an
that he had about suicide. We strapped him down when he got violent,
and after three days of frightful physical and mental agony he died. We
buried him with the usual ceremonies, and Mr. Barnes took command.

"He and I had a consultation. We were well up toward the river Plate,
and he was for putting into Montevideo and cabling the owners for
orders. As he was a competent navigator I advised keeping on; and in
this, perhaps, is where I earned my punishment. He took my advice, and
we had reached up into the doldrums on the line, when a man turned out
at eight bells of the middle watch--midnight, you know--and swore that
a big rat had bitten him as he lay asleep. We laughed at him, even
though he showed four bloody little holes in his wrist. But, three
weeks later, that man was raving around the deck, going into periodic
convulsions, frothing at the mouth, and showing every symptom that had
preceded the death of the skipper. He died in the same horrible agony,
and we realized that not only the skipper, but the rat bitten by the
dog had been inoculated with the virus, and that the rat could
inoculate other rats. We buried the man, and from that time on slept in
our boots, with mittens on, and our heads covered, even in the hot
weather of the tropics. It was no use. Mad rats appeared on deck,
frenzied with pain, frothing at the mouth, fearless of all living
things, a few at first and after dark, then in larger numbers night and
day. We killed them as we could, but they increased. They filled the
cabin and forecastles, and we found them in coils of rope up aloft in
the tops, the crosstrees, and the doublings of the masts. They climbed
everywhere, up or down, on a sail or its leach, a single rope or a
backstay. The mate and myself, with the steward, could shut the doors
of our rooms and keep them out until they chose to gnaw through, but
the poor devils forward had no such refuge. Their forecastles and the
galley and carpenter shop were wide open. Man after man was nipped,
awake or asleep, on deck or below, or up aloft in the dark, when,
reaching for another hold on a shroud or a backstay, he would touch
something soft and furry, and feel the teeth and hear the squeak that
spelled death for him.

"In two weeks from the death of the first sailor, seven others were
sick; and all went through the symptoms--restlessness, talkativeness,
and the tendency to belittle the case and to deny their danger. But the
real symptom, whic