It would be something to remember him by, anyhow.

At each of the adjacent holes stood a little group with a lantern on the
ground shining up the hole, and with one man kneeling and aiming at the
round void before him, waiting for anything that might emerge.

There was an interminable suspense.

Then they heard Cossar's first shot, like an explosion in a mine....

Every one's nerves and muscles tightened at that, and bang! bang! bang!
the rats had tried a bolt, and two more were dead. Then the man who held
the ball of twine reported a twitching. "He's killed one in there," said
Bensington, "and he wants the rope."

He watched the rope creep into the hole, and it seemed as though it had
become animated by a serpentine intelligence--for the darkness made the
twine invisible. At last it stopped crawling, and there was a long
pause. Then what seemed to Bensington the queerest monster of all crept
slowly from the hole, and resolved itself into the little engineer
emerging backwards. After him, and ploughing deep furrows, Cossar's
boots thrust out, and then came his lantern-illuminated back....

Only one rat was left alive now, and this poor, doomed wretch cowered in
the inmost recesses until Cossar and the lantern went in again and slew
it, and finally Cossar, that human ferret, went through all the runs to
make sure.

"We got 'em," he said to his nearly awe-stricken company at last. "And