"There is a birch wattle hid away somewhere here," said he,—"ah, yes!—here it is, take it monsieur, and use it just as you shall see me do when we get among the rats. Keep close to me, else you may get lost in the drains."
Dane grew very excited, now, and ran ahead of us a good way, and presently we heard a great rushing and squeaking, and the suppressed snarling of the little dog as he worried the rats. Then we saw many rats running hither and thither, some of them so scared by the light of the torches, as they came near us, that they leaped into the water, while others ran up the wall, from which we quickly knocked them with our wattles. Simonet did not put them into his bag, but left them where they fell, saying that his custom was to pick them up on his way back.
The dog behaved wonderfully well, fighting and shaking the rats that fell in his way with great fierceness and pluck. At last, when we had killed about a hundred of them, we thought it time to rest. Simonet produced a short, black pipe, and, as I was filling mine, he cast a wistful look at my tobacco-pouch, thinking, probably, that the article contained in it must be of a quality superior to that of the cheap stuff smoked by him; so I poured half the contents of it into his hand, and he filled his pipe from it, with a grin of satisfaction on his ugly face.
"It will soon be time for us to turn back," said he, after a while; "the best place for rats is a little way further on, and it will be too late to try it if we don't go forward now."
On we went, slashing right and left at the rats, most of which, I noticed, were of a very black color here, as if belonging to a peculiar colony that existed in this part of the tunnel. As we rounded a corner, however, a very large white rat ran past us, and disappeared down a cross-gallery that led away to the left. Wishing to secure this animal as a trophy, I hallooed the terrier upon its tracks, and was about following the chase, when Simonet laid his hand upon my arm, and whispered, in a tone of entreaty,—
"Don't risk your life, monsieur! He who follows the white rat of the sewer is likely never to find his way back alive. There's a blight about the creature, and old stories are afloat of how it has led rat-hunters away into dangerous parts of the sewers, like a jack-o'-lantern, and then set upon them with a number of its kind, and picked their bones clean!"
Breaking away from the fellow, with a jerk that knocked the pipe out of his hand, and sent it spinning into the black water below, I ran down the by-sewer after the terrier, whose whimper, as though he were yet in full chase, I could hear at a good distance ahead of me. When I came up with him, which I did only after having taken several turns, he seemed at fault, head up and tail down, and gazing, with a very puzzled expression up at the vaulted roof. There was no white rat to be seen, nor could I detect any aperture in the walls, into which the creature could have made its escape. Then a sort of superstitious fear fell upon me, as I thought of Simonet's warning, and, with a word of encouragement to the dog, I hastened to retrace my steps, shouting loudly every now and then, so as to let the rat-hunter know of my whereabouts. But no responsive halloo came to my call. Not a sound was to be heard but the hollow beat of my footsteps on the damp, mouldy path, and the squeaking, here and there, of the rats, as we disturbed them from their feast on some garbage fished up by them from the slimy bed of the drain. Excited at the position in which I found myself, I now began to make reckless détours hither and thither, until, thoroughly exhausted by my exertions, I leaned my back against the wall, and tried to remember such marks as might have been observed by me in the tunnel since I had parted from Simonet. The only marks of the wayside that I could recall, however, were the dead rats left by us upon the ledge as we passed, and of these I had seen none while I was trying to retrace my steps. Arguing from this, and from the fact that Simonet did not respond to my shouts, which I continued to utter at intervals, I began to feel an extremely unpleasant nervous shiver creeping over me, suggestive of all the horrors about which I had ever read or dreamed. The little dog lay cowering at my feet, as if he, too, were somewhat dejected at the prospect of being eaten alive by avenging rats; and, to crown the situation, just as I had nerved myself for another effort to recover the lost clue, my torch went out with a malignant flicker, and I found myself in black darkness!
Sinking down at the foot of the wall, I now gave myself up for lost. Even had the torch not been quite burnt out, I had no means of relighting it, having used my last match when we stopped to smoke, just before I broke away from my guide. I think I must have become somewhat delirious now; for I have a faint recollection of wild songs chanted, and of yells that made the vaulted roof ring again. Then a heavy sleep must have fallen upon me, which probably lasted for several hours; and then I awoke to a dim consciousness of horror, as I began to realize the terrible situation into which I had brought myself by my reckless folly. My dog was still nestling close to me; and it may have been to his presence, perhaps, that I owed the fact of my not having been mangled by rats during my sleep. Rising with difficulty to my feet, for I was stiff from lying so long upon the damp, cold ground, I once more tried to shout; but my voice was utterly gone, from my previous exertion of it, and I could not raise it above a whisper. Then, in sheer desperation, I dragged myself along the wall, feeling the way with my hands, and had not gone many paces when I felt an angle in the masonry, on rounding which a ray of hope dawned upon me, as I discerned a faint light, far, far away, at the end of what seemed to be all but, an endless shaft of darkness. The prospect of escape infused new vigor into my weary limbs, and I kept steering onward for the light, which grew larger and larger as I approached it. At last I got near enough to see that it came through a small grille, or iron door, which terminated the branch of the sewer in which I was. When I reached the grating, I saw that it looked out upon the river, between which and it, however, there lay a deep indentation, or channel, of some fifty or sixty yards in length. It was gray morning, and I could see boats and steamers and ships, passing and repassing upon the river. Surely deliverance was now at hand! but how was I to make my situation known? My voice, as I have said, was utterly gone, and I had barely strength left to wave my pocket-handkerchief from the grating. There I stood for hours,—a prisoner looking wistfully through the bars of a dungeon to which no wayfarer came. I had sunk down at the foot of the grating, from mere exhaustion, when the whining of my little dog attracted me, and I gave him a caressing pat. He licked my face and whined again, as much as to say, "Can't I be of some use to you?" This brought a bright idea to my mind. Tearing a leaf from my note-book, I wrote the following words upon it, with pencil:—
"I have lost my way in the sewers. You will find
me at the grating just opposite a large buoy marked X.
Come quickly."