Tales From Watership Down Part 18

Hazel sat up quickly and as he did so Dandelion leaped back in real terror, for Hazel's eyes were shining a deep, glowing red in the dark. At that moment the humming vibration grew louder, quenching the rushing of the night breeze in the elms. Then all four rabbits sat as though transfixed by the sudden, blinding light that poured over them like a cloudburst. Their very instinct was numbed in this terrible glare. The dog barked and then became silent once more. Dandelion tried to move, but could not. The awful brightness seemed to cut into his brain.

The car, which had driven up the lane and over the brow under the elms, came on a few more yards and stopped.

"Lucy's rabbits is out, look!"

"Ah! Best get 'un in quick. Leave loights on!"

The sound of men's voices, from somewhere beyond the fierce light, brought Hazel to his senses. He could not see, but nothing, he realized, had happened to his hearing or his nose. He shut his eyes and at once knew where he was.

"Dandelion! Haystack! Shut your eyes and run," he said. A moment later he smelled the lichen and cool moisture of one of the staddle stones. He was under the barn. Dandelion was near him and a little further away was Haystack. Outside, the men's boots sc.r.a.ped and grated over the stones.

"That's it! Get round be'ind 'un."

" 'E won't go far!"

"Pick 'n up, then!"

Hazel moved across to Haystack. "I'm afraid we'll have to leave Laurel," he said. "Just follow me."

Keeping under the raised floor of the barn, they all three scuttled back toward the elm trees. The men's voices were left behind. Coming out into the gra.s.s near the lane, they found the darkness behind the headlights full of the fumes of exhaust--a hostile, choking smell that added to their confusion. Haystack sat down once more and could not be persuaded to move.

"Shouldn't we leave her, Hazel-rah?" asked Dandelion. "After all, the men won't hurt her--they've caught Laurel and taken him back to the hutch."

"If it was a buck, I'd say yes," said Hazel. "But we need this doe. That's what we came for."

At this moment they caught the smell of burning white sticks and heard the men returning up the farmyard. There was a metallic b.u.mping as they rummaged in the car. The sound seemed to rouse Haystack. She looked round at Dandelion.

"I don't want to go back to the hutch," she said.

"You're sure?" asked Dandelion.

"Yes. I'll go with you."

Dandelion immediately turned for the hedgerow. It was only when he had crossed it and reached the ditch beyond that he realized that he was on the opposite side of the lane from that on which they had first approached. He was in a strange ditch. However, there seemed to be nothing to worry about--the ditch led down the slope and that was the way home. He moved slowly along it, waiting for Hazel to join them.

Hazel had crossed the lane a few moments after Dandelion and Haystack. Behind him, he heard the men moving away from the hrududu. As he topped the bank, the beam of a torch shone up the lane and picked out his red eyes and white tail disappearing into the hedge.

"There's ol' woild rabbit, look!"

"Ah! Reckon rest of ours ain't s' far off. Got up there with 'un, see? Best go'n 'ave a look."

In the ditch, Hazel overtook Haystack and Dandelion under a clump of brambles.

"Get on quickly if you can," he said to Haystack. "The men are just behind."

"We can't get on, Hazel," said Dandelion, "without leaving the ditch. It's blocked."

Hazel sniffed ahead. Immediately beyond the brambles, the ditch was closed by a pile of earth, weeds and rubbish. They would have to come into the open. Already the men were over the bank and the torchlight was flickering up and down the hedgerow and through the brambles above their very heads. Then, only a few yards away, footfalls vibrated along the edge of the ditch. Hazel turned to Dandelion.

"Listen," he said, "I'm going to run across the corner of the field, from this ditch to the other one, so that they see me. They'll try to shine that light on me for sure. While they're doing that, you and Haystack climb the bank, get into the lane and run down to the swede shed. You can hide there and I'll join you. Ready?"

There was no time to argue. A moment later Hazel broke almost under the men's feet and ran across the field.

"There 'e goes!"

"Keep torch on 'un, then. Noice and steady!"

Dandelion and Haystack scrambled over the bank and dropped into the lane. Hazel, with the torch beam behind him, had almost reached the other ditch when he felt a sharp blow on one of his hind legs and a hot, stinging pain along his side. The report of the cartridge sounded an instant later. As he somersaulted into a clump of nettles in the ditch bottom, he remembered vividly the scent of beanflowers at sunset. He had not known that the men had a gun.

Hazel crawled through the nettles, dragging his injured leg. In a few moments the men would shine their torch on him and pick him up. He stumbled along the inner wall of the ditch, feeling the blood flowing over his foot. Suddenly he was aware of a draft against one side of his nose, a smell of damp, rotten matter and a hollow, echoing sound at his very ear. He was beside the mouth of a land drain which emptied into the ditch--a smooth, cold tunnel, narrower than a rabbit hole, but wide enough. With flattened ears and belly pressed to the wet floor he crawled up it, pushing a little pile of thin mud in front of him, and lay still as he felt the thud of boots coming nearer.

"I don' roightly know, John, whether you 'it 'e er not."

"Ah, I 'it 'un all roight. That's blood down there, see?"

"Ah, well, but that don't signify. 'E might be a long ways off by now. I reckon you've lost 'e."

"I reckon 'e's in them nettles."

" 'Ave a look, then."

"No, 'e ain't."

"Well, us can't go beggarin' up and down 'ere 'alf b.l.o.o.d.y night. We got to catch them as got out th'utch. Didn't ought 'ave fired be roights, John. Froightened they off, see? You c'n 'ave a look for 'im tomorrow, if 'e's 'ere."

The silence returned, but still Hazel lay motionless in the whispering chill of the tunnel. A cold la.s.situde came over him and he pa.s.sed into a dreaming, inert stupor, full of cramp and pain. After a time, a thread of blood began to trickle over the lip of the drain into the trampled, deserted ditch.

Bigwig, crouched close to Blackberry in the straw of the cattle shed, leaped to flight at the sound of the shot two hundred yards up the lane. He checked himself and turned to the others.

"Don't run!" he said quickly. "Where do you want to run to, anyway? No holes here."

"Further away from the gun," replied Blackberry, white-eyed.

"Wait!" said Bigwig, listening. "They're running down the lane. Can't you hear them?"

"I can hear only two rabbits," answered Blackberry, after a pause, "and one of them sounds exhausted."

They looked at each other and waited. Then Bigwig got up again.

"Stay here, all of you," he said. "I'll go and bring them in."

Out on the verge he found Dandelion urging Haystack, who was lamed and spent.

"Come in here quickly," said Bigwig. "For Frith's sake, where's Hazel?"

"The men have shot him," replied Dandelion.

They reached the other five rabbits in the straw. Dandelion did not wait for their questions.

"They've shot Hazel," he said. "They'd caught that Laurel and put him back in the hutch. Then they came after us. The three of us were at the end of a blocked ditch. Hazel went out of his own accord, to distract their attention while we got away. But we didn't know they had a gun."

"Are you sure they killed him?" said Speedwell.

"I didn't actually see him hit, but they were very close to him."

"We'd better wait," said Bigwig.

They waited a long time. At last Dandelion and Bigwig went cautiously back up the lane. They found the bottom of the ditch trampled by boots and streaked with blood, and returned to tell the others.

The journey back, with the three limping hutch rabbits, lasted more than two weary hours. All were dejected and wretched. When at last they reached the foot of the down Bigwig told Blackberry, Speedwell and Hawkbit to leave them and go on to the warren. They approached the wood just at first light and a rabbit ran to meet them through the wet gra.s.s. It was Fiver. Blackberry stopped and waited beside him while the other two went on in silence.

"Fiver," he said, "there's bad news. Hazel--"

"I know," replied Fiver. "I know now."

"How do you know?" asked Blackberry, startled.

"As you came through the gra.s.s just now," said Fiver, very low, "there was a fourth rabbit behind you, limping and covered with blood. I ran to see who it was, and then there were only three of you, side by side."

He paused and looked across the down, as though still seeking the bleeding rabbit who had vanished in the half-light. Then, as Blackberry said nothing more, he asked, "Do you know what happened?"

When Blackberry had told his news, Fiver returned to the warren and went underground to his empty burrow. A little later Bigwig brought the hutch rabbits up the hill and at once called everyone to meet in the Honeycomb. Fiver did not appear.

It was a dismal welcome for the strangers. Not even Bluebell could find a cheerful word. Dandelion was inconsolable to think that he might have stopped Hazel breaking from the ditch. The meeting came to an end in a dreary silence and a half-hearted silflay.

Later that morning Holly came limping into the warren. Of his three companions, only Silver was alert and unharmed. Buckthorn was wounded in the face and Strawberry was shivering and evidently ill from exhaustion. There were no other rabbits with them.

26.Fiver Beyond

On his dreadful journey, after the shaman has wandered through dark forests and over great ranges of mountains, ... he reaches an opening in the ground. The most difficult stage of the adventure now begins. The depths of the underworld open before him.

Uno Harva, quoted by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces The Hero with a Thousand Faces Fiver lay on the earth floor of the burrow. Outside, the downs were still in the intense, bright heat of noon. The dew and gossamer had dried early from the gra.s.s and by midmorning the finches had fallen silent. Now, along the lonely expanses of wiry turf, the air wavered. On the footpath that led past the warren, bright threads of light--watery, a mirage--trickled and glittered across the shortest, smoothest gra.s.s. From a distance the trees along the edge of the beech hanger appeared full of great, dense shadows, impenetrable to the dazzled eye. The only sound was the "Zip, zip" of the gra.s.shoppers, the only scent that of the warm thyme.

In the burrow, Fiver slept and woke uneasily through the heat of the day, fidgeting and scratching as the last traces of moisture dried out of the earth above him. Once, when a trickle of powdery soil fell from the roof, he leaped out of sleep and was in the mouth of the run before he came to himself and returned to where he had been lying. Each time he woke, he remembered the loss of Hazel and suffered once more the knowledge that had pierced him as the shadowy, limping rabbit disappeared in the first light of morning on the down. Where was that rabbit now? Where had it gone? He began to follow it among the tangled paths of his own thoughts, over the cold, dew-wet ridge and down into the dawn mist of the fields below.

The mist swirled round Fiver as he crept through thistles and nettles. Now he could no longer see the limping rabbit ahead. He was alone and afraid, yet perceiving old, familiar sounds and smells--those of the field where he was born. The thick weeds of summer were gone. He was under the bare ash boughs and the flowering blackthorn of March. He was crossing the brook, going up the slope toward the lane, toward the place where Hazel and he had come upon the notice board. Would the board still be there? He looked timidly up the slope. The view was blotted with mist, but as he neared the top he saw a man busy over a pile of tools--a spade, a rope and other, smaller implements, the use of which he did not know. The notice board lay flat on the ground. It was smaller than he remembered and fixed to a single, long, square post, sharpened at the further end to put into the earth. The surface of the board was white, just as he had seen it before, and covered with the sharp black lines like sticks. Fiver came hesitantly up the slope and stopped close to the man, who stood looking down into a deep, narrow hole sunk in the ground at his feet. The man turned to Fiver with the kind of amiability that an ogre might show to a victim whom they both know that he will kill and eat as soon as it suits him to do so.

"Ah! An' what am I doin', eh?" asked the man.

"What are are you doing?" answered Fiver, staring and twitching with fear. you doing?" answered Fiver, staring and twitching with fear.

"I'm just putt'n up this 'ere ol' board," said the man. "And I s'pose you wants t' know what for, eh?"

"Yes," whispered Fiver.

"It's fer that there old 'Azel," said the man. "On'y where 't'is, see, we got t' put up a bit of a notice, like, on 'is account. And what d'you reckon it says, eh?"

"I don't know," said Fiver. "How--how can a board say anything?"

"Ah, but it do, see?" replied the man. "That's where we knows what you don't. That's why we kills you when we 'as a mind to. Now, you wants take a good look at that there board and then very likely you'll know more 'n what you knows now."

In the livid, foggy twilight, Fiver stared at the board. As he stared, the black sticks flickered on the white surface. They raised their sharp, wedge-shaped little heads and chattered together like a nestful of young weasels. The sound, mocking and cruel, came faintly to his ears, as though m.u.f.fled by sand or sacking. "In memory of Hazel-rah! In memory of Hazel-rah! In memory of Hazel-rah! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!"

"Well, that's where 't'is, see?" said the man. "And I've got t'ang 'im up on this 'ere board. That's t' say, soon's I gets it stood up proper. Same as you'd 'ang up jay, like, or old stoat. Ah! Gon' 'ang 'im up."

"No!" cried Fiver. "No, you shan't!"

"On'y I ain't got 'im, see?" went on the man. "That's why I can't get done. I can't 'ang 'im up, 'cos 'e've gone down th' b.l.o.o.d.y 'ole, that's where 'e've gone. 'E've gone down th' b.l.o.o.d.y 'ole, just when I'd got 'n lined an' all, and I can't get 'n out."

Fiver crept up to the man's boots and peered into the hole. It was circular, a cylinder of baked earthenware that disappeared vertically into the ground. He called, "Hazel! Hazel!" Far down in the bole, something moved and he was about to call again. Then the man bent down and hit him between the ears.

Fiver was struggling in a thick cloud of earth, soft and powdery. Someone was saying, "Steady, Fiver, steady!" He sat up. There was soil in his eyes, his ears and nostrils. He could not smell. He shook himself and said, "Who is it?"

"It's Blackberry. I came to see how you were. It's all right; a bit of the roof's fallen, that's all. There've been falls all over the warren today--it's the heat. Anyway, it woke you from a nightmare, if I know anything. You were thrashing about and calling out for Hazel. You poor old chap! What a miserable thing it is to have happened! We must try to bear it as best we can. We've all got to stop running one day, you know. They say Frith knows all the rabbits, every one."

"Is it evening?" asked Fiver.

"Not yet, no. But it's a fair time after ni-Frith. Holly and the others have come back, you know. Strawberry's very ill and they haven't any does with them--not one. Everything's as bad as it could be. Holly's still asleep--he was completely exhausted. He said he'd tell us what happened this evening. When we told him about poor Hazel, he said--Fiver, you're not listening. I expect you'd rather I kept quiet."

"Blackberry," said Fiver, "do you know the place where Hazel was shot?"

"Yes, Bigwig and I went and looked at the ditch before we came away. But you mustn't--"

"Could you go there with me now?"

"Go back there? Oh, no. It's a long way, Fiver, and what would be the good? The risk, and this fearful heat, and you'd only make yourself wretched."

"Hazel isn't dead," said Fiver.

"Yes, the men took him away. Fiver, I saw the blood."

"Yes, but you didn't see Hazel, because he isn't dead. Blackberry, you must do what I ask."

"You're asking too much."

"Then I shall have to go alone. But what I'm asking you to do is to come and save Hazel's life."

When at last Blackberry had reluctantly given in and they had set out down the hill, Fiver went almost as fast as though he were running for cover. Again and again he urged Blackberry to make haste. The fields were empty in the glare. Every creature bigger than a bluebottle was sheltering from the heat. When they reached the outlying sheds beside the lane, Blackberry began to explain how he and Bigwig had gone back to search; but Fiver cut him short.

"We have to go up the slope, I know that: but you must show me the ditch."