Soyer's Culinary Campaign: Being Historical Reminiscences of the Late War.: With The Plain Art of Cookery for Military and Civil Institutions

special favour I was allowed a night-lamp. I had the pleasure of seeing the rats run about, which afforded me the opportunity of hunting them at my ease. I then perceived that several escaped through the bull’s-eye, which I immediately closed, and so captured three. I then commenced killing them with a stick, and in so doing made noise enough to arouse everybody. Some of the crew came to see what was the matter, while the Captain, who was half asleep, and rather deaf, told the mate to send for the police and turn the drunken man out. Having explained to the first mate the cause of my nocturnal disturbance, he told me that they were sure to come in at the bull’s-eye, if left open, that being the easiest way for them when in harbour. “And,” said he, “they travel that way from one ship to another in bands of ten or twenty at a time.” He then showed me how to close and fasten the bull’s-eye, after which he retired to his berth. All at once, one of the brutes, which had remained concealed, in attempting to escape upset the lamp upon the floor and extinguished it, and thus compelled me for the second time to seek to repose upon the hard and unsophisticated cabin bench, when the Captain made his appearance rather in a state of _négligé_, holding, a rushlight in one hand and a sword in the other, with a nightcap tied round with a red riband upon his head. In great anxiety, he inquired what the row was about. “The row, Captain,” said I, “is nothing. It’s only the bull’s-eye in my cabin, which being half open, the rats have got in again.” “What do you say, Monsieur Soyer?” “Nothing,” again I shouted. “Call that nothing? I never had such a row in my ship before. Bless my soul,” said he, “what a nuisance those rats are! They make quite as free in my cabin; but, being used to it, I do not care so much about them. The worst of it is that we