The Secret of the Ginger Mice (28 page)

“How do you . . .?” Alistair began, looking at her in astonishment. Then, hearing footsteps, he shook his head. “There'll be time for this later. Right now we have to deal with the fact that we're not safe on this ship with the kidnappers aboard, and we don't want to go back to Souris on the
Sickert
. We need a third option.”

“There's a lifeboat on the port bow,” said Tibby Rose.

“Brilliant! Can you lead us to it, Tib?” Alistair asked.

“Sure.” Tibby was about to step out from their hiding place when a shaggy brown mouse rushed down the stairs.

“That's the captain,” whispered Alex.

All four mice peered around the corner of the stairs
to watch as the captain burst into his cabin.

“We're under attack,” he announced to those inside in a hoarse voice. “Pirates. We can't fight them off, so we're going to turn about and head back to Shambles.”

“P-p-pirates?” one of the cabin's occupants wailed. (“Horace,” Alice whispered.)

“My dear Captain, that is completely unacceptable,” came an imperious reply in silvery tones. “We are on our way to Souris.” (“And Sophia,” Alice added with a shiver.)

“I'm afraid that's impossible, Miss Sophia,” said the captain, his tone hardening. “I must consider the safety of my crew and ship first. As it is we'll be lucky if the pirates don't scuttle us.”

“Hmph. Very well.” Sophia did not sound happy. “Then we had better divest ourselves of our young captives, Horace. We don't want those nasty Sourian spies setting foot on our precious Shetlock soil again. Where did your sailors put them, Captain?”

“In the barrel beneath the stairs. You can't miss it—just follow the smell of pickled herring.”

“Yikes! Tibby, get us to that lifeboat,” Alistair urged.

The four young mice scrambled up the narrow staircase.

On deck, the
Marmaduke
's crew were fighting hard to repel the invaders. Fortunately, they were too busy to
pay attention to the four young mice scurrying through their midst.

They were almost at the rail when they heard a screech from below decks.

“They're gone! The brats have gone!”

“Everyone over the rail!” shouted Alistair.

The four mice clambered over the rail just as Horace's lugubrious voice bayed, “There they are, Sophia!”

“Stop them!” the silvery mouse cried. “I order you sailors to stop them!”

But the
Marmaduke
's sailors were too preoccupied fighting off the pirates to pay her any heed.

Casting a glance over his shoulder as he dropped down into the lifeboat, Alistair had a glimpse of silvery gray fur moving rapidly across the deck, pushing through the throng impatiently. A coal-black mouse trailed somewhat reluctantly in her wake.

“Tibby, how do we launch this thing?” Alistair asked urgently.

“It's lashed to the rail with rope,” Tibby shouted. “We need to cut it.” She looked around the bottom of the boat frantically.

Quick as a flash Alex was hauling himself back over the rail.

“Alex!” cried Alice. “Where are you going? Come back!” She tried to snatch at his tail but missed.

“Excuse me?” Alex tapped the shoulder of a pirate who was holding the point of his cutlass at the throat of a sailor whose back was pressed to the rail.

“What?” the pirate barked impatiently.

“I need your cutlass,” said Alex, snatching it from the grasp of the bewildered pirate.

“Hey!” he shouted, but Alex took a running jump and, with one hand on the rail, hurdled back into the lifeboat.

“Here.” He thrust the cutlass at Tibby Rose, who grasped the heavy sword with both hands and swung it through the ropes attaching the lifeboat to the ship.

“Hang on!” she cried, as the small boat fell several meters, hitting the water with an almighty splash.

Alistair, who was ready with the oars, began to stroke quickly away from the
Marmaduke
.

“Come back!” Sophia was shaking her fist from the deck above. But Sophia and the doleful Horace were the only mice aboard to pay any mind to the departure of the four young mice.

“Thank goodness you disguised your ginger fur,” said Alice, watching with a mixture of terror and relief as the enraged silver mouse ran along the deck. “If she had known you were so close . . .” She shuddered.

Pulling hard at the oars, Alistair glanced to his left and right and over his shoulder but could see no sign of land. “Tibby,” he asked, “which direction should I be rowing in?”

Tibby too looked all around, then she squinted at the sky. “That way.” She pointed to her left, which was Alistair's right.

Alex and Alice gaped at her.

“How do you know?” asked Alex. “I mean, we're in the middle of the sea with no landmarks or map or anything.”

“Tibby knows all kinds of amazing things,” said Alistair, feeling rather proud of his new friend.

Tibby pointed at the sun. “Shetlock is south, and the sun sets in the west. Since it's early afternoon and I'm facing the sun, south must be to my left. But there's something else. See those white fluffy clouds? They're called cumulus clouds. If you see a group of them in an otherwise cloudless sky, they're usually sitting over land.”

“Wow. That's a handy thing to know,” said Alice as Alistair corrected course with the oars.

Tibby shrugged modestly. “Your brother's not the only one who likes to read,” she said.

For the first hundred strokes, Alistair felt jubilant. He was with his brother and sister, and he would soon be in Shetlock. The adrenaline of their flight from the
Marmaduke
had given him a surge of energy, and his strokes were strong and swift. For it wasn't just Sophia and Horace they had escaped—they had left all their
pursuers behind: the Sourians who hated them for being ginger, the Queen's Guards, even Oswald and Feast Thompson and Slippers Pink. His oars rippled through the water as easily as a breeze through silk.

By the second hundred strokes he had settled into a steady rhythm. He no longer had the sensation that he was gliding effortlessly, but they were making good progress. The two ships were now some distance away, and the cries of the fighting sailors were faint.

“Alistair,” said Alice, “if you weren't kidnapped, why did you disappear like that? And how did you end up on a pirate ship?”

So it was as Alistair had suspected—his brother and sister didn't seem to have any knowledge of his disappearance. “Well, I heard a tap on the shutters. . . .” He proceeded to explain how he had been plucked from their bedroom window in Smiggins and deposited on Tibby Rose's front path in Templeton.

“He landed right on top of me!” Tibby added. Then, because Alistair was becoming breathless trying to row and talk at the same time, Tibby Rose started to recount everything that had happened to them since they followed Uncle Ebenezer into Templeton and discovered how very unpopular ginger mice were in Souris. When she reached the bit about their discussion with Feast Thompson and Slippers Pink (leaving out
Slippers's revelation about the secret paths of Gerander, of course), and how they had run off to Sadiz before Oswald returned for them and then got jobs aboard the
Sickert
, Alistair rested his oars for a moment. He had done over four hundred strokes and was starting to tire.

“We're both going to join FIG,” he explained. “Tibby decided she didn't want to go back to Templeton, and she's Gerandan too, because of her father. What do you think? It would be great if the four of us joined together.”

“Alistair, that's incredible,” Alice exclaimed. Alex was gazing at his brother in awe.

“It is, isn't it? Tibby'll be like D'Artagnan joining Aramis, Porthos, and Athos, and the four of us will set off to—”

“Uh, I was with you till the dart and yarn joined the ram,” said Alex.

“And what book would that be from, Alistair?” Tibby Rose demanded. Alice giggled at Tibby's long-suffering sigh.

“
The Three Musketeers
, of course. Aramis, Porthos, and Athos are the three musketeers, and then they're joined by a fourth, D'Artagnan, who—”

“Actually, Alistair,” Alice interrupted, “I didn't mean it's amazing that Tibby is our fourth musketeer. Though it is wonderful,” she added, smiling warmly at Tibby, who gave her a shy smile in return. “What I meant
was . . . I mean, the raft and escaping from the Queen's Guards and almost going down a waterfall and joining a pirate crew. I never knew you were so brave!”

“Brave?” Alistair had to laugh. “I've been scared stiff and desperate to get home the whole time. And getting home was worth taking some risks for.” Then his smile faded. “But I don't think we have a home anymore. We won't be safe in Smiggins.” He sighed. “But at least we'll all be together. And maybe . . . maybe if we join FIG we can continue Mum and Dad's fight to free Gerander.” He tugged at his scarf absentmindedly.

“I love the idea of being part of FIG, like Mum and Dad were,” said Alice. “But I'm not sure how Aunt Beezer and Uncle Ebenezer would feel about it. Uncle Ebenezer said he gave up on FIG after Mum and Dad died. He even throws out the letters they send him without reading them.”

That explained why his aunt and uncle had never told him he was going to Templeton—because they didn't know. Alistair was pleased that they hadn't hidden it from him. But it meant they would have been surprised and upset by his disappearance, as he had first feared.

Alistair picked up the oars and resumed rowing as Alice, helped by Alex (who didn't always agree with Alice's version of events), filled them in on their conversation with Aunt Beezer and Uncle Ebenezer the
morning they had discovered Alistair missing, and how they had learned all about FIG and Gerander and set off to find their brother.

As Alex and Alice's story unfolded, the other two were excited all over again by their fortunate meeting with Alistair and Tibby Rose on the
Marmaduke
and their escape from Horace and Sophia, but when the
Marmaduke
and the
Sickert
vanished over the horizon (six hundred strokes), Alistair's earlier euphoria vanished with it. With the sun beating down relentlessly, it was rapidly becoming clear to him what a foolish thing he had done. Here they were, in a tiny lifeboat in the middle of the sea. He had no idea how far from land they were or how long it would take them to get there. Why hadn't anyone stopped him? They had all seemed to think he knew what he was doing. But of course, he had no idea at all. . . .

By seven hundred strokes, the top of his head and the tips of his ears were burning. His neck itched under his scarf, the muscles in his arms were screaming and his back ached. Blisters were forming on his hands where he gripped the oars.

“That's it,” he gasped. “I can't row any farther.”

“I'll do it,” Alex volunteered, and he and Alistair swapped places.

Alistair sat with his head in his hands, trying to shade himself from the sun's glare, while Alice and Tibby Rose
talked quietly. From a few words he heard, he gathered that Tibby Rose was telling Alice about her parents, and how she had come to be living with her grandfather and great-aunt.

The afternoon wore on, and Alex was replaced on the oars by Tibby Rose and then Alice. Conversations about FIG and Gerander were replaced with desultory complaints about the brightness of the sun, their raging thirst, and gnawing hunger.

Hours passed and they seemed to get no closer to the clouds Tibby Rose had pointed out. By the time Alistair had had three turns on the oars, he was starting to despair—how long could they survive in the middle of the sea with no food or water or shelter?

Then Tibby, who had been scanning the sea as Alice rowed and Alex dreamed aloud of an ice-cold blue cheese and strawberry smoothie with plenty of pepper, suddenly said: “Look over there. Does that look like land?”

Hope leaping in his chest, Alistair squinted at the horizon. And squinted harder. “I can't tell,” he said with a shrug. “It's so far away it just looks like a smudge to me.”

But eventually the smudge on the horizon, an indistinct line of gray at first, gradually resolved itself into a muddle of cliffs and vegetation. Then Alistair
caught sight of a jumble of red-tiled roofs spilling higgledy-piggledy down a steep green slope. Shambles! Alistair took over the oars and began to row with renewed vigor.

As they drew nearer, he could make out more details of the town. The row of uneven buildings lining the quay, rising two or three stories above the shop awnings, painted in vivid hues that caught the eye and held it: a tall, narrow lemon yellow building with a single line of pale blue shutters beside a large stately mustard structure with shutters of forest green and graceful wrought-iron balconies; a cheerful, slightly shabby salmon pink house with mauve shutters, geraniums blooming in the pots on the windowsills, stood cheek by jowl with a neat cream building trimmed in red. After the stark whites and cool grays of Souris, Alistair's heart lifted to see the warm colors of home.