Tales from Watership Down (16 page)

“We received nothing else for a long time, and I supposed that now that Thinial was established and flourishing, there was nothing more for us to learn and the secret river knowledge had come to a natural end. I can’t say I was sorry. The whole business frightened me. I was always afraid that somehow or other, General Woundwort would get to know. And yet I kept on, every night, lying in the river. It fascinated me: I couldn’t keep out of it.

“And then, one night, I found myself caught up in a kind of violent mist of confusion and turmoil out of which, for a long time, nothing came; or nothing I could understand, anyway. The others were as lost in it as I.

“At last one thing stood out clearly—that is, one piece of knowledge. And that was the White Blindness. None of us had ever seen a rabbit dying of the White Blindness, but we knew as much as is common knowledge to all rabbits: how an infected rabbit stumbles about in the open, seeing
nothing, so that in the end it may stagger into water and drown. And how other rabbits often become infected, so that a whole warren may be destroyed. We knew that it takes a rabbit a long time to die of the White Blindness.

“All three of us received, that night, knowledge of the Blindness. It didn’t do anything; it was simply there, like a stone or a tree. We didn’t think it was coming down the secret river to infect us, but the mere knowledge of it, dominating everything else in the river and turning it into incomprehensible turbulence, was frightening enough.

“Two nights later, the knowledge grew wider. Flyairth, wandering by herself outside Thinial, had come upon a solitary rabbit, a hlessi, lurching about and dying of the Blindness. Horrified, she kept away from it, but then she saw that it was approaching Thinial of its own accord. Yet at the last moment, apparently, it crawled away in another direction.

“That was all that the river brought us that night.

“For several nights afterward, we learned of nothing but Flyairth’s growing obsession with the Blindness. She knew that if in some way or other it got into Thinial, it would destroy it.

“It wasn’t I,” said Vilthuril, “it was Hyzenthlay who came to know from the river that Flyairth meant to go to any lengths to keep the Blindness out of Thinial. Her great fear was that an infected rabbit—some stranger—might wander into the warren. One strange thing about the Blindness, as I expect you all know, is that infected rabbits are able to mate and quite often do.

“Flyairth told her Owsla of her fear, and they agreed
that everything possible must be done to keep infected rabbits out of the warren. By day, all strangers were refused entry, whether or not they could be seen or smelled to be ill. By night, the task was more difficult. A stranger could get in unseen. The bucks agreed to take it in turns to keep a night watch—four bucks each night—to guard against strangers.

“That was all we learned for many days. And then the knowledge reached us that an infected buck, a stranger, had got into Thinial by night and mated with one of the does, who had become pregnant. One of the bucks who had been on watch admitted that he had fought the stranger, who had beaten him and then entered the warren. Understandably, perhaps, he had said nothing and hoped that he’d hear no more of the matter. The pregnant doe, Milmown, had no buck of her own, and told the Owsla that the stranger had mated with her and then gone his way.

“All might yet have been well, if Milmown had not developed the Blindness. When it was plain that she had, Flyairth and Prake were implacable. Milmown, though pitied by many, was driven out of Thinial by the Owsla and told never to return.

“But she didn’t go away. She remained a short distance from the warren and constantly pleaded, to anyone who would listen, to be allowed to return. And for some reason the progress of the disease in her was delayed. She scratched a hole in the sand and there she bore her litter: no more than four rabbits, blind, deaf and furless. When they had
become old enough to fend for themselves, the White Blindness once more continued to run its course, and Milmown died.

“And now all that the three of us could learn from the secret river was the same knowledge, repeated day after day. We knew that the four young rabbits of Milmown’s litter were living as best they could in the open, not far from Thinial, and that although they didn’t appear to have the Blindness, the Chief Rabbit refused to give them help or shelter. No one could say she was wrong, but few would themselves have felt able to enforce such severity.

“I think many in Thinial must have expected the young rabbits to fall victim to the Thousand, but no elil appeared, and we learned from the secret river that they continued to survive.

“Then we began to receive fresh knowledge, something that hadn’t come down the river before. At first it was confused and fragmentary, and we couldn’t make anything of it all, until Thethuthinnag said that she thought it had something to do with rabbits in Thinial becoming opposed to Flyairth. Once we’d grasped that, the knowledge began to reach us more clearly. The root of it was that Milmown had been well liked in the warren and had had a good many friends, including two or three of the Owsla. These friends hadn’t been able to do anything for her when she had been driven out, because she had the Blindness; she would die, and that was all there was to it. But now that she was dead and her four young, as far as anyone could see, had not
got the Blindness, a number of her former friends began saying that Flyairth and Prake were going too far and that to leave Milmown’s young to die outside the warren was going to unnecessary and cruel lengths. Flyairth, however, refused to consider any change. For her, the safety and survival of Thinial were all-important and justified any severity.

“However, more and more rabbits began to drift away from her. They could see with their own eyes the young rabbits who had been abandoned, but they couldn’t envisage an epidemic of the White Blindness which was not there. Some began going out to meet and talk to Milmown’s youngsters, telling them that they personally would like to see them brought into the warren; and to put a stop to this sort of thing was very difficult for the Owsla.

“And then the river knowledge came to me, hard-breathing in the crowded Near Hind burrow one hot summer night, that several rabbits had come together, brought Milmown’s young into Thinial and given them an empty burrow of their own, in defiance of the Owsla. When Flyairth herself came to order them to leave, she was met by does from among those who had come with her to found the warren, who said that the young rabbits were not to be evicted. Flyairth, a heavy, tough doe, fought and beat two or three of them. But she could not fight them all.

“For many days the river brought us nothing more. All the knowledge we received was of the helpless anger of Flyairth, as she went among one group of her rabbits after
another, doing all she could to assert her authority. We—the three of us in Efrafa—thought that she would have done better to let the matter drop. But she was so much obsessed by her fear of the Blindness that she couldn’t weight up its probability or improbability. As long as there was the least chance of it reentering Thinial, she must take every possible step to prevent it. And night upon night the secret river brought us nothing but the knowledge of her ceaseless anger and determination.

“I shall never forget lying, sometimes half the night, against the burrow wall in Efrafa, conscious of nothing but Flyairth’s rage pouring over me and wondering how it could be that others could not feel it. It was by far the strongest and most powerful flood of knowledge we had yet received.

“Flyairth’s position as Chief Rabbit was very much weakened by the whole business of Milmown’s young, especially because she had refused to give way.

“It was just at this time that she bore her third litter. She was obliged to relinquish her position as Chief Rabbit to look after them, and of course this restricted her and diminished her influence in the warren.

“There were rabbits who said that since she still refused to give way over Milmown’s young, she had better cease to be Chief Rabbit.

“And it was just at this point that we lost the chance of gaining any more knowledge of Thinial or of Flyairth and her desperation. But it wasn’t anything to do with the secret
river. It was because Bigwig was brought into Efrafa and made an officer in the Near Hind Mark—our Mark. When did you first talk to Hyzenthlay about the escape, Bigwig?”

“It was the night of the same day that I joined the Mark,” replied Bigwig. “In my burrow, Hyzenthlay. Do you remember? The plan was that you’d pick the does for the escape. Then you’d tell them that same day and we’d break out that evening. The less time they had to think about it, the better.”

“But we couldn’t do it that evening, because Woundwort kept you talking.”

“So we had to make it the next evening—the evening of the thunderstorm. The evening they arrested Nelthilta.”

“How many nights did you actually spend in Efrafa, then?” asked Vilthuril.

“Three.”

“I remember,” said Hyzenthlay. “I was terrified at the idea of all those does knowing about the escape for a whole night and a day. I thought we were bound to be discovered. I was right too. If Nelthilta had been arrested a little earlier, that would have been that.”

“My last night in Efrafa,” said Vilthuril, “was the night we all spent knowing about the plan and having to wait. And that was the last night, too, that I went into the secret river. I was the only one of the three of us.”

“I had no heart for it that night,” said Hyzenthlay. “Thethuthinnang and I were both worried to death that the plan would be discovered.”

“That night,” said Vilthuril, “I learned nothing—nothing more than I already knew about the growing opposition to Flyairth. I wonder how it all turned out.”

“The strangest thing of all, to me,” said Hyzenthlay, “is that we haven’t the least idea where Thinial is or where those rabbits are. They might be many days’ journey away, or they might be quite near us.”

“It’s the strangest story I’ve ever heard,” said Hazel.

It was not the underground “river” which seemed incredible to Hazel and the other rabbits who had listened to Vilthuril’s story. When meeting with phenomena, none of them ever thought in terms of a division between what was credible and what was not. The idea of the inexplicable meant nothing to them; they did not need it. So much that was inexplicable—for example, the phases of the moon—lay around them that they simply accepted it as part of their lives. True, the “river” lay outside their own experience, but so did much else. What struck them as extraordinary was that Vilthuril should have received this story—this information—never mind how, about rabbits distant from themselves, rabbits not one of whom they had ever seen. As she told it, these far-off rabbits had not communicated to her the knowledge she had received: it had simply come to her, almost as though she had been in Thinial herself. If it had not reached her by way of an underground river—and no doubt there were plenty of them in the world—then it
would have come in some other way. Why? Well, said some, it must have been drifting about, to be almost accidentally picked up by rabbits like Fiver and Vilthuril; and that was strange. Not altogether, said others. It was common knowledge that Fiver and Vilthuril possessed unusual sensibilities.

There was no general agreement, and it was left to Blackberry to reach a conclusion which anyone could comfortably accept. “I doubt whether we’ve heard the last of it.”

Kehaar, the black-headed gull, was flying westward above the land between Caesar’s Belt and the Down. He flew low and in irregular curves from north to south and back, alighting every now and then at his leisure to feed for a while across any piece of likely-looking ground which attracted him.

He was not in the best of tempers. Naturally aggressive and quick to annoyance, like most gulls who live in competition with a myriad of others, he did not always like being asked to carry out tasks by the Watership Down rabbits. Showing pugnacity and attacking their enemies was one thing. Searching was another. Five months before, he had enjoyed taking part in their conflict with Efrafa, in diving on the formidable General Woundwort, in covering the retreat of Bigwig and the fugitive does in their flight from Efrafa and helping them to escape down the river. What he
liked was onslaught. Nevertheless, after the rabbits had saved his life while he was lying injured and helpless on the Down, he had willingly performed for them the reconnaissance which had so unluckily ended in nothing better than his discovery of Efrafa.

Now, to have been asked to carry out another, similar flight had annoyed him, though not to the extent of refusing to do it. It had been tactfully requested. Hazel, who knew very well that of all his rabbits Bigwig was Kehaar’s particular admirer and friend, had shrewdly left to him the business of explaining to the gull their purpose and what they wanted him to look for.

“We’re going to start a new warren, Kehaar,” Bigwig had said, dodging here and there between the gull’s orange-colored legs as he strutted over the thinning November grass. “before this one gets crowded out. Half the rabbits will come from here and half from Efrafa. We want you to find us the right place and then go to Efrafa and ask Captain Campion to come and meet us there and have a look at it.”

“Vat kind of place you vant?” replied Kehaar. “And vhere do you vant it?”

“Somewhere out there on the sunset side,” said Bigwig, “about halfway between here and Efrafa. It mustn’t be anywhere near men’s houses or gardens: that’s very important. And we need a dry place, where digging’s going to be easy. What would be perfect would be a bank on the edge of a copse where men don’t come much and there are a few bushes to conceal the holes.”

“I find him,” answered Kehaar shortly. “Den I come and tell you, show you vhere. Show Efrafa fellow vhere too, yes?”