The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-08-09
MATE BENEFITS YARN.
BY ,. c. PLUMMER.

(Copyrfght, 1904, by Daily Story Pup.
 Col
 It was a perfect day. one of those days which, like a dainty mosaic. fit into the sailorman's life amid many blocks of somber hue, days where amid storm and cold, he has struggled for the right to live.
 There was not a cloud In the sky. A steady northwest wind made every sail draw, and away over the starboard quarter the smudge of Cape Henry was rapidly vanishing.
 The foremast hands lay over the bow watching the froth which the progress of the vessel kicked up for ward, while the skipper and his two mates, soothed by the beauty of the day into unwonted calm, smoked on the poop.
 There was the sharp clangor of a tin pan striking a hard substance there came from the galley the gut teral shout that belongs only to the throat of the negro. and the oiacH cook of the Petrel came out of his den . triumphant smile on his thick IDS bearing aloft the carcass Of nuse rat.
 'Pesky things, rats" observed the skipper, marking the spot where the rat fell With a plump into the sea.
 'Pesky, wuss than that. hate 'em," said MT. Bennett, chief mate ''but hey saved my life once, for all their peskiness."
 ''Shipwrecked, and you caught the tail of a rat in your teeth and was lowed ashore" suggested the skipper flippantly.
 The mate looked hurt.
 There's no use telling yarn If you're smart enough to know 1t fore t41A aaid
 Go on, Bennett" said the skipper. q was only joking"
 "The time when rats was service to me-" began MT. Bennett, was when I was second mate on the old brig Hannibal. She traded from Portland to tte win'ard islands, and that cree tur was full O rats as a oragne is O juice. She used to carry a lot O lumber from Savannah to the West 1njys and the rats got in her there.
 'If you carry lumber look out for rats and cockroaches," put in the skip per
 T never see the like O them rats on the Hannibal" continued the mate. ''The old man used to dump two or three rats out o his boots every morn- in just as regular as he ate breakfast, and when a sailor d turn in the whole fo'castle d sound with the squeals O the rats he was a pressin' on. Why, the whole crew was nussin' rat bites"
 "Why didn't you smoke 'em out? asked the skipper.
 We burned every kind O pizen that would burn in the old hooker. and while the smoke come close to killin' the crew it didn't harm the rats. There was so many O them that you couldn't miss what was killed. Why, when them rats got to runnin' about the brig the ellyments d have to be maxim a big nize outside to make themselves heard"
 "Whew!" whistled the skipper.
 T am only tellin' what g a fact said the mate, firmly Well, them rats got so bad that the old man went pretty nigh plumb crazy, and when the brig gets to Portland one day he ups and throws his job away.
 The owners puts a long hatchet- faced man from the Kennebec in com mand, and he starts in to load the old hooker with white pine lumber for Demerary, and, Lord. he did load her too. He crammed the hold chock a block, and then began pilin' 1t up on deck. Blest if 1t didn't look as if a mejum- sized man d have to duck his head to walk under the fore yard arm Now. you can laugh if you want to don't care rope yarn, but it's a fact that when he was a pilin' that lumber up on deck the most uneasy creeturs 1 ever see was them rats. They'd run about over the load and all the time a-suqeakin' most poweEful
 Finally we gets her loaded, stores aboard, and the next day was fixed to sail Says I to myself. I'll run up