I read that book through three times. I kept at it night and day, and it was the hardest work I've ever done, because I wasn't reading just to pass the time. There was a message in that book, I was sure of it, a message from Carter, a man I liked and trusted.
By the time I began to get a glimmering of an idea as to what Carter's message was, the boys had their net knitted and hung. I went back to the book to find out what to do about this idea, and the boys sailed out to drift the net. I waited for them in a sweat of impatience. They came back at dawn the next day with a boat load of food fish. I met them at the wharf.
"Bill," I said, "what are you going to do with that load of fish?"
Bill looked at the fish. He said with slow and tremendous satisfaction, "I aim to eat them fish, George Henry."
"Bill," I said, "not even you can eat all those fish. I've got a scheme. Save back some of the fish, sure. Let Joy smoke a few even. But take the rest into Murdock tonight and sell them to Hornsby. He used to buy my oysters. He'll buy your fish."
"Rats," I said. "I want rats. Buy some traps or get Pete Younger to make some. Not muskrats. Barn rats. As many as you can catch."
"Fish," Bill said. "Fish for rats. Boy, the birds has got you."
He gave in after a while, more to keep me good natured than for any other reason, that and the gin. He came back with two dozen live, healthy specimens, and watched with an open mouth as I let them loose.
The months passed, and I was worried. To drive the problem from my head, I took the boat out and surveyed the shallow waters off the island. I found something. I found a bed of oysters in broken rock, a bed not marked on WFI charts, because you could see it hadn't been worked for a long time. Later, I located clam beds on the marshy side of the island. The damn place was a paradise, or might be, once those birds were cut down, but I couldn't eliminate them by sheer slaughter because of the WFI.
There didn't seem to be many rats around. December came and all the filthy, stinking work with it, and still no rats. Once in a while, eggs would be missing from occupied nests, and that was all. Gulls could have gotten those. We toiled through stinking February, foul March, odiferous April, and evil-smelling May. Still no rats.