Not that I cared about rats sheltering themselves there. I no longer troubled my head about them; and although I had reason to know that there were still some of them in the neighbourhood, my late sanguinary _razzia_ among them had evidently rendered them afraid to come within reach of me. The terrible screeching which their companions had uttered, while I was pounding the life out of them, had rung loudly all through the hold of the ship, and had acted upon those of the survivors, that had heard it, as a salutary warning. No doubt they were greatly frightened by what they had heard; and perceiving that I was a dangerous fellow-passenger, would be likely to give me a "wide berth" during the remainder of the voyage. It was not any thought about the rats, then, that caused me to caulk up every corner so closely, but simply with the view of economising space; for, as I have already said, this was the point about which I had the greatest apprehensions. Proceeding, then, in this vigorous but careful manner, I at length emptied the upper box, and finished by stowing away its contents behind me. I had managed the latter to my entire satisfaction, and I was under the belief that I had repacked the pieces of cloth in such a manner as to lose scarcely the bulk of one of them of my valuable space. The result had an encouraging effect upon me, and produced a cheerfulness of spirits to which I had long been a stranger. In this pleasant mood I mounted into the upper box--the one which I had just cleared--and after placing one of the loose boards across the bottom, which had been partially removed, I sat down upon it, leaving my legs to hang over into the empty space below. In this attitude, which was entirely new to me, and in which I had plenty of room to sit upright and at my ease, I found a new source of gratification. Confined so long within a chamber whose greatest height was little over three feet, while my own was four, I had been compelled to stoop in a crouching attitude whenever I attempted to stand; and I was even obliged to sit with my legs bent, and my knees on a level with my chin. These inconveniences are but slight, when one has only to suffer them for a short while; but under long endurance, they become irksome and even painful. It was, therefore, not only a release, but a great luxury to me, to find that I had room enough to sit upright, and with my legs at full stretch. Better still, I could also _stand_ erect, for the two boxes now communicated with each other, and it was full six feet from the bottom of the one to the top of the other. Of course my own height being only four, left two feet of space between the crown of my head and the ceiling of my new apartment, which I could not even touch with the tips of my fingers.