Ocean Is. Rats !

HAVE you ever found yourself, with out warning, surrounded by rats — scurrying, scampering, dodging rats —fat and agile and cheeky? That was my extraordinary experience recently on Ocean Island.

I had gone out for a stroll, along a jungle-embowered track, and I thought that all the liveliness in the under growth around was due to lizards, or something. Then I investigated, and I found that, as I walked along, rats were being disturbed from their afternoon siesta, and were bounding off in all directions. So I reversed my heavy stick and, using it a la golf club, I went after every rat I saw. It was great fun, while it lasted: but the climate of that scorched island is definitely against lively exercise, so I knocked off when the death-roll was eight, and my tempera ture about 110.

Residents told me that the rats always are numerous on Ocean Island, but just now they are undergoing one of their recurrent swarming periods. Presently, nature will strike a balance, and some plague or natural enemy will reduce the pest. I got used to them after a day or two: but, as I walked along, I seldom could resist the call of the chase —reverse stick; three quick steps; smack!—and,

once again, le rat mort.-

R.W.R.