Rata

“ One who has been crossed in love should never breathe the odour from the blossoms of the ratama tree. It stirs the memory to a dangerous degree.
One December in the Frio country there was a ratama tree in full bloom, for the winter had been as warm as springtime. That way rode the Frio Kid and his satellite and co-murderer, Mexican Frank. The kid reined in his mustang, and sat in his saddle, thoughtful and grim, with dangerously narrowing eyes. ”

“ Ratavia, as one may designate it, resembles China in that there has never been a census of its population, but that it approximates to the mathematical infinite. They are everywhere—large rats, small rats, bushy rats, shy rats and impudent, with their malign whiskers, their obscene eyes, loathsome all the way from overlapping teeth to kangaroo tail. ”

“ The dark mountains rising purple to the snow, peak beyond peak of the Southern Alps soaring white against that wondrous blue—so close they seem, so attainable—it is hard to realize they are 10,000 feet above us. And between two mountain walls, filling a mighty gorge, winds down the Franz Josef glacier; an icy chaos of pinnacles and seracs, green-blue and glittering white against the purple-black crags of the gorge. But strangest of all is where the glacier and the forest meet, and the splendid scarlet of the ratas seems almost to touch the ice and snow. ”

“ After successfully negotiating the channels we went up the creek leading to the lake, a lovely creek, fringed with bush, and with flax, tree-fern, and clumps of pampas grass growing in and on the edge of the water. Rugged ratas flung their misshapen branches out against the sky to be reflected in the water as in a mirror, and their scarlet flowers made grateful dashes of colour in the gloomy setting of the forest picture. ”

“ From harsh and shrill and clamant, the voices grew blurred and inarticulate. Bad sentences were helped out by worse gestures, and at one table Scabius expressed himself like the famous old knight in the first part of the "Soldier's Fortune" of Otway. Bassalissa and Lysistrata tried to pronounce each other's names, and became very affectionate in the attempt; and Tala, the tragedian, robed in roomy purple, and wearing plume and buskin, rose to his feet, and, with swaying gestures, began to recite one of his favourite parts. ”

“ The lively rat shook his ears with all his natural vivacity. “Pardon me,” he cried, “but I’m of Oddity’s opinion,—heroes like Sir Whiskerandos are the very worst travelling companions in the world! How Ratto has escaped with his life I cannot imagine, but I shall certainly not try the experiment of following your fortunes for an hour! I’ve no fancy to be baked in a pie, or starved on a barrel, crushed by a drosky, or worried by a dog, drowned in a sack, or suspended by my tail! ”

“ There were a good many of the species of the large brown Norwegian rat; but as I have mentioned before, we usually kept out of their way, from a tender regard for our own ears.
There was one brown rat, however, whose fame had spread, not only in his own tribe, but in ours. For quickness of wit, readiness in danger, strength of teeth, and courage in using them, I have never yet met with his equal. Whiskerandos was a hero of a rat. Was it not he who in single combat had met and conquered a young ferret! an exploit in itself quite sufficient to establish his fame as a warrior. ”

“ Certainly it had been begun more than two weeks ago, as both Shaky Liz and the Cherub had said, and that was before he, Billy Kane, had assumed the Rat’s rôle, and, therefore, quite logically it seemed, before the Rat had gone away. It was not that—once started, the unholy quartet to whom the Rat had entrusted his dirty work was quite capable of carrying it through to its detestable conclusion—but it seemed strange that, adventurous as the Rat was and much as he undoubtedly desired to get the Woman in Black out of his way, he would have dared to do this. ”

“ I, as well as the Rahans of the royal race, attend only to the prescriptions of the Wini, such as they have been laid down and published by Buddha.” The people replied to him: “Venerable Ratha, you are a true Rahan, and you follow the right way. Pray stay with us and be our teacher; we will abundantly supply you with the necessaries of life.” Ratha, going on his way, was always followed by the people, who, in token of their respect and love, accompanied him to the Kootagara monastery, in the midst of the forest of sala trees. ”

“ As to his intimacy with the gods, had not one of his forebears been the chosen companion of the great Daikoku, the most revered and the most beneficent of the gods of Good Fortune?
Mr. Rat was well-to-do in life. His home had for generations been established in a snug, warm and cosy bank, hard by one of the most fertile rice-fields on the country-side, where crops never failed, and where in spring he could nibble his fill of the [172] young green shoots, and in autumn gather into his storerooms supplies of the ripened grain sufficient for all his wants during the coming winter. ”

“ The old Rat Killer in the picture looks suspiciously like a magician. It seems as if he must have bewitched the rats which crawl friskily about him, one perching on his shoulders. He reminds one of some ogre out of a fairy tale, with his strange tall cap, his kilted coat, and baggy trousers, the money pouch at his belt, the fur mantle flung over one shoulder, and the fierce-looking sword dangling at his side. ”

“ Oddity might have accompanied us, but he preferred, as he said, home comforts and a nibble in the warehouse. I knew that he would look after old Furry, whose infirmities were sadly increasing upon him, so that I had no fear of the blind rat being neglected.
I suspected that more than one reason induced my pie-bald brother to decline the tour. He had struck up an acquaintance with Bright-eyes, a lively little rat, and probably found his society more agreeable than that of Whiskerandos, of whom he always stood somewhat in awe. ”

“ Whiskerandos! Whiskerandos!” thought I, as, almost rooted to the spot with horror, I stood gazing on the pitiful sight. “I am glad that you are dead! oh, I am glad that you are dead! bravest, noblest of rats, they can torture you no more!”
The dogs showed by their impatient movements that they considered that their master took a great deal too much time in his survey of a lifeless rat I suspect that he only did so to tease and tantalize them, for suddenly raising Whiskerandos still higher, to give more force to his fling, he cried, “Now Carlo—Rover—Cæsar—who’s first!” ”

“ There is the foreigner, the invader, the common brown rat, who is accursed; there is the old English black rat, whom the accursed one has nearly wiped out into little more than a ghost; and there is the water-rat, who is not a rat, but a vole, and would thank you to remember the fact.
And this rat was a black rat, as black as jet, shark-jawed, star-eyed, elfin-eared, snake-tailed, lean, long-legged, and graceful—a very greyhound among the rats. He was there, in that dancing-floor of the winds by the estuary, because no common or sewer rats were there. ”

“ It caught Antan, too, but that did not matter, for Antan had been dead an hour.
But Juozas the Litvak, husband of the flat-faced Katré, father of the little Domukas, had to die as a rat dies when its trap is soused be neath the water in a tub, with stones laid on to keep the creature down. You have seen that, eh? The rat swimming, swimming under water, with a fine silvery line of bubbles pouring from its nose and mouth as the bursting lungs refuse to hold? Then, kicking, writhing, palpitating, growing still, with glazed eyes and upturned lip that shows the fangs? Only a rat! A beast! ”

“ Another sub-species, the Tree or Roof Rat (E. rattus frugivorus) , common in the Mediterranean region, often appears in our ports. It has long, soft and dense fur, of light grey or brown on the upper parts and whitish below (pure white to pale yellow) , and the feet usually white above.
The Black Rat is more of a climber than a burrower; more cleanly in its feeding than its brown rival. The pink-skinned young are born without fur, sight, or hearing. ”

“ The brown rats looked at the warrior with keen, wondering gaze, while Whiskerandos calmly continued, “I lost my ears in single combat with a ferret; he who exacted the toll lost his life in exchange, and I feel somehow persuaded that you will rather politely guide me into your house and share with me whatever I get there, than try the experiment whether a rat can fight as well without ears as he once did with them.” ”

“ Now and then, however, these crab-like creatures assumed the form of rats; and then my dream more resembled reality. I dreamt that they were in vast numbers around me, and menaced me from every side; that I had only my jacket to keep them off, and that I was sweeping it from side to side for that purpose. I thought they grew bolder and bolder as they saw how little damage I was able to do them with such a weapon; and that a very large rat, much bigger than any of the others, was encouraging them on to the attack. This was not a real rat, but the ghost of one—of that one I had killed! ”

“ But rats have a large history of their own, outside rat-pits. In Egypt and Chaldsea they were the symbol of utter destruction, while in India they are to-day the emblem of prosperous wisdom. The Romans took augury from rats, — happy indeed the man who saw a white one; and Apollo, the most artistic of the Greek divinities, did not scorn the title of the rat-killer. In this very England of ours, the hardy Norseman rats bore their share in the Conquest nobly, and on the continent they have ruined a city and a river. Rats, they say, have scuttled ships, and it is certain they once ate up a bishop. ”

“ I could not stay to see the poor fellow killed, and I was afraid of sharing his fate, so I made off as fast as I could.”
“Poor Oddity!” sighed I very mournfully, “never was there an uglier nor a better-hearted rat! Ah! what pleasure I vainly promised to myself in relating to you all my adventures! I have been across the deep waters, encountered various perils, now in danger of being cooked in a pie, now shivering on a barrel in the ocean, and yet here am I safe and sound after all; while you, remaining quietly in England, have ignominiously perished in a hay-rick!” ”

“ Whiskerandos would have been more than a match for three Odditys, for the piebald one had neither his strength, nor agility, nor experience in fighting; but the strong rat seemed at this juncture to have no inclination to give battle to the weak one. I hope that it will be considered no sign of cowardice on his part, that he quietly dropped the corner of the handkerchief, and never even attempted to examine the contents of the can. ”

“ I faintly exclaimed; “human beings never, never eat rats!”
“Oh! I beg your pardon!” replied Whiskerandos, regaining his usual brisk manner; “don’t you remember old Furry telling us that his reason for quitting China was, that he was afraid of being dished up for the dinner of some mighty mandarin, whose hair hung in a long tail behind him? Amongst the lowest classes in France, and the gypsies in England, we poor rats are known as an article of food; and I have heard that in the islands of the South Seas we were held in so much esteem, that ‘sweet as a rat’ passed as a proverb.” ”

“ At this point in the story Whiskerandos and I uttered expressions of amazement.
“Wherever he went,” continued Oddity, “I went too. He taught me many things altogether new to a rat. It is our nature to take what we can get,—he taught me to see food and not to touch it! He never suffered me to feel hungry: he conversed with me as though I were a little companion, and never one blow did I receive from his hand, or one kick 155 from his heel! It was not in the nature of a quadruped to be insensible to kindness like this!” ”

“ So although, while the Rat was talking so seriously, he kept saying to himself mutinously, ‘But it WAS fun, though! Awful fun!’ and making strange suppressed noises inside him, k-i-ck-ck-ck, and poop-p-p, and other sounds resembling stifled snorts, or the opening of soda-water bottles, yet when the Rat had quite finished, he heaved a deep sigh and said, very nicely and humbly, ‘Quite right, Ratty! How SOUND you always are! Yes, I’ve been a conceited old ass, I can quite see that; but now I’m going to be a good Toad, and not do it any more. ”

“ Espying the tree, and seeing that all his enemies were at that moment too much engaged to attend to him, he sprang up the trunk and came rapidly towards me, little expecting to find another of his foes so far away from her companions. I watched him come, and resolved in my own mind that he should not escape, although my heart beat a good deal at the idea of the encounter.
The rat sprang on to the roof, and was going to scamper over it, when his fierce little eyes,—and quick nose too, no doubt, for it moved incessantly,—spied me out, crouching at a short distance and ready to spring. ”

“ There is something in the short, hot glitter of a rat’s eye that has never ceased to affect us unpleasantly. We could not help imagining them to be the mere receptacles of mischievous spirits, and their keen eyes had always a kind of mocking expression, as if they said, ‘You think we are rats, but if we get hold of you you will know that we are a good deal more than that.’ We never could estimate how many populated our old house. ”

“ The "rat"—a slang word that has become old-fashioned—was a girl of ten or twelve in the chorus of some theatre, more particularly at the opera, who was trained by young roues to vice and infamy. A "rat" was a sort of demon page, a tomboy who was forgiven a trick if it were but funny. The "rat" might take what she pleased; she was to be watched like a dangerous animal, and she brought an element of liveliness into life, like Scapin, Sganarelle, and Frontin in old-fashioned comedy. ”