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The Grain Ship
by
“It was that rat that brought you to yourself that evening,” I ventured. “Rats must have had something to do with your past life.”
“Right, they did,” he answered, puffing fiercely. “I didn’t know you had rats here, though.”
“A whole herd of them under the floor. But they’re harmless. I found them good company.”
“I found them bad company. I was shipmates with thousands of rats on that last passage. Want the yarn? It’ll raise your hair.”
I was willing, and he reeled it off. His strong self-control never left him from the beginning to the end, though the effect upon me was not only to raise my hair, but at times to stop the beating of my heart. I left him next morning, and have never seen or heard of him since; but there is strong reason to believe that he never went to sea again, or told that yarn in shipping circles. And it is because I have not seen that old Commodore since the evening in the restaurant, and because I cannot recall the name of the ship, or secure full data of marine happenings of the year 1875, that I am giving that story to the world in this form, hoping it will reach the right quarters and explain to those interested the mystery of the grain ship, found in good shape, but abandoned by all but the dead rats.
* * * * *
“I shipped in her at ‘Frisco,” began Draper. “She was a big, skysail-yarder loading grain at Oakland, and as the skipper had offered me second mate’s berth, I went over and sized her up. She seemed all right, as far as man may judge of a ship in port–nearly new, and well found in gear and canvas, which the riggers had rove off and bent. Her cargo of grain was nearly in, and there would be nothing much to do in the way of hard work. Still, I couldn’t make up my mind. Something seemed to prevent me liking the prospect, so I went on up to Oakland to visit some friends, and on the way back, long after dark, stopped again at the dock for another look at her. And this time I saw what was needed to ease my mind and decide me. You know as well as I do that rats quit a ship bound for the bottom, and their judgment is always right, though no one knows why. And I reasoned that if rats swarm into an outbound ship she would have a safe passage. Well, that’s what they were doing. Wharf rats, a foot long–hundreds of them–going up the mooring-chains, the cable to the dock, the lines, the fenders, and the gangway, some over the rail, others in through the mooring-chocks. The watchman was quiet, perhaps asleep; so, perhaps, every rat that went aboard got into the hold. I signed on next morning.
“Nothing occurred aboard that ship except the usual trouble of breaking in a new crew, until we’d got down to about forty south, when the skipper brought up a rat-trap with a big, healthy rat in it. He was a mild-mannered little man, and a rat and dog fight marked the limits of his sporting nature. That was what he was after. He had a little black-and-tan terrier, about the size of the rat, and there was a lively time around the deck for a while, until the rat got away. He put up a stiff fight with the dog, but finally saw his chance, and slipped into the forward companion of the cabin; then, I suppose, he found the hole he’d come up. But the dog had nipped him once, it seemed, for the rat left a tiny trail of blood after him. As for the dog, he nearly had a fit in his anger and disappointment, and when the skipper picked him up he nipped him, too. It was only a little wound on the skipper’s thumb, but the dog’s teeth were sharp, and the blood had come. The skipper gave him a licking, and the work went on.