Watership Down Page 12

  Fiver was off up the field like a hare. Hazel, left alone, tried to understand what was needed. What was the peg? How was he to dig it out? He looked down at the foul mess before him. Bigwig was lying across the wire, which came out under his belly and seemed to disappear into the ground. Hazel struggled with his own incomprehension. Bigwig had said, "Dig." That at least he understood. He began to scratch into the soft earth beside the body, until after a time his claws scraped against something smooth and firm. As he paused, perplexed, he found Blackberry at his shoulder.

  "Bigwig just spoke," he said to him, "but I don't think he can now. He said, 'Dig out the peg. What does that mean? What have we got to do?"

  "Wait a moment," said Blackberry. "Let me think, and try not to be impatient."

  Hazel turned his head and looked down the course of the brook. Far away, between the two copses, he could see the cherry tree where two days before he had sat with Blackberry and Fiver in the sunrise. He remembered how Bigwig had chased Hawkbit through the long grass, forgetting the quarrel of the previous night in the joy of their arrival. He could see Hawkbit running toward him now and two or three of the others-Silver, Dandelion and Pipkin. Dandelion, well in front, dashed up to the gap and checked, twitching and staring.

  "What is it, Hazel? What's happened? Fiver said-"

  "Bigwig's in a wire. Let him alone till Blackberry tells us. Stop the others crowding round."

  Dandelion turned and raced back as Pipkin came up.

  "Is Cowslip coming?" said Hazel. "Perhaps he knows-"

  "He wouldn't come," replied Pipkin. "He told Fiver to stop talking about it."

  "Told him what?" asked Hazel incredulously. But at that moment Blackberry spoke and Hazel was beside him in a flash.

  "This is it," said Blackberry. "The wire's on a peg and the peg's in the ground-there, look. We've got to dig it out. Come on-dig beside it."

  Hazel dug once more, his forepaws throwing up the soft, wet soil and slipping against the hard sides of the peg. Dimly, he was aware of the others waiting nearby. After a time he was forced to stop, panting. Silver took his place, and was followed by Buckthorn. The nasty, smooth, clean, man-smelling peg was laid bare to the length of a rabbit's ear, but still it did not come loose. Bigwig had not moved. He lay across the wire, torn and bloody, with closed eyes. Buckthorn drew his head and paws out of the hole and rubbed the mud off his face.

  "The peg's narrower down there," he said. "It tapers. I think it could be bitten through, but I can't get my teeth to it."

  "Send Pipkin in," said Blackberry. "He's smaller."

  Pipkin plunged into the hole. They could hear the wood splintering under his teeth-a sound like a mouse in a shed wainscot at midnight. He came out with his nose bleeding.

  "The splinters prick you and it's hard to breathe, but the peg's nearly through."

  "Fiver, go in," said Hazel.

  Fiver was not long in the hole. He, too, came out bleeding.

  "It's broken in two. It's free."

  Blackberry pressed his nose against Bigwig's head. As he nuzzled him gently the head rolled sideways and back again.

  "Bigwig," said Blackberry in his ear, "the peg's out."

  There was no response. Bigwig lay still as before. A great fly settled on one of his ears. Blackberry thrust at it angrily and it flew up, buzzing, into the sunshine.

  "I think he's gone," said Blackberry. "I can't feel his breathing."

  Hazel crouched down by Blackberry and laid his nostrils close to Bigwig's, but a light breeze was blowing and he could not tell whether there was breath or not. The legs were loose, the belly flaccid and limp. He tried to think of what little he had heard of snares. A strong rabbit could break his neck in a snare. Or had the point of the sharp wire pierced the windpipe?

  "Bigwig," he whispered, "we've got you out. You're free."

  Bigwig did not stir. Suddenly it came to Hazel that if Bigwig was dead-and what else could hold 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.

  "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 Inlé, 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 grass 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 grass.

  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 grass 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 sti
ll and his words seemed to come crawling up the sunlight, over the grass.

  "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 passed 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 came, over the heather in the night. Wild rabbits, making scrapes 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 grass. 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 grass 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 Hell

  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 grass 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 grass 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 suns
et. 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 glass. 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 assurance 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.