By the time the last rat passed through my room, and I began to breathe freely again, darkness had come. My room was lit by the dim light of a wick floating in a tumbler of cocoa-nut oil, enclosed in a lantern of glass. The Ayah took up her position again and squatted by the wall without saying a word, nearly petrified with terror at what had happened. I pictured this mass of swiftly-moving, crafty-looking creatures, under the influence of some mysterious force unknown to ourselves, and remembered Cuvier, that great Frenchman, who wrote that when one thinks of the family life of even the most loathsome of creatures, one is inclined to forget any repulsion one may feel towards them. Rats, however, were a great trouble to me. I have recognized individual rats visiting me on different occasions. I don’t know whether they wanted to make friends, one will never know, but they frightened me dreadfully. I often pitied the way the poor creatures were trapped, poisoned, and killed, when after all they were only trying to keep their place in the world, just as we do. On another occasion, I was fast asleep when I woke up feeling a sort of nip. I opened my eyes and saw a large rat sitting on my arm. I shook it off, and it fell to the ground. Being in my mosquito house, I was curious to discover how the rat had got in, and lighting a candle, found that it had gnawed a hole through the muslin to get at some food placed on a table for me to eat during the night. As luck would have it, these rat visitations invariably took place when I was ill, so perhaps it magnified the disgust I felt towards these creatures. But thinking on the matter many times since, I have largely got over my loathing for rats, and I do not think nowadays, I should mind their migrating through my room, because I have become more familiar with animals and their ways. CHAPTER X There are certain animals in Sarawak, very little mentioned by travellers, with which we are always surrounded. These are the lizards which run up and down the walls of all houses in the tropics. They are light grey-green in colour, make a funny little noise, and on this account the natives call them chik-chak. They have the peculiar and rather disagreeable property of shedding their tails; once or twice they have dropped these appendages on to my head as they ran to and fro on the ceiling. It sometimes happens that if a picture or a piece of furniture standing against a wall is moved, a very large black chik-chak, about twice the size of an ordinary chik-chak, will come out from behind these shelters. I have noticed that a great many rooms are inhabited by one of these black chik-chak ensconced behind such safe retreats, and these giants of the same species are called by Malays, “Rajah chi-chak.”