Three Skeleton Key

The younger Toudouze wrote on such topics as art, architecture, travel and French naval history.

Although he penned numerous adventure novels and short stories, he is today remembered for a single work: "Three Skeleton Key".

The men escape into the lighthouse gallery, which has a metal trapdoor that the rats cannot gnaw through, and are able to use the light to signal an investigating patrol boat.

Eventually the rats are lured off the island onto a barge loaded with meat, which is then set on fire by incendiary shells.

The fates of the men are then revealed by the narrator: Le Gleo went insane from the events and was locked away in a French asylum, and Itchoua dies of infection from rat bites and scratches.