caught a strident shriek of anger and the whir of a flying body, and saw just beneath his uplifted hand the rat struggling in the bed with an animated ball of fuzzy black, bristling with clawlike tentacles that writhed convulsively. The struggle was sudden, sharp, short, and when it was over, the doctor saw, lying dead on his bed, one of the most savage and venomous scorpions of that region.
It had come on board probably in the unbarked fire-wood, and it worked its way aft through the hidden recesses of the timbers to the doctor's room. Had his hand ever touched the sheet where the scorpion lay hidden from him in the half-light, but visible to the rat, no power could have saved him from the poison of the sting which would have followed.