There was a busy coming and going from the wasps’ nest, they saw. A swarm of black shapes interlaced in the air, above the rusty hill-front beyond the pine cluster, and ever and again one of these would dart up into the sky with incredible swiftness and soar off upon some distant quest. Their humming became audible at more than half a mile’s distance from the Experimental Farm. Once a yellow-striped monster dropped towards them and hung for a space watching them with its great compound eyes, but at an ineffectual shot from Cossar it darted off again. Down in a corner of the field, away to the right, several were crawling about over some ragged bones that were probably the remains of the lamb the rats had brought from Huxter’s Farm. The horses became very restless as they drew near these creatures. None of the party was an expert driver, and they had to put a man to lead each horse and encourage it with the voice.
They could see nothing of the rats as they came up to the house, and everything seemed perfectly still except for the rising and falling “whoozzzzzzzzz, whoooo-zoo-oo” of the wasps’ nest.
They led the horses into the yard, and one of Cossar’s men, seeing the door open—the whole of the middle portion of the door had been gnawed out—walked into the house. Nobody missed him for the time, the rest being occupied with the barrels of paraffin, and the first intimation they had of his separation from them was the report of his gun and the whizz of his bullet. “Bang, bang,” both barrels, and his first bullet it seems went through the cask of sulphur, smashed out a stave from the further side, and filled the air with yellow dust. Redwood had kept his gun in hand and let fly at something grey that leapt past him. He had a vision of the broad hindquarters, the long scaly tail and long soles of the hind-feet of a rat, and fired his second barrel. He saw Bensington drop as the beast vanished round the corner.
Then for a time everybody was busy with a gun. For three minutes lives were cheap at the Experimental Farm, and the banging of guns filled the air. Redwood, careless of Bensington in his excitement, rushed in pursuit, and was knocked headlong by a mass of brick fragments, mortar, plaster, and rotten lath splinters that came flying out at him as a bullet whacked through the wall.
He found himself sitting on the ground with blood on his hands and lips, and a great stillness brooded over all about him.
Then a flattish voice from within the house remarked: “Gee-whizz!”
“Hullo!” said Redwood.
“Hullo there!” answered the voice.
And then: “Did you chaps get ’im?”
A sense of the duties of friendship returned to Redwood. “Is Mr. Bensington hurt?” he said.
The man inside heard imperfectly. “No one ain’t to blame if I ain’t,” said the voice inside.
It became clearer to Redwood that he must have shot Bensington. He forgot the cuts upon his face, arose and came back to find Bensington seated on the ground and rubbing his shoulder. Bensington looked over his glasses. “We peppered him, Redwood,” he said, and then: “He tried to jump over me, and knocked me down. But I let him have it with both barrels, and my! how it has hurt my shoulder, to be sure.”
A man appeared in the doorway. “I got him once in the chest and once in the side,” he said.
“Where’s the wagons?” said Cossar, appearing amidst a thicket of gigantic canary-creeper leaves.
It became evident, to Redwood’s amazement, first, that no one had been shot, and, secondly, that the trolley and wagon had shifted fifty yards, and were now standing with interlocked wheels amidst the tangled distortions of Skinner’s kitchen garden. The horses had stopped their plunging. Halfway towards them, the burst barrel of sulphur lay in the path with a cloud of sulphur dust above it. He indicated this to Cossar and walked towards it. “Has anyone seen that rat?” shouted Cossar, following. “I got him in between the ribs once, and once in the face as he turned on me.”
They were joined by two men, as they worried at the locked wheels.
“I killed that rat,” said one of the men.
“Have they got him?” asked Cossar.
“Jim Bates has found him, beyond the hedge. I got him jest as he came round the corner. … Whack behind the shoulder. …”
When things were a little shipshape again Redwood went and stared at the huge misshapen corpse. The brute lay on its side, with its body slightly bent. Its rodent teeth overhanging its receding lower jaw gave its face a look of colossal feebleness, of weak avidity. It seemed not in the least ferocious or terrible. Its forepaws reminded him of lank emaciated hands. Except for one neat round hole with a scorched rim on either side of its neck, the creature was absolutely intact. He meditated over this fact for some time. “There must have been two rats,” he said at last, turning away.
“Yes. And the one that everybody hit—got away.”
“I am certain that my own shot—”
A canary-creeper leaf tendril, engaged in that mysterious search for a holdfast which constitutes a tendril’s career, bent itself engagingly towards his neck
