"The Cage" (July Writing Prompt 2012), Amnesty Prompt # 5
Title: The Cage
Author: gardnerhill
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (Disney film The Great Mouse Detective)
Rating: PG (language, violence)
Warning: Endangerment of cute animals, dockside profanity, Discovery-Channel-style mayhem. Also implied manly (er, mousely) scrumpings.
Word Count: 3330
Summary: It's a bad move to mistake Dr. David Q. Dawson for a damsel in distress.
Author's Notes: For the
watsons_woes 2012 July Writing Amnesty Prompt #5: Inprisonment/Hostage/etc. and Rescue fic
"Boss, 'ow do we let Basil know we've got 'is friend?" a gerbil said in a whiny high voice.
"We could cut his tail off and send it to Baker Street," the rat's deeper and rougher voice said. The rest of the gang snickered, looking up at my swinging cage. I made sure to give them no expression in return, even though the only light in the place was their table lantern, but silently clenched my fists (still bound behind my back) at the thought of such a horrific and shameful mutilation - his tail is a mouse's pride. I vowed that they wouldn't have it without a fight. "But for now, we start with his hat. Just nip round to 221b with this, little Eddie, like a good 'un, and tell him what I told you to say."
"Boss," the gerbil whined, "'e'll get angry at me, 'e'll do me a mischief -"
"You'll do what you're bloody well told you little worm!" the rat snarled, the air of bonhomie gone at once.
I went back to surveying my prison, as I did not need to see the brutal beating the rat gave the sniveling henchman; the thumps and squeals of pain were bad enough. The cage they'd thrown me in after yanking off my blindfold was suspended from the ceiling by means of a chain that they'd used to lower and raise the device; further, it was fashioned of fine-mesh wire and a solid wood floor that would take several days of devoted gnawing in which to make an escape-sized hole. I had a pan of water but no food ("You could stand to lose a few, Tubby," one of them sneered when I asked - a toad, most likely one of Ratigan's old gang since he'd used an insult from his master's repertoire).
Anger, more than fear or hunger or worry, consumed me. I've been captured by a better class of bastard than these skulking vermin; pitiful criminals, all of them, who couldn't begin to compare to the grandiose scheming and acute brain of their late unlamented idol (to think that of all the creatures in Great Britain I could miss Ratigan!). The only reason they'd gotten the drop on me was through sheer numbers and physical size whilst I was returning from a late house call on a squirrel family in Hyde Park with a croupy child. But I didn't get captured quietly; one or two of the blackguards now had black eyes and missing teeth, and I rubbed my sore knuckles with quiet pride.
As for my whereabouts? I might have been blindfolded during the bumpy ride on an undercarriage, and I surely did not possess my friend's gifts of perception and deduction, but I knew enough. My nose and ears told me we were near the wharf (creosote, fish, dank sulphurous air; the watchman's bell, the occasional screech of a gull) - and the constant bobbing and swaying that put my poor empty stomach in peril told me that we were all aboard a moored ship.
Which meant that the leader of this pitiful gang was a wharf-rat, and very possibly Limehouse Danny himself, who ran a ransom-ring with his mates in that particular foul district. Basil had been getting closer and closer to apprehending the beast and his crew; was my capture Danny's move to ensure that my friend would back off the scent?
What troubled me even more than the threat to my prized caudal appendage were the other cages swinging and bumping with the ship's movements. This was clearly the dungeon they used for their captives until their ransoms were paid (one of Ratigan's old nests, no doubt).
I didn't know if all the other cages held captives, but I did hear a very faint sniffling sound from the one immediately adjacent to mine - a very young-sounding noise of distress - and my heart was immediately wrung with pity for my fellow prisoner. "What's your name?" I whispered.
"Go on, little lad, answer the nice mouse!" the rat called up, and I silently cursed that I'd been too loud even then. "Tell him who you are!"
Another sniff. "T- Timothy. Timothy Wainwright, sir," the voice said tremulously.
I knew that last name, as did Basil and every other appreciator of fine wine; the Wainwrights had been the vintners to Her Majesty and the royal family for over a hundred years, and was one of the wealthiest families in the Commonwealth. This was high-stakes pupnapping, far above the petty thuggery usually indulged in by these gangs. The light dawned on my own capture; surely I was merely a pawn in this game, caught to ensure Basil's compliance. But my fur hackled all up my back in anger all over again, as it had when Ratigan had taken Olivia; these fiends had captured a child.
"Well? Nice mouse? Ain't you going to repay the favour?" Danny taunted - for I was sure this was indeed the terror of Limehouse. "Introduce yourself!"
"I am Dr. David Q. Dawson, Timothy," I replied as warmly as I could. "An intimate friend of the greatest detective mind in all of mousedom, Mr. Basil of Baker Street."
A little gasp. "Basil of Baker Street? The mouse who saved the Queen? The one everyone says is so smart?"
"None other, lad." My pride and trust in my friend's gifts would not stay busheled even for these louts.
"And if your intimate friend really is that smart," Danny taunted, stressing the word "intimate" as if our association was scandalous or shameful, "he'll stay in Baker Street and let a dishonest rat conduct his business in peace - or have his intimate friend sent back to him a piece at a time. But I'm a nice feller, so I'll start with your hat instead of your tail. Git, Eddie, damn you!"
I almost opened his mouth to taunt back, but closed it again without a word as the gerbil scurried off with my bowler. If Limehouse Danny wished to slap a cat who was I to stop him? Basil had learned my Army history from a mended sleeve and could tell Ratigan's childhood from the pocket-watch he'd kept as a trophy of his greatest triumph - did this petty, stupid small-timer of a crook not know that Basil would quickly learn my current whereabouts from inspecting my hat?
…He knows that, surely, if he's a member of Ratigan's old gang. What if this is all a trap to lure Basil here to rescue me?
That possibility chilled my blood. Basil's precise, rational thinking had but one fatal flaw, as he himself put it: any real or perceived danger to myself, his only close friend and intimate associate, short-circuited his thinking processes into the overwhelming need to come to my aid. If this was Danny's end-game, he wouldn't plan some elaborately sadistic end for my friend when he showed, as had Ratigan; he'd simply cut Basil's throat and toss his body into the Thames for the pikes.
This must not happen. I had my duty cut out for me: First, to rescue this poor child and myself, if possible, before Basil was caught up in it himself. Second, to help Basil bring this foul rodent to justice.
"Ti - Master Wainwright," I said softly. "How long have you been here? Are there other captives here besides ourselves?"
"N- no, sir," the child said in the same tremulous voice; if nothing else, the loneliness in that voice told the truth louder than his words. "I don't know how long they've had me. I've slept once or twice. I want to go home."
"Well, Master Wainwright, you've been frightfully brave through this ordeal. I'm going to ask you to be brave a little longer."
"Oh, does Dr. Dawson have a cunning plan to thwart Limehouse Danny and rescue a toff's brat?" the rat called up viciously. So I'd been right about his identity. "Or is your big brave Basil gonna rescue you and carry you off?"
I swallowed my anger and fear. "Perhaps," I said calmly, and let their cruel laughter roll over me like water off a duck's back.
Let them mock me all they wanted, if it meant they underestimated me. And the faint cries outside our prison - so audible that our ceiling could only be the deck of the ship - had given me the key I needed to make a chance for escape.
I bit my lips hard to hide my smile. I took a deep breath. Then I screeched in the fashion of a gull - once, twice, three times - at the top of my lungs.
Young Wainwright cried out in shock at the horrid sound. So did the gang - with some cries of fear mingled with anger. Even the cries outside stopped for a second before resuming.
Danny flung a tin cup at my cage with a roar of "Stop that bastard noise, you whoreson!" Oh, I'd frightened the big bad ringleader of this gang, had I?
"Yeh, scream for help all you want, Fatty," a vole chittered, "coppers know better than to come to the wharf!"
"What, you thought you'd pretend to be a gull and scare us did you?" a frog chirped. "We're not that blimmin' stupid."
"Ain't no one in mousedom gonna save you, Dawson," Danny snarled. "And just for that bloody scare, I'm sending Basil your tongue instead of your tail next. Sleep on that, fat stuff."
It's not easy to settle down in a swaying cage with your hands bound behind you, but I managed.
"Sir, you've just made them angrier," Timothy whispered.
"I know," I said. "It was a foolhardy thing to do, and I'm afraid I'll pay for that in the morning. But try to sleep, my lad."
"Well. Well, sir. That was frightfully brave."
Warmth spread through me. "My friend Basil of Baker Street has a way of making you want to be brave as ever you can. Even in an idiotic way, like I did just now - so don't you go trying to make them angry like that."
"He's bloody right, snot-nose," Danny called up. "I wouldn't mind sending your old man one of your ears as proof I've got you if you don't keep your beak shut."
We said nothing more. I rested, even if sleep eluded me at first - not out of fear or dread, but pondering that move I'd made. Idiotic? I'd know in a few hours. Foolish or not, what I'd done was terribly risky, and I could lose my tongue for it (and they a few paws in getting it, I grimly vowed). But the possibility of success was worth the risk, in my mind.
While my friend Basil of Baker Street is justifiably renowned for his assistance with our strong and resilient race in all its variations, colloquially known as Mousedom, he has also turned his unsurpassed brain to the difficulties of many more creatures of the Commonwealth than his own species. (Basil has even been known to leave small clues for the human beings in whose parlour our tidy mousehole resides. One of them is nearly as clever as Basil, for he suspects from where those clues come - and the occasional gift of a splendid bit of bacon or Camembert outside our hole, cut with a human-sized knife, clearly comes from that gentlehuman.) Just as my medical assistance is offered to any civil animal in distress (I may not know the illnesses of canines or lagomorphs as I do those of Rodentia, but I have cleaned thorn-wounds in rabbits' paws and removed ticks from a grateful Toby's ears), Basil is a friend in need to any beast of Britain who brings him an intriguing puzzle to solve.
No one in mousedom who'd save me? I was counting on it.
***
I may have dozed a little (an old campaigner can sleep standing up if necessary - being bound in a cage and awaiting mutilation is nothing), and who knows if young Timothy had done the same. Most of the gang slept where they lay in corners of their dungeon, dreaming of the Wainwright wealth that would soon be theirs, save for one or two blinking, muttering watchmice.
What awakened me was what awakened everybody - a white explosion of screeching feathers down the hatchway.
The gull attack was even more frightening than I thought it would be, and I may (I admit nothing, mind you) I may have evacuated in response. But that was nothing to the screaming of the gang scrambling to avoid the jabbing beaks of the greedy scavengers, shouting their terrible hunger cry "Mine! Mine! Mine!" Up above I could hear the shocked cries of the human watchman who'd just seen a small flock of gulls abandon all sense and dive straight into the hold.
But I recovered quickly and responded with the same gull-screech I'd made a few hours ago. "Alice! Gertie!" Screech. "Gertie!"
"Dr. Dawson, as I live and breathe!" screeched one great bird flapping around my cage. Alice. "Ain't seen you since Basil found those eggs for us! Chicks grown and gone now, my how the time flies, hee hee! Heard about your noise last night! 'Sounds like a gull,' I says to my Gert I says, 'but smells like mice, they says!' 'Could only be our friends Basil and David,' says Gert, 'or it's a barking mad mouse wants to be eaten by us!' she says! 'Either way we go!' says I, and here we are, and plucked if there ain't enough mice to eat anyway!"
I didn't look down where a few other black-backed gulls were happily bolting down the screaming gang-members who hadn't escaped. Gertie seemed to be having enormous fun jabbing her great bill at a scampering, howling Limehouse Danny.
"Alice," I said urgently, for the thumping on deck meant the human watchman would come down and chase out the birds soon, "can you open the doors on this cage and that one?"
"Ooo Alice come down and have a poke at this feller, how he do like to run!" Gertie cawed up at us. "Plucking wharf-rats, always stealing our rubbish!"
"Plucked gulls, I'll tear yer damn' eyes out!" screamed Danny hysterically. "I'll cut yer damn' throat for this, Dawson!"
Alice meantime had picked open our cage doors with the skill of dealing with half-opened pilchard tins, and I turned around. I got one or two nasty peck-wounds on my arms, but my ties were gone after that, and I scrambled out of the cage. "Timothy, we're safe, it's all right, they're friends!" I shouted, for the poor lad was understandably huddled in the far end of the beaked-open cage and crying with terror at the thought of being eaten by that great hungry bird. "Alice, leave him alone!"
"Oh, bother," Alice said, and yanked her head out of Timothy's cage. "Well, that toad looks all right," and dived, and that was the end of another of Ratigan's gang.
In the melee I made my way down the cage-chain and back up Timothy's. He was so young, huddling in a grimy sailor-suit, eyes bulging with terror. "Come to me, my brave lad, it's all right. Come to me, I'll take you to your mum and dad."
"Th- the birds," Timothy stammered, shaking.
"Those birds are Basil's friends," I said firmly. "Basil helped those two gulls, and they're repaying the favour." A scream of terror from a vole - ended by a gulping noise. "Rather violently, I'm afraid. Now come, brave Master Wainwright, put your arms around my neck. And just think - you can tell all your mates that you were captured by real wharf-pirates, and you were saved by gulls who ate them up." The gulls retreated screeching and flapping, accompanied by the stomping of the human who'd no idea of the drama he'd just interrupted.
"I…I did, didn't I?" Timothy said, clinging to me as we crept down the chain.
"That's right," I said, "and when everyone finds out, no one will ever try to pup-nap you again." And wouldn't that be a relief for his poor parents -
A gash of pain in my side made me yelp and let go the chain, and I landed with a thump to the deck; Timothy's arms slipped off.
Limehouse Danny towered over me, ragged and bleeding from a dozen beak-wounds, eyes enraged. "I'll eat you myself," he whispered.
I felt the same snarl curl on my own face. I'm not bound and blindfolded now, you coward! "Timothy! Hide! Now!" I shouted in my best drill-sergeant voice, and lunged at my opponent.
It was high time I showed that foul Danny what the Army had taught me about boxing.
***
Really, the rest is hardly worth talking about.
I was rather glad Basil and Inspector Gervaise showed up not long afterward, for my long night of deprivation and fear had taken the mickey out of me, and it was starting to show in our bout. But between the gull attacks and my fisticuffs we'd softened the blighter up so that it only took three police to subdue and cuff Danny. As for the rest of the Limehouse gang they were scattered or swallowed, so their chief would hang alone.
Basil tells me I was a fright to see ("all over blood, actually," he said carelessly, his hand trembling on his pipe). But I managed a smile and a wink at Timothy before we handed him over to be smothered with embraces and kisses from his tearful parents - and I reassured my anxious friend that all I wanted was a hot bath, a cup of tea and a sound sleep to be put right again.
"Ooo we wouldn't dream of a reward you two!" Gertie said, when Basil and I tried to thank the couple for their response to my distress cry (the rest of the gulls having sensibly flown away). "Haven't had so much fun in ages, have we Alice?"
"Nor so many plump little voles and lizards and such, and that great screaming rat, oh wasn't he fun Gert!"
"Not after you found those eggs and helped us start our family, eh? Don't think we haven't forgotten that!" Gert squawked. "Chicks grown and gone, my how the time flies don't it Alcy?"
A few years ago, Basil had located three fertile gull eggs in an abandoned nest - risking his own life hunting among the nesting birds - which were immediately adopted by the paired hen-gulls who'd waddled right up to him on the dock one day and asked for help. Basil had helped them, not just for the challenge of it but because he and I knew of the difficulties that were faced by those in an unusual pairing.
"Imagination," I said when our feathered allies had flapped off. "Vision. That's what Danny lacked. He was no Ratigan - the fact that I was able to take him down proves that!"
Basil laughed and patted my least-wounded shoulder, very gently. "I never do get your limits, my dear Dawson. Best get you home and into a bath before you frighten Mrs. Judson with your appearance."
The thought of her steaming-hot cheese crumpets made my empty stomach rumble loudly. "I may need a bit of help washing my back," I said, heading back to the corner where we'd be able to catch a hansom heading back to Baker Street, wading past Gervaise and his mice loading Danny into a cart.
"Yes. I should get in with you, just to be sure," Basil said thoughtfully, "before I get you to bed. And when you wake again, Doctor, don't be surprised if you're a wealthy mouse - the Wainwrights are very grateful to you."
A source of income other than my Army pension. And I'd had my opponent to rights before Basil could show up and endanger himself, rescued young Timothy into the bargain. And baby Kit would be well-recovered from her croup by now.
All in all, a good night's work.
Author: gardnerhill
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (Disney film The Great Mouse Detective)
Rating: PG (language, violence)
Warning: Endangerment of cute animals, dockside profanity, Discovery-Channel-style mayhem. Also implied manly (er, mousely) scrumpings.
Word Count: 3330
Summary: It's a bad move to mistake Dr. David Q. Dawson for a damsel in distress.
Author's Notes: For the
watsons_woes 2012 July Writing Amnesty Prompt #5: Inprisonment/Hostage/etc. and Rescue fic
"Boss, 'ow do we let Basil know we've got 'is friend?" a gerbil said in a whiny high voice.
"We could cut his tail off and send it to Baker Street," the rat's deeper and rougher voice said. The rest of the gang snickered, looking up at my swinging cage. I made sure to give them no expression in return, even though the only light in the place was their table lantern, but silently clenched my fists (still bound behind my back) at the thought of such a horrific and shameful mutilation - his tail is a mouse's pride. I vowed that they wouldn't have it without a fight. "But for now, we start with his hat. Just nip round to 221b with this, little Eddie, like a good 'un, and tell him what I told you to say."
"Boss," the gerbil whined, "'e'll get angry at me, 'e'll do me a mischief -"
"You'll do what you're bloody well told you little worm!" the rat snarled, the air of bonhomie gone at once.
I went back to surveying my prison, as I did not need to see the brutal beating the rat gave the sniveling henchman; the thumps and squeals of pain were bad enough. The cage they'd thrown me in after yanking off my blindfold was suspended from the ceiling by means of a chain that they'd used to lower and raise the device; further, it was fashioned of fine-mesh wire and a solid wood floor that would take several days of devoted gnawing in which to make an escape-sized hole. I had a pan of water but no food ("You could stand to lose a few, Tubby," one of them sneered when I asked - a toad, most likely one of Ratigan's old gang since he'd used an insult from his master's repertoire).
Anger, more than fear or hunger or worry, consumed me. I've been captured by a better class of bastard than these skulking vermin; pitiful criminals, all of them, who couldn't begin to compare to the grandiose scheming and acute brain of their late unlamented idol (to think that of all the creatures in Great Britain I could miss Ratigan!). The only reason they'd gotten the drop on me was through sheer numbers and physical size whilst I was returning from a late house call on a squirrel family in Hyde Park with a croupy child. But I didn't get captured quietly; one or two of the blackguards now had black eyes and missing teeth, and I rubbed my sore knuckles with quiet pride.
As for my whereabouts? I might have been blindfolded during the bumpy ride on an undercarriage, and I surely did not possess my friend's gifts of perception and deduction, but I knew enough. My nose and ears told me we were near the wharf (creosote, fish, dank sulphurous air; the watchman's bell, the occasional screech of a gull) - and the constant bobbing and swaying that put my poor empty stomach in peril told me that we were all aboard a moored ship.
Which meant that the leader of this pitiful gang was a wharf-rat, and very possibly Limehouse Danny himself, who ran a ransom-ring with his mates in that particular foul district. Basil had been getting closer and closer to apprehending the beast and his crew; was my capture Danny's move to ensure that my friend would back off the scent?
What troubled me even more than the threat to my prized caudal appendage were the other cages swinging and bumping with the ship's movements. This was clearly the dungeon they used for their captives until their ransoms were paid (one of Ratigan's old nests, no doubt).
I didn't know if all the other cages held captives, but I did hear a very faint sniffling sound from the one immediately adjacent to mine - a very young-sounding noise of distress - and my heart was immediately wrung with pity for my fellow prisoner. "What's your name?" I whispered.
"Go on, little lad, answer the nice mouse!" the rat called up, and I silently cursed that I'd been too loud even then. "Tell him who you are!"
Another sniff. "T- Timothy. Timothy Wainwright, sir," the voice said tremulously.
I knew that last name, as did Basil and every other appreciator of fine wine; the Wainwrights had been the vintners to Her Majesty and the royal family for over a hundred years, and was one of the wealthiest families in the Commonwealth. This was high-stakes pupnapping, far above the petty thuggery usually indulged in by these gangs. The light dawned on my own capture; surely I was merely a pawn in this game, caught to ensure Basil's compliance. But my fur hackled all up my back in anger all over again, as it had when Ratigan had taken Olivia; these fiends had captured a child.
"Well? Nice mouse? Ain't you going to repay the favour?" Danny taunted - for I was sure this was indeed the terror of Limehouse. "Introduce yourself!"
"I am Dr. David Q. Dawson, Timothy," I replied as warmly as I could. "An intimate friend of the greatest detective mind in all of mousedom, Mr. Basil of Baker Street."
A little gasp. "Basil of Baker Street? The mouse who saved the Queen? The one everyone says is so smart?"
"None other, lad." My pride and trust in my friend's gifts would not stay busheled even for these louts.
"And if your intimate friend really is that smart," Danny taunted, stressing the word "intimate" as if our association was scandalous or shameful, "he'll stay in Baker Street and let a dishonest rat conduct his business in peace - or have his intimate friend sent back to him a piece at a time. But I'm a nice feller, so I'll start with your hat instead of your tail. Git, Eddie, damn you!"
I almost opened his mouth to taunt back, but closed it again without a word as the gerbil scurried off with my bowler. If Limehouse Danny wished to slap a cat who was I to stop him? Basil had learned my Army history from a mended sleeve and could tell Ratigan's childhood from the pocket-watch he'd kept as a trophy of his greatest triumph - did this petty, stupid small-timer of a crook not know that Basil would quickly learn my current whereabouts from inspecting my hat?
…He knows that, surely, if he's a member of Ratigan's old gang. What if this is all a trap to lure Basil here to rescue me?
That possibility chilled my blood. Basil's precise, rational thinking had but one fatal flaw, as he himself put it: any real or perceived danger to myself, his only close friend and intimate associate, short-circuited his thinking processes into the overwhelming need to come to my aid. If this was Danny's end-game, he wouldn't plan some elaborately sadistic end for my friend when he showed, as had Ratigan; he'd simply cut Basil's throat and toss his body into the Thames for the pikes.
This must not happen. I had my duty cut out for me: First, to rescue this poor child and myself, if possible, before Basil was caught up in it himself. Second, to help Basil bring this foul rodent to justice.
"Ti - Master Wainwright," I said softly. "How long have you been here? Are there other captives here besides ourselves?"
"N- no, sir," the child said in the same tremulous voice; if nothing else, the loneliness in that voice told the truth louder than his words. "I don't know how long they've had me. I've slept once or twice. I want to go home."
"Well, Master Wainwright, you've been frightfully brave through this ordeal. I'm going to ask you to be brave a little longer."
"Oh, does Dr. Dawson have a cunning plan to thwart Limehouse Danny and rescue a toff's brat?" the rat called up viciously. So I'd been right about his identity. "Or is your big brave Basil gonna rescue you and carry you off?"
I swallowed my anger and fear. "Perhaps," I said calmly, and let their cruel laughter roll over me like water off a duck's back.
Let them mock me all they wanted, if it meant they underestimated me. And the faint cries outside our prison - so audible that our ceiling could only be the deck of the ship - had given me the key I needed to make a chance for escape.
I bit my lips hard to hide my smile. I took a deep breath. Then I screeched in the fashion of a gull - once, twice, three times - at the top of my lungs.
Young Wainwright cried out in shock at the horrid sound. So did the gang - with some cries of fear mingled with anger. Even the cries outside stopped for a second before resuming.
Danny flung a tin cup at my cage with a roar of "Stop that bastard noise, you whoreson!" Oh, I'd frightened the big bad ringleader of this gang, had I?
"Yeh, scream for help all you want, Fatty," a vole chittered, "coppers know better than to come to the wharf!"
"What, you thought you'd pretend to be a gull and scare us did you?" a frog chirped. "We're not that blimmin' stupid."
"Ain't no one in mousedom gonna save you, Dawson," Danny snarled. "And just for that bloody scare, I'm sending Basil your tongue instead of your tail next. Sleep on that, fat stuff."
It's not easy to settle down in a swaying cage with your hands bound behind you, but I managed.
"Sir, you've just made them angrier," Timothy whispered.
"I know," I said. "It was a foolhardy thing to do, and I'm afraid I'll pay for that in the morning. But try to sleep, my lad."
"Well. Well, sir. That was frightfully brave."
Warmth spread through me. "My friend Basil of Baker Street has a way of making you want to be brave as ever you can. Even in an idiotic way, like I did just now - so don't you go trying to make them angry like that."
"He's bloody right, snot-nose," Danny called up. "I wouldn't mind sending your old man one of your ears as proof I've got you if you don't keep your beak shut."
We said nothing more. I rested, even if sleep eluded me at first - not out of fear or dread, but pondering that move I'd made. Idiotic? I'd know in a few hours. Foolish or not, what I'd done was terribly risky, and I could lose my tongue for it (and they a few paws in getting it, I grimly vowed). But the possibility of success was worth the risk, in my mind.
While my friend Basil of Baker Street is justifiably renowned for his assistance with our strong and resilient race in all its variations, colloquially known as Mousedom, he has also turned his unsurpassed brain to the difficulties of many more creatures of the Commonwealth than his own species. (Basil has even been known to leave small clues for the human beings in whose parlour our tidy mousehole resides. One of them is nearly as clever as Basil, for he suspects from where those clues come - and the occasional gift of a splendid bit of bacon or Camembert outside our hole, cut with a human-sized knife, clearly comes from that gentlehuman.) Just as my medical assistance is offered to any civil animal in distress (I may not know the illnesses of canines or lagomorphs as I do those of Rodentia, but I have cleaned thorn-wounds in rabbits' paws and removed ticks from a grateful Toby's ears), Basil is a friend in need to any beast of Britain who brings him an intriguing puzzle to solve.
No one in mousedom who'd save me? I was counting on it.
***
I may have dozed a little (an old campaigner can sleep standing up if necessary - being bound in a cage and awaiting mutilation is nothing), and who knows if young Timothy had done the same. Most of the gang slept where they lay in corners of their dungeon, dreaming of the Wainwright wealth that would soon be theirs, save for one or two blinking, muttering watchmice.
What awakened me was what awakened everybody - a white explosion of screeching feathers down the hatchway.
The gull attack was even more frightening than I thought it would be, and I may (I admit nothing, mind you) I may have evacuated in response. But that was nothing to the screaming of the gang scrambling to avoid the jabbing beaks of the greedy scavengers, shouting their terrible hunger cry "Mine! Mine! Mine!" Up above I could hear the shocked cries of the human watchman who'd just seen a small flock of gulls abandon all sense and dive straight into the hold.
But I recovered quickly and responded with the same gull-screech I'd made a few hours ago. "Alice! Gertie!" Screech. "Gertie!"
"Dr. Dawson, as I live and breathe!" screeched one great bird flapping around my cage. Alice. "Ain't seen you since Basil found those eggs for us! Chicks grown and gone now, my how the time flies, hee hee! Heard about your noise last night! 'Sounds like a gull,' I says to my Gert I says, 'but smells like mice, they says!' 'Could only be our friends Basil and David,' says Gert, 'or it's a barking mad mouse wants to be eaten by us!' she says! 'Either way we go!' says I, and here we are, and plucked if there ain't enough mice to eat anyway!"
I didn't look down where a few other black-backed gulls were happily bolting down the screaming gang-members who hadn't escaped. Gertie seemed to be having enormous fun jabbing her great bill at a scampering, howling Limehouse Danny.
"Alice," I said urgently, for the thumping on deck meant the human watchman would come down and chase out the birds soon, "can you open the doors on this cage and that one?"
"Ooo Alice come down and have a poke at this feller, how he do like to run!" Gertie cawed up at us. "Plucking wharf-rats, always stealing our rubbish!"
"Plucked gulls, I'll tear yer damn' eyes out!" screamed Danny hysterically. "I'll cut yer damn' throat for this, Dawson!"
Alice meantime had picked open our cage doors with the skill of dealing with half-opened pilchard tins, and I turned around. I got one or two nasty peck-wounds on my arms, but my ties were gone after that, and I scrambled out of the cage. "Timothy, we're safe, it's all right, they're friends!" I shouted, for the poor lad was understandably huddled in the far end of the beaked-open cage and crying with terror at the thought of being eaten by that great hungry bird. "Alice, leave him alone!"
"Oh, bother," Alice said, and yanked her head out of Timothy's cage. "Well, that toad looks all right," and dived, and that was the end of another of Ratigan's gang.
In the melee I made my way down the cage-chain and back up Timothy's. He was so young, huddling in a grimy sailor-suit, eyes bulging with terror. "Come to me, my brave lad, it's all right. Come to me, I'll take you to your mum and dad."
"Th- the birds," Timothy stammered, shaking.
"Those birds are Basil's friends," I said firmly. "Basil helped those two gulls, and they're repaying the favour." A scream of terror from a vole - ended by a gulping noise. "Rather violently, I'm afraid. Now come, brave Master Wainwright, put your arms around my neck. And just think - you can tell all your mates that you were captured by real wharf-pirates, and you were saved by gulls who ate them up." The gulls retreated screeching and flapping, accompanied by the stomping of the human who'd no idea of the drama he'd just interrupted.
"I…I did, didn't I?" Timothy said, clinging to me as we crept down the chain.
"That's right," I said, "and when everyone finds out, no one will ever try to pup-nap you again." And wouldn't that be a relief for his poor parents -
A gash of pain in my side made me yelp and let go the chain, and I landed with a thump to the deck; Timothy's arms slipped off.
Limehouse Danny towered over me, ragged and bleeding from a dozen beak-wounds, eyes enraged. "I'll eat you myself," he whispered.
I felt the same snarl curl on my own face. I'm not bound and blindfolded now, you coward! "Timothy! Hide! Now!" I shouted in my best drill-sergeant voice, and lunged at my opponent.
It was high time I showed that foul Danny what the Army had taught me about boxing.
***
Really, the rest is hardly worth talking about.
I was rather glad Basil and Inspector Gervaise showed up not long afterward, for my long night of deprivation and fear had taken the mickey out of me, and it was starting to show in our bout. But between the gull attacks and my fisticuffs we'd softened the blighter up so that it only took three police to subdue and cuff Danny. As for the rest of the Limehouse gang they were scattered or swallowed, so their chief would hang alone.
Basil tells me I was a fright to see ("all over blood, actually," he said carelessly, his hand trembling on his pipe). But I managed a smile and a wink at Timothy before we handed him over to be smothered with embraces and kisses from his tearful parents - and I reassured my anxious friend that all I wanted was a hot bath, a cup of tea and a sound sleep to be put right again.
"Ooo we wouldn't dream of a reward you two!" Gertie said, when Basil and I tried to thank the couple for their response to my distress cry (the rest of the gulls having sensibly flown away). "Haven't had so much fun in ages, have we Alice?"
"Nor so many plump little voles and lizards and such, and that great screaming rat, oh wasn't he fun Gert!"
"Not after you found those eggs and helped us start our family, eh? Don't think we haven't forgotten that!" Gert squawked. "Chicks grown and gone, my how the time flies don't it Alcy?"
A few years ago, Basil had located three fertile gull eggs in an abandoned nest - risking his own life hunting among the nesting birds - which were immediately adopted by the paired hen-gulls who'd waddled right up to him on the dock one day and asked for help. Basil had helped them, not just for the challenge of it but because he and I knew of the difficulties that were faced by those in an unusual pairing.
"Imagination," I said when our feathered allies had flapped off. "Vision. That's what Danny lacked. He was no Ratigan - the fact that I was able to take him down proves that!"
Basil laughed and patted my least-wounded shoulder, very gently. "I never do get your limits, my dear Dawson. Best get you home and into a bath before you frighten Mrs. Judson with your appearance."
The thought of her steaming-hot cheese crumpets made my empty stomach rumble loudly. "I may need a bit of help washing my back," I said, heading back to the corner where we'd be able to catch a hansom heading back to Baker Street, wading past Gervaise and his mice loading Danny into a cart.
"Yes. I should get in with you, just to be sure," Basil said thoughtfully, "before I get you to bed. And when you wake again, Doctor, don't be surprised if you're a wealthy mouse - the Wainwrights are very grateful to you."
A source of income other than my Army pension. And I'd had my opponent to rights before Basil could show up and endanger himself, rescued young Timothy into the bargain. And baby Kit would be well-recovered from her croup by now.
All in all, a good night's work.