A Queer Race: The Story of a Strange People — page 76: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A QUEER RACE. 73 ‘Get ont, you big devil!” said the boatswain, seizing it by the tail. But instead of getting out, the rat twisted round and fixed its lony, sharp teeth into its captor’s thumb. ‘Tom dropped the bucket hike a hot potato, and catching the creature by the neck. choked it off and sent it spinning. ‘* By ,1t hurts!” he exclaimed, popping the wounded thumb into his mouth. “You had better go and bathe it with hot water,” I said. ‘‘ Rat-bite are nasty things sometimes,” “TT don’t think it’s worth while. Tl puta bit of pitch on it. It’s the best plaster I know. I never thought a rat could bite so keen. That gray-whiskered beggar’s teeth were like pins and needles.” This incident made the boatswain more inveterate agaist the rats than ever. He converted all the buekets in the ship into traps, and by sunset he had caught sev- eral dozens. He took care, however, before throwing them overboard, to see that they were properly drowned, and even then he handled the bucket in such a way as to prevent any possibility of a second bite. But the rats, though they perished, had their revenge. The next morning Bolsover was very ill. ‘The thumh was inflamed and exceedingly painful, and he had all the appearance of sickening for yellow fever. I was seri- ously alarmed, for, despite his craze about the Santa Anna, old ‘Tom was a thorough seaman and a very good fellow. You cannot be thrown much with ‘a man (at any. rate, | cannot) without getting to like him, unless he is absolutely repulsive, and I had got to like the boatswain. Besides, what should become of me if 1 should be left alone on board a big ship in mid-ocean, utterly ignorant of my whereabouts, only just able to steer, and hardly knowing one sail from another?” If it were possible to keep old ‘T’om alive, I meant to do it, although, judging by my recent experience, the odds against his recovery were hundreds to one. On the other hand, the very fact that he had remained so long invulnerable showed that he possessed great resisting power, and rendered it probable that he would make 2 tougher fight for his life than the others had done. The first thing was to get my patient to keep his bed, which for a time he obstinately refused todo. ‘To con- (E(O) mm Cc ,00 SH (E(@)