At ten by the kitchen clock, the Fitzgibbons went to bed. Dragon was put out, the doors locked, the lights turned off. The first of these things was done by Billy, on instruction from his mother, not without some difficulty. He opened the door.
‘Come on, Dragon. Out.’
‘He won’t get up.’
‘I never saw such a lazy cat. He gets worse every day.’
Finally Dragon, protesting with only the sleepiest of whines, was picked up and deposited on the back porch. He scarcely opened his eyes.
By that time it was dark. Mrs Frisby waited a few minutes until she was sure they were really gone and until her eyes adjusted so she could see the bars of her cage. They were vertical bars, smooth and no thicker than match sticks, which made them slippery to climb, but by turning more or less sideways, she was able to grip them fairly well. She inched her way up to the sliding door and tried to lift it.
She could tell from the first pull that it was no use. The door was stiff and it was heavy, and she could not get a good enough grip on either it or the cage wall to exert much pressure. Still she kept trying, first lifting on the middle of the door, then on one corner, then another, straining every muscle. In half an hour she admitted defeat, at least for the moment, and climbed back down to the bottom of the cage. She sat there, shaking from the effort, and thought.
Somehow, she had to get out. Her children, even now, would be alone in the dark house, alone at night for the first time. Martin and Teresa would be trying to reassure the younger ones; yet they themselves would be sadly frightened. What would they think? Since she had not told them about Dragon and the sleeping powder, she hoped that perhaps they would decide she had, for some reason, stayed with the rats.
But at eleven, which could not be far off (she could not read the kitchen clock in the dark), the rats would arrive to move the house. Or would they, knowing — since Justin must have told them — that she had not come out of the kitchen? She thought they would. She hoped they would, and that Justin would go with them and talk to the children and try to calm their fear. There was something about Justin, a kind of easy confidence, that would help them.
She no longer had any doubt, of course, that the rats could move her house. It was a generous thing to do, especially at a time when they were hurrying so in their Plan, their own move. And they had no idea yet of how little time they really had, of the new danger that crowded upon them. If she could only get out! She would run and warn them, and it might still not be too late.
She thought: It’s a good plan and a brave one. It would be the first time in all the world that intelligent beings, besides men, had ever tried to start a real civilization of their own. They ought to have a chance. It was not right that they should be killed at the last minute. Or captured. Could it be that they — the men who were coming — were somehow connected with Nimh? Or was it more likely, as Paul had guessed, that they were only worried about rabies? She decided it didn’t really matter. The result would be the same. The day after next the truck would come with its poison gas and that would be the end of all their plans. Unless they could be warned. Wearily, she got up to climb the wall and try the door again.
She heard a noise.
It was in the kitchen, near her cage, a small scuffling on the hard linoleum floor.
‘Now what kind of a bird can that be, with no wings?’
It was Justin’s voice, very soft, and he was laughing.
‘Justin!’
‘I thought you might like to come home. Your children are asking after you.’
‘Are they all right?’
‘They’re fine. They were worried, but I told them I’d bring you back. They seemed to believe me.’
‘But how did you know …?’
‘That you were here? You forget. I was waiting just under the cabinet. I heard what happened. I felt like biting Billy full of holes. But as soon as I heard that you were safely in the cage, I went and told the children you were all right, but that you’d be a little late. I didn’t tell them exactly why.
‘Now, let’s get you out.’
‘I tried. I couldn’t open the door.’
‘I’ll get it open. I brought along a few tools — burglar’s tools, you might say — in my back pack. Should I climb up the stand? No. It looks slippery. I think I’ll try the curtain.’
And in a matter of seconds Justin had swarmed up a window curtain a foot away, and she heard a thump as he leaped and landed on top of the cage, which swayed under the impact. The noise was slight, but they both listened intently for a moment to see if it produced another, from upstairs. All quiet.
‘Now let me look at that door.’ Justin climbed easily down the side of the cage.
‘Oh, I hope you can get it open.’
‘I can,’ Justin said, examining it, ‘easily enough. But I don’t think I will.’
‘Because you couldn’t,’ Justin said, ‘and they’ll know that. So they won’t be curious, let’s make it open itself. As I expected, it doesn’t have real hinges.’ He had pulled a small metal bar out of his back pack, and was working as he talked. ‘Just little wire rings. Cheap, flimsy things. They’re always coming apart.’ As he said that, one of them came apart; the door sagged and hung crazily by one corner. ‘There, you see? You couldn’t help it if they put you in a defective cage. Come on out.’
Mrs Frisby climbed through and stood with Justin on the top of the cage.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘we shinny down the stand like a fireman’s pole. You go out the way you came in — under the cabinet and through the hole. I’ll go out the way I came in — through the attic. I’ll meet you outside.’
‘Justin,’ Mrs Frisby said, ‘there’s something I’ve got to tell you, something I learned …’
‘Wait till we’re out,’ said Justin. ‘We’ve got to hurry. You see, we’re having a little trouble moving your cement block.’ He was off, running silently into the front of the house, from which the stairway led up two flights to the attic.
Mrs Frisby crawled under the cabinet, searched in total darkness for the small hole, and finally felt one foot slip down. She dropped through. The square opening in the foundation was easier to find, it glowed palely ahead of her, lit with moonlight.
Justin was waiting for her as she came out of the corner of the screen. The night was warm, and a half-moon shone on the farmyard.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘what was it you wanted to tell me?’ He spoke seriously; he had heard the urgency in her voice. They hurried towards the garden, rounding the back porch. There, a dark heap in the moonlight, lay Dragon, no threat to anyone tonight.
‘Some exterminators are coming to poison all of you.’ Mrs Frisby told him, as briefly as she could, of the conversation she had heard at the Fitzgibbons’ dinner table.
‘Seven rats,’ Justin said. ‘Rabies. It might be. But I’ll bet it was Jenner. When are the men supposed to come?’
‘The day after tomorrow.’
To her surprise, Justin stopped. He looked at her in admiration.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘I had a feeling the first time I clapped eyes on you that you’d bring us good luck.’
‘Good luck!’ She was amazed.
‘Oh, it’s bad news. It’s serious. We’ll have to change our plans, and quickly. But think how much worse it would be if you hadn’t overheard it. We wouldn’t have had a chance.’
They came into the garden.
‘Is Nicodemus here?’ Mrs Frisby asked.
‘No. In a few minutes I’ll go and tell him. But first we need your help to get started moving your house.’
‘My help? What can I do?’
‘You can talk to your neighbour. She seems to think we’re stealing your cement block. She bit Arthur in the leg.’
At one end of the big stone in the middle of the garden, ten rats were digging briskly, using scoops that looked more like teaspoons than shovels, piling the earth neatly beside a hole already almost big enough to hold Mrs Frisby’s house.
But on the other side of the stone there was an impasse.
Here another ten rats stood, baffled, in a semicircle. Behind them they had deposited a jumble of equipment: odd-shaped metal bars, pulleys, wooden structures that looked like ladders, other pieces of wood that resembled small logs. But between the rats and Mrs Frisby’s front door stood a small, defiant figure. The rats, looking enormous by comparison, remained a respectful distance away from her.
‘Why,’ said Mrs Frisby to Justin, ‘it’s the shrew!’
‘Yes,’ said Justin, ‘and acting shrewish.’
One of the rats was speaking. Mrs Frisby recognized Arthur.
‘… but I told you, ma’am, we do have Mrs Frisby’s permission. She wants us to move her house. Ask the children. Call them out.’
‘Don’t tell me that. What have you done with Mrs Frisby? It’s a good thing the children haven’t heard you. They’d be frightened half to death! If Mrs Frisby wanted you to move her house, she’d be here.’
‘It’s all right,’ called Mrs Frisby, running forward. ‘I’m here.’
‘Mrs Frisby!’ said the shrew. ‘You’re just in time. I heard a noise, and came out and found these — creatures — trying to dig up your house.’
‘I tried to explain it to her,’ said Arthur. ‘But she won’t believe me.’
‘I certainly won’t,’ said the shrew. ‘He said you asked him to dig up your house. Thieving rats!’
‘It’s true,’ Mrs Frisby said. ‘I did ask them, and they said they would. It’s very kind of them.’
‘Kind?’ said the shrew, ‘Great hulking beasts. What do you mean?’
It took several more minutes of reassurance by Mrs Frisby before the shrew grudgingly moved aside, still muttering warnings. ‘I wouldn’t trust them. How do you know they’ll do what they say?’ That, of course, Mrs Frisby could not explain to her.
The rats now commenced to dig busily at the dirt on top of and around Mrs Frisby’s cement block. Justin said: ‘I’ve got to go and talk to Nicodemus. You’d better get the children out.’ Mrs Frisby hurried into her house.
She found them waiting in the living room, unaware of the small crisis that had been taking place outside. As Justin had said, they did not seem worried.
‘We were scared at first,’ Teresa said. ‘But then one of the rats came to see us. He couldn’t come in, but he called to us, and we came out, Martin and I. He said his name was Justin. Have you met him? He’s very nice.’
‘I’ve met him,’ said Mrs Frisby. ‘Now we’d better go outside. They’re getting ready to move the house.’
‘I’m ready,’ said Timothy. ‘I’m all wrapped up like a scarecrow.’
Martin and Teresa had taken pieces of warm cloth from the bed and tied them around him. Mrs Frisby could not see him in the dark, but when she touched him she found they had even tied a piece like a bonnet around his head and ears.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘And we’re lucky — it’s a warm night, and dry.’
They went up the small tunnel to the garden and watched in the moonlight from a hillock a few feet away. The rats had finished digging the new hole, and all twenty of them were working near the house. It was a sight to see.
As soon as the earth had been cleared from the top and sides of the cement block, so that it lay fully exposed in its hole, all of the rats turned to the pile of equipment. Under Arthur’s direction the ladder-like structures became a scaffolding — four small towers standing one near each corner of the block. Across the tops of these the rats fastened strong, light bars of metal, probably, Mrs Frisby thought, from the Toy Tinker’s truck.
From these bars they now hung pulleys wound with strong, thin cord, and at the ends of the cords they fastened hooks, which they slipped into the oval-shaped holes in the block and pulled taut. Five strong rats stood by each cord. One of them, Mrs Frisby noticed, was bigger than the rest: her friend Brutus.
‘Heave!’ called Arthur.
The twenty rats strained on the cords, and the block rose an inch. Each rat stepped back a pace.
‘Heave!’ Another inch.
Slowly, the heavy block rose from the hole until it hung two inches above level ground.
‘Steady,’ said Arthur. ‘Get the rollers.’
Eight rats, two from each group, ran to the round pieces of wood Mrs Frisby had noticed earlier; these resembled sawed-up pieces of broom handle, each about a foot long.
Two rats to a roller, they slipped four of these under the cement block so that they lay athwart the hole, like bars across a window.
‘Lower away,’ said Arthur, and the cement block came to rest gently on the rollers.
‘Let’s see how it rolls.’
They slipped the ropes free of the pulleys and re-hooked two of them to the front of the block. Nine rats now manned each rope; two stayed behind, watching the rollers.
‘Heave!’
The rollers turned and the heavy block slid forward easily, like a truck on wheels, in the direction of the new hole. When it moved off the hindmost of the rollers, as it did every few inches, the two rats in the rear would quickly pick that one up and replace it under the front of the block.
Almost like a game of leap-frog, Mrs Frisby thought. But a well-rehearsed game; the rats had planned carefully; they knew exactly what they were doing; they moved with precision and never wasted a motion.
Within a very few minutes the first of the rollers lay across the new hole; then the second, and finally all four. The block was poised and in position; the hole was exactly the right size and shape. The rats had even dug out a new pantry-hole in one corner, and carved out the small tunnel that would connect the two rooms of the house.
The towers and the pulleys were put up again, and the whole process of lifting and lowering was done in reverse; the rollers were pulled away and the block was eased slowly into its new home.
‘It’s done!’ cried Mrs Frisby. She felt like applauding.
‘Not quite yet,’ said Arthur over his shoulder. To the other rats he said: ‘Get the shovels and the backpacks.’
Pausing a moment to rest, he explained to Mrs Frisby: ‘We’re going to cover it with turf, and then we’ve got to fill up the old hole with the dirt from the new one, or Mr Fitzgibbon will wonder who’s been digging up his garden. Also, we’ve still to dig you an entrance hole.’
In her excitement Mrs Frisby had forgotten this small detail. She could not get into her house. Now she watched in awe as Arthur and Brutus, using two small, sharp, long-handled shovels, dug the narrow tunnel down to her living room. It took them somewhat less than five minutes. It had taken her all day to dig the other one.
‘Now,’ said Arthur, ‘you can put your children to bed. We’ll take care of the rest.’