The Fourth Murray Leinster

by Murray Leinster

  IT WAS probably the seventh or eighth day when he learned that the rat was also on the island.

  He had picked up the canvas bag which held the sea biscuits. It should have been nearly full. His daily ration was small. But as he lifted the bag, something fell at his feet. There was a hole in the bag. A fine white powder sifted out of it, spreading in the air. At his feet was half a biscuit, irregularly gnawed. The tooth marks were clearly those of a rat.

  The man’s heart tried to stop. He regarded the hole and the gnawed biscuit with a sort of stupefied horror. Then he swiftly counted the contents of the bag. He should have had nineteen of the biscuits. Instead, he had sixteen and the fragment which was less than a half. More than a week of life had been taken from him.

  He had no real hope of rescue, of course. The island was a speck in a waste of sea. It might or might not be on the charts. He did not know. If it was charted, ships would avoid it as a danger to navigation. But the instinct to cling to life is too strong for mere reason to controvert. The man’s hands shook. He carefully unraveled a strand of rope. He tied up the hole in the bag. And he had apportioned his supplies to keep him alive for a certain number of days. He could not bring himself to surrender even one hour of that scheduled time. Since a part of his food had been taken from him, he desperately resolved to cut down his ration to make up for the theft. And he did.

  He chewed the reduced fraction of a sea biscuit, which was his day’s food, with exhaustive care. He made it last a very long time. He watched the horizon with dazzled, reddened eyes. He was already hungry all the time. He had hunger cramps in the night. His knees felt oddly exhausted when he climbed about the wave-rounded mass which was the island, but he resolutely made the journey. He watched all day. He saw nothing. When night came he drank the few swallows he allowed himself. He tied the bag to a spliced stick and propped it up so that it hung in mid-air He slept.

  In the morning the bag was on the ground again. The rat had gnawed through the cord upholding it. There were only twelve biscuits left and the man saw a floury scraping on the rock, two yards from the bag, which told him that the rat had carried off one biscuit uneaten.

  The man knew hatred, now. And he made a savage search of every square inch of the island. It was not difficult. One hundred and fifty feet in one direction. About forty-five in another. Nothing of any size could hide, but there were cracks and crevices and miniature caverns in which the rat could conceal it-self during the search. The man found one tiny, crumby place where the rat had eaten, at leisure, food which was more than the man allowed him-self for three days. And he came to have an inkling of how the rat drank. Even now, the small crevices in the rocks were cool. Undoubtedly moisture condensed upon their surfaces during the night and the rat licked it. It would serve a rat but no man could live that way.

  But he did not find the rat. He did not even catch a glimpse of it, but by this time he hated it with an emotion far past any hatred men ordinarily know.

  That night the man’s rage kept him from sleeping. He had a section of splintered plank not too heavy to be a club. He put out the bag of biscuits as bait and sat on guard beside it. The sun sank. The vast blue bowl turned dark and very many pairs of malevolent stars shone out, to look down upon him and watch him maliciously. His hands shook with his hatred. The sea soughed and gurgled among the irregular rocks about the shore line. The man waited, hating…

  But he was very weak. He woke suddenly. His club, held ready, had fallen with a crash to the rock before him. The sound had roused him. He heard the scurrying of tiny feet. The rat, scuttling away.

  The canvas bag was a good two feet from where it had been. The rat had been trying to drag it to its own hiding place.

  The man made inarticulate noises of fury. He knew, now, that the rat would seek to prey upon him for food as long as the two of them lived upon the island. That is the instinct of rats. And in any case he would have tried to kill the rat if he saw it, because that is the instinct of men. But here the conflict of instincts became more than inevitable. It became deadly. Both the man and the rat could not live upon this island. If the man lived, the rat died. If the man died, the chance of the rat for survival would be directly and specifically increased.

  But the man was too weak to think very clearly. He had found a rock with a hollow in it. He put the bag of biscuits there and lay down. His body formed a protecting lid over the receptacle for his food. The rat could not reach the biscuits without first gnawing the man. But the man slept fitfully and even through his dreams there moved a hazy, groping thought. The rat must die or he must…

  IN THE morning the man chewed his ration for hours. It was the fraction of a sea biscuit. He savored every particle of flavor it possessed. The heat beat upon him. He panted, watching the unchanging horizon beneath a brazen sun. He kept his body wetted with sea-water so that he would not need to drink. But already he suffered severely from thirst. And then, toward nightfall, he saw the rat.

  It was swimming toward an outlying rock which was perhaps ten yards from the main island. The rock was certainly no more than five feet across and rose perhaps that much above the slow, smooth swells which forever swayed across the sea.

  The rat reached the base of that rock. It swam about it, trying to find gripping places for its paws. The man watched in a passion of sheer hatred until it disappeared. Then he moved closer. He heard its paws scratching and scrambling, out of sight. Presently its pointed muzzle appeared on top of the small rock. It went sniffing here and there. Suddenly it stopped stock-still. It began to eat. And the man smelled something tainted. Perhaps a dead fish flung to the top of the rock by a wave or swell. Perhaps a gull or tern which had died there. Recently. Whatever it was, the rat ate it.

  The man trembled all over with hatred. He could no longer compute the anguish he had suffered, of hunger with but a tantalizing morsel of food a day, and of thirst with but enough of lukewarm water barely to moisten his lips. But the rat had enough of water, somehow, and now it fed!

  The man stumbled back to his utterly useless cache of shattered timbers and weathered cordage. He thought bitterly of the rat?s smooth body. Of its un-shrunken muscles. Of its sleek fur. And suddenly, as in his hatred he envisioned rending it limb from limb—suddenly he saw it in a new light. From a thing to be hated and destroyed, the rat suddenly became a fascinating, an infinitely desirable thing. The man was starving. As he thought of the rat his mouth watered.

  The conditions of the game now were wholly clear. If the man died, the rat’s chances of survival would be directly increased. If the rat died, the man would live longer at least by days. So the rat must die, or the man. They had played a deadly game before. Now the side bet—of life—was explicit.

  DAYS passed. The sun rose and there was a vast blue bowl which was the sky. The sun sank and a multitude of stars gazed down. The man gave all his thought, now, to the game. He did not even glance at the horizon. He grew rapidly weaker, but his whole thought was fixed upon the construction of elaborate gins and traps by which the rat might be captured. He made them, and they failed, because he could not bring himself to risk even a scrap of food for bait.

  When at last he risked a full quarter of his day’s ration in hopes of luring the rat into capture, the rat cunningly sprang the trap and escaped with the bread. It was a morsel about half the size of a thimble. The man wept when he discovered his failure. But it was for the loss of the bread.

  Then he made a bow and arrow. It was clumsy and crude and it would be hopelessly inaccurate, because he had no tools. When he had made the weapon, he spent three days stalking the rat over the uneven surface of the island. Most of the time he had to crawl, because of his weakness. Much of the time he knew where the rat was. Some of the time he even saw it, because the rat had grown bolder since the man’s weakness had forced him to crawl rather than walk.

  The first day’s stalking brought no result. Not the second. But on the third day—even the rat was starving, now—the man’s persistence
and infinite care took him to where he saw the rat clearly. It was sleeping. The man crept closer, inch by inch. He moved with breathless caution. He saw, though he did not realize, that the rat’s ribs now showed through its fur. Its eyes were rimmed with red. It was no longer sleek and well-muscled. It was shabby and unkempt and almost as emaciated as the man.

  The man drew his solitary arrow back. But he had not realized his weakness. His heart pounded hysterically. His eyes glared. His mouth slobbered in horrible anticipation. His hands shook. And when he had drawn back the arrow to the fullest extent of which he was capable, the arrow flicked forward, glanced off a rock—it would have missed—and by sheer ironic accident was deflected again into its true path. It struck the rat.

  And the bow had been drawn so weakly that the arrow did not penetrate. The rat leaped upright, squeaking, and fled. And the useless arrow lay where it had fallen while the starving man wept. He saw, now, that it was the rat which would win the game and the stakes—and the side bet.

  The rat knew it too. Two days later the man’s rations, both of food and of water, came to an end. He regarded them both for a long time. Once gone, the rat won their deadly game.

  The man ate the bread and drank the water. He lay down. He did not bother even to glance at the horizon, because the game was over and he had lost. He was not suffering at all when night came. He felt no hunger and even his thirst was not severe. He was peculiarly clearheaded and calm. His body was weak, to be sure, but there were no hunger gripings in his belly. He lay and looked up at the stars and foresaw the rat’s winning of game and stakes and side bet, and was unmoved by the fore-knowledge. He was too weak for emotion.

  BUT then he heard a little sound, and in the starlight he saw a movement. It was the rat.

  It was still for a long time. The man did not move. It crept toward him. The man stirred. The rat stopped. Presently it sank down on all fours, watching the man with glowing eyes.

  There was silence save for the gurgling of the long slow swells among the rocks. The man even laughed weakly. The rat waited with a quivering impatience. It had known nothing of rationing. It had eaten more fully than the man, but not as often. Its whole body was a clamoring, raging hunger. It quivered with a horrible desire to claim its winnings in the deadly game.

  “No,” said the man detachedly. His voice was a bare croak, but there was almost amusement in it. “Not yet! The one who dies first loses. I—I’m not dead—yet ….”

  THE rat quivered. It backed away when the man spoke, its eyes flaring hatred. But when he stopped it crept forward. A little closer than before. It stopped only when the man stirred.

  Then the man thought of something. He was very weak indeed, but at the very beginning he had picked out some soft fiber from the cordage he had saved. He had worked out a small spike, and he tested it against the rock. He had even dried out a little seaweed, as more practical than hemp for the making of a blaze.

  Now he struck the spike against the rock. It sparked. The rat retreated. Presently it crept forward again. The man struck the spike again upon the rock. The rat was checked.

  It happened many times before the spark struck in the improvised oakum tinder. Then it fatigued the man very much to blow it and sift dried and crumpled seaweed upon it—blowing the while—and later to transfer small coal to the assembly of little splinters he had made ready long since. They were to kindle the signal fire he had intended to light if a ship should ever come into view. But now he lighted the kindling because the rat was no more than five feet from him and he could hear it panting in a desperate eagerness to claim its winnings. The flames caught and climbed.

  The rat drew back slowly, its eyes desperate. The man watched. The flames grew higher yet. Presently they were hot. Unbearably hot. He summoned his last strength and crawled a little distance away. Then he lay still.

  Over his head malicious stars looked down, but now a huge and spreading column of smoke rose up, lighted from below by the blaze. It blotted out the stars. And the flames climbed higher and higher, crackling fiercely, and the fire roared. There was a leaping thicket of yellow flame beneath the smoke. Its topmost branches reared up for fifteen feet. Twenty. Long tongues of detached incandescence licked up into the thick smoke even higher still. And the reddish-yellow glare upon the smoke made it into a radiant mist, and every stone and portion of the island glowed as if it were red-hot.

  “It—would have been a pretty good signal,” the man thought with an odd pride, “if there’d been a ship….”

  Then he thought of something else. If he could have contrived to be upon that heap of blazing timber, and had contrived that it should catch fire after he was dead, the rat would never collect its winnings from the game.

  “But that wouldn’t have been fair,” said the man lightheartedly. “It—it would’ve been welshing….”

  The rat had vanished; crept into some crack or crevice to hide from the glare and the heat of the fire. And the fire blazed up and up, and slowly died down, and when the dawn came the man saw smoke still rising from the ashes.

  And again he saw the rat.

  But he heard—he heard the rattle of an anchor chain. Which was that of a ship which had seen the flame-lit smoke of the fire during the dark hours, and had thought it another ship ablaze, and had come to offer help. Now a boat was on its way ashore to give that help.

  WHEN small boat, they he carried croaked the out man a to request. They placed him as he wished in the boat, so that as it pulled toward the ship he saw the island. And he saw the rat upon it.

  The rat ran crazily back and forth, squealing. The squeals were cries of rage. The rat was a bare skeleton covered with tight-stretched hide, and its rage was ghastly. Its disappointment was horrible. Its fury was incredible. The man was being carried away and there was no other food upon the island…

  “I—I’ve got a money belt on,” croaked the man. “There’s—sixty dollars in it. I-I’ve lost a bet.” He rested for a moment. “I—want to buy some food and—have it left on the island for that—rat. He—won a game from me and I—don’t want to welsh on a bet….”

  They lifted him carefully to the steamer’s deck. Weakly, he insisted on this final favor. The boat went back to the island. It left a great heap of more than a hundred pounds of ship’s biscuit where the sea was not likely to wash any of it away. Before it had pulled out from the island, the rat had flung itself upon the heap and was eating.

  They told the man. He grinned feebly—he had been fed—and went incontinently to sleep. They told him afterward that the rat was still eating when the ship sailed over the horizon.

  What happened after that, the man never knew. But he felt that he had paid the side bet.

  Trailing Trouble

  THE last steamer to come down the Tanana before the freeze-up brought a letter which took Pete Shields upriver again. He was a deputy marshal then, and the letter was not originally written to him. Janet Blair had it—the Janet Blair who was Grace Blair’s sister, Grace being the prettiest girl in Fairbanks. Janet had gone through high school with Pete, and they seemed always to be seeing each other to speak to, but that was all. Janet was a public stenographer now, and spent the summer working, when she said polite things to cheechako clients. In winter, when cheechakos were rare, life was less polite and much more natural.

  She gave the letter to Pete Shields. He looked at the first line, which began, “Darling!” He looked up, embarrassed.

  “You don’t want me to read this!” he protested.

  Her cheeks were pink, but she nodded.

  “Nothing to be ashamed of,” she said calmly. “Tom Holmes. Wedding in the spring. Read it. It’s about Tom’s partner.”

  Pete read on, and his face changed. He was, you remember, a deputy marshal. His work was supposed to be definitely limited, yet he was expected to see that nobody sold whisky to Aleuts and Tlingits, keep an eye on divers matters of game and mining laws, act as de facto justice of the peace, and be health officer and general m
aid of all work. But he was human.

  He read this letter carefully, then handed it back.

  “Thanks,” he said. “It’s a tip.”

  Janet looked at his face. It was hard now, and purposeful.

  “Tom’s trapping,” she told him. “He says he’s found the one place where he’s bound to make a stake by spring. He saw two silvers, this summer. It’s a trapper’s paradise. Is—his partner Jules Farmier?”

  Pete Shields shrugged, but his face remained hard.

  “I’m not sure,” he said reservedly, “but I’m going up there to see. I’m rather anxious to catch Jules.”

  He was. Janet Blair knew it. Everybody knew it. Jules Farmier was once a salmon fisherman, and he turned poacher, and things got too hot for him and he went inland. His strength was monstrous and his ideas of humor were also monstrous. Pete Shields’ best friend had died because of Jules’ idea of a jest. It had seemed exquisitely humorous to him, after a holdup, to pour water upon a bound and helpless man in a temperature of twenty-two degrees below zero.

  “TOM will be all right,” said Pete. “Anyhow until I get there. Jules will be amused to watch Tom making a stake for him.”

  Janet caught her lip between her teeth. Then she said:

  “I’m going with you, Pete.”

  “Hardly,” said Pete. “Hardly!”

  “If Tom’s got Jules for a partner,’’ insisted Janet, “and Jules is going to kill him in the spring for his furs, then Tom needs somebody to look after him. He does, Pete. You know it.”

  Pete was thinking exclusively of Jules Farmier. She could see it. His face was savage. He had hunted for Jules for a long time, and he was already planning how to get upriver, now that the last steamer had come down. He turned impatiently away.

  “Don’t worry about Tom,” he said curtly. “I’ll go up at once. And you stay here. It’s best.”

  “I won’t stay here,” said Janet. “I’m going with you.”