Trapped With Rats

There must be 500,000 rats in the United States; of course I'm only speaking from memory.                      Billy Nye

 

 We were five days out of the Canary's when we first heard the thing. Five days downwind with a hot African Sirocco, bound for Barbados on a simple boat delivery. Yeah right....simple boat delivery.

 Five days of rice & water, (seems the captain drank up the food fund), five days of torturous 'confused seas,' & the scanty plastic Morgan was creaking at the seams, leaking like a screen door. Five days of being trapped with two of the most despicable, hateful creatures on earth....Captain 'Jack' & the Frenchman. The Frenchman called himself Jean Claude....I called him 'Frogzilla.' He looked like a rat, I hated him....& to complicate matters, he hated me.

 But not as bad as we both hated Captain Jack

Not only had the Captain failed to provision the boat, he had also decided the 21 day passage might be a good time to dry out. The 'Captain' was now rabid,  

, screaming at us like Bly on the Bounty, and seeing rats.

 Frogzilla & I both laughed at him when he confessed to seeing a 'rat the size of a beagle,' in the pantry.

 And now this......

 

 "I tell you zeere iz zomething trapped in the hull!" said Frogzilla one morning, "Zomething beeg & terrible... I fear for our zafety...."

 If he feared for his zafety what in Gods name was he doing on a rotten sail boat in the middle of the Atlantic?

 "One of your snails probably got away John Clod."

 His pointed nose twitched nervously as those cold beady eyes cut out my throat. Boy, he hated me.

 "YOU HAVE SNAILS ON BOARD MY SHIP?" Screamed the hallucinating Captain.

 "Big ones Captain, big as meat loaves, the Frenchman smuggled them on, cooks em up when we're asleep.

 "Sacrea Blu!" muttered Frogzilla...."Bull tweedy!"....muttered Jack.

 

It was that night I heard the thing too...something scratching on the hull....some.....THING!....scratching to get in. In the middle of the cold black Atlantic some evil thing rising from the depths every night to scratch madly on that wafer thin hull. The Frenchman had been right.....but how to admit it to the pompous twit, eluded me.

 So on we sailed in maddening silence.

 

 Finally on day 8 the Captain admitted he'd heard the thing two....I was the only one who still claimed ignorance.....to the scratching that is.

 Being the odd one out is no picnic anywhere, but in the middle of the ocean can soon lead to a pecking frenzy that will drive the loner to swimming.

 I joined the vermin.

 "Mabey it's a Rat?" I ventured "Snuck on in Gibraltar."

 "A RAT? HA!! Howled Frogzilla "A RAT WOULD HAVE STARVED EATING WHAT WE'RE EATING!"

 God I hated that guy...

 "Well one thing fur sure".....Captain Jack stared out to sea......for about 5 minutes....

 "What's that Captain?"

 "What's what?"

 "What's 'fur sure' for Gods Sake...."

 " Oh...If there's a Rat on board, we're in trouble...."

 "Whys that?"

 "Whys what?"

 "WHY ARE WE IN TROUBLE?"

 "Cause a rat, you mouthy bilge scum, will eat everything on this boat!! Electrical wires, rubber hoses, DRAIN PLUGS!!"

 "C'mon Captain!"

 "Then the thing will start on us...THE WEAKER WE GET, THE STRONGER IT GETS!"

 "Come on Captain, we're talking about a small rodent here....."

"MARK MY WORDS JIM!!"

 "Steve"..

 "WHATEVER!!!"  

 "We'll have to kill the thing...before it kills us." The captain muttered darkly.

 

 For the next few days the only civil conversations on board that boat dealt with the rats demise.

 
"VE VILL electrocute HIM!" Howled Frogzilla.

 "Have to shoot him"....said Jack.

 "Why not just set fire to the boat," I offered.

 At night the creatures frantic scrambling threatened to dismember our fragile stability.

 My stomach shrunk to a walnut, the toilet overflowed & seized. Sea water was starting to seep through every seam when the engine went.

 Still we spoke of nothing but the rats capture.

 Frogzilla ran coat hangers behind the walls while I'd wait with club in hand for the rats appearance. We set off a bug bomb in the bilge....still nothing.

 We maced our living quarters....nothing.

 On day 18 a sudden gust blew out the main.

 We didn't care....we were to busy building an elaborate rat trap in the galley.

 And still the beast evaded us.

 

It was as if the creature was immortal, & indeed he seemed to grow stronger

as we slowly went round the bend.

 And so there we sat hundreds of miles off Barbados, with no food, little water, no engine, no sails, going crazy trying to catch that rat.

 As much as we hated each other & as serious as the situation was becoming, one thing held us together...the quest to catch that rat.

 

 From the lonely watery world of lengthy ocean passages, rise strange tales of odd encounters. Solo sailors have encountered ghosts at the helm, weird voices floating across the waves, sightings of creatures best left unexplained on land. The mermaid myth no doubt came about from the rampant rambling of an unbridled lonely sailors imagination. The rat had become just such an obsession. Our attention was drawn from our own miserable condition, distracted from our personal loathing of each other to only the capture of that rustling rodent.

 

 And so it was when the Frenchman produced a bit of hoarded cheese neither the Captain nor I considered revenge on him, we all thought of just one thing. Baiting that rat.

 With care rivaling brain surgery we stealthily entombed 3 sleeping pills in the tiny hunk of cheddar & placed it with cautiously beneath the sink.

 Then we sat down to wait.

 The wind had now died completely, leaving us to bob silently in that glass sea. A painted ship on a painted ocean, our SOS radio calls seemed to be falling on deaf ears. Through cracked lips we croaked at each other, not about our inevitable starvation, but about the rat.

 When would the rat eat the cheese?

Then, suddenly one blinding hot morning we were jerked awake by Frogzillas nasal scream. There, on the floor of the galley lay the rat. The beast was far from dead though, but only drugged into a slow motion stupor.

 We surrounded him like hunting lions, hissing from dry throats in that reeking cabin we plotted his capture. A fetid blanket was thrown over the struggling rodent & with a ragged cheer we hoisted him on deck. Then with the fervor of an angry mob we tossed that rat into the sea.

 As the creature feebly pawed the water, we congratulated each other, shaking hands, & slapping each others backs in our victory.

 

 Captain Jack saw it first....a tiny speck on the horizon but growing quickly, we soon saw the unmistakable shape of a coast guard cutter steaming towards us.

 "WE'RE SAVED!!"  "MY GOD WE'RE SAVED!!" We screamed leaping in joy.

 The joy was short lived however, as again we raced to the rail, only to see the rats struggling form slip beneath the surface for the last time.

 

Not a word was said between us, not a thought hampered our decision, as suddenly in unison the three of us leapt overboard, to save that drowning rat.

 

 For as odd as it may sound our survival would mean nothing if the rat didn't make it. After all....we had become a crew of four.