opened the drawer. Like most
drawers on board ship and frequently elsewhere it jammed. By frantic
up and down movements the subaltern freed it. Then he waited, both
officers listening intently. Not a sound came from within.

"Don't suppose the brute's there after all. He must have effected a
strategic movement.... Look out, by Jove!"

Acting upon his impression Laxdale had tugged the drawer half open.
Instantly there was a vision of a dark object darting with
lightning-like rapidity.

Down came Wilmshurst's towel roller a fraction of a second too late for
Mister Rat. At the same time Laxdale moved his hands along the ledge
of the drawer and received the full force of the blow across the
knuckles.

"Sorry!" exclaimed Wilmshurst.

Laxdale, nursing the injured hand, made no audible comment.
Deliberately he relieved Dudley of the towel-roller, throwing his
companion the knotted towel in exchange.

"Where's the brute now?" he asked grimly.

A scuffling noise in a tin bath suspended from the cork-cemented roof
of the cabin betrayed the rodent's temporary hiding-place. Both men
looked first at the bath and then at each other.

"It would be as well if we put our helmets on," suggested Wilmshurst,
replacing his "double-pith" headgear. "Now, I'll shake the bath and
you let rip when he falls. But please don't try to get your own back
on me."

As a precautionary measure Dudley beat the side of the bath with the
towel. It might have been efficacious if the subaltern had been
engaging in apiarian operations, but as far as present events went it
was a "frost."

"Tilt it, old man," suggested Laxdale.

Wilmshurst carried out this suggestion only too well. The bath,
slipping from its supporting fixtures, clattered noisily to the floor,
its edge descending heavily upon Dudley's foot. Again a momentary
vision of the leaping rodent, then, crash! With a mighty sweep of the
tower-roller Laxdale demolished the electric-light globe into a
thousand fragments.

"Getting on," he remarked cheerfully. "There'll be a big bill for
'barrack damages' eh, what? Where's the brute?"

The rat, terrified by the din, had retired to a recess formed by the
bulkhead of the cabin and the fixed wash-basin and was acting strictly
on the defensive.

"Aha!" exclaimed Laxdale. "Now you're cornered. No use yelling
'Mercy, kamerad.'"

Levelling the roller like a billiard cue the subaltern prepared to make
a thrust and administer t