Even as the voice ceased the creatures to whom the above words were addressed seemed to feel their effects and to act at once upon the instructions given. Without any delay, the cats who had dropped down inside the castle walls on receiving the watery deluge with which the mannikins had greeted them, rushed with fury upon the {204}unhappy rats whom they saw before them, apparently forgetful of everything except those natural instincts which led them to destroy and eat animals whom they had ever been accustomed to regard as fit objects wherewith to satisfy their hungry appetites. At the same instant it seemed to strike the snakes that a perfectly legitimate opportunity had arisen for feasting upon those frogs who were congregated in their immediate vicinity, and, acting at once upon the idea, they commenced to swallow the wretched creatures without any unnecessary delay. The mannikins calmly looked down meanwhile, and watched their enemies destroying each other until there was scarcely a live rat or frog left in the place, and the toads had fled frantically into the wood for fear the snakes should mistake them for frogs and they should be subjected to a fate from which all their dabblings in magic art might not have been able to preserve them. When the cries of the devouring and devoured creatures below had pretty well ceased, and few save cats and snakes were any longer to be seen in the courtyard, the owl gave a signal at which the mannikins turned on the water which, unknown to any person save themselves and their master, had been laid on to supply the castle in case of fire, and which by a judicious arrangement of pipes could be made to flood the courtyard at pleasure. The gorged cats and snakes were unable to make any effort to escape, although the latter might probably have swum safely off, many of them being water-snakes, and entertaining no great objection to the element. But, alas for them! there was one little circumstance which entirely prevented it. The _water was boiling_; {205}having been conducted through the kitchen of the castle, the large boilers of which had, by the owl’s orders, been carefully heated for the occasion. The shrieks of the wretched animals were dreadful to hear, when they became aware of the trap in which they had been Caught and the cruel fate which awaited them, from which escape was hopeless. They strove in vain to clamber up the walls or to creep through the holes; wherever they succeeded in raising themselves up from the water on to the walls, the mannikins with drawn swords and fierce looks relentlessly pushed them back into the hot bath below, so that, after a space of some twenty minutes or so, any person who desired a meal of boiled cat and snake-sauce might have been easily accommodated, and every one of the wretched creatures had perished.