Chapter 51 - The Boy Tar by Mayne Reid
A Grand Rat-Trap
For some time I have said nothing of the rats. Do not fancy, from this silence about them, that they had gone away and left me to myself! They had done no such thing. They were around and about me, as brisk as ever, and as troublesome. Bolder they could not have been, unless they had positively assailed me; and no doubt such would have been the case, had I exposed myself to their attack.
But, whenever I moved, my first care had been to close them out, by means of walls, which I constructed with pieces of cloth, and thus only had I kept them at bay. Now and then, when I had passed from place to place, I could hear and feel them all around me; and twice or three times had I been bitten by one or another. It was only by exercising extreme vigilance and caution, that I was enabled to keep them from attacking me.
This parenthesis will, no doubt, lead you to anticipate what I am coming to, and enable you to guess what was the idea that had taken possession of my mind. It had occurred to me, then, that instead of letting the rats eat me, I should eat them. That was it exactly.
I felt no disgust at the thought of such food; nor would you, if placed in a situation similar to mine. On the contrary, I hailed the idea as a welcome one, since it promised to enable me to carry out my plan of cutting my way up to the deck—in other words, of saving my life. Indeed, as soon as I had conceived it, I felt as if I was actually saved. It only remained to carry out the intention.
I knew there were many rats—too many, I had thought before—but now I cared not how plentiful they were. At all events, there were enough of them to “ration” me for a long while—I hoped long enough for my purpose. The question was, how should I capture them?
I could think of no other way but by feeling for them with my hands, and boldly grasping them, one at a time, and so squeezing the life out of them. I had already given my attention to trapping them, without success. I had, as you know, killed one, by the only ingenuity I could think of, and likely enough I might get one or two more in the same way, but it was just as likely I might not; or even if I succeeded in killing one or two, the rest might become shy of me, and then the supply would stop. Better, therefore, to consider some plan for capturing a large number of them at once, and so have a larder that would last me for ten or twelve days. Perhaps by that time I might be within reach of more palatable food. This would be wiser, as well as safer; and I remained for a long while considering how I should make a wholesale capture.
Necessity is the parent of invention; and I suppose, by the help of this, more than from any real genius I possessed for contriving, I at last succeeded in sketching out the plan of a rat-trap. It was certainly of the simplest kind, but I felt pretty sure it would be effective. I should make me a large bag out of the broadcloth, which I could easily do, by cutting a piece of the proper length, and sewing up the two sides with a string. Strings I had in plenty for the rolls of cloth had been tied with strong pieces of twine, and of course these were at hand. I should use the blade of my knife for a needle, and by the same instrument I should be enabled to reeve round the mouth of the bag a strong piece of the twine, to act as a draw-string.
I not only should do all this, but did it without further delay; for in less than an hour I had my bag (net, I called it) quite finished, draw-string rove around the mouth, and all complete for action.