Tales from Watership Down (13 page)

“No, I haven’t,” answered Burdock. “I’ve hardly ever seen a human being, and I certainly haven’t been near any. But rabbits can hide and rabbits can run. They can run a lot faster than human beings, I know that.”

“True enough,” said El-ahrairah. “But all the same, this place, where we are now, is too close to that farmhouse, and if you let your rabbits settle here and go traipsing in and out of that kitchen garden, you’ll be letting them in for danger and death. Human beings hate all rabbits, and they’re nearly always ready to kill them wherever they are, but rabbits in a vegetable garden they’ll go to a whole lot of trouble to kill, believe me.”

“Well, but I don’t think I could stop my rabbits going in,” said Burdock evasively. “What do you want me to do?”

“Look,” said El-ahrairah, “I’m not Chief Rabbit and not trying to be. I’m just a passing visitor. But if you want my advice, I think you ought to take them off into open country, right away from the farm. Edge of a wood, an open hillside, somewhere like that. It’s just that I
know
there’ll be a whole lot of trouble if they stay here. Anyway,” he went on, as Celandine came up and joined them, “let’s all have a look round together and get ourselves an idea of the place, shall we?”

During the morning the four rabbits went over the farmland from end to end. It was very well tended and prosperous. There was a big field of cows and another of sheep, with all the hedges and fences very sound and efficiently maintained. There was another, bare field where the hay had already been cut and the ricks built. At its far end, cornfields, planted some with wheat and some with barley, extended out as far as distant woodland.

Coming back, they went through an orchard of young cherry trees, some way away from the vegetable garden. Burdock was looking for a convenient gap, when they smelled tobacco and heard a man approaching from the other side of the hedge. They were just in time to hide among some nearby nut-bushes before he came out through a small gate and set off toward the long-grass meadow where they had spent the night. As he tossed his white stick into the grass, a rabbit bolted almost under his feet. He stopped and watched it disappear among the scrubland and bushes bordering the orchard.

“See what I mean?” said Burdock. “Rabbits can run and rabbits can hide.”

That afternoon, when El-ahrairah and Rabscuttle were alone together, Rabscuttle said, “Do you think we’d do best to leave these rabbits now, master, before the trouble begins? Only at this rate, there’s bound to be a whole lot of trouble, isn’t there? And quite soon, I’d say. We don’t want to be mixed up in it.”

“You’re probably right,” answered El-ahrairah, “but I haven’t altogether given up hope of getting them to see sense. If I can’t, then I promise you we’ll leave as quick as we can.”

After a few days, virtually all the rabbits had discovered the vegetable garden for themselves. There were two or three ways into it, and near these, on both sides of the hedge, conspicuous rabbit paths had already begun to appear. El-ahrairah, forbidding Rabscuttle to risk his life
anywhere near the garden, went in himself one fine evening toward sunset, to see what sort of a state it was in. He found the lettuces nibbled to nothing and the cabbages and cauliflowers showing all too plainly the effect of the rabbits’ attentions. As he had expected, a good deal more had been spoiled than had been eaten. Finding a couple of youngsters among the carrots, he tried to tell them about their danger, but they had no mind to listen to him.

“Why, I think Celandine’s in here himself,” said one of them. “We know how to get away quick enough if any men come along. This place is far too good to let alone. I’d never imagined there
could
be flayrah like this.”

At night, most of the rabbits slept or lay up among the long grass of the meadow alongside the marsh. The fine weather continued without a hint of rain, and the only rabbits to do any digging were two or three does who knew themselves to be pregnant and going to give birth to litters. The loose earth and other signs of their digging, in the bank leading down to the marsh, were clearly to be seen and added to El-ahrairah’s anxiety. He noticed, too, that Burdock and Celandine did not seem to like his company as much as formerly, and he had little doubt of the reason. Even if he did not actually talk about the vegetable garden, his manner had become constrained by the constant thought of it, whereas every other rabbit except Rabscuttle lived in a state of almost riotous high spirits and well-being.

One afternoon, as he was lying in the sun, El-ahrairah saw two rabbits nearby setting off with a purposeful air in a
direction opposite to that leading to the vegetable garden. He wondered what they might be up to, and followed them with as unconcerned an air as he could assume. He saw them go down the further end of the bank and make their way into the cherry orchard. He waited for a time and then went in himself, by a way different from theirs. He soon caught sight of them again and saw what they were doing. They were stripping the bark low down on one of the cherry trees. One or two trees nearby had been stripped already. And that was not all. At the far end of the orchard, two men were talking together as they walked slowly among the trees.

El-ahrairah went back to the meadow and began asking every rabbit he met where he could find Burdock. At length he came upon him asleep in one of the nestlike refuges the rabbits had made in the long grass. He woke him up and told him what he had seen.

“Well,” said Burdock, “what do you expect me to do? I couldn’t stop them even if I wanted to. They wouldn’t leave the trees alone just because I told them.”

“But don’t you realize,” said El-ahrairah, “that barking kills the trees and that the men are bound to notice and do everything they can to—”

Burdock stood up and faced El-ahrairah. He had clearly lost his temper. “Do you think I’m going to be ordered about by the likes of you, a ragamuffin hlessi who’s lost his tail and ears and works himself into a fright about every single thing he sees? You’re nothing but a continual
nuisance. You’d better take care I don’t tell Celandine to have you set upon and finished with. You think because you led the way through the marsh you can tell us all what to do and lay down the law about everything.”

“Very well,” replied El-ahrairah quietly. “I won’t bother you anymore.”

When El-ahrairah said this he meant it, but that was before the cat.

The cat, black-and-white and short-furred, made its first appearance about two days later, in the early evening. It came wandering slowly down from the vicinity of the farmhouse, pausing from time to time and looking here and there at anything which attracted its momentary attention. Soon it reached the edge of the field of long grass and began walking along the verge, evidently with no particular purpose, for it went slowly and almost paw by paw. It wore a thin leather collar and had a sleek, well-fed appearance. It was certainly not hunting.

El-ahrairah and Rabscuttle were dozing together on the bank above the marsh when they became aware of the cat’s approach. They both grew alert and held themselves in readiness for instant flight. The cat, however, passed within a few yards without paying them the least attention. All the same, thought El-ahrairah, it might be as well to move a little further away. He was just about to do so when he found Celandine beside him.

Celandine was holding himself tensely. He was breathing fast and watching the cat with a vigilant, aggressive air.
After a little, he said to El-ahrairah, “Do you see that damned pest out there?”

“Yes, of course,” replied El-ahrairah.

“We’re going to kill it,” said Celandine.

“This year or next?” asked El-ahrairah, joining in what he took to be some kind of game.

“You don’t believe me?” replied Celandine. “You may as well know that it won’t be the first time our Owsla have killed a cat.”

“I’ve never heard of rabbits attacking a cat,” said El-ahrairah, “except perhaps a doe defending her litter.”

“When we were living in the warren where you first joined us,” said Celandine, “There was a cat which used to come hunting about and making a nuisance of itself, and after a bit our Owsla set upon it and killed it. That was when Betony was captain of Owsla and I was still quite young.”

“And what happened?” asked El-ahrairah.

“What d’you mean, what happened?” answered Celandine.

“Did any human beings come looking for it? Did any of them take the body away?”

“No, nothing like that,” said Celandine. “Rats disposed of the body, I suppose. Something did, anyway.”

“And you want to show you’re as good as Betony, and kill that cat?”

“Certainly. Three or four of my Owsla are mad keen.”

“Well,” said El-ahrairah, “I beg you, I implore you, to listen to me before you do anything else. From all you’ve
told me, the cat your Captain Betony killed must have been a stray. It didn’t belong to any human beings. It was just wandering on its own. But that cat out there belongs to the farmhouse. It’s wearing a collar and it obviously gets plenty to eat. And it reeks of human beings. I could smell it from here when it went past just now. Drive it away by all means if you want to, but if you kill it the farmhouse human beings will come after you with everything they’ve got. As far as they’re concerned, it’ll be the last straw. You’ve ruined the vegetable garden and done a lot of damage in the cherry orchard. I’m surprised they haven’t done their best to wipe you out already. Do take my advice, Celandine. Let the cat alone, for Frith’s sake.”

“I’ll think about it,” replied Celandine. “But the cat’s asking for trouble, you must admit.”

During the next two or three days, Celandine and three of his Owsla waited patiently in the long grass for the black-and-white cat, but it did not reappear. It was not until early evening several days later that it came sauntering along the verge and pausing to look here and there, as it had before.

From Celandine’s point of view, the opportunity could not have been a better one. The cat lay down in the sun almost opposite where they were concealed, turned on its back and began washing its stomach. When the four rabbits leaped upon it, it was taken completely by surprise.

It fought, however, miawling and biting savagely. Its claws were more effective than the rabbits’, and it was more
used to using them. If it had not been for the reckless audacity of Celandine, it would almost certainly have got away. But lying on its back when he attacked it, it offered him the chance to use a rabbit’s strongest weapon, its back legs. Leaping, Celandine landed on its chest, drove one of his back legs into its belly and kicked backward. This was decisive. Ripped open, horribly wounded, its guts trailing, it still struggled, scratching fiercely and clenching its teeth on Celandine’s throat until he lay virtually at its mercy. But at this moment its strength failed. Gasping, it rolled over on its side and a few moments later lay dead. Celandine and his rabbits, covered with its blood and a great deal of their own, made off into the long grass.

It was almost dark before a girl from the farm found the body and, weeping bitterly, carried it away, all bloody as it was.

El-ahrairah did not himself see Celandine and his rabbits kill the cat; but Rabscuttle, who did, told him, and he also saw the weeping girl carry the body away.

“Shall we leave now, master?” asked Rabscuttle. “You surely don’t want us to be mixed up with this place any longer, do you? We might be shot or … or … well, whatever the men are going to do.”

“Yes, we’ll leave, all right,” replied El-ahrairah. “But I’m not ready yet. Just keep a lookout and tell me at once if you see the men doing anything unusual.”

However, nothing happened on the following day and nothing the day after that. It was unusually early on the
morning of the third day after the cat had been killed that Rabscuttle woke El-ahrairah and told him that a whole lot of men were coming into the long-grass field, most of them carrying sticks and one of them with a gun. El-ahrairah crept under a hawthorn bush to a place where both of them could watch the men, who at that moment were doing nothing except standing about, burning white sticks in their mouths and talking.

After some time, two of them went away and came back riding on the hrududu, pulling the grass cutter behind it. They drove it to a place at the outer edge of the long grass and began cutting the whole field in a circle, always going a little further inward as they came round. Meanwhile, the other men spread out and stood all round the edge, moving slowly inward as the grass was cut. Although El-ahrairah knew that the whole field was full of rabbits, he saw none come out. He realized that they wanted to stay hidden in the long grass and were creeping toward the center as it was cut.

At last the hrududu stopped and became silent. It had left a patch of long grass uncut, and this the men surrounded.

“Right, we’ll go now,” said El-ahrairah, and began to run as fast as he could away from the field, away from the farm and out into the open country beyond, with Rabscuttle hard on his heels. He did not want to hear the men shouting as they went forward, beating at the grass with their sticks. He did not want to see Burdock and his rabbits come
scuttling out in all directions, to be clubbed and battered to death as they tried to get through the encircling men. One or two did get through, but the man with the gun did not miss them.

“Don’t look back,” said El-ahrairah to the trembling Rabscuttle, “and don’t ever talk about it. We’re going home—remember?—and something’s telling me it’s not very far now.”

For a few days (said Dandelion) after they had left poor Burdock and his rabbits, El-ahrairah and Rabscuttle traveled on uneventfully through the long-grass meadows and the summer weather.