211 THE SEA. 



any outward-bound ships that are to be seen in the Channel, and to criticise the appearance- 

 and glorify the capabilities of the little fleet of "Looe fishing-boats riding snugly at 

 anchor before them at the entrance of the bay. 



"The inhabitants number some fourteen hundred, and are as good-humoured and 

 unsophisticated a set of people as you will meet with anywhere. The fisheries and the 

 coast trade form their principal means of subsistence. The women take a very fair share 

 of the hard work out of the men's hands. You constantly see them carrying coals from 

 the vessels to the quay in curious hand-barrows ; they laugh, scream, and run in each 

 other's way incessantly; but these little irregularities seem to assist rather than impede 

 them in the prosecution of their tasks. As to the men, one absorbing interest appears 

 to govern them all. The whole day long they are mending boats, painting boats, clean- 

 ing boats, rowing boats, or, standing with their hands in their pockets, looking at boats, 

 The children seem to be children in size, and children in nothing else. They congregate 

 together in sober little groups, and hold mysterious conversation, in a dialect which we 

 cannot understand. If they ever tumble down, soil their pinafores, throw stones, or make 

 mud-pies, they practise these juvenile vices in a midnight secresy that no stranger's eye 

 can penetrate." 



A mile or so out at sea rises a green triangularly-shaped eminence, called Looe Island. 

 Several years since a ship was wrecked on the island, but not only were the crew saved,, 

 but several free passengers of the rat species, who had got on board, nobody knew how, 

 where, or when, were also preserved by their own strenuous exertions, and wisely took up 

 permanent quarters for the future on the terra fir ma of Looe Island. In course of time these 

 rats increased and multiplied; and, being confined all round within certain limits by the 

 sea, soon became a palpable and tremendous nuisance. Destruction was threatened to the 

 agricultural produce of all the small patches of cultivated land on the island it seemed 

 doubtful whether any man who ventured there by himself might not share the fate of 

 Bishop Hatto, and be devoured by rats. Under these circumstances, the people of Looe 

 decided to make one determined and united effort to extirpate the whole colony of 

 invaders. Ordinary means of destruction had been tried already, and without effect. It was 

 said that the rats left for dead on the ground had mysteriously revived faster than they 

 could be picked up and skinned or cast into the sea. Rats desperately wounded had got 

 away into their holes, and become convalescent, and increased and multiplied again more 

 productively than ever. The great problem was, not how to kill the rats, but how to 

 annihilate them so effectually that the whole population might certainly know that the 

 reappearance of even one of them was altogether out of the question. This was the problem, 

 and it was solved practically and triumphantly in the following manner : All the inhabitants 

 of the town were called to join in a great hunt. The rats were caught by every conceiv- 

 able artifice; and, once taken, were instantly and ferociously smothered in onions; the 

 corpses were then decently laid out on clean china dishes, and straightway eaten with 

 vindictive relish by the people of Looe. Never was any invention for destroying rats so- 

 complete and so successful as this. Every man, woman, and child that could eat could 

 swear to the death and annihilation of all the rats they had eaten. The local returns of 

 dead rats were not made by the bills of mortality, but by the bills of fare ; it was getting 



