Part 7

First his head came free, and its old covering lay in tattered rags upon his neck. He pulled his hands out next, leaving their casing as the fingers of a turned glove. Next came his body's turn, for this he had to squeeze himself between the weed-stalks. Lastly, he cleared his legs and tail.

His old skin hung before him on the starwort, white-gleaming and transparent, a perfect, neatly folded model of himself. Of himself, did I say? It scarcely did his present splendour justice. Along his back now rose the budding undulations of a crest. His flanks had lost their sombre olive shade, and were suffused with mottlings of velvet black, mottlings that turned to purple as they crept across his orange front.

Even these beauties paled before his tail—a ribbon whose jet black centre shaded into violet, and whose edges were flushed with crimson.

Had he not been consumed with hunger, he might well have lingered in complacent admiration of himself. But hunger such as he had never felt before rose superior to his aesthetic sense, and he left his weed-shelter in ravenous haste.

He had not far to go—a swim of ten yards, and he was among the tadpoles.

They were in a patch of sunlight, lazily browsing on the starwort, mild as any sheep, with foolish, staring eyes, gaping suckers, and bodies that gleamed as if sprinkled with gold dust. For three days he settled in their neighbourhood, growing each day sleeker and more gorgeous. His orange waistcoat took a warmer hue, the crimson deepened on his tail and tipped the summits of his festooned crest. In six days' time he was a very perfect newt, decked and caparisoned for love or war. The very sticklebacks fought shy of him. One, it is true, charged him with spines erect—he had a nest to guard and would have charged a pike—but even he, for all his burnished panoply of emerald and vermilion, shrank back and bristled defiance from a safe distance. As for the shoal, they scattered in flashing rainbow-tinted disarray at his approach.

He was master of his surroundings, but there came a time when tadpoles palled upon him. For one thing, they were becoming daily more bony. Those with hind legs developed were difficult to swallow; those with front legs also were hopeless. A change of diet was imperative, and, in seeking for this, he came into collision with the water-spider.

Now, the water-spider lived by himself in a bubble of his own making. His legs were stout and long and hairy, his countenance was horrible, and his bite a thing to be avoided. When the newt first saw him he was devouring a caddis-worm. Vanity had been the worm's undoing. Instead of casing itself with tiny sticks and pebbles and sojourning at the bottom, as Nature ordained, it had put on a gaudy livery of starwort leaves. Trusting to this elegant protective mimicry, it boldly sought the surface. The disguise availed it nothing. The spider drove its fangs through the flimsy covering that but half concealed its head. The newt had seen it all. The bunch of animated foliage carelessly advancing, the spider's leap from its bubble, the glint of its shears as they met in the wretched creature's neck, the ghastly quivering tremor of the case. Then the fierce eight-legged efforts to extract the victim, and finally the awful cunning that seemed intelligent of Nature's devices, and pulled it out, as any angler would, tail foremost.

It was not so much animus against the spider as a longing for the worm that brought about the conflict. For the newt to snap at it was certainly unpardonable. Had he anticipated the resultant display of force, he would have hesitated. He had judged the spider solely by his size. When he felt six legs firmly fixed about his face, when he felt the cunning leverage of two more added to the pull, and a hideous pair of jaws drawing closer and closer, he dropped the worm, a useless martyr in Nature's scheme, and bit for freedom. The spider lost a foot, but left its mark, and the spider's hairy foot was not worth eating.

In his next robbery he was more judicious. He snatched an infant dragon-fly from the jaws of the water-scorpion, devoured it with pleasure, and then turned his attention to the water-scorpion himself. He found him flat and tasteless. The water-boatman was more succulent, but, with only one soft spot, difficult to do justice to. It was the same with all the larger creatures. He was reduced to stickleback fry, small larvae, and even juveniles of his own race. But nothing touched the tadpole, whose unkind destiny it is to furnish half the water-world with food. Had it not been for a diversion, he would have left the water in disgust.

Probably it was a case of mutual attraction. He swung his tail and crest before her, comeliest and most debonair of all her suitors; and she, with an engaging smile, swung a responsive tail at him. Crest she had none, and, of course, her tail could not compare with his in beauty. The higher we get in the natural orders, the more distinctly does decoration become a feminine necessity. Her coat was a pale olive green; her front light orange. Her charm was in herself.

For newts they made an excellent and well-matched pair. Of course they had their disagreements. Newts are by nature fickle and inconstant.

When she was occupied with the cares of a family, and spent her days and nights in deftly fashioning starwort cradles for her eggs, it was irritating that he, whose duty it was to frighten the marauding sticklebacks, should have preferred to rush away into the giddy vortex of newt society. It was more than irritating when, by way of showing that her cradles were insecure, he opened six and devoured the contents himself.

She profited by the experience, however, and the next series were exquisitely finished. The egg was placed in the exact centre of the leaf, the leaf was folded over, and sealed, tip to base, with all the strength of her hind feet. Her mouth put the finishing touch.

When she had visited some half-dozen stalks, and left each adorned throughout its length with a neat series of symmetrical bows, she felt that her task was done and that she was at liberty to accompany him. Together they learnt the brook from end to end. Sometimes they walked along the bottom, stirring to right and left of them a host of low-class life, slimy leeches, dingy crustaceans of every imaginable kind. Sometimes they traversed the middle deeps, brushing against the beetles and the boatmen and the water-snails. Sometimes they sunned themselves on the surface, snapping idly at the measurers and whirligigs.

It was the flood that parted them. For three days it had rained unceasingly on the surface of the brook. As they rose to breathe, their noses were lashed by pigmy waves. Each raindrop made its own widening eddy, its own pattering sound. Rain on the roof is noisy enough to those beneath, but rain on the water is deafening.

In the brook, as I have said, it rained for three days. In one part or another of the valley it rained for a week. The meadow-land gave its surplus to the brook, and the brook sought the river for relief. But the river was already filled to overflowing, so that brook and river met each other halfway, and the life in each was intermingled.

Now, between brook-life and river-life there is a great gulf fixed. There is no sideways in the river. All things that would stay at rest obey the current. The fishes point their noses against it; the plants lie as it guides them. Up or down is the law of quiet existence. The newt knew nothing of this, and, when a rush of waters swept him into the river-bed his natural instinct was to seek the bank. This laid him broadside and helpless. A roach snapped idly at him as he floundered past the shoal. The snap cost him his tail, and was probably his salvation. Without a tail his biteable area was halved. A young trout missed him, and he pulled up amid the lamperns in the shallows. The lamperns were too busily engrossed to notice him. Each was fast anchored by its sucker to a rounded pebble. Across their slender undulating bodies he struggled to the shore, battered, bruised, and tailless, but alive. He entered the first brook he came to, and there he remained a month in gloomy solitude, for he felt that his chief glory had been taken from him. In a month's time his tail had partially repaired itself. The new portion was stubby and colourless. In another fortnight his crest had shrunk to half its former size. This blow decided him. He left the water definitely. Where he went I cannot tell you, nor do I know what happened to her, but I think they will meet next year, and by that time his tail will be as beautiful as ever.

THE PASSING OF THE BLACK RAT

(NOTE.—The old English black rat, for some three hundred years predominant in this country, is now well-nigh extinct. He has been superseded, some think exterminated, by the brown Hanoverian rat, a more powerful and disreputable species, which made its appearance in the course of the eighteenth century.)

The black rat sat back on his haunches, pricked up his ears, and listened. It was something different to the faint lapping wash of the sewer; different to the dull hum of the traffic. It was an uncanny, unfamiliar scratching.

Every rat knows the scratching of his relations; but the black rat had no relations.

Six weeks ago there had been at least two others of his kind in existence—the one he had fought with, and the one he had most unsuccessfully fought for. As a matter of fact, he had crawled away from that encounter to die. Instead of dying, he had recovered. That his rival was in reality the better rat he could not allow. Position is everything in the rat duello, and position had not favoured him.

After a series of disastrous frontal attacks, he had limped behind the old corn-bin, with half his mouth torn away, and his front paws mangled and useless. He had bowed his head and waited sullenly for the coup de grace. But the coup de grace never came. There had been a diversion in the rear, and into the cause of that diversion he had not troubled to inquire.

He had seen neither him nor her since, and, until he had recovered from his wounds, had hardly felt his loneliness. For a wounded rat, loneliness is normal and necessary. Of late, as he sniffed dubiously round the old familiar corners, the sense of desolation had forced itself upon him.

He recalled, dimly, the few weeks before his misfortune. Every day the number of the tribe had lessened. First went the patriarch, white about the muzzle, grizzled all over, tottering and feeble, but still of eminent distinction—the black rat does not coarsen with age—then, one by one, with fearless inconsequence, the younger ones; lastly, save two, his own contemporaries.

The scratching seemed to get louder. The black rat glided, like a shadow, towards it. It sounded from the bottom of the door.

Three sides of the cellar—for a hundred years the cellar had been the rats' stronghold—were solid masonry. The fourth side was a wooden partition. At one corner of this stood the door, close-fitted to its sill and frame, and shrouded in cobwebs, which, in rats' memory, had never parted. Along the wall opposite ran a six-inch shelf, and, at the extremity of this shelf, where the fittings entered the brickwork, was the entrance of the run.

Generations of rats had used that run. Its sides were smooth and polished as a metal tube. Here it was narrower, there wider, but throughout its length it was free and unimpeded.

For the most part it lay between wall and wainscot. At times it seemed to pierce the masonry itself. Midway in the ascent the path of least resistance had been towards the outer wall. Two round holes pierced its surface—a brick's length dividing them. One can understand the making of the first hole, but the making of the second? Fifteen feet below resounded the busy traffic of the city. Did two tunnels converge by chance? did they converge by design? or was the second made by some colossal rat, stretched at full length, and trusting his life to his superhuman hearing? I can only state the facts. I do not pretend to explain them.

From the second hole the run passed into the masonry once more, zigzagged upwards into the storeroom, and ended.

From the storeroom there were countless exists—down the gutter into the courtyard (a short cut to the shambles), beneath the flooring to the scullery, and thence along the drain-pipe to the great sewer, through the ventilator on to the roof—anywhere, everywhere.

The scratching was certainly louder. The black rat was stepping very delicately, but a slippery corn-husk shot from underneath his foot, and with the rustle of the corn-husk the scratching ceased.

Nothing but a rat could have heard that; it was certainly a rat, but who?

For ten minutes he waited, listening. Then he stole forward, until the points of his whiskers brushed lightly against the door. Instantly there was a movement on the far side—a four-footed movement. Caution against such cunning seemed superfluous. He boldly forced his nose between door and flooring and sniffed; but only for a second, for his nose had gone farther than he meant; the bottom of the woodwork had been gnawed through until it was a bare half-inch thick all along its length. He drew back with a jerk, and waited another ten minutes, staring at the door and thinking.

The silence on the far side grew unendurable. The black rat whisked round, and rushed madly for the run. He gained the shelf by a beautiful swinging leap, easy and silent as a cat's.

For the first few yards, between brickwork and wainscot, the run was clear enough; but, as it turned upwards to the floor above, something seemed unfamiliar.

The light, which had always faintly shimmered from the hole in the outer wall, was gone. As he drove forward headlong, he bruised his nose against the cause of its disappearance. The wall had been repaired with concrete. It was utterly ungnawable, and he slowly retraced his steps to the cellar. He was just in time to hear the scratching recommence.

It drew closer and closer. It got upon his nerves. He tried to steady himself by nibbling at a stray corn-ear. He dropped it before he had fairly tasted it, and crept forward to the door once more. There was more than one unknown at work. At times a light quiver ran the whole length of the bottom ledge.

From a rat standpoint, it was the worst position conceivable. That attack was impending was certain; it was equally certain that retreat was impossible. Desperation, rather than bravado, determined him to reverse the positions. In one spot the wood had been fined to a quarter of an inch. Light filtered through, and cast a dull red shadow on the floor. It was at that spot that he flung himself. As he touched it, every other sound ceased. He had the field to himself, and he worked it to the best of his ability. The splinters flew before his chisel teeth; he wrenched, and scratched, and tore. Before five minutes were gone, the flimsy wooden screen had been transformed into a neat three-cornered hole.

He thrust his head forward, and stared with all his eyes. At first he could distinguish nothing. The far side of the partition was, in comparison with his recent surroundings, brilliantly lighted. Gradually the form of the enemy shaped itself before him. It was certainly a rat, but what a rat! Until his muzzle had shot through the opening, it had been facing him, waiting and watching. Now it had leapt backwards, and presented a three-quarter rear view.

It was the most vulgar, ill-conditioned beast he had ever set eyes on. Its muzzle was coarse and blunted; its ears were half concealed in coarse-grained, unkempt hair; its tail, instead of tapering, like his own, to an elegant infinity, was short and stumpy; its eyes were, to say the least of it, insignificant. But its colour! a dirty, nondescript, khaki brown!

The sight of it was enough, and he drove at it full tilt.

Appearances were undoubtedly against the brown rat, but it knew something of tactics. With a lightness, such as one could hardly have expected, it swung to one side, and, before his brilliant charge could take effect, had got its back to the wall. He had made the same mistake again—the mistake of brainless breeding all the world over. It mattered not whether he approached from front, or right, or left, the same whirling flail of fore-paws was ready for him. He leapt clean over its head, and was flung back—by the brickwork. Whichever way he tried he had only half a foe to aim at. Still he never flinched, happy in the conviction that blood must tell.

Blood might have told against a single enemy. Against a score it availed little. And a full score were advancing. The ungainly, stubby forms seemed to rise from every crevice in the floor.

They came very slowly at first—a dirty cohort of khaki Hanoverians; their muzzles uplifted and quivering at the scent of blood, their beady eyes fixed seemingly on vacancy, but really on himself. He felt them coming, and, for a moment, paused in his attack. The whole group might, save for the restless nostrils, have been carved in stone; the duellists eyeing each other warily, the scavenger ring waiting on events; but the whiskers of each one trembled, and gave the whole group life.

It was the watchman's tread that broke the spell. The black rat knew that tread well enough. He knew every tread in the warehouse; but to the invaders it was unfamiliar. Before the footsteps had resounded twice, he was left alone; the host had vanished as quickly as it came.

The black rat retreated in good order, and established himself once more in a corner of the cellar. It was a mistake, but he wanted time to recover himself, and time to think.

Of the world on the far side of the partition he knew nothing, but he realized that there was a world. Should he make a rush for it before the enemy had regained courage? Even so, where should he rush to? Was he likely to find an exit amid altogether strange surroundings? Could he block the hole? Rats had done such things before now, but it was only deferring the evil hour, and what time would he have to do it in? The question was answered for him. The echo of the watchman's step had barely ceased, before the hole at the base of the door was, for a moment, obscured.

They came in jerky disorder. First a young, loose-limbed stripling. He was barely out before he was back again, throwing up the pink soles of his hind feet, and flicking the woodwork with his belated tail. Then a kaleidoscopic succession of suspicious faces. The light danced on the floor as each thrust his neighbour aside, thrust his head like lightning through the opening, and as quickly withdrew it. They were masters of scouting, these brown barbarians. Sometimes one, bolder or younger than the rest, would steal a foot within the cellar. Sometimes, for minutes together, all would be quiet, the light patch on the floor the only thing amiss. The black rat never moved his eyes from that light.

It was an hour before the chieftain himself appeared. He squeezed through the opening, but, for all his bulk, came quickly. Once clear, he dropped upon his haunches, and knit his fists before him. The position showed him at his best. Crouched or in motion, the clumsy angles of his body were forced into relief. As he sat back, the curves softened, and, as far as brown rat could be, he was imposing. For some moments he sat immovable, facing the darkness, then he turned, and, with one eye always fixed behind him, passed slowly out of sight.

There was a long silence after this. The light patch on the floor seemed to grow in intensity. By its dull reflection, the black rat could just distinguish his own whiskers. It fascinated him. He stole halfway across the floor towards it, and paused. As he paused, it was blotted out once more.

He was being watched. Before he was back in his corner, three of the enemy were through the breach. Five more followed. Then in quick confusion a dozen. Then a dozen more. The Hanoverian army was spreading its wings.