“I can give you a receipt which will enable you to have them almost all caught in a few days.”
“The deuce you could!” said he, coming and sitting opposite to me. “Tell me how it is done--I shall be so much obliged to you; but I must go and put something on first, I am so cold.” As he said this, I perceived that the skylight over his head was open.
“Oh, never mind that; it won’t take two minutes to tell you--listen to me.”
“The place where you keep your cheese would be the very spot to make the trial. The thing is quite easy. Have your cheese and candles removed.”
“So I will; but I wish you would let me put a coat on--I am getting so very cold.”
“Never mind about that; I shall not keep you a minute--listen to me.”
“When the cabin is perfectly empty, have it cleaned and well scrubbed.”
“When it is dry, take half a pound of good Cheshire cheese, scrape it fine, and mix it with about two pounds of rough bread-crumbs.”
“Perhaps you think it is a pity to give them half a pound of good cheese.”
“Not at all, because the vermin eat pounds of it daily.”
“Yes, I understand--and make them into balls.”
“No, not at all--only spread the lot upon the floor, leave the door and window open, and go to bed. Of course they will come and eat.”
“The next evening do the same, cutting the cheese a trifle larger. They will come again and eat it.”
“The third night, leave the doors and windows open; go to bed as usual, and put nothing at all in the cabin.”
“What then?” he asked again, in a state of anxiety.
“Why, of course, when they come and find nothing to eat, and being in still greater numbers than the two previous nights, they will be all caught.”
“How,” said he, “will they be all caught?”
“Why, of course, finding nothing to eat, they will be all taken in.”
“That be d----d! I have made a nice fool of myself, standing here half naked to listen to such rubbish as that.”
Having said this, he ran into his cabin, and for a long while I heard him sneezing and muttering to himself. The word “fool” was all that I could catch; and soon after all was silent till daybreak.
On waking, I at first regretted having carried the joke so far, when all at once I heard the good captain burst out laughing and sneezing. The first visit I had in the morning, while shaving in my cabin, was from the captain. As it was then only six o’clock, I made sure he was coming to challenge me, and began to think of choosing my favourite weapons, which I had so successfully employed on a similar occasion in London, after a serious discussion with a red republican on the subject of monarchy.