Watership Down Page 13

  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 grass, 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 mass 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 mass 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 grass 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 grass, among the awakened insect movement and the light ablaze. The grass 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 cumuli. Their movement was disturbing, unlike that of trees or grass or rabbits. These great masses 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 grass, 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 grass, 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 grasses.

  "He must have gone down," said Dand
elion.

  "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 passed 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."

  In the twilight a swift flew screaming overhead and Hazel turned to Dandelion.

  "News! News!" he said. "Go and get them up here."

  Thus it fell to one of the rank and file to make a lucky find that brought them at last to the downs: and probably saved a life or two, for they could hardly have spent the night in the open, either on or under the hill, without being attacked by some enemy or other.

  19. Fear in the Dark

  "Who's in the next room? — who?

  A figure wan

  With a message to one in there of something due?

  Shall I know him anon?"

  "Yea, he; and he brought such; and you'll know him anon."

  Thomas Hardy, Who's in the Next Room?

  The holes certainly were rough-"Just right for a lot of vagabonds[9] like us," said Bigwig-but the exhausted and those who wander in strange country are not particular about therr quarters. At least there was room for twelve rabbits and the burrows were dry. Two of the runs-the ones among the thorn trees-led straight down to burrows scooped out of the top of the chalk subsoil. Rabbits do not line their sleeping places and a hard, almost rocky floor is uncomfortable for those not accustomed to it. The holes in the bank, however, had runs of the usual bow shape, leading down to the chalk and then curving up again to burrows with floors of trampled earth. There were no connecting passages, but the rabbits were too weary to care. They slept four to a burrow, snug and secure. Hazel remained awake for some time, licking Buckthorn's leg, which was stiff and tender. He was reassured to find no smell of infection, but all that he had ever heard about rats decided him to see that Buckthorn got a good deal of rest and was kept out of the dirt until the wound was better. "That's the third one of us to get hurt: still, all in all, things could have been far worse," he thought, as he fell asleep.

  The short June darkness slipped by in a few hours. The light returned early to the high down, but the rabbits did not stir. Well after dawn they were still sleeping, undisturbed in a silence deeper than they had ever known. Nowadays, among fields and woods, the noise level by day is high-too high for some kinds of animal to tolerate. Few places are far from human noise-cars, buses, motorcycles, tractors, lorries. The sound of a housing estate in the morning is audible a long way off. People who record birdsong generally do it very early-before six o'clock-if they can. Soon after that, the invasion of distant noise in most woodland becomes too constant and too loud. During the last fifty years the silence of much of the country has been destroyed. But here, on Watership Down, there floated up only faint traces of the daylight noise below.

  The sun was well up, though not yet as high as the down, when Hazel woke. With him in the burrow were Buckthorn, Fiver and Pipkin. He was nearest to the mouth of the hole and did not wake them as he slipped up the run. Outside, he stopped to pass hraka and then hopped through the thorn patch to the open grass. Below, the country was covered with early-morning mist which was beginning to clear. Here and there, far off, were the shapes of trees and roofs, from which streamers of mist trailed down like broken waves pouring from rocks. The sky was cloudless and deep blue, darkening to mauve along the whole rim of the horizon. The wind had dropped and the spiders had already gone well down into the grass. It was going to be a hot day.

  Hazel rambled about in the usual way of a rabbit feeding-five or six slow, rocking hops through the grass; a pause to look round, sitting up with ears erect; then busy nibbling for a short time, followed by another move of a few yards. For the first time for many days he felt relaxed and safe. He began to wonder whether they had much to learn about their new home.

  "Fiver was right," he thought. "This is the place for us. But we shall need to get used to it and the fewer mistakes we make the better. I wonder what became of the rabbits who made these holes? Did they stop running or did they just move away? If we could only find them they could tell us a lot."

  At this moment he saw a rabbit come rather hesitantly out of the hole furthest from himself. It was Blackberry. He, too, passed hraka, scratched himself and then hopped into the full sunlight and combed his ears. As he began to feed, Hazel came up and fell in with him, nibbling among the grass tussocks and wandering on wherever his friend pleased. They came to a patch of milkwort-a blue as deep as that of the sky-with long stems creeping through the grass and each minute flower spreading its two upper petals like wings. Blackberry sniffed at it, but the leaves were tough and unappetizing.

  "What is this stuff, do you know?" he asked.

  "No, I don't," said Hazel. "I've never seen it before."

  "There's a lot we don't know," said Blackberry. "About this place, I mean. The plants are new, the smells are new. We're going to need some new ideas ourselves."

  "Well, you're the fellow for ideas," said Hazel. "I never know anything until you tell me."

  "But you go in front and take the risks first," answered Blackberry. "We've all seen that. And now our journey's over, isn't it? This place is as safe as Fiver said it would be. Nothing can get near us without our knowing: that is, as long as we can smell and see and hear."

  "We can all do that."

  "Not when we're asleep: and we can't see in the dark."

  "It's bound to be dark at night," said Hazel, "and rabbits have got to sleep."

  "In the open?"

  "Well, we can go on using these holes if we want to, but I expect a good many will lie out. After all, you can't expect a bunch of bucks to dig. They might make a scrape or two-like that day after we came over the heather-but they won't do more than that."

  "That's what I've been thinking about," said Blackberry. "Those rabbits we left-Cowslip and the rest-a lot of the things they did weren't natural to rabbits-pushing stones into the earth and carrying food underground and Frith knows what."

  "The Threarah's lettuce was carried underground, if it comes to that."

  "Exactly. Don't you see, they'd altered what rabbits do naturally because they thought they could do better? And if they altered their ways, so can we if we like. You say buck rabbits don't dig. Nor they do. But they could, if they wanted to. Suppose we had deep, comfortable burrows to sleep in?
To be out of bad weather and underground at night? Then we would be safe. And there's nothing to stop us having them, except that buck rabbits won't dig. Not can't-won't."

  "What's your idea, then?" asked Hazel, half interested and half reluctant. "Do you want us to try to turn these holes into a regular warren?"

  "No, these holes won't do. It's easy to see why they've been deserted. Only a little way down and you come to this hard white stuff that no one can dig. They must be bitterly cold in winter. But there's a wood just over the top of the hill. I got a glimpse of it last night when we came. Suppose we go up higher now, just you and I, and have a look at it?"

  They ran uphill to the summit. The beech hanger lay some little way off to the southeast, on the far side of a grassy track that ran along the ridge.

  "There are some big trees there," said Blackberry. "The roots must have broken up the ground pretty deep. We could dig holes and be as well off as ever we were in the old warren. But if Bigwig and the others won't dig or say they can't-well, it's bare and bleak here. That's why it's lonely and safe, of course; but when bad weather comes we shall be driven off the hills for sure."