Watership Down (4 page)

       
"I don't blame you," said Hazel. "Knowing Toadflax, I'm surprised he didn't knock you over first and ask questions afterward. All the same, let's wait a little longer.
 
Blackberry ought to be here soon."
 

       
Time passed. They crouched in silence while the
 
moon shadows moved northward in the grass. At last, just as Hazel was about to run down the slope to Blackberry's burrow, he saw him come out of his hole, followed by no less than three rabbits. One of these, Buckthorn, Hazel knew well. He was glad to see him, for he knew him for a tough, sturdy fellow who was considered certain to get into the Owsla as soon as he reached full weight.
 

       
"But I dare say he's impatient," thought Hazel, "or he may have come off worst in some scuffle over a doe and taken it hard. Well, with him and Bigwig, at least we shan't be too badly off if we run into any fighting."

       
He did not recognize the other two rabbits and when Blackberry told him their names--Speedwell and Acorn--he was none the wiser. But this was not surprising, for they were typical outskirters--thin-looking six-monthers, with the strained, wary look of those who are only too well used to the thin end of the stick. They looked curiously at Fiver. From what Blackberry had told them, they had been almost expecting to find Fiver foretelling doom in a poetic torrent. Instead, he seemed more calm and normal than the rest. The certainty of going had lifted a weight from Fiver.

       
More time went slowly by. Blackberry scrambled up into the fern and then returned to the top of the bank,

fidgeting nervously and half inclined to bolt at nothing. Hazel and Fiver remained in the ditch, nibbling halfheartedly at the dark grass. At last Hazel heard what he was listening for; a rabbit--or was it two?--approaching from the wood.

       
A few moments later Bigwig was in the ditch. Behind him came a hefty, brisk-looking rabbit something over twelve months old. He was well known by sight to all the warren, for his fur was entirely gray, with patches of near-white that now caught the moonlight as he sat scratching himself without speaking. This was Silver, a nephew of the Threarah, who was serving his first month in the Owsla.

       
Hazel could not help feeling relieved that Bigwig had brought only Silver--a quiet, straightforward fellow who had not yet really found his feet among the veterans. When Bigwig had spoken earlier of sounding out the Owsla, Hazel had been in two minds. It was only too likely that they would encounter dangers beyond the warren and that they would stand in need of some good fighters. Again, if Fiver was right and the whole warren was in imminent peril, then of course they ought to welcome any rabbit who was ready to join them. On the other hand, there seemed no point in taking particular pains to get hold of rabbits who were going to behave like Toadflax.

       
"Wherever we settle down in the end," thought Hazel, "I'm determined to see that Pipkin and Fiver aren't sat on and cuffed around until they're ready to run any risk just to get away. But is Bigwig going to see it like that?"

       
"You know Silver, don't you?" asked Bigwig, breaking in on his thoughts. "Apparently some of the younger fellows in the Owsla have been giving him a thin time--teasing him about his fur, you know, and saying he only got his place because of the Threarah. I thought I was going to get some more, but I suppose nearly all the Owsla feel they're very well off as they are."

       
He looked about him. "I say, there aren't many here, are there? Do you think it's really worth going on with

this idea?"

       
Silver seemed about to speak when suddenly there was a pattering in the undergrowth above and three more rabbits came over the bank from the wood. Their movement was direct and purposeful, quite unlike the earlier, haphazard approach of those who were now gathered in the ditch. The largest of the three newcomers was in front and the other two followed him, as though under orders. Hazel, sensing at once that they had nothing in common with himself and his companions, started and sat up tensely. Fiver muttered in his ear, "Oh, Hazel, they've come to--" but broke off short. Bigwig turned toward them and stared, his nose working rapidly. The three came straight up to him.
"Thlayli?" said the leader.

       
"You know me perfectly well," replied Bigwig, "and I know you, Holly. What do you want?"

       
"You're under arrest."

       
"Under arrest? What do you mean? What for?"

       
"Spreading dissension and inciting to mutiny. Silver, you're under arrest too, for failing to report to Toadflax this evening and causing your duty to devolve on a comrade. You're both to come with me."

       
Immediately Bigwig fell upon him, scratching and kicking. Holly fought back. His followers closed in, looking for an opening to join the fight and pin Bigwig down. Suddenly, from the top of the bank, Buckthorn flung himself headlong into the scuffle, knocked one of the guards flying with a kick from his back legs and then closed with the other. He was followed a moment later by Dandelion, who landed full on the rabbit whom Buckthorn had kicked. Both guards broke clear, looked round for a moment and then leaped up the bank into the wood. Holly struggled free of Bigwig and crouched on his haunches, scuffling his front paws and growling, as rabbits will when angry. He was about to speak when Hazel faced him.

       
"Go," said Hazel, firmly and quietly, "or we'll kill you."

       
"Do you know what this means?" replied Holly. "I am Captain of Owsla. You know that, don't you?"

       
"Go," repeated Hazel, "or you will be killed."

       
"It is you who will be killed," replied Holly. Without another word he, too, went back up the bank and vanished

into the wood.

       
Dandelion was bleeding from the shoulder. He licked the wound for a few moments and then turned to Hazel.

       
"They won't be long coming back, you know, Hazel," he said. "They've gone to turn out the Owsla, and then

we'll be for it right enough."

       
"We ought to go at once," said Fiver.

       
"Yes, the time's come now, all right," replied Hazel. "Come on, down to the stream. Then we'll follow the bank--that'll help us to keep together."

       
"If you'll take my advice--" began Bigwig.

       
"If we stay here any longer I shan't be able to," answered Hazel.

       
With Fiver beside him, he led the way out of the ditch and down the slope. In less than a minute the little band of rabbits had disappeared into the dim, moonlit night.

5.
     
In the Woods

These young rabbits ... must move out if they are to survive. In a wild and free state they ... stray sometimes for miles ... wandering until they find a suitable environment.

R.M. Lockley,
The Private Life of the Rabbit

It was getting on toward moonset when they left the fields and entered the wood. Straggling, catching up with one another, keeping more or less together, they had wandered over half a mile down the fields, always following the course of the brook. Although Hazel guessed that they must now have gone further from the warren than any rabbit he had ever talked to, he was not sure whether they were yet safely away: and it was while he was wondering--not for the first time--whether he could hear sounds of pursuit that he first noticed the dark masses of the trees and the brook disappearing among them.

       
Rabbits avoid close woodland, where the ground is shady, damp and grassless and they feel menaced by the undergrowth. Hazel did not care for the look of the trees. Still, he thought, Holly would no doubt think twice before following them into a place like that, and to keep beside the brook might well prove safer than wandering about the fields in one direction and another, with the risk of finding themselves, in the end, back at the warren. He decided to go straight into the wood without consulting Bigwig, and to trust that the rest would follow.

       
"If we don't run into any trouble and the brook takes us through the wood," he thought, "we really shall be clear of the warren and then we can look for somewhere to rest for a bit. Most of them still seem to be more or less all right, but Fiver and Pipkin will have had as much as they can stand before long."

       
From the moment he entered it, the wood seemed full of noises. There was a smell of damp leaves and moss,

and everywhere the splash of water went whispering about. Just inside, the brook made a little fall into a pool, and the sound, enclosed among the trees, echoed as though in a cave. Roosting birds rustled overhead; the night breeze stirred the leaves; here and there a dead twig fell. And there were more sinister, unidentified sounds from further away; sounds of movement.

       
To rabbits, everything unknown is dangerous. The first reaction is to startle, the second to bolt. Again and again

they startled, until they were close to exhaustion. But what did these sounds mean and where, in this wilderness,

could they bolt to?

       
The rabbits crept, closer together. Their progress grew slower. Before long they lost the course of the brook, slipping across the moonlit patches as fugitives and halting in the bushes with raised ears and staring eyes. The moon was low now and the light, wherever it slanted through the trees, seemed thicker, older and more yellow.

       
From a thick pile of dead leaves beneath a holly tree, Hazel looked down a narrow path lined on either side with fern and sprouting fireweed. The fern moved slightly in the breeze, but along the path there was nothing to be seen except a scatter of last year's fallen acorns under an oak. What was in the bracken? What lay round the further bend? And what would happen to a rabbit who left the shelter of the holly tree and ran down the path? He turned to Dandelion beside him.

       
"You'd better wait here," he said. "When I get to the bend I'll stamp. But if I run into trouble, get the others away."

       
Without waiting for an answer, he ran into the open and down the path. A few seconds brought him to the oak. He paused a moment, staring about him, and then ran on to the bend. Beyond, the path was the same--empty in the darkening moonlight and leading gently downhill into the deep shadow of a grove of ilex trees. Hazel stamped, and a few moments later Dandelion was beside him in the bracken. Even in the midst of his fear and strain it occurred to him that Dandelion must be very fast: he had covered the distance in a flash.

       
"Well done," whispered
 
Dandelion. "Running our risks for us, are you--like El-ahrairah?"*

       
Hazel gave him a quick, friendly glance. It was warm praise and cheered him. What Robin Hood is to the English and John Henry to the American Negroes, Elil-Hrair-Rah, or El-ahrairah--The Prince with a Thousand Enemies--is to rabbits. Uncle Remus might well have heard of him, for some of El-ahrairah's adventures are those of Brer Rabbit. For that matter, Odysseus himself might have borrowed a trick or two from the rabbit hero, for he is very old and was never at a loss for a trick to deceive his enemies. Once, so they say, he had to get home by swimming across a river in which there was a large and hungry pike. El-ahrairah combed himself until he had enough fur to cover a clay rabbit, which he pushed into the water. The pike rushed at it, bit it and left it in disgust. After a little, it drifted to the bank and El-ahrairah dragged it out and waited a while before pushing it in again. After an hour of this, the pike left it alone, and when it had done so for the fifth time, El-ahrairah swam across himself and went home. Some rabbits say he controls the weather, because the wind, the damp and the dew are friends and instruments to rabbits against their enemies.

       
"Hazel, we'll have to stop here," said Bigwig, coming up between the panting, crouching bodies of the others. "I know it's not a good place, but Fiver and this other half-sized fellow you've got here--they're pretty well all in. They won't be able to go on if we don't rest."

       
The truth was that every one of them was tired. Many rabbits spend all their lives in the same place and never run more than a hundred yards at a stretch. Even though they may live and sleep above ground for months at a time, they prefer not to be out of distance of some sort of refuge that will serve for a hole. They have two natural gaits--the gentle, lolloping forward movement of the warren on a summer evening and the lightning dash for cover that every human has seen at some time or other. It is difficult to imagine a rabbit plodding steadily on: they are not built for it. It is true that young rabbits are great migrants and capable of journeying for miles, but they do not take to it readily.