fellows, the strongest and fiercest. Sometimes, passing the mouth of
one ventilator that is in the after wall of the chart-house, I can
hear their plaintive squealing and crying from far beneath in the
coal.

Other and luckier rats are in the 'tween decks for'ard, where all the
spare suits of sails are stored. They come out and run about the
deck at night, steal food from the galley, and lap up the dew. Which
reminds me that Mr. Pike will no longer look at Possum. It seems,
under his suggestion, that Wada trapped a rat in the donkey-engine
room. Wada swears that it was the father of all rats, and that, by
actual measurement, it scaled eighteen inches from nose to the tip of
tail. Also, it seems that Mr. Pike and Wada, with the door shut in
the former's room, pitted the rat against Possum, and that Possum was
licked. They were compelled to kill the rat themselves, while
Possum, when all was over, lay down and had a fit.

Now Mr. Pike abhors a coward, and his disgust with Possum is
profound. He no longer plays with the puppy, nor even speaks to him,
and, whenever he passes him on the deck, glowers sourly at him.

I have been reading up the South Atlantic Sailing Directions, and I
find that we are now entering the most beautiful sunset region in the
world. And this evening we were favoured with a sample. I was in my
quarters, overhauling my books, when Miss West called to me from the
foot of the chart-house stairs:

"Mr. Pathurst!--Come quick! Oh, do come quick! You can't afford to
miss it!"