Tales From Watership Down Part 9

Bigwig did not stir. Suddenly it came to Hazel that if Bigwig was dead--and what else could hold him him silent in the mud?--then he himself must get the others away before the dreadful loss could drain their courage and break their spirit--as it would if they stayed by the body. Besides, the man would come soon. Perhaps he was already coming, with his gun, to take poor Bigwig away. They must go; and he must do his best to see that all of them--even he himself--put what had happened out of mind, forever. silent in the mud?--then he himself must get the others away before the dreadful loss could drain their courage and break their spirit--as it would if they stayed by the body. Besides, the man would come soon. Perhaps he was already coming, with his gun, to take poor Bigwig away. They must go; and he must do his best to see that all of them--even he himself--put what had happened out of mind, forever.

"My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today," he said to Blackberry, quoting a rabbit proverb.

"If only it were not Bigwig," said Blackberry. "What shall we do without him?"

"The others are waiting," said Hazel. "We have to stay alive. There has to be something for them to think about. Help me, or it will be more than I can do."

He turned away from the body and looked for Fiver among the rabbits behind him. But Fiver was nowhere to be seen and Hazel was afraid to ask for him, in case to do so should seem like weakness and a need for comfort.

"Pipkin," he snapped, "why don't you clean up your face and stop the bleeding? The smell of blood attracts elil. You know that, don't you?"

"Yes, Hazel. I'm sorry. Will Bigwig--"

"And another thing," said Hazel desperately. "What was it you were telling me about Cowslip? Did you say he told Fiver to be quiet?"

"Yes, Hazel. Fiver came into the warren and told us about the snare, and that poor Bigwig--"

"Yes, all right. And then Cowslip--?"

"Cowslip and Strawberry and the others pretended not to hear. It was ridiculous, because Fiver was calling out to everybody. And then as we were running out Silver said to Cowslip, 'Surely you're coming?' And Cowslip simply turned his back. So then Fiver went up and spoke to him very quietly, but I heard what Cowslip answered. He said, 'Hills or Inle, it's all one to me where you go. You hold your tongue.' And then he struck at Fiver and scratched his ear."

"I'll kill him," gasped a low, choking voice behind them. They all leaped round. Bigwig had raised his head and was supporting himself on his forepaws alone. His body was twisted and his hind parts and back legs still lay along the ground. His eyes were open, but his face was such a fearful mask of blood, foam, vomit and earth that he looked more like some demon creature than a rabbit, The immediate sight of him, which should have filled them with relief and joy, brought only terror. They cringed away and none said a word.

"I'll kill him," repeated Bigwig, spluttering through his fouled whiskers and clotted fur. "Help me, rot you! Can't anyone get this stinking wire off me?" He struggled, dragging his hind legs. Then he fell again and crawled forward, trailing the wire through the gra.s.s with the broken peg snickering behind it.

"Let him alone!" cried Hazel, for now they were all pressing forward to help him. "Do you want to kill him? Let him rest! Let him breathe!"

"No, not rest," panted Bigwig. "I'm all right." As he spoke he fell again and immediately struggled up on his forepaws as before. "It's my back legs. Won't move. That Cowslip! I'll kill him!"

"Why do we let them stay in that warren?" cried Silver. "What sort of rabbits are they? They left Bigwig to die.

You all heard Cowslip in the burrow. They're cowards. Let's drive them out--kill them! Take the warren and live there ourselves!"

"Yes! Yes!" they all answered. "Come on! Back to the warren! Down with Cowslip! Down with Silverweed! Kill them!"

"O embleer Frith!" cried a squealing voice in the long gra.s.s.

At this shocking impiety, the tumult died away. They looked about them, wondering who could have spoken.

There was silence. Then, from between two great tussocks of hair gra.s.s came Fiver, his eyes blazing with a frantic urgency. He growled and gibbered at them like a witch hare and those nearest to him fell back in fear. Even Hazel could not have said a word for his life. They realized that he was speaking.

"The warren? You're going to the warren? You fools! That warren's nothing but a death hole! The whole place is one foul elil's larder! It's snared--everywhere, every day! That explains everything: everything that's happened since we came here."

He sat still and his words seemed to come crawling up the sunlight, over the gra.s.s.

"Listen, Dandelion. You're fond of stories, aren't you? I'll tell you one--yes, one for El-ahrairah to cry at. Once there was a fine warren on the edge of a wood, overlooking the meadows of a farm. It was big, full of rabbits. Then one day the white blindness came and the rabbits fell sick and died. But a few survived, as they always do. The warren became almost empty. One day the farmer thought, 'I could increase those rabbits: make them part of my farm--their meat, their skins. Why should I bother to keep rabbits in hutches? They'll do very well where they are.' He began to shoot all elil--lendri, homba, stoat, owl. He put out food for the rabbits, but not too near the warren. For his purpose they had to become accustomed to going about in the fields and the wood. And then he snared them--not too many: as many as he wanted and not as many as would frighten them all away or destroy the warren. They grew big and strong and healthy, for he saw to it that they had all of the best, particularly in winter, and nothing to fear--except the running knot in the hedge gap and the wood path. So they lived as he wanted them to live and all the time there were a few who disappeared. The rabbits became strange in many ways, different from other rabbits. They knew well enough what was happening. But even to themselves they pretended that all was well, for the food was good, they were protected, they had nothing to fear but the one fear; and that struck here and there, never enough at a time to drive them away. They forgot the ways of wild rabbits. They forgot El-ahrairah, for what use had they for tricks and cunning, living in the enemy's warren and paying his price? They found out other marvelous arts to take the place of tricks and old stories. They danced in ceremonious greeting. They sang songs like the birds and made Shapes on the walls; and though these could help them not at all, yet they pa.s.sed the time and enabled them to tell themselves that they were splendid fellows, the very flower of Rabbitry, cleverer than magpies. They had no Chief Rabbit--no, how could they?--for a Chief Rabbit must be El-ahrairah to his warren and keep them from death: and here there was no death but one, and what Chief Rabbit could have an answer to that? Instead, Frith sent them strange singers, beautiful and sick like oak apples, like robins' pincushions on the wild rose. And since they could not bear the truth, these singers, who might in some other place have been wise, were squeezed under the terrible weight of the warren's secret until they gulped out fine folly--about dignity and acquiescence, and anything else that could make believe that the rabbit loved the shining wire. But one strict rule they had; oh yes, the strictest. No one must ever ask where another rabbit was and anyone who asked 'Where?'--except in a song or a poem--must be silenced. To say 'Where?' was bad enough, but to speak openly of the wires--that was intolerable. For that they would scratch and kill."

He stopped. No one moved. Then, in the silence, Bigwig lurched to his feet, swayed a moment, tottered a few steps toward Fiver and fell again. Fiver paid him no heed, but looked from one to another among the rabbits. Then he began speaking again.

"And then we we came, over the heather in the night. Wild rabbits, making sc.r.a.pes across the valley. The warren rabbits didn't show themselves at once. They needed to think what was best to be done. But they hit on it quite soon. To bring us into the warren and tell us nothing. Don't you see? The farmer only sets so many snares at a time, and if one rabbit dies, the others will live that much longer. You suggested that Hazel should tell them our adventures, Blackberry, but it didn't go down well, did it? Who wants to hear about brave deeds when he's ashamed of his own, and who likes an open, honest tale from someone he's deceiving? Do you want me to go on? I tell you, every single thing that's happened fits like a bee in a foxglove. And kill them, you say, and help ourselves to the great burrow? We shall help ourselves to a roof of bones, hung with shining wires! Help ourselves to misery and death!" came, over the heather in the night. Wild rabbits, making sc.r.a.pes across the valley. The warren rabbits didn't show themselves at once. They needed to think what was best to be done. But they hit on it quite soon. To bring us into the warren and tell us nothing. Don't you see? The farmer only sets so many snares at a time, and if one rabbit dies, the others will live that much longer. You suggested that Hazel should tell them our adventures, Blackberry, but it didn't go down well, did it? Who wants to hear about brave deeds when he's ashamed of his own, and who likes an open, honest tale from someone he's deceiving? Do you want me to go on? I tell you, every single thing that's happened fits like a bee in a foxglove. And kill them, you say, and help ourselves to the great burrow? We shall help ourselves to a roof of bones, hung with shining wires! Help ourselves to misery and death!"

Fiver sank down into the gra.s.s. Bigwig, still trailing his horrible, smooth peg, staggered up to him and touched his nose with his own.

"I'm still alive, Fiver," he said. "So are all of us. You've bitten through a bigger peg than this one I'm dragging. Tell us what to do."

"Do?" replied Fiver. "Why, go--now. I told Cowslip we were going before I left the burrow."

"Where?" said Bigwig. But it was Hazel who answered.

"To the hills," he said.

South of them, the ground rose gently away from the brook. Along the crest was the line of a cart track and beyond, a copse. Hazel turned toward it and the rest began to follow him up the slope in ones and twos.

"What about the wire, Bigwig?" said Silver. "The peg will catch and tighten it again."

"No, it's loose now," said Bigwig "I could shake it off if I hadn't hurt my neck."

"Try," said Silver. "You won't get far otherwise."

"Hazel," said Speedwell suddenly, "there's a rabbit coming down from the warren. Look!"

"Only one?" said Bigwig. "What a pity! You take him, Silver. I won't deprive you. Make a good job of it while you're at it."

They stopped and waited, dotted here and there about the slope. The rabbit who was coming was running in a curious, headlong manner. Once he ran straight into a thick-stemmed thistle, knocking himself sideways and rolling over and over. But he got up and came blundering on toward them.

"Is it the white blindness?" said Buckthorn. "He's not looking where he's going."

"Frith forbid!" said Blackberry. "Shall we run away?"

"No, he couldn't run like that with the white blindness," said Hazel. "Whatever ails him, it isn't that."

"It's Strawberry!" cried Dandelion.

Strawberry came through the hedge by the crab-apple tree, looked about him and made his way to Hazel. All his urbane self-possession had vanished. He was staring and trembling and his great size seemed only to add to his air of stricken misery. He cringed before them in the gra.s.s as Hazel waited, stern and motionless, with Silver at his side.

"Hazel," said Strawberry, "are you going away?"

Hazel made no answer, but Silver said sharply, "What's that to you?"

"Take me with you." There was no reply and he repeated, "Take me with you."

"We don't care for creatures who deceive us," said Silver. "Better go back to Nildro-hain. No doubt she's less particular."

Strawberry gave a kind of choking squeal, as though he had been wounded. He looked from Silver to Hazel and then to Fiver. At last, in a pitiful whisper, he said, "The wires."

Silver was about to answer, but Hazel spoke first.

"You can come with us," he said. "Don't say any more. Poor fellow."

A few minutes later the rabbits had crossed the cart track and vanished into the copse beyond. A magpie, seeing some light-colored object conspicuous on the empty slope, flew closer to look. But all that lay there was a splintered peg and a twisted length of wire.

PART II

On Watership Down

18.Watership Down

What is now proved was once only imagin'd.

William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and h.e.l.l The Marriage of Heaven and h.e.l.l It was evening of the following day. The north-facing escarpment of Watership Down, in shadow since early morning, now caught the western sun for an hour before twilight. Three hundred feet the down rose vertically in a stretch of no more than six hundred--a precipitous wall, from the thin belt of trees at the foot to the ridge where the steep flattened out. The light, full and smooth, lay like a gold rind over the turf, the furze and yew bushes, the few wind-stunted thorn trees. From the ridge, the light seemed to cover all the slope below, drowsy and still. But down in the gra.s.s itself, between the bushes, in that thick forest trodden by the beetle, the spider and the hunting shrew, the moving light was like a wind that danced among them to set them scurrying and weaving. The red rays flickered in and out of the gra.s.s stems, flashing minutely on membranous wings, casting long shadows behind the thinnest of filamentary legs, breaking each patch of bare soil into a myriad individual grains. The insects buzzed, whined, hummed, stridulated and droned as the air grew warmer in the sunset. Louder yet calmer than they, among the trees, sounded the yellowhammer, the linnet and greenfinch. The larks went up, twittering in the scented air above the down. From the summit, the apparent immobility of the vast blue distance was broken, here and there, by wisps of smoke and tiny, momentary flashes of gla.s.s. Far below lay the fields green with wheat, the flat pastures grazed by horses, the darker greens of the woods. They, too, like the hillside jungle, were tumultuous with evening, but from the remote height turned to stillness, their fierceness tempered by the air that lay between.

At the foot of the turf cliff, Hazel and his companions were crouching under the low branches of two or three spindle trees. Since the previous morning they had journeyed nearly three miles. Their luck had been good, for everyone who had left the warren was still alive. They had splashed through two brooks and wandered fearfully in the deep woodlands west of Ecchinswell. They had rested in the straw of a starveall, or lonely barn, and woken to find themselves attacked by rats. Silver and Buckthorn, with Bigwig helping them, had covered the retreat until, once all were together outside, they had taken to flight. Buckthorn had been bitten in the foreleg, and the wound, in the manner of a rat bite, was irritant and painful. Skirting a small lake, they had stared to see a great gray fisher bird that stabbed and paddled in the sedge, until a flight of wild duck had frightened them away with their clamor. They had crossed more than half a mile of open pasture without a trace of cover, expecting every moment some attack that did not come. They had heard the unnatural humming of a pylon in the summer air; and had actually gone beneath it, on Fiver's a.s.surance that it could do them no harm. Now they lay under the spindle trees and sniffed in weariness and doubt at the strange, bare country round them.

Since leaving the warren of the snares they had become warier, shrewder, a tenacious band who understood each other and worked together. There was no more quarreling. The truth about the warren had been a grim shock. They had come closer together, relying on and valuing each other's capacities. They knew now that it was on these and on nothing else that their lives depended, and they were not going to waste anything they possessed between them. In spite of Hazel's efforts beside the snare, there was not one of them who had not turned sick at heart to think that Bigwig was dead and wondered, like Blackberry, what would become of them now. Without Hazel, without Blackberry, Buckthorn and Pipkin--Bigwig would have died. Without himself he would have died, for which else, of them all, would not have stopped running after such punishment? There was no more questioning of Bigwig's strength, Fiver's insight, Blackberry's wits or Hazel's authority. When the rats came, Buckthorn and Silver had obeyed Bigwig and stood their ground. The rest had followed Hazel when he roused them and, without explanation, told them to go quickly outside the barn. Later, Hazel had said that there was nothing for it but to cross the open pasture and under Silver's direction they had crossed it, with Dandelion running ahead to reconnoiter. When Fiver said the iron tree was harmless they believed him.

Strawberry had had a bad time. His misery made him slow-witted and careless and he was ashamed of the part he had played at the warren. He was soft and more used than he dared admit to indolence and good food. But he made no complaint and it was plain that he was determined to show what he could do and not to be left behind. He had proved useful in the woodland, being better accustomed to thick woods than any of the others. "He'll be all right, you know, if we give him a chance," said Hazel to Bigwig by the lake. "So he darned well ought to be," replied Bigwig, "the great dandy"--for by their standards Strawberry was scrupulously clean and fastidious. "Well, I won't have him brow-beaten, Bigwig, mind. That won't help him." This Bigwig had accepted, though rather sulkily. Yet he himself had become less overbearing. The snare had left him weak and overwrought. It was he who had given the alarm in the barn, for he could not sleep and at the sound of scratching had started up at once. He would not let Silver and Buckthorn fight alone, but he had felt obliged to leave the worst of it to them. For the first time in his life, Bigwig had found himself driven to moderation and prudence.

As the sun sank lower and touched the edge of the cloud belt on the horizon, Hazel came out from under the branches and looked carefully round the lower slope. Then he stared upward over the anthills, to the open down rising above. Fiver and Acorn followed him out and fell to nibbling at a patch of sainfoin. It was new to them, but they did not need to be told that it was good and it raised their spirits. Hazel turned back and joined them among the big, rosy-veined, magenta flower spikes.

"Fiver," he said, "let me get this right. You want us to climb up this place, however far it is, and find shelter on the top. Is that it?"

"Yes, Hazel."

"But the top must be very high. I can't even see it from here. It'll be open and cold."

"Not in the ground: and the soil's so light that we shall be able to scratch some shelter easily when we find the right place."

Hazel considered again. "It's getting started that bothers me. Here we are, all tired out. I'm sure it's dangerous to stay here. We've nowhere to run to. We don't know the country and we can't get underground. But it seems out of the question for everybody to climb up there tonight. We should be even less safe."

"We shall be forced to dig, shan't we?" said Acorn. "This place is almost as open as that heather we crossed, and the trees won't hide us from anything hunting on four feet."

"It would have been the same any time we came," said Fiver.

"I'm not saying anything against it, Fiver," replied Acorn, "but we need holes. It's a bad place not to be able to get underground."

"Before everyone goes up to the top," said Hazel, "we ought to find out what it's like. I'm going up myself to have a look round. I'll be as quick as I can and you'll have to hope for the best until I get back. You can rest and feed, anyway."

"You're not going alone," said Fiver firmly.

Since each one of them was ready to go with him in spite of their fatigue, Hazel gave in and chose Dandelion and Hawkbit, who seemed less weary than the others. They set out up the hillside, going slowly, picking their way from one bush and tussock to another and pausing continually to sniff and stare along the great expanse of gra.s.s, which stretched on either side as far as they could see.

A man walks upright. For him it is strenuous to climb a steep hill, because he has to keep pushing his own vertical ma.s.s upward and cannot gain any momentum. The rabbit is better off. His forelegs support his horizontal body and the great back legs do the work. They are more than equal to thrusting uphill the light ma.s.s in front of them. Rabbits can go fast uphill. In fact, they have so much power behind that they find going downhill awkward, and sometimes, in flight down a steep place, they may actually go head over heels. On the other hand, the man is five or six feet above the hillside and can see all round. To him the ground may be steep and rough but on the whole it is even, and he can pick his direction easily from the top of his moving, six-foot tower. The rabbits' anxieties and strain in climbing the down were different, therefore, from those which you, reader, will experience if you go there. Their main trouble was not bodily fatigue. When Hazel had said that they were all tired out, he had meant that they were feeling the strain of prolonged insecurity and fear.

Rabbits above ground, unless they are in proved, familiar surroundings close to their holes, live in continual fear. If it grows intense enough they can become glazed and paralyzed by it--"tharn," to use their own word. Hazel and his companions had been on the jump for nearly two days. Indeed, ever since they had left their home warren, five days before, they had faced one danger after another. They were all on edge, sometimes starting at nothing and, again, lying down in any patch of long gra.s.s that offered. Bigwig and Buckthorn smelled of blood and everyone else knew they did. What bothered Hazel, Dandelion and Hawkbit was the openness and strangeness of the down and their inability to see very far ahead. They climbed not over but through the sun-red gra.s.s, among the awakened insect movement and the light ablaze. The gra.s.s undulated about them. They peered over anthills and looked cautiously round clumps of teazle. They could not tell how far away the ridge might be. They topped each short slope only to find another above it. To Hazel, it seemed a likely place for a weasel: or the white owl, perhaps, might fly along the escarpment at twilight, looking inward with its stony eyes, ready to turn a few feet sideways and pick off the shelf anything that moved. Some elil wait for their prey, but the white owl is a seeker and he comes in silence.

As Hazel still went up, the south wind began to blow and the June sunset reddened the sky to the zenith. Hazel, like nearly all wild animals, was unaccustomed to look up at the sky. What he thought of as the sky was the horizon, usually broken by trees and hedges. Now, with his head pointing upward, he found himself gazing at the ridge, as over the skyline came the silent, moving, red-tinged c.u.muli. Their movement was disturbing, unlike that of trees or gra.s.s or rabbits. These great ma.s.ses moved steadily, noiselessly and always in the same direction. They were not of his world.

"O Frith," thought Hazel, turning his head for a moment to the bright glow in the west, "are you sending us to live among the clouds? If you spoke truly to Fiver, help me to trust him." At this moment he saw Dandelion, who had run well ahead, squatting on an anthill clear against the sky. Alarmed, he dashed forward.

"Dandelion, get down!" he said. "Why are you sitting up there?"

"Because I can see," replied Dandelion, with a kind of excited joy. "Come and look! You can see the whole world."

Hazel came up to him. There was another anthill nearby and he copied Dandelion, sitting upright on his hind legs and looking about him. He realized now that they were almost on level ground. Indeed, the slope was no more than gentle for some way back along the line by which they had come; but he had been preoccupied with the idea of danger in the open and had not noticed the change. They were on top of the down. Perched above the gra.s.s, they could see far in every direction. Their surroundings were empty. If anything had been moving they would have seen it immediately: and where the turf ended, the sky began. A man, a fox--even a rabbit--coming over the down would be conspicuous. Fiver had been right. Up here, they would have clear warning of any approach.

The wind ruffled their fur and tugged at the gra.s.s, which smelled of thyme and self-heal. The solitude seemed like a release and a blessing. The height, the sky and the distance went to their heads and they skipped in the sunset. "O Frith on the hills!" cried Dandelion. "He must have made it for us!"

"He may have made it, but Fiver thought of it for us," answered Hazel. "Wait till we get him up here! Fiver-rah!"

"Where's Hawkbit?" said Dandelion suddenly.

Although the light was still clear, Hawkbit was not to be seen anywhere on the upland. After staring about for some time, they ran across to a little mound some way away and looked again. But they saw nothing except a field mouse, which came out of its hole and began furricking in a path of seeded gra.s.ses.

"He must have gone down," said Dandelion.

"Well, whether he has or not," said Hazel, "we can't go on looking for him. The others are waiting and they may be in danger. We must go down ourselves."

"What a shame to lose him, though," said Dandelion, "just when we'd reached Fiver's hills without losing anyone. He's such a duffer; we shouldn't have brought him up. But how could anything have got hold of him here, without our seeing?"

"No, he's gone back, for sure," said Hazel. "I wonder what Bigwig will say to him? I hope he won't bite him again. We'd better get on."

"Are you going to bring them up tonight?" asked Dandelion.

"I don't know," said Hazel. "It's a problem. Where's the shelter to be found?"

They made for the steep edge. The light was beginning to fail. They picked their direction by a clump of stunted trees which they had pa.s.sed on their way up. These formed a kind of dry oasis--a little feature common on the downs. Half a dozen thorns and two or three elders grew together above and below a bank. Between them the ground was bare and the naked chalk showed a pallid, dirty white under the cream-colored elder bloom. As they approached, they suddenly saw Hawkbit sitting among the thorn trunks, cleaning his face with his paws.

"We've been looking for you," said Hazel. "Where in the world have you been?"

"I'm sorry, Hazel," replied Hawkbit meekly. "I've been looking at these holes. I thought they might be some good to us."

In the low bank behind him were three rabbit holes. There were two more flat on the ground, between the thick, gnarled roots. They could see no footmarks and no droppings. The holes were clearly deserted.

"Have you been down?" asked Hazel, sniffing round.

"Yes, I have," said Hawkbit. "Three of them, anyway. They're shallow and rather rough, but there's no smell of death or disease and they're perfectly sound. I thought they might do for us--just for the moment, anyway."