" A cat would have been a harmless animal, I dare
say, but there was nothing for puss to do on board, and she is an
unsociable animal at best. True, a rat got into my vessel at the
Keeling Cocos Islands, and another at Rodriguez, along with a centiped
stowed away in the hold; but one of them I drove out of the ship, and
the other I caught. This is how it was: for the first one with
infinite pains I made a trap, looking to its capture and destruction;
but the wily rodent, not to be deluded, took the hint and got ashore
the day the thing was completed.
It is, according to tradition, a most reassuring sign to find rats
coming to a ship, and I had a mind to abide the knowing one of
Rodriguez; but a breach of discipline decided the matter against him.
While I slept one night, my ship sailing on, he undertook to walk over
me, beginning at the crown of my head, concerning which I am always
sensitive. I sleep lightly. Before his impertinence had got him even
to my nose I cried "Rat!" had him by the tail, and threw him out of
the companionway into the sea.
As for the centiped, I was not aware of its presence till the wretched
insect, all feet and venom, beginning, like the rat, at my head,
wakened me by a sharp bite on the scalp. This also was more than I
could tolerate. After a few applications of kerosene the poisonous
bite, painful at first, gave me no further inconvenience.
From this on for a time no living thing disturbed my solitude; no
insect even was present in my vessel, except the spider and his wife,
from Boston, now with a family of young spiders.
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