round the corner.... Whack behind the shoulder...."

When things were a little ship-shape again Redwood went and stared at
the huge misshapen corpse. The brute lay on its side, with its body
slightly bent. Its rodent teeth overhanging its receding lower jaw gave
its face a look of colossal feebleness, of weak avidity. It seemed not
in the least ferocious or terrible. Its fore-paws reminded him of lank
emaciated hands. Except for one neat round hole with a scorched rim on
either side of its neck, the creature was absolutely intact. He
meditated over this fact for some time. "There must have been two rats,"
he said at last, turning away.

"Yes. And the one that everybody hit--got away."

"I am certain that my own shot--"

A canary-creeper leaf tendril, engaged in that mysterious search for a
holdfast which constitutes a tendril's career, bent itself engagingly
towards his neck and made him step aside hastily.

"Whoo-z-z z-z-z-z-Z-Z-Z," from the distant wasps' nest, "whoo oo
zoo-oo."


V.

This incident left the party alert but not unstrung.

They got their stores into the house, which had evidently been ransacked
by the rats after the flight of Mrs. Skinner, and four of the men took