One night, after a shore-going in a tropical port, the doctor lighted his candle at the ward-room lantern, and entering his room, heard a whirring note of anger over his bed. Looking up, he saw the little rat in a strange state of fury, its eyes burning like points of fire, its hair ruffled, and its legs gathered for a jump. Wondering at this unwonted excitement, the doctor called and whistled to it, and then turned to his bunk to throw back the bedclothes.
Just as his hand reached the upper covering he caught a strident shriek of anger and the whir of a flying body, and saw just beneath his uplifted hand the rat struggling in the bed with an animated ball of fuzzy black, bristling with clawlike tentacles that writhed convulsively. The struggle was sudden, sharp, short, and when it was over, the doctor saw, lying dead on his bed, one of the most savage and venomous scorpions of that region.
It had come on board probably in the unbarked fire-wood, and it worked its way aft through the hidden recesses of the timbers to the doctor's room. Had his hand ever touched the sheet where the scorpion lay hidden from him in the half-light, but visible to the rat, no power could have saved him from the poison of the sting which would have followed.
Of course his ratship was the hero of that day and of many days, and I should like to add that it went on in the pleasant lines of its youth, adding to its virtues hourly. But one night, when it had become big and strong, it strayed into the evil company of other rats, and went with them upon strange and perilous adventures. Gradually it forsook its civilization and life of simple honesty, and one mid-watch, close after four bells, it was found dead--a prey to a jealous ship cat, who caught it stealing warily towards a mess cheese forward.
Next in importance, but not chronologically, was a wonderful pig--not a euchre-playing, time-telling, disreputable suckling, but as plucky a four-legged shoat as ever thirsted for a miry spot or ran in windy weather with a straw in his mouth. What memories cluster around that intelligent suckling! What regrets filled our souls in after-days for his early flight!
By some lost correlation of ideas, pigs who go down to the sea are always dubbed "Dennis," and it is only a little less than mutiny to name them otherwise.