Now, the corporal
was a fearless soldier whose nerves were not easily
shaken, but the idea of a nasty mush rat, as they termed
it, touching his person in this manner, produced in him
unconquerable disgust, even while it gave him the desperate
energy to clutch the object with a nervous grasp, and
without regard to the chance of being bitten in the act,
by the small, sharp teeth of the animal. His consternation
was even greater when, on enclosing it within his rough
palm, he felt the whole to collapse, as though it had
been a heavy air-filled bladder, burst by the compression
of his fingers. A new feeling-a new chain of ideas now
took possession of him, and leaving the musket where it
was, he rose near the spot from which he first started,
and still clutching his hairy and undesirable prize,
threw it from him towards the boat, into the bottom of
which it fell, after grazing the cheek of Collins.
"Pooh! pooh! pooh," spluttered the latter, moving as if
the action was necessary to disembarrass him of the
unsightly object no longer there.
A new source of curiosity was now created, not only among
the swimmers, but the idlers who were smoking their pipes
and looking carelessly on.
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