156 JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS

every passing person, there is a rat in the tunnels
underneath.

They are shy creatures; even while I slept among
them, and heard them round me all night, I never
saw one until I arrived in Ganta, where they were
bolder and didn't wait till dark. Flash a torch: they
always avoided its beam; leave a lamp burning: and
they played just as furiously in the shadow outside
the range of light.*

I remembered the first live rat I ever saw. I had
returned with my brother from a revue in Paris to
a famous hotel on the left bank near the Luxem-
bourg. It was about one o'clock in the morning;
my brother went upstairs first; and lolloping behind
him, like a small rabbit, went a rat. I could hardly
believe my eyes as I followed them; it didn't go
with the dapper lounge, the wealthy international
guests. But I wasn't drunk; I could see quite dis-
tinctly the rough brown fur at its neck. I suppose
one of the million or two rats in Paris was recon-
noitring. Its appearance had a premeditated sinister
air. I thought of the first Uhlans appearing at the
end of a Belgian country road.

The next rat I saw was dead. I had taken a cottage
in Gloucestershire and the country scared me. Some-
thing used to make a noise in the thatch every night,
and I thought of rats: I knew the villagers went
ratting along the hedge at the bottom of my garden.
The rat-catcher, a rat-like man himself in old army
breeches who was said by cruel village rumour to

t * Perhaps town rats are bolder. In Freetown in 1942 I would
lie awake under my mosquito-net and watch them scamper
across my dressing table and swing upon my black-out curtains