PART I The Journey
1. The Notice Board
CHORUS: Why do you cry out thus, unless at some vision of horror?
CASSANDRA: The house reeks of death and dripping blood.
CHORUS: How so? 'Tis but the odor of the altar sacrifice.
CASSANDRA: The stench is like a breath from the tomb.
Aeschylus, Agamemnon
The primroses were over. Toward the edge of the wood, where the ground became open and sloped down to an old fence and a brambly ditch beyond, only a few fading patches of pale yellow still showed among the dog's mercury and oak-tree roots. On the other side of the fence, the upper part of the field was full of rabbit holes. In places the grass was gone altogether and everywhere there were clusters of dry droppings, through which nothing but the ragwort would grow. A hundred yards away, at the bottom of the slope, ran the brook, no more than three feet wide, half choked with kingcups, watercress and blue brooklime. The cart track crossed by a brick culvert and climbed the opposite slope to a five-barred gate in the thorn hedge. The gate led into the lane.
The May sunset was red in clouds, and there was still half an hour to twilight. The dry slope was dotted with rabbits--some nibbling at the thin grass near their holes, others pushing further down to look for dandelions or perhaps a cowslip that the rest had missed. Here and there one sat upright on an ant heap and looked about, with ears erect and nose in the wind. But a blackbird, singing undisturbed on the outskirts of the wood, showed that there was nothing alarming there, and in the other direction, along the brook, all was plain to be seen, empty and quiet. The warren was at peace.
At the top of the bank, close to the wild cherry where the blackbird sang, was a little group of holes almost hidden by brambles. In the green half-light, at the mouth of one of these holes, two rabbits were sitting together side by side. At length, the larger of the two came out, slipped along the bank under cover of the brambles and so down into the ditch and up into the field. A few moments later the other followed.
The first rabbit stopped in a sunny patch and scratched his ear with rapid movements of his hind leg. Although he was a yearling and still below full weight, he had not the harassed look of most "outskirters"--that is, the rank and file of ordinary rabbits in their first year who, lacking either aristocratic parentage or unusual size and strength, get sat on by their elders and live as best they can--often in the open--on the edge of their warren. He looked as though he knew how to take care of himself. There was a shrewd, buoyant air about him as he sat up, looked around and rubbed both front paws over his nose. As soon as he was satisfied that all was well, he laid back his ears and set to work on the grass.
His companion seemed less at ease. He was small, with wide, staring eyes and a way of raising and turning his head which suggested not so much caution as a kind of ceaseless, nervous tension. His nose moved continually, and when a bumblebee flew humming to a thistle bloom behind him, he jumped and spun round with a start that sent two nearby rabbits scurrying for holes before the nearest, a buck with black-tipped ears, recognized him and returned to feeding.
"Oh, it's only Fiver," said the black-tipped rabbit, "jumping at bluebottles again. Come on, Buckthorn, what were you telling me?"
"Fiver?" said the other rabbit. "Why's he called that?"
"Five in the litter, you know: he was the last--and the smallest. You'd wonder nothing had got him by now. I always say a man couldn't see him and a fox wouldn't want him. Still, I admit he seems to be able to keep out of harm's way."*
The small rabbit came closer to his companion, lolloping on long hind legs.
"Let's go a bit further, Hazel," he said. "You know, there's something queer about the warren this evening, although I can't tell exactly what it is. Shall we go down to the brook?"
"All right," answered Hazel, "and you can find me a cowslip. If you can't find one, no one can."
He led the way down the slope, his shadow stretching behind him on the grass. They reached the brook and began nibbling and searching close beside the wheel ruts of the track.
It was not long before Fiver found what they were looking for. Cowslips are a delicacy among rabbits, and as a rule there are very few left by late May in the neighborhood of even a small warren. This one had not bloomed and its flat spread of leaves was almost hidden under the long grass. They were just starting on it when two larger rabbits came running across from the other side of the nearby cattle wade.
"Cowslip?" said one. "All right--just leave it to us. Come on, hurry up," he added, as Fiver hesitated. "You heard me, didn't you?"
"Fiver found it, Toadflax," said Hazel.
"And we'll eat it," replied Toadflax. "Cowslips are for Owsla*--don't you know that? If you don't, we can easily teach you."
Fiver had already turned away. Hazel caught him up by the culvert.
"I'm sick and tired of it," he said. "It's the same all the time. 'These are my claws, so this is my cowslip.' 'These are my teeth, so this is my burrow.' I'll tell you, if ever I get into the Owsla, I'll treat outskirters with a bit of decency."
"Well, you can at least expect to be in the Owsla one day," answered Fiver. "You've got some weight coming and that's more than I shall ever have."
"You don't suppose I'll leave you to look after yourself, do you?" said Hazel. "But to tell you the truth, I sometimes feel like clearing out of this warren altogether. Still, let's forget it now and try to enjoy the evening. I tell you what--shall we go across the brook? There'll be fewer rabbits and we can have a bit of peace. Unless you feel it isn't safe?" he added.
The way in which he asked suggested that he did in fact think that Fiver was likely to know better than himself, and it was clear from Fiver's reply that this was accepted between them.
"No, it's safe enough," he answered. "If I start feeling there's anything dangerous I'll tell you. But it's not exactly danger that I seem to feel about the place. It's--oh, I don't know--something oppressive, like thunder: I can't tell what; but it worries me. All the same, I'll come across with you."
They ran over the culvert. The grass was wet and thick near the stream and they made their way up the opposite slope, looking for drier ground. Part of the slope was in shadow, for the sun was sinking ahead of them, and Hazel, who wanted a warm, sunny spot, went on until they were quite near the lane. As they approached the gate he stopped, staring.
"Fiver, what's that? Look!"
A little way in front of them, the ground had been freshly disturbed. Two piles of earth lay on the grass. Heavy posts, reeking of creosote and paint, towered up as high as the holly trees in the hedge, and the board they carried threw a long shadow across the top of the field. Near one of the posts, a hammer and a few nails had been left behind.
The two rabbits went up to the board at a hopping run and crouched in a patch of nettles on the far side, wrinkling their noses at the smell of a dead cigarette end somewhere in the grass. Suddenly Fiver shivered and cowered down.
"Oh, Hazel! This is where it comes from! I know now--something very bad! Some terrible thing--coming closer and closer."
He began to whimper with fear.
"What sort of thing--what do you mean? I thought you said there was no danger?"
"I don't know what it is," answered Fiver wretchedly. "There isn't any danger here, at this moment. But it's coming--it's coming. Oh, Hazel, look! The field! It's covered with blood!"
"Don't be silly, it's only the light of the sunset. Fiver, come on, don't talk like this, you're frightening me!"
Fiver sat trembling and crying among the nettles as Hazel tried to reassure him and to find out what it could be that had suddenly driven him beside himself. If he was terrified, why did he not run for safety, as any sensible rabbit would? But Fiver could not explain and only grew more and more distressed. At last Hazel said,
"Fiver, you can't sit crying here. Anyway, it's getting dark. We'd better go back to the burrow."
"Back to the burrow?" whimpered Fiver. "It'll come there--don't think it won't! I tell you, the field's full of blood--"
"Now stop it," said Hazel firmly. "Just let me look after you for a bit. Whatever the trouble is, it's time we got back."
He ran down the field and over the brook to the cattle wade. Here there was a delay, for Fiver--surrounded on all sides by the quiet summer evening--became helpless and almost paralyzed with fear. When at last Hazel had got him back to the ditch, he refused at first to go underground and Hazel had almost to push him down the hole.
The sun set behind the opposite slope. The wind turned colder, with a scatter of rain, and in less than an hour it was dark. All color had faded from the sky: and although the big board by the gate creaked slightly in the night wind (as though to insist that it had not disappeared in the darkness, but was still firmly where it had been put), there was no passer-by to read the sharp, hard letters that cut straight as black knives across its white surface. They said:
THIS IDEALLY SITUATED ESTATE, COMPRISING SIX ACRES OF EXCELLENT BUILDING LAND, IS TO BE DEVELOPED WITH HIGH CLASS MODERN RESIDENCES BY SUTCH AND MARTIN, LIMITED, OF NEWBURY, BERKS.
* Rabbits can count up to four. Any number above four is hrair--"a lot," or "a thousand." Thus they say U Hrair--"The Thousand"--to mean, collectively, all the enemies (or elil, as they call them) of rabbits--fox, stoat, weasel, cat, owl, man, etc. There were probably more than five rabbits in the litter when Fiver was born, but his name, Hrairoo, means "Little Thousand"--i.e., the little one of a lot or, as they say of pigs, "the runt."
* Nearly all warrens have an Owsla, or group of strong or clever rabbits--second-year or older--surrounding the Chief Rabbit and his doe and exercising authority. Owslas vary. In one warren, the Owsla may be the band of a warlord: in another, it may consist largely of clever patrollers or garden-raiders. Sometimes a good storyteller may find a place; or a seer, or intuitive rabbit. In the Sandleford warren at this time, the Owsla was rather military in character (though, as will be seen later, not so military as some).
2. The Chief Rabbit
The darksome statesman, hung with weights and woe,
Like a thick midnight-fog, moved there so slow,
He did not stay, nor go.
Henry Vaughan, The World
In the darkness and warmth of the burrow Hazel suddenly woke, struggling and kicking with his back legs. Something was attacking him. There was no smell of ferret or weasel. No instinct told him to run. His head cleared and he realized that he was alone except for Fiver. It was Fiver who was clambering over him, clawing and grabbing like a rabbit trying to climb a wire fence in a panic.
"Fiver! Fiver, wake up, you silly fellow! It's Hazel. You'll hurt me in a moment. Wake up!"
He held him down. Fiver struggled and woke.
"Oh, Hazel! I was dreaming. It was dreadful. You were there. We were sitting on water, going down a great, deep stream, and then I realized we were on a board--like that board in the field--all white and covered with black lines. There were other rabbits there--bucks and does. But when I looked down, I saw the board was all made of bones and wire; and I screamed and you said, 'Swim--everybody swim'; and then I was looking for you everywhere and trying to drag you out of a hole in the bank. I found you, but you said, 'The Chief Rabbit must go alone,' and you floated away down a dark tunnel of water."
"Well, you've hurt my ribs, anyway. Tunnel of water indeed! What rubbish! Can we go back to sleep now?"
"Hazel--the danger, the bad thing. It hasn't gone away. It's here--all round us. Don't tell me to forget about it and go to sleep. We've got to go away before it's too late."
"Go away? From here, you mean? From the warren?"
"Yes. Very soon. It doesn't matter where."
"Just you and I?"
"No, everyone."
"The whole warren? Don't be silly. They won't come. They'll say you're out of your wits."
"Then they'll be here when the bad thing comes. You must listen to me, Hazel. Believe me, something very bad is close upon us and we ought to go away."
"Well, I suppose we'd better go and see the Chief Rabbit and you can tell him about it. Or I'll try to. But I don't expect he'll like the idea at all."
Hazel led the way down the slope of the run and up toward the bramble curtain. He did not want to believe Fiver, and he was afraid not to.
It was a little after ni-Frith, or noon. The whole warren were underground, mostly asleep. Hazel and Fiver went a short way above ground and then into a wide, open hole in a sand patch and so down, by various runs, until they were thirty feet into the wood, among the roots of an oak. Here they were stopped by a large, heavily built rabbit--one of the Owsla. He had a curious, heavy growth of fur on the crown of his head, which gave him an odd appearance, as though he were wearing a kind of cap. This had given him his name, Thlayli, which means, literally, "Furhead" or, as we might say, "Bigwig."
"Hazel?" said Bigwig, sniffing at him in the deep twilight among the tree roots. "It is Hazel, isn't it? What are you doing here? And at this time of day?" He ignored Fiver, who was waiting further down the run.
"We want to see the Chief Rabbit," said Hazel. "It's important, Bigwig. Can you help us?"
"We?" said Bigwig. "Is he going to see him, too?"
"Yes, he must. Do trust me, Bigwig. I don't usually come and talk like this, do I? When did I ever ask to see the Chief Rabbit before?"
"Well, I'll do it for you, Hazel, although I'll probably get my head bitten off. I'll tell him I know you're a sensible fellow. He ought to know you himself, of course, but he's getting old. Wait here, will you?"
Bigwig went a little way down the run and stopped at the entrance to a large burrow. After speaking a few words that Hazel could not catch, he was evidently called inside. The two rabbits waited in silence, broken only by the continual nervous fidgeting of Fiver.
The Chief Rabbit's name and style was Threarah, meaning "Lord Rowan Tree." For some reason he was always referred to as "The Threarah"--perhaps because there happened to be only one threar, or rowan, near the warren, from which he took his name. He had won his position not only by strength in his prime, but also by level-headedness and a certain self-contained detachment, quite unlike the impulsive behavior of most rabbits. It was well known that he never let himself become excited by rumor or danger. He had coolly--some even said coldly--stood firm during the terrible onslaught of the myxomatosis, ruthlessly driving out every rabbit who seemed to be sickening. He had resisted all ideas of mass emigration and enforced complete isolation on the warren, thereby almost certainly saving it from extinction. It was he, too, who had once dealt with a particularly troublesome stoat by leading it down among the pheasant coops and so (at the risk of his own life) onto a keeper's gun. He was now, as Bigwig said, getting old, but his wits were still clear enough. When Hazel and Fiver were brought in, he greeted them politely. Owsla like Toadflax might threaten and bully. The Threarah had no need.
"Ah, Walnut. It is Walnut, isn't it?"
"Hazel," said Hazel.
"Hazel, of course. How very nice of you to come and see me. I knew your mother well. And your friend--"
"My brother."
"Your brother," said the Threarah, with the faintest suggestion of "Don't correct me any more, will you?" in his voice. "Do make yourselves comfortable. Have some lettuce?"
The Chief Rabbit's lettuce was stolen by the Owsla from a garden half a mile away across the fields. Outskirters seldom or never saw lettuce. Hazel took a small leaf and nibbled politely. Fiver refused, and sat blinking and twitching miserably.
"Now, how are things with you?" said the Chief Rabbit. "Do tell me how I can help you."
"Well, sir," said Hazel rather hesitantly, "it's because of my brother--Fiver here. He can often tell when there's anything bad about, and I've found him right again and again. He knew the flood was coming last autumn and sometimes he can tell where a wire's been set. And now he says he can sense a bad danger coming upon the warren."
"A bad danger. Yes, I see. How very upsetting," said the Chief Rabbit, looking anything but upset. "Now, what sort of danger, I wonder?" He looked at Fiver.
"I don't know," said Fiver. "B-but it's bad. It's so b-bad that--it's very bad," he concluded miserably.
The Threarah waited politely for a few moments and then he said, "Well, now, and what ought we to do about it, I wonder?"
"Go away," said Fiver instantly. "Go away. All of us. Now. Threarah, sir, we must all go away."
The Threarah waited again. Then, in an extremely understanding voice, he said, "Well, I never did! That's rather a tall order, isn't it? What do you think yourself?"
"Well, sir," said Hazel, "my brother doesn't really think about these feelings he gets. He just has the feelings, if you see what I mean. I'm sure you're the right person to decide what we ought to do."
"Well, that's very nice of you to say that. I hope I am. But now, my dear fellows, let's just think about this a moment, shall we? It's May, isn't it? Everyone's busy and most of the rabbits are enjoying themselves. No elil for miles, or so they tell me. No illness, good weather. And you want me to tell the warren that young--er--young--er--your brother here has got a hunch and we must all go traipsing across country to goodness knows where and risk the consequences, eh? What do you think they'll say? All delighted, eh?"
"They'd take it from you," said Fiver suddenly.
"That's very nice of you," said the Threarah again. "Well, perhaps they would, perhaps they would. But I should have to consider it very carefully indeed. A most serious step, of course. And then--"
"But there's no time, Threarah, sir," blurted out Fiver. "I can feel the danger like a wire round my neck--like a wire--Hazel, help!" He squealed and rolled over in the sand, kicking frantically, as a rabbit does in a snare. Hazel held him down with both forepaws and he grew quieter.
"I'm awfully sorry, Chief Rabbit," said Hazel. "He gets like this sometimes. He'll be all right in a minute."
"What a shame! What a shame! Poor fellow, perhaps he ought to go home and rest. Yes, you'd better take him along now. Well, it's really been extremely good of you to come and see me, Walnut. I appreciate it very much indeed. And I shall think over all you've said most carefully, you can be quite sure of that. Bigwig, just wait a moment, will you?"
As Hazel and Fiver made their way dejectedly down the run outside the Threarah's burrow, they could just hear, from inside, the Chief Rabbit's voice assuming a rather sharper note, interspersed with an occasional "Yes, sir," "No, sir."
Bigwig, as he had predicted, was getting his head bitten off.
3. Hazel's Decision
What am I lying here for? ... We are lying here as though we had a chance of enjoying a quiet time. ... Am I waiting until I become a little older?
Xenophon, The Anabasis
"But, Hazel, you didn't really think the Chief Rabbit would act on your advice, did you? What were you expecting?"
It was evening once more and Hazel and Fiver were feeding outside the wood with two friends. Blackberry, the rabbit with tipped ears who had been startled by Fiver the night before, had listened carefully to Hazel's description of the notice board, remarking that he had always felt sure that men left these things about to act as signs or messages of some kind, in the same way that rabbits left marks on runs and gaps. It was another neighbor, Dandelion, who had now brought the talk back to the Threarah and his indifference to Fiver's fear.
"I don't know what I expected," said Hazel. "I'd never been near the Chief Rabbit before. But I thought, 'Well, even if he won't listen, at least no one cay say afterward that we didn't do our best to warn him.' "
"You're sure, then, that there's really something to be afraid of?"
"I'm quite certain. I've always known Fiver, you see."
Blackberry was about to reply when another rabbit came noisily through the thick dog's mercury in the wood, blundered down into the brambles and pushed his way up from the ditch. It was Bigwig.
"Hello, Bigwig," said Hazel. "You're off duty?"
"Off duty" said Bigwig, "and likely to remain off duty."
"How do you mean?"
"I've left the Owsla, that's what I mean."
"Not on our account?"
"You could say that. The Threarah's rather good at making himself unpleasant when he's been woken up at ni-Frith for what he considers a piece of trivial nonsense. He certainly knows how to get under your skin. I dare say a good many rabbits would have kept quiet and thought about keeping on the right side of the Chief, but I'm afraid I'm not much good at that. I told him that the Owsla's privileges didn't mean all that much to me in any case and that a strong rabbit could always do just as well by leaving the warren. He told me not to be impulsive and think it over, but I shan't stay. Lettuce-stealing isn't my idea of a jolly life, nor sentry duty in the burrow. I'm in a fine temper, I can tell you."
"No one will steal lettuces soon," said Fiver quietly.
"Oh, that's you, Fiver, is it?" said Bigwig, noticing him for the first time. "Good, I was coming to look for you. I've been thinking about what you said to the Chief Rabbit. Tell me, is it a sort of tremendous hoax to make yourself important, or is it true?"
"It is true," said Fiver. "I wish it weren't."
"Then you'll be leaving the warren?"
They were all startled by the bluntness with which Bigwig went to the point. Dandelion muttered, "Leave the warren, Frithrah!" while Blackberry twitched his ears and looked very intently, first at Bigwig and then at Hazel.
It was Hazel who replied. "Fiver and I will be leaving the warren tonight," he said deliberately. "I don't know exactly where we shall go, but we'll take anyone who's ready to come with us."
"Right," said Bigwig, "then you can take me."
The last thing Hazel had expected was the immediate support of a member of the Owsla. It crossed his mind that although Bigwig would certainly be a useful rabbit in a tight corner, he would also be a difficult one to get on with. He certainly would not want to do what he was told--or even asked--by an outskirter. "I don't care if he is in the Owsla," thought Hazel. "If we get away from the warren, I'm not going to let Bigwig run everything, or why bother to go?" But he answered only, "Good. We shall be glad to have you."
He looked round at the other rabbits, who were all staring either at Bigwig or at himself. It was Blackberry who spoke next.
"I think I'll come," he said. "I don't quite know whether it's you who've persuaded me, Fiver. But anyway, there are too many bucks in this warren, and it's pretty poor fun for any rabbit that's not in the Owsla. The funny thing is that you feel terrified to stay and I feel terrified to go. Foxes here, weasels there, Fiver in the middle, begone dull care!"
He pulled out a burnet leaf and ate it slowly, concealing his fear as best he could; for all his instincts were warning him of the dangers in the unknown country beyond the warren.
"If we believe Fiver," said Hazel, "it means that we think no rabbits at all ought to stay here. So between now and the time when we go, we ought to persuade as many as we can to join us."
"I think there are one or two in the Owsla who might be worth sounding," said Bigwig. "If I can talk them over, they'll be with me when I join you tonight. But they won't come because of Fiver. They'll be juniors, discontented fellows like me. You need to have heard Fiver yourself to be convinced by him. He's convinced me. It's obvious that he's been sent some kind of message, and I believe in these things. I can't think why he didn't convince the Threarah."
"Because the Threarah doesn't like anything he hasn't thought of for himself," answered Hazel. "But we can't bother with him any more now. We've got to try to collect some more rabbits and meet again here, fu Inlé. And we'll start fu Inlé, too: we can't wait longer. The danger's coming closer all the time--whatever it is--and, besides, the Threarah isn't going to like it if he finds out that you've been trying to get at rabbits in the Owsla, Bigwig. Neither is Captain Holly, I dare say. They won't mind odds and ends like us clearing off, but they won't want to lose you. If I were in your place, I'd be careful whom I picked to talk to."
4. The Departure
Now sir, young Fortinbras,
Of unimproved mettle hot and full,
Hath in the skirts of Norway here and there
Sharked up a list of lawless resolutes
For food and diet to some enterprise
That hath a stomach in't.
Shakespeare, Hamlet
Fu Inlé means "after moonrise." Rabbits, of course, have no idea of precise time or of punctuality. In this respect they are much the same as primitive people, who often take several days over assembling for some purpose and then several more to get started. Before such people can act together, a kind of telepathic feeling has to flow through them and ripen to the point when they all know that they are ready to begin. Anyone who has seen the martins and swallows in September, assembling on the telephone wires, twittering, making short flights singly and in groups over the open, stubbly fields, returning to form longer and even longer lines above the yellowing verges of the lanes--the hundreds of individual birds merging and blending, in a mounting excitement, into swarms, and these swarms coming loosely and untidily together to create a great, unorganized flock, thick at the center and ragged at the edges, which breaks and re-forms continually like clouds or waves--until that moment when the greater part (but not all) of them know that the time has come: they are off, and have begun once more that great southward flight which many will not survive; anyone seeing this has seen at work the current that flows (among creatures who think of themselves primarily as part of a group and only secondarily, if at all, as individuals) to fuse them together and impel them into action without conscious thought or will: has seen at work the angel which drove the First Crusade into Antioch and drives the lemmings into the sea.
It was actually about an hour after moonrise and a good while before midnight when Hazel and Fiver once more came out of their burrow behind the brambles and slipped quietly along the bottom of the ditch. With them was a third rabbit, Hlao--Pipkin--a friend of Fiver. (Hlao means any small concavity in the grass where moisture may collect--e.g., the dimple formed by a dandelion or thistle cup.) He too was small, and inclined to be timid, and Hazel and Fiver had spent the greater part of their last evening in the warren in persuading him to join them. Pipkin had agreed rather hesitantly. He still felt extremely nervous about what might happen once they left the warren, and had decided that the best way to avoid trouble would be to keep close to Hazel and do exactly what he said.
The three were still in the ditch when Hazel heard a movement above. He looked up quickly.
"Who's there?" he said. "Dandelion?"
"No, I'm Hawkbit," said the rabbit who was peering over the edge. He jumped down among them, landing rather heavily. "Do you remember me, Hazel? We were in the same burrow during the snow last winter. Dandelion told me you were going to leave the warren tonight. If you are, I'll come with you."
Hazel could recall Hawkbit--a rather slow, stupid rabbit whose company for five snowbound days underground had been distinctly tedious. Still, he thought, this was no time to pick and choose. Although Bigwig might succeed in talking over one or two, most of the rabbits they could expect to join them would not come from the Owsla. They would be outskirters who were getting a thin time and wondering what to do about it. He was running over some of these in his mind when Dandelion appeared.
"The sooner we're off the better, I reckon," said Dandelion. "I don't much like the look of things. After I'd persuaded Hawkbit here to join us, I was just starting to talk to a few more, when I found that Toadflax fellow had followed me down the run. 'I want to know what you're up to,' he said, and I don't think he believed me when I told him I was only trying to find out whether there were any rabbits who wanted to leave the Warren. He asked me if I was sure I wasn't working up some kind of plot against the Threarah and he got awfully angry and suspicious. It put the wind up me, to tell you the truth, so I've just brought Hawkbit along and left it at that."
"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.
Hazel and his companions had spent the night doing everything that came unnaturally to them, and this for the first time. They had been moving in a group, or trying to: actually, they had straggled widely at times. They had been trying to maintain a steady pace, between hopping and running, and it had come hard. Since entering the wood they had been in severe anxiety. Several were almost tharn--that is, in that state of staring, glazed paralysis that comes over terrified or exhausted rabbits, so that they sit and watch their enemies--weasels or humans--approach to take their lives. Pipkin sat trembling under a fern, his ears drooping on either side of his head. He held one paw forward in an awkward, unnatural way and kept licking it miserably. Fiver was little better off. He still looked cheerful, but very weary. Hazel realized that until they were rested they would all be safer where they were than stumbling along in the open with no strength left to run from an enemy. But if they lay brooding, unable to feed or go underground, all their troubles would come crowding into their hearts, their fears would mount and they might very likely scatter, or even try to return to the warren. He had an idea.
"Yes, all right, we'll rest here," he said, "Let's go in among this fern. Come on, Dandelion, tell us a story. I know you're handy that way. Pipkin here can't wait to hear it."
Dandelion looked at Pipkin and realized what it was that Hazel was asking him to do. Choking back his own fear of the desolate, grassless woodland, the before-dawn-returning owls that they could hear some way off, and the extraordinary, rank animal smell that seemed to come from somewhere rather nearer, he began.
*The stresses are the same as in the phrase "Never say die."
6. The Story of the Blessing of El-ahrairah
Why should he think me cruel
Or that he is betrayed?
I'd have him love the thing that was
Before the world was made.
W.B. Yeats, A Woman Young and Old
"Long ago, Frith made the world. He made all the stars, too, and the world is one of the stars. He made them by scattering his droppings over the sky and this is why the grass and the trees grow so thick on the world. Frith makes the rivers flow. They follow him as he goes through the sky, and when he leaves the sky they look for him all night Frith made all the animals and birds, but when he first made them they were all the same. The sparrow and the kestrel were friends and they both ate seeds and flies. And the fox and the rabbit were friends and they both ate grass. And there was plenty of grass and plenty of flies, because the world was new and Frith shone down bright and warm all day.
"Now, El-ahrairah was among the animals in those days and he had many wives. He had so many wives that there was no counting them, and the wives had so many young that even Frith could not count them, and they ate the grass and the dandelions and the lettuces and the clover, and El-ahrairah was the father of them all." (Bigwig growled appreciatively.) "And after a time," went on Dandelion, "after a time the grass began to grow thin and the rabbits wandered everywhere, multiplying and eating as they went.
"Then Frith said to El-ahrairah, 'Prince Rabbit, if you cannot control your people, I shall find ways to control them. So mark what I say.' But El-ahrairah would not listen and he said to Frith, 'My people are the strongest in the world, for they breed faster and eat more than any of the other people. And this shows how much they love Lord Frith, for of all the animals they are the most responsive to his warmth and brightness. You must realize, my lord, how important they are and not hinder them in their beautiful lives.'
"Frith could have killed El-ahrairah at once, but he had a mind to keep him in the world, because he needed him to sport and jest and play tricks. So he determined to get the better of him, not by means of his own great power but by means of a trick. He gave out that he would hold a great meeting and that at that meeting he wouid give a present to every animal and bird, to make each one different from the rest. And all the creatures set out to go to the meeting place. But they all arrived at different times, because Frith made sure that it would happen so. And when the blackbird came, he gave him his beautiful song, and when the cow came, he gave her sharp horns and the strength to be afraid of no other creature. And so in their turn came the fox and the stoat and the weasel. And to each of them Frith gave the cunning and the fierceness and the desire to hunt and slay and eat the children of El-ahrairah. And so they went away from Frith full of nothing but hunger to kill the rabbits.
"Now, all this time El-ahrairah was dancing and mating and boasting that he was going to Frith's meeting to receive a great gift. And at last he set out for the meeting place. But as he was going there, he stopped to rest on a soft, sandy hillside. And while he was resting, over the hill came flying the dark swift, screaming as he went, 'News! News! News!' For you know, this is what he has said ever since that day. So El-ahrairah called up to him and said, 'What news?' 'Why,' said the swift, 'I would not be you, El-ahrairah. For Frith has given the fox and the weasel cunning hearts and sharp teeth, and to the cat he has given silent feet and eyes that can see in the dark, and they are gone away from Frith's place to kill and devour all that belongs to El-ahrairah.' And he dashed on over the hills. And at that moment El-ahrairah heard the voice of Frith calling, 'Where is El-ahrairah? For all the others have taken their gifts and gone and I have come to look for him.'
"Then El-ahrairah knew that Frith was too clever for him and he was frightened. He thought that the fox and the weasel were coming with Frith and he turned to the face of the hill and began to dig. He dug a hole, but he had dug only a little of it when Frith came over the hill alone. And he saw El-ahrairah's bottom sticking out of the hole and the sand flying out in showers as the digging went on. When he saw that, he called out, 'My friend, have you seen El-ahrairah, for I am looking for him to give him my gift?' 'No,' answered El-ahrairah, without coming out, 'I have not seen him. He is far away. He could not come.' So Frith said, 'Then come out of that hole and I will bless you instead of him.' 'No, I cannot,' said El-ahrairah, 'I am busy. The fox and the weasel are coming. If you want to bless me you can bless my bottom, for it is sticking out of the hole.' "
All the rabbits had heard the story before: on winter nights, when the cold draft moved down the warren passages and the icy wet lay in the pits of the runs below their burrows; and on summer evenings, in the grass under the red may and the sweet, carrion-scented elder bloom. Dandelion was telling it well, and even Pipkin forgot his weariness and danger and remembered instead the great indestructibility of the rabbits. Each one of them saw himself as El-ahrairah, who could be impudent to Frith and get away with it.
"Then," said Dandelion, "Frith felt himself in friendship with El-ahrairah, who would not give up even when he thought the fox and the weasel were coming. And he said, 'Very well, I will bless your bottom as it sticks out of the hole. Bottom, be strength and warning and speed forever and save the life of your master. Be it so!' And as he spoke, El-ahrairah's tail grew shining white and flashed like a star: and his back legs grew long and powerful and he thumped the hillside until the very beetles fell off the the grass stems. He came out of the hole and tore across the hill faster than any creature in the world. And Frith called after him, 'El-ahrairah, your people cannot rule the world, for I will not have it so. All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.' And El-ahrairah knew then that although he would not be mocked, yet Frith was his friend. And every evening, when Frith has done his day's work and lies calm and easy in the red sky, El-ahrairah and his children and his children's children come out of their holes and feed and play in his sight, for they are his friends and he has promised them that they can never be destroyed."
7. The Lendri and the River
Quant au courage moral, il avait trouvé fort rare, disait-il celui de deux heures après minuit; c'est-à-dire le courage de l'improviste.
Napoleon Bonaparte
As Dandelion ended, Acorn, who was on the windward side of the little group, suddenly started and sat back, with ears up and nostrils twitching. The strange, rank smell was stronger than ever and after a few moments they all heard a heavy movement close by. Suddenly, on the other side of the path, the fern parted and there looked out a long, dog-like head, striped black and white. It was pointed downward, the jaws grinning, the muzzle close to the ground. Behind, they could just discern great, powerful paws and a shaggy black body. The eyes were peering at them, full of savage cunning. The head moved slowly, taking in the dusky lengths of the wood ride in both directions, and then fixed them once more with its fierce, terrible stare. The jaws opened wider and they could see the teeth, glimmering white as the stripes along the head. For long moments it gazed and the rabbits remained motionless, staring back without a sound. Then Bigwig, who was nearest to the path, turned and slipped back among the others.
"A lendri," he muttered as he passed through them. "It may be dangerous and it may not, but I'm taking no chances with it. Let's get away."
They followed him through the fern and very soon came upon another, parallel path. Bigwig turned into it and broke into a run. Dandelion overtook him and the two disappeared among the ilex trees. Hazel and the others followed as best they could, with Pipkin limping and staggering behind, his fear driving him on in spite of the pain in his paw.
Hazel came out on the further side of the ilexes and followed the path round a bend. Then he stopped dead and sat back on his haunches. Immediately in front of him, Bigwig and Dandelion were staring out from the sheer edge of a high bank, and below the bank ran a stream. It was in fact the little river Enborne, twelve to fifteen feet wide and at this time of year two or three feet deep with spring rain, but to the rabbits it seemed immense, such a river as they had never imagined. The moon had almost set and the night was now dark, but they could see the water faintly shining as it flowed and could just make out, on the further side, a thin belt of nut trees and alders. Somewhere beyond, a plover called three or four times and was silent.
One by one, most of the others came up, stopped at the bank and looked at the water without speaking. A chilly breeze was moving and several of them trembled where they sat.
"Well, this is a nice surprise, Hazel," said Bigwig at length. "Or were you expecting this when you took us into the wood?"
Hazel realized wearily that Bigwig was probably going to be troublesome. He was certainly no coward, but he was likely to remain steady only as long as he could see his way clear and be sure of what to do. To him, perplexity was worse than danger; and when he was perplexed he usually grew angry. The day before, Fiver's warning had troubled him, and he had spoken in anger to the Threarah and left the Owsla. Then, while he was in an uncertain mood about the idea of leaving the warren, Captain Holly had appeared in capital time to be attacked and to provide a perfect reason for their departure. Now, at the sight of the river, Bigwig's assurance was leaking again and unless he, Hazel, could restore it in some way, they were likely to be in for trouble. He thought of the Threarah and his wily courtesy.
"I don't know what we should have done without you just now, Bigwig," he said. "What was that animal? Would it have killed us?"
"A lendri," said Bigwig. "I've heard about them in the Owsla. They're not really dangerous. They can't catch a rabbit that runs, and nearly always you can smell them coming. They're funny things: I've heard of rabbits living almost on top of them and coming to no harm. But they're best avoided, all the same. They'll dig out rabbit kittens and they'll kill an injured rabbit if they find one. They're one of the Thousand, all right. I ought to have guessed from the smell, but it was new to me."
"It had killed before it met us," said Blackberry with a shudder. "I saw the blood on its lips."
"A rat, perhaps, or pheasant chicks. Lucky for us it had killed, otherwise it might have been quicker. Still, fortunately we did the right thing. We really came out of it very well," said Bigwig.
Fiver came limping down the path with Pipkin. They, too, checked and stared at the sight of the river.
"What do you think we ought to do now, Fiver?" asked Hazel.
Fiver looked down at the water and twitched his ears.
"We shall have to cross it," he said. "But I don't think I can swim, Hazel. I'm worn out, and Pipkin's a good deal worse than I am."
"Cross it?" cried Bigwig. "Cross it? Who's going to cross it? What do you want to cross it for? I never heard such
nonsense."
Like all wild animals, rabbits can swim if they have to: and some even swim when it suits them. Rabbits have been known to live on the edge of a wood and regularly swim a brook to feed in the fields beyond. But most rabbits avoid swimming, and certainly an exhausted rabbit could not swim the Enborne.
"I don't want to jump in there," said Speedwell.
"Why not just go along the bank?" asked Hawkbit.
Hazel suspected that if Fiver felt they ought to cross the river, it might be dangerous not to. But how were the others to be persuaded? At this moment, as he was still wondering what to say to them, he suddenly realized that
something had lightened his spirits. What could it be? A smell? A sound? Then he knew. Nearby, across the river, a lark had begun to twitter and climb. It was morning. A blackbird called one or two deep, slow notes and was followed by a wood pigeon. Soon they were in a gray twilight and could see that the stream bordered the further edge of the wood. On the other side lay open fields.
8. The Crossing
The centurion ... commanded that they which could swim should cast themselves first into the sea and get to land. And the rest, some on boards and some on broken pieces of the ship. And so it came to pass, that they escaped all safe to land.
The Acts of the Apostles , Chapter 27
The top of the sandy bank was a good six feet above the water. From where they sat, the rabbits could look straight ahead upstream, and downstream to their left. Evidently there were nesting holes in the sheer face below them, for as the light grew they saw three or four martins dart out over the stream and away into the fields beyond. In a short time one returned with his beak full, and they could hear the nestlings squeaking as he flew out of sight beneath their feet. The bank did not extend far in either direction. Upstream, it sloped down to a grassy path between the trees and the water. This followed the line of the river, which ran straight from almost as far away as they could see, flowing smoothly without fords, gravel shallows or plank bridges. Immediately below them lay a wide pool and here the water was almost still. Away to their left, the bank sloped down again into clumps of alder, among which the stream could be heard chattering over gravel. There was a glimpse of barbed wire stretched across the water and they guessed that this must surround a cattle wade, like the one in the little brook near the home warren.
Hazel looked at the path upstream. "There's grass down there," he said. "Let's go and feed."
They scrambled down the bank and set to nibbling beside the water. Between them and the stream itself stood half-grown clumps of purple loosestrife and fleabane, which would not flower for nearly two months yet. The only blooms were a few early meadowsweet and a patch of pink butterbur. Looking back at the face of the bank, they could see that it was in fact dotted thickly with martins' holes. There was a narrow foreshore at the foot of the little cliff and this was littered with the rubbish of the colony--sticks, droppings, feathers, a broken egg and a dead nestling or two. The martins were now coming and going in numbers over the water.
Hazel moved close to Fiver and quietly edged him away from the others, feeding as he went. When they were a little way off, and half concealed by a patch of reeds, he said, "Are you sure we've got to cross the river, Fiver? What about going along the bank one way or the other?"
"No, we need to cross the river, Hazel, so that we can get into those fields--and on beyond them too. I know what we ought to be looking for--a high, lonely place with dry soil, where rabbits can see and hear all round and men hardly ever come. Wouldn't that be worth a journey?"
"Yes, of course it would. But is there such a place?"
"Not near a river--I needn't tell you that. But if you cross a river you start going up again, don't you? We ought to be on the top--on the top and in the open."
"But, Fiver, I think they may refuse to go much further. And then again, you say all this and yet you say you're too tired to swim?"
"I can rest, Hazel, but Pipkin's in a pretty bad way. I think he's injured. We may have to stay here half the day."
"Well, let's go and talk to the others. They may not mind staying. It's crossing they're not going to fancy, unless something frightens them into it."
As soon as they had made their way back, Bigwig came across to them from the bushes at the edge of the path.
"I was wondering where you'd got to," he said to Hazel. "Are you ready to move on?"
"No, I'm not," answered Hazel firmly. "I think we ought to stay here until ni-Frith. That'll give everyone a chance to rest and then we can swim across to those fields."
Bigwig was about to reply, but Blackberry spoke first.
"Bigwig," he said, "why don't you swim over now, and then go out into the field and have a look round? The wood may not stretch very far one way or the other. You could see from there; and then we might know which would be the best way to go."
"Oh, well," said Bigwig rather grudgingly, "I suppose there's some sense in that. I'll swim the embleer* river as many times as you like. Always glad to oblige."
Without the slightest hesitation, he took two hops to the water, waded in and swam across the deep, still pool. They watched him pull himself out beside a flowering clump of figwort, gripping one of the tough stems in his teeth, shake a shower of drops out of his fur and scutter into the alder bushes. A moment later, between the nut trees, they saw him running off into the field.
"I'm glad he's with us," said Hazel to Silver. Again he thought wryly of the Threarah. "He's the fellow to find out all we need to know. Oh, I say, look, he's coming back already."
Bigwig was racing back across the field, looking more agitated than he had at any time since the encounter with Captain Holly. He ran into the water almost headlong and paddled over fast, leaving an arrowhead ripple on the calm brown surface. He was speaking as he jerked himself out on the sandy foreshore.
"Well, Hazel, if I were you I shouldn't wait until ni-Frith. I should go now. In fact, I think you'll have to."
"Why?" asked Hazel.
"There's a large dog loose in the wood."
Hazel started. "What?" he said. "How do you know?"
"When you get into the field you can see the wood sloping down to the river. Parts of it are open. I saw the dog crossing a clearing. It was trailing a chain, so it must have broken loose. It may be on the lendri's scent, but the lendri will be underground by now. What do you think will happen when it picks up our scent, running from one side of the wood to the other, with dew on it? Come on, let's get over quickly,"
Hazel felt at a loss. In front of him stood Bigwig, sodden wet, undaunted, single-minded--the very picture of decision. At his shoulder was Fiver, silent and twitching. He saw Blackberry watching him intently, waiting for his lead and disregarding Bigwig's. Then he looked at Pipkin, huddled into a fold of sand, more panic-stricken and helpless than any rabbit he had ever seen. At this moment, up in the wood, there broke out an excited yelping and a jay began to scold.
Hazel spoke through a kind of light-headed trance. "Well, you'd better get on, then," he said, "and anyone else who wants to. Personally, I'm going to wait until Fiver and Pipkin are fit to tackle it."
"You silly blockhead!" cried Bigwig. "We'll all be finished! We'll--"
"Don't stamp about," said Hazel, "You may be heard. What do you suggest, then?"
"Suggest? There's no suggesting to be done. Those who can swim, swim. The others will have to stay here and hope for the best. The dog may not come."
"I'm afraid that won't do for me. I got Pipkin into this and I'm going to get him out."
"Well, you didn't get Fiver into it, did you? He got you into it."
Hazel could not help noticing, with reluctant admiration, that although Bigwig had lost his temper, he was apparently in no hurry on his own account and seemed less frightened than any of them. Looking round for Blackberry, he saw that he had left them and was up at the top of the pool, where the narrow beach tailed away into a gravel spit. His paws were half buried in the wet gravel and he was nosing at something large and flat on the waterline. It looked like a piece of wood.
"Blackberry," he said, "can you come back here a moment?"
Blackberry looked up, tugged out his paws and ran back.
"Hazel," he said quickly, "that's a piece of flat wood--like that piece that closed the gap by the Green Loose above the warren--you remember? It must have drifted down the river. So it floats. We could put Fiver and Pipkin on it and make it float again. It might go across the river. Can you understand?"
Hazel had no idea what he meant. Blackberry's flood of apparent nonsense only seemed to draw tighter the mesh of danger and bewilderment. As though Bigwig's angry impatience, Pipkin's terror and the approaching dog were not enough to contend with, the cleverest rabbit among them had evidently gone out of his mind. He felt close to despair.
"Frithrah, yes, I see!" said an excited voice at his ear. It was Fiver. "Quick, Hazel, don't wait! Come on, and bring Pipkin!"
It was Blackberry who bullied the stupefied Pipkin to his feet and forced him to limp the few yards to the gravel spit. The piece of wood, hardly bigger than a large rhubarb leaf, was lightly aground. Blackberry almost drove Pipkin onto it with his claws. Pipkin crouched shivering and Fiver followed him aboard.
"Who's strong?" said Blackberry. "Bigwig! Silver! Push it out!"
No one obeyed him. All squatted, puzzled and uncertain. Blackberry buried his nose in the gravel under the landward edge of the board and raised it, pushing. The board tipped. Pipkin squealed and Fiver lowered his head and splayed his claws. Then the board righted itself and drifted out a few feet into the pool with the two rabbits hunched upon it, rigid and motionless. It rotated slowly and they found themselves staring back at their comrades.
"Frith and Inlé!" said Dandelion. "They're sitting on the water! Why don't they sink?"
"They're sitting on the wood and the wood floats, can't you see?" said Blackberry. "Now we swim over ourselves. Can we start, Hazel?"
During the last few minutes Hazel had been as near to losing his head as he was ever to come. He had been at his wits' end, with no reply to Bigwig's scornful impatience except his readiness to risk his own life in company with Fiver and Pipkin. He still could not understand what had happened, but at least he realized that Blackberry wanted him to show authority. His head cleared.
"Swim," he said. "Everybody swim."
He watched them as they went in. Dandelion swam as well as he ran, swiftly and easily. Silver, too, was strong. The others paddled and scrambled over somehow, and as they began to reach the other side, Hazel plunged. The cold water penetrated his fur almost at once. His breath came short and as his head went under he could hear a faint grating of gravel along the bottom. He paddled across awkwardly, his head tilted high out of the water, and made for the figwort. As he pulled himself out, he looked round among the sopping rabbits in the alders.
"Where's Bigwig?" he asked.
"Behind you," answered Blackberry, his teeth chattering.
Bigwig was still in the water, on the other side of the pool. He had swum to the raft, put his head against it and was pushing it forward with heavy thrusts of his back legs. "Keep still," Hazel heard him say in a quick, gulping voice. Then he sank. But a moment later he was up again and had thrust his head over the back of the board. As he kicked and struggled, it tilted and then, while the rabbits watched from the bank, moved slowly across the pool and grounded on the opposite side. Fiver pushed Pipkin onto the stones and Bigwig waded out beside them, shivering and breathless.
"I got the idea once Blackberry had shown us," he said. "But it's hard to push it when you're in the water. I hope it's not long to sunrise. I'm cold. Let's get on."
There was no sign of the dog as they made haste through the alders and up the field to the first hedgerow. Most of them had not understood Blackberry's discovery of the raft and at once forgot it. Fiver, however, came over to where Blackberry was lying against the stem of a blackthorn in the hedge.
"You saved Pipkin and me, didn't you?" he said. "I don't think Pipkin's got any idea what really happened; but I have."
"I admit it was a good idea," replied Blackberry. "Let's remember it. It might come in handy again sometime."
*Stinking--the word for the smell of a fox.
9. The Crow and the Beanfield
With the beanflower's boon,
And the blackbird's tune,
And May, and June!
Robert Browning, De Gustibus
The sun rose while they were still lying in the thorn. Already several of the rabbits were asleep, crouched uneasily between the thick stems, aware of the chance of danger but too tired to do more than trust to luck. Hazel, looking at them, felt almost as insecure as he had on the riverbank. A hedgerow in open fields was no place to remain all day. But where could they go? He needed to know more about their surroundings. He moved along the hedge, feeling the breeze from the south and looking for some spot where he could sit and scent it without too much risk. The smells that came down from the higher ground might tell him something.
He came to a wide gap which had been trodden into mud by cattle. He could see them grazing in the next field, further up the slope. He went cautiously out into the field, squatted down against a clump of thistles and began to smell the wind. Now that he was clear of the hawthorn scent of the hedge and the reek of cattle dung, he became fully aware of what had already been drifting into his nostrils while he was lying among the thorn. There was only one smell on the wind and it was new to him: a strong, fresh, sweet fragrance that filled the air. It was healthy enough. There was no harm in it. But what was it and why was it so strong? How could it exclude every other smell, in open country on a south wind? The source must be close by. Hazel wondered whether to send one of the rabbits to find out. Dandelion would be over the top and back almost as fast as a hare. Then his sense of adventure and mischief prompted him. He would go himself and bring back some news before they even knew that he had gone. That would give Bigwig something to bite on.
He ran easily up the meadow toward the cows. As he came they raised their heads and gazed at him, all together, for a moment, before returning to their feeding. A great black bird was flapping and hopping a little way behind the herd. It looked rather like a large rook, but, unlike a rook, it was alone. He watched its greenish, powerful beak stabbing the ground, but could not make out what it was doing. It so happened that Hazel had never seen a crow. It did not occur to him that it was following the track of a mole, in the hope of killing it with a blow of its beak and then pulling it out of its shallow run. If he had realized this, he might not have classed it light-heartedly as a "Not-hawk"--that is, anything from a wren to a pheasant--and continued on his way up the slope.
The strange fragrance was stronger now, coming over the top of the rise in a wave of scent that struck him powerfully--as the scent of orange blossom in the Mediterranean strikes a traveler who smells it for the first time. Fascinated, he ran to the crest. Nearby was another hedgerow and beyond, moving gently in the breeze, stood a field of broad beans in full flower.
Hazel squatted on his haunches and stared at the orderly forest of small, glaucous trees with their columns of black-and-white bloom. He had never seen anything like this. Wheat and barley he knew, and once he had been in a field of turnips. But this was entirely different from any of those and seemed, somehow, attractive, wholesome, propitious. True, rabbits could not eat these plants: he could smell that. But they could lie safely among them for as long as they liked, and they could move through them easily and unseen. Hazel determined then and there to bring the rabbits up to the beanfield to shelter and rest until the evening. He ran back and found the others where he had left them. Bigwig and Silver were awake, but all the rest were still napping uneasily.
"Not asleep, Silver?" he said.
"It's too dangerous, Hazel," replied Silver. "I'd like to sleep as much as anyone, but if we all sleep and something comes, who's going to spot it?"
"I know. I've found a place where we can sleep safely for as long as we like."
"A burrow?"
"No, not a burrow. A great field of scented plants that will cover us, sight and smell, until we're rested. Come out here and smell it, if you like."
Both rabbits did so. "You say you've seen these plants?" said Bigwig, turning his ears to catch the distant rustling of the beans."
"Yes, they're only just over the top. Come on, let's get the others moving before a man comes with a hrududu* or they'll scatter all over the place."
Silver roused the others and began to coax them into the field. They stumbled out drowsily, responding with reluctance to his repeated assurance that it was "only a little way."
They became widely separated as they straggled up the slope. Silver and Bigwig led the way, with Hazel and Buckthorn a short distance behind. The rest idled along, hopping a few yards and then pausing to nibble or to pass droppings on the warm, sunny grass. Silver was almost at the crest when suddenly, from halfway up, there came a high screaming--the sound a rabbit makes, not to call for help or to frighten an enemy, but simply out of terror. Fiver and Pipkin, limping behind the others, and conspicuously undersized and tired, were being attacked by the crow. It had flown low along the ground. Then, pouncing, it had aimed a blow of its great bill at Fiver, who just managed to dodge in time. Now it was leaping and hopping among the grass tussocks, striking at the two rabbits with terrible darts of its head. Crows aim at the eyes and Pipkin, sensing this, had buried his head in a clump of rank grass and was trying to burrow further in. It was he who was screaming.
Hazel covered the distance down the slope in a few seconds. He had no idea what he was going to do, and if the crow had ignored him he would probably have been at a loss. But by dashing up he distracted its attention and it turned on him. He swerved past it, stopped and, looking back, saw Bigwig come racing in from the opposite side. The crow turned again, struck at Bigwig and missed. Hazel heard its beak hit a pebble in the grass with a sound like a snail shell when a thrush beats it on a stone. As Silver followed Bigwig, it recovered itself and faced him squarely. Silver stopped short in fear and the crow seemed to dance before him, its great black wings flapping in a horrible commotion. It was just about to stab when Bigwig ran straight into it from behind and knocked it sideways, so that it staggered across the turf with a harsh, raucous cawing of rage.
"Keep at it!" cried Bigwig. "Come in behind it! They're cowards! They only attack helpless rabbits."
But already the crow was making off, flying low with slow, heavy wing beats. They watched it clear the further hedge and disappear into the wood beyond the river. In the silence there was a gentle, tearing sound as a grazing cow moved nearer.
Bigwig strolled over to Pipkin, muttering a ribald Owsla lampoon.
"Hoi, hoi u embleer Hrair,
M'saion ulé hraka vair."*
"Come on, Hlao-roo," he said. "You can get your head out now. Having quite a day, aren't we?"
He turned away and Pipkin tried to follow him. Hazel remembered that Fiver had said he thought he was injured. Now, as he watched him limping and staggering up the slope, it occurred to him that he might actually be wounded in some way. He kept trying to put his near-side front paw to the ground and then drawing it up again, hopping on three legs.
"I'll have a look at him as soon as they're settled under cover," he thought. "Poor little chap, he won't be able to get much further like that."
At the top of the slope Buckthorn was already leading the way into the beanfield. Hazel reached the hedge, crossed a narrow turf verge on the other side and found himself looking straight down a long, shadowy aisle between two rows of beans. The earth was soft and crumbling, with a scattering of the weeds that are found in cultivated fields--fumitory, charlock, pimpernel and mayweed, all growing in the green gloom under the bean leaves. As the plants moved in the breeze, the sunlight dappled and speckled back and forth over the brown soil, the white pebbles and weeds. Yet in this ubiquitous restlessness there was nothing alarming, for the whole forest took part in it and the only sound was the soft, steady movement of the leaves. Far along the bean row Hazel glimpsed Buckthorn's back and followed him into the depths of the field.
Soon after, all the rabbits had come together in a kind of hollow. Far around, on all sides, stood the orderly rows of beans, securing them against hostile approach, roofing them over and covering their scent. They could hardly have been safer underground. Even a little food could be had at a pinch, for here and there were a few pale twists of grass and here and there a dandelion.
"We can sleep here all day," said Hazel. "But I suppose one of us ought to stay awake; and if I take the first turn it'll give me a chance to have a look at your paw, Hlao-roo. I think you've got something in it."
Pipkin, who was lying on his left side, breathing quickly and heavily, rolled over and stretched out his front paw, underside turned upward. Hazel peered closely into the thick, coarse hair (a rabbit's foot has no pads) and after a few moments saw what he had expected--the oval shank of a snapped-off thorn sticking out through the skin. There was a little blood and the flesh was torn.
"You've got a big thorn in there, Hlao," he said. "No wonder you couldn't run. We'll have to get it out."
Getting the thorn out was not easy, for the foot had become so tender that Pipkin winced and pulled away even from Hazel's tongue. But after a good deal of patient effort Hazel succeeded in working out enough of the stump to get a grip with his teeth. The thorn came out smoothly and the wound bled. The spine was so long and thick that Hawkbit, who happened to be close by, woke Speedwell to have a look at it.
"Frith above, Pipkin!" said Speedwell, sniffing at the thorn where it lay on a pebble. "You'd better collect a few more like that: then you can make a notice board and frighten Fiver. You might have poked the lendri's eye out for us, if you'd only known."
"Lick the place, Hlao," said Hazel. "Lick it until it feels better and then go to sleep."
* Tractor--or any motor.
* Hoi, hoi, the stinking Thousand, We meet them even when we stop to pass our droppings."
10. The Road and the Common
Timorous answered, that they ... had got up that difficult place: but, said he, the further we go, the more danger we meet with; wherefore we turned, and are going back again.
John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress
After some time, Hazel woke Buckhorn. Then he scratched a shallow nest in the earth and slept. One watch succeeded another through the day, though how the rabbits judged the passing of the time is something that civilized human beings have lost the power to feel. Creatures that have neither clocks nor books are alive to all manner of knowledge about time and the weather; and about direction, too, as we know from their extraordinary migratory and homing journeys. The changes in the warmth and dampness of the soil, the falling of the sunlight patches, the altering movement of the beans in the light wind, the direction and strength of the air currents along the ground--all these were perceived by the rabbit awake.
The sun was beginning to set when Hazel woke to see Acorn listening and sniffing in the silence, between two white-skinned flints. The light was thicker, the breeze had dropped and the beans were still. Pipkin was stretched out a little way away. A yellow-and-black burying beetle, crawling across the white fur of his belly, stopped, waved its short, curved antennae and then moved on again. Hazel grew tense with sudden misgiving. He knew that these beetles come to dead bodies, on which they feed and lay their eggs. They will dig away the earth from under the bodies of small creatures, such as shrew mice and fallen fledglings, and then lay their eggs on them before covering them with soil. Surely Pipkin could not have died in his sleep? Hazel sat up quickly. Acorn started and turned toward him and the beetle scurried away over the pebbles as Pipkin moved and woke.
"How's the paw?" said Hazel.
Pipkin put it to the ground. Then he stood on it.
"It feels much better," he said. "I think I shall be able to go as well as the others now. They won't leave me behind, will they?"
Hazel rubbed his nose behind Pipkin's ear. "No one's going to leave anyone else behind," he said. "If you had to stay, I'd stay with you. But don't pick up any more thorns, Hlao-roo, because we may have to go a long way."
The next moment all the rabbits leaped up in panic. From close at hand the sound of a shot tore across the fields. A peewit rose screaming. The echoes came back in waves, like a pebble rolling round a box, and from the wood across the river came the clattering of wood pigeons' wings among the branches. In an instant the rabbits were running in all directions through the bean rows, each one tearing by instinct toward holes that were not there.
Hazel stopped short on the edge of the beans. Looking about him, he could see none of the others. He waited, trembling, for the next shot: but there was silence. Then he felt, vibrating along the ground, the steady tread of a man going away beyond the crest over which they had come that morning. At that moment Silver appeared, pushing his way through the plants close by.
"I hope it's the crow, don't you?" said Silver.
"I hope no one's been silly enough to bolt out of this field," answered Hazel. "They're all scattered. How can we find them?"
"I don't think we can," said Silver. "We'd better go back to where we were. They'll come in time."
It was in fact a long time before all the rabbits had come back to the hollow in the middle of the field. As he waited, Hazel realized more fully than ever how dangerous was their position, without holes, wandering in country they did not know. The lendri, the dog, the crow, the marksman--they had been lucky to escape them. How long would their luck hold? Would they really be able to travel on as far as Fiver's high place--wherever it might be?
"I'd settle for any decent, dry bank, myself," he thought, "as long as there was some grass and no men with guns. And the sooner we can find one the better."
Hawkbit was the last to return and as he came up Hazel set off at once. He looked cautiously out from among the beans and then darted into the hedgerow. The wind, as he stopped to sniff it, was reassuring, carrying only the scents of evening dew, may and cow dung. He led the way into the next field, a pasture: and here they all fell to feeding, nibbling their way over the grass as easily as though their warren were close by.
When he was halfway across the field, Hazel became aware of a hrududu approaching very fast on the other side of the further hedge. It was small and less noisy than the farm tractor which he had sometimes watched from the edge of the primrose wood at home. It passed in a flash of man-made, unnatural color, glittering here and there and brighter than a winter holly tree. A few moments later came the smells of petrol and exhaust. Hazel stared, twitching his nose. He could not understand how the hrududu could move so quickly and smoothly through the fields. Would it return? Would it come through the fields faster than they could run, and hunt them down?
As he paused, wondering what was best to be done, Bigwig came up.
"There's a road there, then," he said. "That'll give some of them a surprise, won't it?"
"A road?" said Hazel, thinking of the lane by the notice board. "How do you know?"
"Well, how do you suppose a hrududu can go that fast? Besides, can't you smell it?"
The smell of warm tar was now plain on the evening air.
"I've never smelled that in my life," said Hazel with a touch of irritation.
"Ah," said Bigwig, "but then you were never sent out stealing lettuces for the Threarah, were you? If you had been, you'd have learned about roads. There's nothing to them, really, as long as you let them alone by night. They're elil then, all right."
"You'd better teach me, I think," said Hazel. "I'll go up with you and we'll let the others follow."
They ran on and crept through the hedge. Hazel looked down at the road in astonishment. For a moment he thought that he was looking at another river--black, smooth and straight between its banks. Then he saw the gravel embedded in the tar and watched a spider running over the surface.
"But that's not natural," he said, sniffing the strange, strong smells of tar and oil. "What is it? How did it come there?"
"It's a man thing," said Bigwig. "They put that stuff there and then the hrududil run on it--faster than we can; and what else can run faster than we?"
"It's dangerous, then? They can catch us?"
"No, that's what's so odd. They don't take any notice of us at all. I'll show you, if you like."
The other rabbits were beginning to reach the hedge as Bigwig hopped down the bank and crouched on the verge of the road. From beyond the bend came the sound of another approaching car. Hazel and Silver watched tensely. The car appeared, flashing green and white, and raced down toward Bigwig. For an instant it filled the whole world with noise and fear. Then it was gone and Bigwig's fur was blowing in the whack of wind that followed it down the hedges. He jumped back up the bank among the staring rabbits.
"See? They don't hurt you," said Bigwig. "As a matter of fact, I don't think they're alive at all. But I must admit I can't altogether make it out."
As on the riverbank, Blackberry had moved away and was already down on the road on his own account, sniffing out toward the middle, halfway between Hazel and the bend. They saw him start and jump back to the shelter of the bank.
"What is it?" said Hazel.
Blackberry did not answer, and Hazel and Bigwig hopped toward him along the verge. He was opening and shutting his mouth and licking his lips, much as a cat does when something disgusts it.
"You say they're not dangerous, Bigwig," he said quietly. "But I think they must be, for all that."
In the middle of the road was a flattened, bloody mass of brown prickles and white fur, with small black feet and snout crushed round the edges. The flies crawled upon it, and here and there the sharp points of gravel pressed up through the flesh.
"A yona," said Blackberry. "What harm does a yona do to anything but slugs and beetles? And what can eat a yona?"
"It must have come at night," said Bigwig.
"Yes, of course. The yonil always hunt by night. If you see them by day, they're dying."
"I know. But what I'm trying to explain is that at night the hrududil have great lights, brighter than Frith himself. They draw creatures toward them, and if they shine on you, you can't see or think which way to go. Then the hrududu is quite likely to crush you. At least, that's what we were taught in the Owsla. I don't intend to try it."
"Well, it will be dark soon," said Hazel. "Come on, let's get across. As far as I can see, this road's no good to us at all. Now that I've learned about it, I want to get away from it as soon as I can."
By moonrise they had made their way through Newtown churchyard, where a little brook runs between the lawns and under the path. Wandering on, they climbed a hill and came to Newtown Common--a country of peat, gorse and silver birch. After the meadows they had left, this was a strange, forbidding land. Trees, herbage, even the soil--all were unfamiliar. They hesitated among the thick heather, unable to see more than a few feet ahead. Their fur became soaked with the dew. The ground was broken by rifts and pits of naked black peat, where water lay and sharp white stones, some as big as a pigeon's, some as a rabbit's skull, glimmered in the moonlight. Whenever they reached one of these rifts the rabbits huddled together, waiting for Hazel or Bigwig to climb the further side and find a way forward. Everywhere they came upon beetles, spiders and small lizards which scurried away as they pushed through the fibrous, resistant heather. Once Buckthorn disturbed a snake, and leaped into the air as it whipped between his paws to vanish down a hole at the foot of a birch.
The very plants were unknown to them--pink lousewort with its sprays of hooked flowers, bog asphodel and the thin-stemmed blooms of the sundews, rising above their hairy, fly-catching mouths, all shut fast by night. In this close jungle all was silence. They went more and more slowly, and made long halts in the peat cuts. But if the heather itself was silent, the breeze brought distant night sounds across the open common. A cock crowed. A dog ran barking and a man shouted at it. A little owl called "Kee-wik, kee-wik" and something--a vole or a shrew--gave a sudden squeal. There was not a noise but seemed to tell of danger.
Late in the night, toward moonset, Hazel was looking up from a cut where they were crouching to a little bank above. As he was wondering whether to climb up to it, to see whether he could get a clear view ahead, he heard a movement behind him and turned to find Hawkbit at his shoulder. There was something furtive and hesitant about him and Hazel glanced at him sharply, wondering for a moment whether he could have sickness or poison on him. "Er--Hazel," said Hawkbit, looking past him into the face of the dreary black cliff. "I--er--that is to say we--er--feel that we--well, that we can't go on like this. We've had enough of it."
He stopped. Hazel now saw that Speedwell and Acorn were behind him, listening expectantly. There was a pause.
"Go on, Hawkbit," said Speedwell, "or shall I?"
"More than enough," said Hawkbit, with a kind of foolish importance.
"Well, so have I," answered Hazel, "and I hope there won't be much more. Then we can all have a rest."
"We want to stop now," said Speedwell. "We think it was stupid to come so far."
"It gets worse and worse the further we go," said Acorn. "Where are we going and how long will it be before some of us stop running for good and all?"
"It's the place that worries you," said Hazel. "I don't like it myself, but it won't go on forever."
Hawkbit looked sly and shifty. "We don't believe you know where we are going," he said. "You didn't know about the road, did you? And you don't know what there is in front of us."
"Look here," said Hazel, "suppose you tell me what you want to do and I'll tell you what I think about it."
"We want to go back," said Acorn. "We think Fiver was wrong."
"How can you go back through all we've come through?" replied Hazel. "And probably get killed for wounding an Owsla officer, if you ever do get back? Talk sense, for Frith's sake."
"It wasn't we who wounded Holly," said Speedwell.
"You were there and Blackberry brought you there. Do you think they won't remember that? Besides--"
Hazel stopped as Fiver approached, followed by Bigwig.
"Hazel," said Fiver, "could you come up on the bank with me for a few moments? It's important."
"And while you're there," said Bigwig, scowling round at the others from under the great sheaf of fur on his head, "I'll just have a few words with these three. Why don't you get washed, Hawkbit? You look like the end of a rat's tail left in a trap. And as for you, Speedwell--"
Hazel did not wait to hear what Speedwell looked like. Following Fiver, he scrambled up the lumps and shelves of peat to the overhang of gravelly earth and thin grass that topped them. As soon as Fiver had found a place to clamber out, he led the way along the edge to the bank which Hazel had been looking at before Hawkbit spoke to him. It stood a few feet above the nodding, windy heather and was open and grassy at the top. They climbed it and squatted down. To their right the moon, smoky and yellow in thin night cloud, stood over a clump of distant pine trees. They looked southward across the dismal waste. Hazel waited for Fiver to speak, but he remained silent.
"What was it you wanted to say to me?" asked Hazel at last.
Fiver made no reply and Hazel paused in perplexity. From below, Bigwig was just audible.
"And you, Acorn, you dog-eared, dung-faced disgrace to a gamekeeper's gibbet, if I only had time to tell you--"
The moon sailed free of the cloud and lit the heather more brightly, but neither Hazel nor Fiver moved from the top of the bank. Fiver was looking far out beyond the edge of the common. Four miles away, along the southern skyline, rose the seven-hundred-and-fifty-foot ridge of the downs. On the highest point, the beech trees of Cottington's Clump were moving in a stronger wind than that which blew across the heather.
"Look!" said Fiver suddenly. "That's the place for us, Hazel. High, lonely hills, where the wind and the sound carry and the ground's as dry as straw in a barn. That's where we ought to be. That's where we have to get to."
Hazel looked at the dim, far-off hills. Obviously, the idea of trying to reach them was out of the question. It might well prove to be all they could do to find their way across the heather to some quiet field or copse bank like those they had been used to. It was lucky that Fiver had not come out with this foolish notion in front of any of the others, especially as there was trouble enough already. If only he could be persuaded to drop it here and now, there would be no harm done--unless, indeed, he had already said anything to Pipkin.
"I don't think we could get the others to go as far as that, Fiver," he said. "They're frightened and tired as it is, you know. What we need is to find a safe place soon, and I'd rather succeed in doing what we can than fail to do what we can't."
Fiver gave no sign of having heard him. He seemed to be lost in his own thoughts. When he spoke again, it was as though he were talking to himself. "There's a thick mist between the hills and us. I can't see through it, but through it we shall have to go. Or into it, anyway."
"A mist?" said Hazel. "What do you mean?"
"We're in for some mysterious trouble," whispered Fiver, "and it's not elil. It feels more like--like mist. Like being deceived and losing our way."
There was no mist around them. The May night was clear and fresh. Hazel waited in silence and after a time Fiver said, slowly and expressionlessly, "But we must go on, until we reach the hills." His voice sank and became that of a sleep-talker. "Until we reach the hills. The rabbit that goes back through the gap will run his head into trouble. That running--not wise. That running--not safe. Running--not--" He trembled violently, kicked once or twice and became quiet.
In the hollow below, Bigwig seemed to be drawing to a close. "And now, you bunch of mole-snouted, muck-raking, hutch-hearted sheep ticks, get out of my sight sharp. Otherwise I'll--" He became inaudible again.
Hazel looked once more at the faint line of the hills. Then, as Fiver stirred and muttered beside him, he pushed him gently with one forepaw and nuzzled his shoulder.
Fiver started. "What was I saying, Hazel?" he asked. "I'm afraid I can't remember. I meant to tell you--"
"Never mind," answered Hazel. "We'll go down now. It's time we were getting them on again. If you have any more queer feelings like that, keep close to me. I'll look after you."
11. Hard Going
Then Sir Beaumains ... rode all that ever he might ride through marshes and fields and great dales, that many times ... he plunged over the head in deep mires, for he knew not the way, but took the gainest way in that woodness. ... And at the last him happened to come to a fair green way.
Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur
When Hazel and Fiver reached the floor of the hollow they found Blackberry wailing for them, crouching on the peat and nibbling at a few brown stalks of sedge grass.
"Hello," said Hazel. "What's happened? Where are the others?"
"Over there," answered Blackberry. "There's been a fearful row. Bigwig told Hawkbit and Speedwell that he'd scratch them to pieces if they didn't obey him. And when Hawkbit said he wanted to know who was Chief Rabbit, Bigwig bit him. It seems a nasty business. Who is Chief Rabbit, anyway--you or Bigwig?"
"I don't know," answered Hazel, "but Bigwig's certainly the strongest. There was no need to go biting Hawkbit: he couldn't have gone back if he'd tried. He and his friends would have seen that if they'd been allowed to talk for a bit. Now Bigwig's put their backs up, and they'll think they've got to go on because he makes them. I want them to go on because they can see it's the only thing to do. There are too few of us for giving orders and biting people. Frith in a fog! Isn't there enough trouble and danger already?"
They went over to the far end of the pit. Bigwig and Silver were talking with Buckthorn under an overhanging broom. Nearby, Pipkin and Dandelion were pretending to feed on a patch of scrub. Some way away, Acorn was making a great business of licking Hawkbit's throat, while Speedwell watched.
"Keep still if you can, poor old chap," said Acorn, who obviously wanted to be overheard. "Just let me clean the blood out. Steady, now!" Hawkbit winced in an exaggerated manner and backed away. As Hazel came up, all the rabbits turned and stared at him expectantly.
"Look," said Hazel, "I know there's been some trouble, but the best thing will be to try to forget it. This is a bad place, but we'll soon get out of it."
"Do you really think we will?" asked Dandelion.
"If you'll follow me now," replied Hazel desperately, "I'll have you out of it by sunrise."
"If I don't," he thought, "they'll very likely tear me to bits: and much good may it do them."
For the second time he made his way out of the pit, and the others followed. The weary, frightening journey began again, broken only by alarms. Once a white owl swept silently overhead, so low that Hazel saw its dark, searching eyes looking into his own. But either it was not hunting or he was too big to tackle, for it disappeared over the heather; and although he waited motionless for some time, it did not return. Once Dandelion struck the smell of a stoat and they all joined him, whispering and sniffing over the ground. But the scent was old and after a time they went on again. In this low undergrowth their disorganized progress and uneven, differing rhythms of movement delayed them still more than in the wood. There were continual stampings of alarm, pausing, freezing to the spot at the sound of movement real or imagined. It was so dark that Hazel seldom knew for certain whether he was leading or whether Bigwig or Silver might not be ahead. Once, hearing an unaccountable noise in front of him, which ceased on the instant, he kept still for a long time; and when at last he moved cautiously forward, found Silver crouching behind a tussock of cocksfoot for fear of the sound of his own approach. All was confusion, ignorance, clambering and exhaustion. Throughout the bad dream of the night's journey, Pipkin seemed to be always close beside him. Though each of the others vanished and reappeared like fragments floating round a pool, Pipkin never left him; and his need for encouragement became at last Hazel's only support against his own weariness.
"Not far now, Hlao-roo, not far now," he kept muttering, until he realized that what he said had become meaningless, a mere refrain. He was not speaking to Pipkin or even to himself. He was talking in his sleep, or something very near it.
At last he saw the first of the dawn, like light faintly perceived round a corner at the far end of an unknown burrow; and in the same moment a yellowhammer sang. Hazel's feelings were like those which might pass through the mind of a defeated general. Where were his followers exactly? He hoped, not far away. But were they? All of them? Where had he led them? What was he going to do now? What if an enemy appeared at this moment? He had answers to none of these questions and no spirit left to force himself to think about them. Behind him, Pipkin shivered in the damp, and he turned and nuzzled him--much as the general, with nothing left to do, might fall to considering the welfare of his servant, simply because the servant happened to be there.
The light grew stronger and soon he could see that a little way ahead there was an open track of bare gravel. He limped out of the heather, sat on the stones and shook the wet from his fur. He could see Fiver's hills plainly now, greenish-gray and seeming close in the rain-laden air. He could even pick out the dots of furze bushes and stunted yew trees on the steep slopes. As he gazed at them, he heard an excited voice further down the track.
"He's done it! Didn't I tell you he'd do it?"
Hazel turned his head and saw Blackberry on the path. He was bedraggled and exhausted, but it was he who was speaking. Out of the heather behind him came Acorn, Speedwell and Buckthorn. All four rabbits were now staring straight at him. He wondered why. Then, as they approached, he realized that they were looking not at him, but past him at something further off. He turned round. The gravel track led downhill into a narrow belt of silver birch and rowan. Beyond was a thin hedge; and beyond that, a green field between two copses. They had reached the other side of the common.
"Oh, Hazel," said Blackberry, coming up to him round a puddle in the gravel. "I was so tired and confused, I actually began to wonder whether you knew where you were going. I could hear you in the heather, saying 'Not far now' and it was annoying me. I thought you were making it up. I should have known better. Frithrah, you're what I call a Chief Rabbit!"
"Well done, Hazel!" said Buckthorn. "Well done!"
Hazel did not know what to reply. He looked at them in silence and it was Acorn who spoke next.
"Come on!" he said. "Who's going to be first into that field? I can still run." He was off, slowly enough, down the slope, but when Hazel stamped for him to stop he did so at once.
"Where are the others?" said Hazel. "Dandelion? Bigwig?"
At that moment Dandelion appeared out of the heather and sat on the path, looking at the field. He was followed first by Hawkbit and then by Fiver. Hazel was watching Fiver as he took in the sight of the field, when Buckthorn drew his attention back to the foot of the slope.
"Look, Hazel," he said, "Silver and Bigwig are down there. They're waiting for us."
Silver's light-gray fur showed up plainly against a low spray of gorse, but Hazel could not see Bigwig until he sat up and ran toward them.
"Splendid, Hazel," he said. "Everybody's here. Let's get them into that field."
A few moments later they were under the silver birches and as the sun rose, striking flashes of red and green from the drops on ferns and twigs, they scrambled through the hedge, across a shallow ditch and into the thick grass of the meadow.
12. The Stranger in the Field
Nevertheless, even in a crowded warren, visitors in the form of young rabbits seeking desirable dry quarters may be tolerated ... and if powerful enough they may obtain and hold a place.
R.M. Lockley, The Private Life of the Rabbit
To come to the end of a time of anxiety and fear! To feel the cloud that hung over us lift and disperse--the cloud that dulled the heart and made happiness no more than a memory! This at least is one joy that must have been known by almost every living creature.
Here is a boy who was waiting to be punished. But then, unexpectedly, he finds that his fault has been overlooked or forgiven and at once the world reappears in brilliant colors, full of delightful prospects. Here is a soldier who was waiting, with a heavy heart, to suffer and die in battle. But suddenly the luck has changed. There is news! The war is over and everyone bursts out singing! He will go home after all! The sparrows in the plowland were crouching in terror of the kestrel. But she has gone; and they fly pell-mell up the hedgerow, frisking, chattering and perching where they will. The bitter winter had all the country in its grip. The hares on the down, stupid and torpid with cold, were resigned to sinking further and further into the freezing heart of snow and silence. But now--who would have dreamed it?--the thaw is trickling, the great tit is ringing his bell from the top of a bare lime tree, the earth is scented; and the hares bound and skip in the warm wind. Hopelessness and reluctance are blown away like a fog and the dumb solitude where they crept, a place desolate as a crack in the ground, opens like a rose and stretches to the hills and the sky.
The tired rabbits fed and basked in the sunny meadow as though they had come no further than from the bank at the edge of the nearby copse. The heather and the stumbling darkness were forgotten as though the sunrise had melted them. Bigwig and Hawkbit chased each other through the long grass. Speedwell jumped over the little brook that ran down the middle of the field and when Acorn tried to follow him and fell short, Silver joked with him as he scrambled out and rolled him in a patch of dead oak leaves until he was dry. As the sun rose higher, shortening the shadows and drawing the dew from the grass, most of the rabbits came wandering back to the sun-flecked shade among the cow parsley along the edge of the ditch. Here, Hazel and Fiver were sitting with Dandelion under a flowering wild cherry. The white petals spun down around them, covering the grass and speckling their fur, while thirty feet above a thrush sang, "Cherry dew, cherry dew. Knee deep, knee deep, knee deep."
"Well, this is the place all right, isn't it, Hazel?" said Dandelion lazily. "I suppose we'd better start having a look along the banks soon, although I must say I'm in no particular hurry. But I've got an idea it may be going to rain before much longer."
Fiver looked as though he were about to speak, but then shook his ears and turned to nibbling at a dandelion.
"That looks a good bank, along the edge of the trees up there," answered Hazel. "What do you say, Fiver? Shall we go up there now or shall we wait a bit longer?"
Fiver hesitated and then replied, "Just as you think, Hazel."
"Well, there's no need to do any serious digging, is there?" said Bigwig. "That sort of thing's all right for does, but not for us."
"Still, we'd better make one or two scrapes, don't you think?" said Hazel. "Something to give us shelter at a pinch. Let's go up to the copse and look round. We might as well take our time and make quite sure where we'd like to have them. We don't want to have to do the work twice."
"Yes, that's the style," said Bigwig. "And while you're doing that, I'll take Silver and Buckthorn here and have a run down the fields beyond, just to get the lie of the land and make sure there isn't anything dangerous."
The three explorers set off beside the brook, while Hazel led the other rabbits across the field and up to the edge of the woodland. They went slowly along the foot of the bank, pushing in and out of the clumps of red campion and ragged robin. From time to time one or another would begin to scrape in the gravelly bank, or venture a little way in among the trees and nut bushes to scuffle in the leaf mold. After they had been searching and moving on quietly for some time, they reached a place from which they could see that the field below them broadened out. Both on their own side and opposite, the wood edges curved outward, away from the brook. They also noticed the roofs of a farm, but some distance off. Hazel stopped and they gathered round him.
"I don't think it makes much difference where we do a bit of scratching," he said. "It's all good, so far as I can see. Not the slightest trace of elil--no scent or tracks or droppings. That seems unusual, but it may be just that the home warren attracted more elil than other places. Anyway, we ought to do well here. Now I'll tell you what seems the right thing to me. Let's go back a little way, between the woods, and have a scratch near that oak tree there--just by that white patch of stitchwort. I know the farm's a long way off, but there's no point in being nearer to it than we need. And if we're fairly close to the wood opposite, the trees will help to break the wind a bit in winter."
"Splendid," said Blackberry. "It's going to cloud over, do you see? Rain before sunset and we'll be in shelter. Well, let's make a start. Oh, look! There's Bigwig coming back along the bottom, and the other two with him."
The three rabbits were returning down the bank of the stream and had not yet seen Hazel and the others. They passed below them, into the narrower part of the field between the two copses, and it was not until Acorn had been sent halfway down the slope to attract their attention that they turned and came up to the ditch.
"I don't think there's going to be much to trouble us here, Hazel," said Bigwig. "The farm's a good way away and the fields between don't show any signs of elil at all. There's a man track--in fact, there are several--and they look as though they were used a good deal. Scent's fresh and there are the ends of those little white sticks that they burn in their mouths. But that's all for the best, I reckon. We keep away from the men and the men frighten the elil away."
"Why do the men come, do you suppose?" asked Fiver.
"Who knows why men do anything? They may drive cows or sheep in the fields, or cut wood in the copses. What does it matter? I'd rather dodge a man than a stoat or a fox."
"Well, that's fine," said Hazel. "You've found out a lot, Bigwig, and all to the good. We were just going to make some scrapes along the bank there. We'd better start. The rain won't be long now, if I know anything about it."
Buck rabbits on their own seldom or never go in for serious digging. This is the natural job of a doe making a home for her litter before they are born, and then her buck helps her. All the same, solitary bucks--if they can find no existing holes to make use of--will sometimes scratch out short tunnels for shelter, although it is not work that they tackle at all seriously. During the morning the digging proceeded in a light-hearted and intermittent way. The bank on each side of the oak tree was bare and consisted of a light, gravelly soil. There were several false starts and fresh choices, but by ni-Frith they had three scrapes of a sort. Hazel, watching, lent help here and there and encouraged the others. Every so often he slipped back to look out over the field and make sure that all was safe. Only Fiver remained solitary. He took no part in the digging but squatted on the edge of the ditch, fidgeting backward and forward, sometimes nibbling and then starting up suddenly as though he could hear some sound in the wood. After speaking to him once or twice and receiving no reply, Hazel thought it best to let him alone. The next time he left the digging he kept away from Fiver and sat looking at the bank, as though entirely concerned with the work.
A little while after ni-Frith the sky clouded over thickly. The light grew dull and they could smell rain approaching from the west. The blue tit that had been swinging on a bramble, singing "Heigh ho, go-and-get-another-bit-of-moss," stopped his acrobatics and flew into the wood. Hazel was just wondering whether it would be worthwhile starting a side passage to link Bigwig's hole to Dandelion's, when he felt a stamp of warning from somewhere close by. He turned quickly. It was Fiver who had stamped and he was now staring intently across the field.
Beside a tussock of grass a little way outside the opposite copse, a rabbit was sitting and gazing at them. Its ears were erect and it was evidently giving them the full attention of sight, smell and hearing. Hazel rose on his hind legs, paused, and then sat back on his haunches, in full view. The other rabbit remained motionless. Hazel, never taking his eyes off it, heard three or four of the others coming up behind him. After a moment he said,