Sleeping on deck became popular for other reasons too; the fact that the ship – now such a hothouse, due to the necessary lack of ventilation – was becoming infested with insects. Mosquitoes hid everywhere – they were extremely good at hiding – and stalked their prey with commando-like precision. I was lucky, as was Peggy – they had no interest in us – but the men were plagued constantly, many of them covered in angry-looking bites, and driven to distraction by the constant itching of them.
There was also a big increase in the cockroach population. Where toying with a cockroach had once been a happy diversion for me, there were now so many running around that I scarcely registered them, even when they twitched my finally sprouting whiskers. Where the rats had their runs, so the cockroaches did too, though where the rat runs followed routes behind pipes and under furniture, the cockroaches – nimble, quick, and entirely without limits – would scuttle along bedsteads and hammock ropes and pillowslips, and if a human got in the way they’d just scuttle straight over them, their antennae waving gaily as they passed.
It was an education in the curious sensibilities of humans; I knew cockroaches were high on the doc’s list of ‘health crises in the making’ because, like rats, they spread diseases. But it turned out the sailors didn’t care about that. No. In the main, they were just very, very frightened of them. There was no logic in this. Not that I could see, anyway. Yet the sight of a cockroach would have the biggest, burliest seaman shuddering – especially the younger ones – and I wasn’t sure they knew why themselves. But what was very clear was that they found it impossible to ignore them. If they weren’t jumping up and down on them – though never in bare feet – they’d be springing up, going ‘aagh!’ and ‘yuck!’ and ‘ruddy bleeders! Yarggg!’, shaking themselves down as if they were crawling with scores of them, rather than just one, and doing strange little dances on the spot.
There was an entirely different attitude towards the moths. Strangely, given that moths were far superior when it came to flying (and often sat for minutes at a time on the men’s faces, when they dozed off, if only they knew) they attracted nothing like the same frantic response. A moth was looked upon benignly, brushed away relatively calmly – though as the weeks passed and the heat grew their numbers began increasing, the cry of ‘Cover that ruddy light off – we’ll be swamped with the bloody things!’ became a common one.
But it was the rats – always the rats – who were posing the worst infestation, and by mid-June – six whole weeks since we’d been taken hostage by the communists – there was little choice but to stop using the aft part of the ship entirely, and let the rodents have the run of the place.
As a consequence, the men were even more crammed together in the heat and, when not working or on watch (Captain Kerans was becoming infamous for his ‘obsession’ with keeping everyone occupied) attempted to amuse themselves not only by reading, or playing cards (or, touchingly, writing long letters that couldn’t be posted) but by thinking up ways the evil scourge could be exterminated. Whenever the opportunity arose, boots were lobbed at any rat who was bold enough to run around in daylight.
These days, such boldness was common to most of them, and all I could do was my best. But it was fast becoming an unequal battle. I made kills every day now – rats were there for the taking – but for every one I finished off there seemed to be a dozen more.
‘Breeding like rabbits!’ Sid observed one evening, after the meal was cleared away. ‘We’ll soon be overrun with the wretched things!
Sid, the youngest rating, had recently become a particular friend. To add to the woes already heaped on us by the communists, he’d suffered an injury a few weeks back when trying to adjust a steel cable. When he’d been taken ashore by the doctor, it was discovered he’d broken his arm, so he’d been in need of a little extra help and comfort.
I was sharing his hammock in the mess now, curled on top of his feet to keep his toes warm and, despite the chatter of the men, it was impossible not to hear the rats’ constant scurryings and scrapings beneath and around us.
‘Wish they were rabbits,’ remarked the other boy sailor, Martin. ‘Least then we could put them in a pie and eat the blighters!’
Martin, too, had had a tougher time than most. He and Bannister, one of the stoker mechanics, had been among those put to shore. They’d spent time in captivity – the plan being to use them to help coerce the captain. But they hadn’t co-operated, and had not long been returned.
‘Oh, for pity’s sake!’ said Sid. ‘Now you’re making me feel sick!’
Sid was particularly queasy about the rats, having woken up one morning to find one half dead and squealing, dangling a scant three inches above his head, after a kind soul had rigged up a snare with some fuse wire. ‘Well, how was I to know you planned to sleep there?’ the sailor had huffed.
As it was, my kills were mostly lobbed over the guardrail into the Yangtse. It became the ritual to wish them a safe journey to the north shore, where the ‘bloody commies’ could roast them for dinner. I worked hard to keep the supply up, knowing my contribution was vital, as no other method of killing them seemed to work. Which was not to say the men didn’t try – in a fit of furious determination upwards of fifty traps were laid in a single afternoon. The next day, not a single one was sprung.
It was perhaps inevitable, then, that the feeling became prevalent that the rats were more organised than we knew. They certainly seemed so – and so confident! They were increasingly bolder and braver. Poor Sid, who’d been dozing in the sick bay one afternoon, just after his accident, was roused from his slumbers by one calmly nibbling at his toes.
There was also talk of several sightings of a rat to beat the lot of them – a giant of an animal who they’d nicknamed Mao Tse-tung, on account of him seeming to be the ringleader. ‘Big as you, he is Blackie,’ Jack had helpfully told me. ‘I reckon you’d have a job on your hands, taking him on.’
‘Nah, he’s a sight bigger,’ Sid had even more helpfully corrected him. ‘Job on his hands? I reckon that rat could see him off if he wasn’t careful. You’d best keep away from him, Blackie.’
‘He’s the one, though,’ Martin agreed. ‘He’s the King Rat, no doubt about it. He’s the one that needs dispatching to the afterlife, the filthy bugger. Before he sires any more of the blasted things.’
I’d never thought about rats having an afterlife before. Did they too have their souls in the stars? I wasn’t sure I liked it, but I had to concede that the idea made some sense to me, even it didn’t inspire any finer feelings for the filthy vermin. I was a member of His Majesty’s Navy and I had no time for that. Not for animals that caused so much misery for my friends.
I did think quite a lot about this legendary Mao Tse-tung, though. That perhaps Jack and Sid were right. Perhaps he would be too much for me. I’d already dealt with a couple of sizeable males, and, even with my strength returning and my whiskers coming along nicely, I was not fully fit yet, and it had been no small matter to catch them and finish them off. It seemed the bolder they got, the more well fed they got – while the men faced the meat running out in a matter of days now, the rats, gorging on grain and rice, were growing ever plumper. The plumper they were, the heavier and bulkier they were, and though I was healing well – barely limping now, as Lieutenant Hett had noticed recently – I weighed no more than I ever did, nor, I thought, would I.