THE RATS GUARDING THE LADDER.

The trawler has been fishing off the west coast of Africa under the command of the USSR fishery and bore her sig, MRT-13 and had her stational port in Angola. This MRT - 13, which I, later bought from the USSR - was not only in bad condition, so, that the repair carried out took two years to get her classed - she also carried a lot of rats aboard, the rats were coal black and as big as a cat. One morning I was descending by ladder down to the engine room as I heard a warning cry behind my back, it was my shipmate Lasse who was warning me of a rat, and indeed there was a rat, big and black - hanging himself from the asbestos isolation of the exhaust tube above my neck. I jumped and ended on the floor of the engine room. They were hungry cannibals, the didn't eat for last six anything but each other, the vessel been laid up for six months. Some morning we could find a head of a rat, jammed in the trap we had set in the WC- all another part of the body was eaten up.We also hear them running in the mezzanine, the were plenty of em', we heard them but didn't see them. Every night when I got on the bunk to sleep I load my shotgun and took it with me in the bunk. Then, one day, they all was gone.

T