had stolen my supper.

Once more I heard the scraping and scratching noise. Certainly it
proceeded from my buskins?

Slowly and silently I raised myself into a half-upright position, so
that I could reach the buskins with a single effort, and in this
attitude I again listened for a repetition of the sound.

But though I remained patient for a considerable time, I did not hear it
again; and I then passed my hands over the buskins, and around the place
where they were lying, but felt nothing there. They appeared to be just
as they had been left, and nothing amiss. I also groped over all the
floor of my cell, but with like result. Nothing was there that ought
not to have been.

I was not a little perplexed, and lay for a good while awake and
listening, without hearing anything more of the mysterious noise. Sleep
once more began to steal upon me, and I dropped off into a series of
dozing fits as before.

Once again the scraping and scratching noise falling upon my ear
disturbed me, and caused me to lie listening. Most surely it came from
the buskins; but when I moved to get within reach of them, the noise
instantly ceased, as if I had frightened the creature that was making
it; and, just as before, I groped everywhere and found nothing!

"Ha!" muttered I to myself, "I now know what has been causing all this
disturbance: no crab at all--for a crab could not possibly crawl so
quickly out of the way. The intruder is a mouse. Nothing more nor
less. Strange I did not think of this before! I might have guessed
that it was a mouse, and not have made myself so uneasy about it. It
could only be a mouse; and, but for my dream, I should, perhaps, never
have thought of its being a crab."

With this reflection I lay down again, intending to go to sleep at once,
and not trouble myself any more about the mouse or its movements.

But I had scarcely settled my cheek upon the pillow, when the scratching
began afresh, and it now occurred to me that the mouse was gnawing at my
buskins, and probably doing them a serious damage. Although they were
of no service to me just then, I could not permit them to be eaten up in
this way; and, raising myself once more, I made a dash to catch the
mouse.

In this I was unsuccessful. I did not even touch the animal; but I
thought I heard it scampering through the crevice that led out between
the brandy-cask and the timbers of the ship.

On handling the buskins, I discovered to my ch