For all her effort at control, she fell into a brief imagining of herself as a baleful rat crouched at a corner where two passage walls met while a guard came tramping past. . . and then the contact came.

The cupboard stood open, as she had left it, but no rats crouched on the shelves.

The white rats crouched in rather disorderly fashion around a little table of their own set on the floor near the wall between the sea-bed and the door, just aft of one of the trapdoors opening down into the grain-redolent hold.

The second rat crouched, making a sound low in its throat.

The other rat crouched back.

The rat crouched over Mr Foreman jealously, ripping at one limp arm.

As the trap-hunter spun around, the rat crouched hurriedly, almost rolling on its back to show how small and harmless it was.

A fat-bellied rat crouched beside her.