RATS ASHORE by James C. Young 

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WE WERE twenty days out of Rio when Captain Andy remarked to me that he never had seen so few rats on the old George Crabtree. After that I kept a sharp eye, and it seemed as though only a few dozen rats were aboard us. This worried me, because we had rats aplenty at Panama and all the way to Rio. When I began to think about the thing I remembered that the rats had started to disappear before we reached Rio. That was a bad sign. The only place we had stopped in between was a little mudhole port called New Madrid. And suddenly I recalled that the rats were scarce after we pulled up anchor there.

“Have the boys noticed it, Mr. Spriggins—about the rats?” asked Captain Andy, speaking properly to me as first officer.

“Why, not so far as I know, sir,” I said, “but there’s no telling when they will. I can’t understand it.”

“Must have gone ashore at Rio,” he observed.

“But I missed them after we left New Madrid, although there seemed to be plenty left. In Rio there were not so many, and now I can find only a few.”

“They couldn’t have ducked overboard,” said Captain Andy, asking the question rather than telling me any news.

“No rats ever left a ship at sear which wasn’t sinking,” I said.

“Sinking?” repeated the old man. “But we are not sinking.”

“Then where the devil—beg pardon, sir—are the rats?”

“Blessed if I know,” was all he could say, walking away and shaking his gray head.

It might be thought strange for a man to worry about the rats missing from his ship. But I knew just how the men felt. There was likely to be trouble if they missed them. Maybe some of the crew knew it already. We were swinging up with the trade wind and would soon drop anchor at a port of call. If the men ever started to talk of the rats leaving us we would not get out of port again with the same crew. And crews were scarce.

In this pinch I advised Captain Andy to skip the port of call, but he said that he would make port, rats or no rats. In fact, he damned all the rats afloat and me, too, his first officer, which was not a proper way of speaking.

I found myself anxiously watching for some of those ugly rodents. Two or three times I went below to look for them, and called myself worse names than had Captain Andy. I felt like I was going into a decline or something, the rats bothered me so much.

On one trip I saw a big fellow sitting in a passageway on the third deck below, and I could have shaken hands with him, I was so pleased. Then a strange thing happened. I was not more than twenty feet away when the rat disappeared and I heard something slap against a case with a vicious swing. That looked peculiar to me. I went forward, to see what was the trouble, but found nothing. One minute the rat had been there and the next he was gone—then silence. I decided that he must have jumped, and being an extra big fellow had slammed himself against the case. Anyway it was a small matter, though I almost hoped that rat had not hurt himself. I wanted a few to show the men in case of trouble.

Trouble came soon enough. We had a large crew for a freighter, but the prospect of losing a half dozen men was not a pleasant one for a first officer to have ahead of him. They called on me, properly enough, as being next in command to the old man, and wanted to know if they could leave ship at the first port we touched. That was a white man’s way of doing things, and I tried to treat them civilly, asking about the trouble. They wouldn’t say, but I could see, and they knew that I understood. It would have been mighty bad form for any man to tell his mate that he wanted to leave ship because the rats had gone. But I almost felt that way myself.

There was something wrong with the old George Crabtree. From the day that the men asked about their discharge every hand aboard was uneasy. We fouled a propeller on a floating spar and began to limp. Then one of our turbines started to show its temper and we almost stood still. Captain Andy swore longer and louder every day, which was not a proper way of speaking, to my mind.

Things were just about at this pass when I started to watch “Foolish” Thompson. He had been wearing a grin for a week, and was the only one of us who appeared to be pleased about anything. Some men’s idea of fun is hard to explain. Thompson was that sort of man, the dare-devil kind, without any particular sense. He went through life grinning at everybody, always playing some trick. But he and I had reached the point where that grin had to end.

I got him in a corner, with a hand on his throat.

“What the devil are you grinning about?” I asked, eyeing him hard.

He wouldn’t say anything, and I was ready to let him go when a remark of mine brought him to time.

“There’s something funny going on below,” I said, thinking to bluff the men through him, “and I mean to find out what it is mighty quick.”

Thompson’s face went a little white, and he said quickly:

“Be careful, sir, or you’ll get hurt.”

“Hurt?” I demanded. “What do you mean—mutiny?”

Then I saw his eyes change and guessed that it was something else, for he looked relieved, and answered: “Oh, no; not mutiny, sir. I didn’t mean anything.”

When I got through shaking and persuading him, he opened up with his yarn.

IT WAS this way, Mr. Spriggins,” he said. “Me and Bill Toots and Sam Sparks, and a couple of other fellows from the engine room, went ashore at New Madrid. You know where that mountain is back of the town? We decided to go up on top and have a look at the country. It was a stiff climb, but we got there about noon and sat around in the shade to rest. ‘Fore long Sam Sparks yells and starts to run. We looked about. Not far away and coming toward us was a big boa constrictor. He wasn’t coming fast, just sneaking along the ground, and maybe wanted to see what we was like. But, believe me, Mr. Spriggins, he was coming plenty fast for us. We all ran and soon got out of his way. Then we turned and saw that snake moseying around where we had been sitting, eating our grub, which we had brought from New Madrid. That I couldn’t take. I told the fellows we must go back and lay out that snake. They wanted to bolt at first, but decided to stick after we talked it over. Bill Toots, who used to work in a circus, got to thinking about how much more that snake would be worth alive than dead. He told us we should catch and sell him. Right there we almost lost our crew, but some of them wanted to know who would buy such a thing. Bill said there were plenty of fellows in New York or New Orleans who would give us a thousand for the snake. He looked about forty feet long, and big as a barrel. Bill said he was a beauty, better than anything he had seen in the circus. I didn’t express my sentiments on his beauty, but said I would help do the trick.

“That boa was stuffing himself on our grub in a way to make you mad. One or two of the boys wanted to back out when they saw what an appetite he had, but we kidded them along, me and Bill Toots, who knew all about these boas. He said the fellows who buy them might give us a couple of hundred extra on account of the boa’s size.

“Well, we cut a lot of limbs, with forks big enough to put over your body, and started to do our job. I began to feel sort of sick as we got near the boa. He was the biggest thing in the snake line I’d ever seen outside of a dream. But that grub of ours must have made him sleepy. He wrapped part of himself around a log and stretched out a few yards, laying still as a dead one. We could almost hear him snore, Mr. Spriggins. He didn’t pay no more attention to us than if we hadn’t been around, just went right on with his nap.

“We watched that boa a long time before we starting anything. Then Bill Toots told us he would slip up and hit the boa a wallop to put him out. At the same time I was to slap down a notched stick on the back of his head and hold on for dear life. The other fellows were told to grab his tail. Then we would tie him onto a log.

“Everything worked fine. The boa was sound asleep. Bill got a club as big as my leg and let the old boy have it on the head. He never hit him to kill, only intending to knock the big fellow out. I was a little too quick and came down with my notch over his neck about one second before Bill landed. The boa almost tore my arm off with the jump he made, but Bill hit him so quick that it didn’t do the boa any good to jump. I held the fork over his neck and some of the other fellows nailed him down along the body. Sam Sparks got the worst of it. He was on the tail end, and the boa hit Sam a crack which laid him in the shade. One of them big engine room huskies caught that tail and held on, see-sawing like a man holding a loose sail in a gale. Gee, it was awful.”

“What happened then?”

“Mr. Spriggins, we got that snake on a log ‘fore he really came to and tied him down some way. Then we started to carry the log, which wasn’t very large. But the whole crowd of us had a tussle with it, that snake being so heavy. After a long time we crawled down the mountain, skirted around New Madrid and came to our dock after dark. From there we slipped the boa aboard when no one was looking—”

“And where is he now?”

“Down below, sir. He got off that log and is running loose.”

Now I knew where the rats had gone!

CAPTAIN ANDY was just coming up from the engine room when I went in search of him. He and the engineer had been having a session with the turbine, and he was in a sweet humor—ready to bite a spike in two. I had to tell him, but it was a case of gaining time. So I asked about the engine, and began petting Maggie, the mastiff which dogged his heels. She had been part of the crew for so long that we almost regarded her as one of us. And Maggie was the old man’s special pride.

The fuss I made over Maggie soothed his temper a bit, and I judged this to be the proper time and place. So I said:

“Captain, there’s a boa constrictor down below and running loose. He’s cleaned out the rats and may start on some of us next.”

“Boa constrictor?” questioned the old man. “Have you been drinking, Mr. Spriggins?”

That was no proper way of speaking to me, a man who never was anything but sober. I saluted, in a stiff kind of way, and said nothing. Then Captain Andy broke loose and dealt me a choice line of conversation. Thompson had slipped away. I had to tell the whole tale.

“Where is Thompson?” demanded the old man, “Put him in irons.”

That would have been a bad thing to do, with the men already upset, and at least a half dozen of them knowing there was a giant boa below decks. I tried to turn the old man’s wrath and finally got him to heed a little reason. He came around with the wind, and took charge of things like a captain should, and as he knew well how to do.

“Where is this varmint?” he asked.

“Third deck below, up forward, when last seen, Captain.”

“Take Thompson and the rest of the men who put him on this ship and make them get him.”

And that was about the largest order of my long time at sea.

“How are we going to do it?” I asked.

“Don’t ask me,” said the old man. “Let Thompson and those other fools find out.”

We sent for the half dozen rascals, and I said a few words straight to the point. Then I gave them the bad news.

They fell back and looked sullen. So I singled out Bill Toots and inquired, “Bill, how did they work these things in that second-rate circus you used to follow around? What did you do when one of these big boas got on a rampage?”

According to Bill, he had no experience in this line. I called for suggestions, but failed to get any.

“Very well,” I said, “if you fellows could catch this boa, you at least can kill him. We will issue rifles to every man. Get your knives, too, and search the third deck. The first thing which you see that moves—shoot.”

I was going to add, “or which you feel,” but that did not seem to be a happy ending just then. As it was, the men went about their job mighty reluctant. A roar from the old man set them in motion. We issued rifles, some of the lot which had been put aboard during the war, and the men started on the boa hunt. We gave them pocket flashlights to light up dark corners.

I had to go along, of course, and brought up the rear, not so much from fear of the boa as to see that none of the lads dodged their task.

When we got down to the third deck everybody was jumpy. I could hear the men breathing hard. Then I remembered that this was the deck where I had seen the big rat disappear, and heard something slap against a case. The hair began to rise on my head. I had been within twenty feet of the boa—and didn’t know it!

Now I understood what Foolish Thompson had meant about feeling sick when he got near the boa. I was pretty sick right at that moment. It seemed as though I could feel something cold slip about me, then tighten, and my senses begin to go. But I steadied a bit and started to talk. That was the next best thing next to whistling, and my courage certainly needed some whistling to help it along.

“Look here, men,” I said. “We’ve got to get that reptile. Scatter out and work down the passageways. Shoot—and shoot quick—anything which you see.”

Did you ever hunt for something in the dark which you didn’t want to find? That was the way with us. Of course we had the flashlights, and the incandescents were burning here and there, so it wasn’t wholly dark. The flashlights sent little beams of light ahead as we moved along between the big packing cases.

That was a devilish bad job. Unless the boa was in a passageway, we had small chance of finding him. He might be hiding behind a pile of freight, or stretched out on top of the cases. I got to thinking of this and was ready any minute for something clammy to fall about my neck. But we moved along the deck and found nothing. As the men came nearer to the bow bulkheads, they got mighty nervous. Still nothing happened, and after a half day’s hunt we gave it up.

There was no boa on the third deck. At least—none we could find.

We had coffee on the other decks, with a thousand hiding places among the sacks. It took three days to finish the hunt among those sacks, and still no boa. Where he had gone was a question that everybody tried not to think about.

The captain’s dog took part in the hunt, and we hoped for big things from her, figuring that she would be able to smell the reptile. But in all our search Maggie never once let out a yelp. Captain Andy suggested that the boa might have gone overboard. I doubted it, for there was a book in the cabin telling about wild animals and such things. I found the chapter on boas and the fellow who wrote it said that no boa ever took to the water. Besides, though I didn’t tell anybody, I had come upon a rat, pretty well lashed up—and recently. The boa was still around.

I didn’t lose any time clearing out from the neighborhood of the dead rat. But I got sort of ashamed afterward and led a searching party. No mate of the George Crabtree could lose his nerve and hold the job. I didn’t mean to part with my berth just then, even though boas were out of my line.

It was Maggie who found the reptile. She had a crony down in the stoke hole and went to see him. While the man was playing with her she suddenly threw her head in the air and started to bark, with ears standing straight out.

Maggie was no coward. She had been fighting everything that came aboard the George Crabtree, man or beast, for many years. Before the stoker could stop her she had jumped on the coal and into the darkness of the bunkers. The next instant the men heard a terrible threshing, with Maggie barking and snarling. Then they knew where the boa had hidden.

I don’t like to call those fellows names, seeing as they were a good crew, but I believe that every man ran. One or two reached the main deck, although most of them recovered their nerve and went back before we drove the other fellows down.

By the time I reached the stoke hole poor Maggie was dead. We could not hear a sound. Again our pocket flashlights and the rifles came into play. We crawled up on the coal, badly scared as men could be. But we meant to get that boa and end it once for all.

I have been a game man in my time because I had to be. But never was I so ready to run as the hour I crawled about in the coal. We could not find the boa. He was gone, nobody knew where. Nothing could be done but give up the hunt.

We found poor Maggie, with her sides crushed. The boa had done for her at one stroke. When she was taken on deck and the old man saw her I thought he was going to weep. Two big tears came into his eyes, and he motioned the men away, saying nothing. We buried Maggie with honors, a weight at her feet just like any of us might have had.

As all things come to an end, like the poet fellow said, so our troubles with the engine got straightened out. We started to move again. The hunt for the boa went on, in a half-hearted way. I believe the crew felt better, even with the boa aboard, than when the rats were disappearing and nobody knew why except the fellows who brought that snake on to the ship. Most men will face things they can see, even such a thing as a boa constrictor. Of course none of us had seen him except the fools who kidnapped the devil, but we all knew he was there.

It had been an ugly day at sea and I was in command when a call from Captain Andy’s cabin startled me. Many times he had proved himself a brave man, and that cry sent a chill through my heart. I left the deck in a run and scrambled down to the cabin. Something seized me about the legs as I ran, and I fell with a crash. The old man cried again, a kind of wavering cry that turned me cold all over, even as I hit the deck. But I had no time to consider anything. For I knew what had taken me around the legs.

I didn’t understand it all then, but the devil had thrown me with his tail. I felt the coil tighten and the blood fly upward as the flow stopped below my knees. I reached for my knife—and couldn’t find it. The boa was threshing about this way and then another, and every instant I heard the cry of the old man. Now I was crying out myself, calling for help loudly as I could. There is a recollection in my mind of flying footsteps, then my head struck the wall and everything went black.

I DIDN’T see what happened. Some of the men told me. Foolish Thompson had been in my watch on deck. He came down after me with the others. When they saw that boa all but Thompson ran for the rifles. Thompson was a dare-devil man.

He said when it was over that he had got us into the scrape and that it was up to him to get us out again. But he risked his life and did it like a man.

The boa had Captain Andy pinned to his bunk. It never wrapped around him, probably because the captain was laying on the bunk, one edge of which was flush to the wall. But that devil of a reptile just stayed there, half coiled on the old man’s chest. Captain Andy couldn’t move, the weight being so great. And every minute he expected the writhing death to get him. Still he had the courage to call out.

When Thompson went into the cabin the boa got busy. He left the old man with a spring straight at Thompson. But Thompson ducked and swung his sheath knife. He must have landed, for the fight began in dead earnest. Thompson may have been foolish most of the time, but he had sense enough to get behind a table and to hold a chair in front of him. That bothered the reptile. Every time it lunged Thompson struck back with his knife.

I was in a bad way, for the devil was threshing around with his tail. And every time the tail moved I hit something. But my mind had gone to Davy Jones and the rest of me was in a fair way to follow.

Some of the men returned and started to help Thompson. They were afraid to shoot, fearing to hit one of us. We were all mixed up with the big boa in the little cabin. The furniture was going to pieces, and the old man had been laid out by a lick from the boa.

Thompson said that I was nearing the end of my rope. Another crack or two and I’d have gone under. Anyway he pushed over the table and drove the knife home with a blow which severed the boa’s neck. That didn’t end matters, for the villain’s body kept writhing about the cabin. The men went into action and slashed the devil so many times that finally he quieted down and they pried me loose. I didn’t see the cabin for several days, but they said it wasn’t a pretty sight about the time they freed me. Besides a couple of cracked ribs and a body covered with bruises I was all right. The old man hadn’t been hurt.

We went into port with a new third officer, Mr. Thompson by name, and Captain Andy bought a silver plate for the cabin wall, in honor of Maggie. But he has a bad temper, the old man, and whenever things go wrong nowadays he warns Mr. Thompson that any foolishness will land him in irons, which isn’t a proper way of speaking to your third officer, I allows.