Watership Down Page 21

  While these scents reached them they were also listening. But beyond the light movements of birds and the first buzzing of the flies immediately around them, they could hear nothing but the continual susurration of the trees. Under the northern steep of the down the air had been still, but here the southerly breeze was magnified by the elms, with their myriads of small, fluttering leaves, just as the effect of sunlight on a garden is magnified by dew. The sound, coming from the topmost branches, disturbed Hazel because it suggested some huge approach-an approach that was never completed: and he and Pipkin remained still for some time, listening tensely to this loud yet meaningless vehemence high overhead.

  They saw no cat, but near the house stood a flat-roofed dog kennel. They could just glimpse the dog asleep inside-a large, smooth-haired, black dog, with head on paws. Hazel could not see a chain; but then, after a moment, he noticed the line of a thin rope that came out through the kennel door and ended in some sort of fastening on the roof. "Why a rope?" he wondered and then thought, "Because a restless dog cannot rattle it in the night."

  The two rabbits began to wander among the outbuildings. At first they took care to remain in cover and continually on the watch for cats. But they saw none and soon grew bolder, crossing open spaces and even stopping to nibble at dandelions in the patches of weeds and rough grass. Guided by scent, Hazel made his way to a low-roofed shed. The door was half open and he went through it with scarcely a pause at the brick threshold. Immediately opposite the door, on a broad wooden shelf-a kind of platform-stood a wire-fronted hutch. Through the mesh he could see a brown bowl, some greenstuff and the ears of two or three rabbits. As he stared, one of the rabbits came close to the wire, looked out and saw him.

  Beside the platform, on the near side, was an up-ended bale of straw. Hazel jumped lightly on it and from there to the thick planks, which were old and soft-surfaced, dusty and covered with chaff. Then he turned back to Pipkin, waiting just inside the door.

  "Hlao-roo," he said, "there's only one way out of this place. You'll have to keep watching for cats or we may be trapped. Stay at the door and if you see a cat outside, tell me at once."

  "Right, Hazel-rah," said Pipkin. "It's all clear at the moment."

  Hazel went up to the side of the hutch. The wired front projected over the edge of the shelf so that he could neither reach it nor look in, but there was a knothole in one of the boards facing him and on the far side he could see a twitching nose.

  "I am Hazel-rah," he said. "I have come to talk to you. Can you understand me?"

  The answer was in slightly strange but perfectly intelligible Lapine.

  "Yes, we understand you. My name is Boxwood. Where do you come from?"

  "From the hills. My friends and I live as we please, without men. We eat the grass, lie in the sun and sleep underground. How many are you?"

  "Four. Bucks and does."

  "Do you ever come out?"

  "Yes, sometimes. A child takes us out and puts us in a pen on the grass."

  "I have come to tell you about my warren. We need more rabbits. We want you to run away from the farm and join us."

  "There's a wire door at the back of this hutch," said Boxwood. "Come down there: we can talk more easily."

  The door was made of wire netting on a wooden frame, with two leather hinges nailed to the uprights and a hasp and staple fastened with a twist of wire. Four rabbits were crowded against the wire, pressing their noses through the mesh. Two- Laurel and Clover-were short-haired black Angoras. The others, Boxwood and his doe Haystack, were black-and-white Himalayans.

  Hazel began to speak about the life of the downs and the excitement and freedom enjoyed by wild rabbits. In his usual straightforward way he told about the predicament of his warren in having no does and how he had come to look for some. "But," he said, "we don't want to steal your does. All four of you are welcome to join us, bucks and does alike. There's plenty for everyone on the hills." He went on to talk of the evening feed in the sunset and of early morning in the long grass.

  The hutch rabbits seemed at once bewildered and fascinated. Clover, the Angora doe-a strong, active rabbit-was clearly excited by Hazel's description and asked several questions about the warren and the downs. It became plain that they thought of their life in the hutch as dull but safe. They had learned a good deal about elil from some source or other and seemed sure that few wild rabbits survived for long. Hazel realized that although they were glad to talk to him and welcomed his visit because it brought a little excitement and change into their monotonous life, it was not within their capacity to take a decision and act on it. They did not know how to make up their minds. To him and his companions, sensing and acting was second nature; but these rabbits had never had to act to save their lives or even to find a meal. If he was going to get any of them as far as the down, they would have to be urged. He sat quiet for a little, nibbling a patch of bran spilled on the boards outside the hutch. Then he said,

  "I must go back now to my friends in the hills: but we shall return. We shall come one night, and when we do, believe me, we shall open your hutch as easily as the farmer does: and then, any of you who wish will be free to come with us."

  Boxwood was about to reply when suddenly Pipkin spoke from the floor. "Hazel, there's a cat in the yard outside!"

  "We're not afraid of cats," said Hazel to Boxwood, "as long as we're in the open." Trying to appear unhurried, he went back to the floor by way of the straw bale and crossed over to the door. Pipkin was looking through the hinge. He was plainly frightened.

  "I think it's smelled us, Hazel," he said. "I'm afraid it knows where we are."

  "Don't stay there, then," said Hazel. "Follow me close and run when I do." Without waiting to look out through the hinge, he went round the half-open door of the shed and stopped on the threshold.

  The cat, a tabby with white chest and paws, was at the further end of the little yard, walking slowly and deliberately along the side of a pile of logs. When Hazel appeared in the doorway it saw him at once and stood stock still, with staring eyes and twitching tail. Hazel hopped slowly across the threshold and stopped again. Already sunlight was slanting across the yard, and in the stillness the flies buzzed about a patch of dung a few feet away. There was a smell of straw and dust and hawthorn.

  "You look hungry," said Hazel to the cat. "Rats getting too clever, I suppose?"

  The cat made no reply. Hazel sat blinking in the sunshine. The cat crouched almost flat on the ground, thrusting its head forward between its front paws. Close behind, Pipkin fidgeted and Hazel, never taking his eyes from the cat, could sense that he was trembling.

  "Don't be frightened, Hlao-roo," he whispered, "I'll get you away, but you must wait till it comes for us. Keep still."

  The cat began to lash its tail. Its hindquarters lifted and wagged from side to side in mounting excitement.

  "Can you run?" said Hazel. "I think not. Why, you pop-eyed, back-door saucer-scraper-"

  The cat flung itself across the yard and the two rabbits leaped into flight with great thrusts of their hind legs. The cat came very fast indeed and although both of them had been braced ready to move on the instant, they were barely out of the yard in time. Racing up the side of the long barn, they heard the Labrador barking in excitement as it ran to the full extent of its rope. A man's voice shouted to it. From the cover of the hedge beside the lane they turned and looked back. The cat had stopped short and was licking one paw with a pretense of nonchalance.

  "They hate to look silly," said Hazel. "It won't give us any more trouble. If it hadn't charged at us like that, it would have followed us much further and probably called up another as well. And somehow you can't make a dash unless they do it first. It's a good thing you saw it coming, Hlao-roo."

  "I'm glad if I helped, Hazel. But what were we up to, and why did you talk to the rabbits in the box?"

  "I'll tell you all about it later on. Let's go into the field now and feed; then we can make our way home as slowly as
you like."

  25. The Raid

  He went consenting, or else he was no king… It was no one's place to say to him, "It is time to make the offering."

  Mary Renault, The King Must Die

  As things turned out, Hazel and Pipkin did not come back to the Honeycomb until the evening. They were still feeding in the field when it came on to rain, with a cold wind, and they took shelter first in the nearby ditch and then-since the ditch was on a slope and had a fair flow of rainwater in about ten minutes-among some sheds halfway down the lane. They burrowed into a thick pile of straw and for some time remained listening for rats. But all was quiet and they grew drowsy and fell asleep, while outside the rain settled in for the morning. When they woke it was mid-afternoon and still drizzling. It seemed to Hazel that there was no particular hurry. The going would be troublesome in the wet, and anyway no self-respecting rabbit could leave without a forage round the sheds. A pile of mangels and swedes occupied them for some time and they set out only when the light was beginning to fade. They took their time and reached the hanger a little before dark, with nothing worse to trouble them than the discomfort of soaking-wet fur. Only two or three of the rabbits were out to a rather subdued silflay in the wet. No one remarked on their absence and Hazel went underground at once, telling Pipkin to say nothing about their adventure for the time being. He found his burrow empty, lay down and fell asleep.

  Waking, he found Fiver beside him as usual. It was some time before dawn. The earth floor felt pleasantly dry and snug and he was about to go back to sleep when Fiver spoke.

  "You've been wet through, Hazel."

  "Well, what about it? The grass is wet, you know."

  "You didn't get so wet on silflay. You were soaked. You weren't here at all yesterday, were you?"

  "Oh, I went foraging down the hill."

  "Eating swedes: and your feet smell of farmyard-hens' droppings and bran. But there's some other funny thing besides-something I can't smell. What happened?"

  "Well, I had a bit of a brush with a cat, but why worry?"

  "Because you're concealing something, Hazel. Something dangerous."

  "It's Holly that's in danger, not I. Why bother about me?"

  "Holly?" replied Fiver in surprise. "But Holly and the others reached the big warren early yesterday evening. Kehaar told us. Do you mean to say you didn't know?"

  Hazel felt fairly caught out. "Well, I know now," he replied. "I'm glad to hear it."

  "So it comes to this," said Fiver. "You went to a farm yesterday and escaped from a cat. And whatever you were up to, it was so much on your mind that you forgot to ask about Holly last night."

  "Well, all right, Fiver-I'll tell you all about it. I took Pipkin and went to that farm that Kehaar told us about where there are rabbits in a hutch. I found the rabbits and talked to them and I've taken a notion to go back one night and get them out, to come and join us here."

  "What for?"

  "Well, two of them are does, that's what for."

  "But if Holly's successful we shall soon have plenty of does: and from all I've ever heard of hutch rabbits, they don't take easily to wild life. The truth is, you're just a silly show-off."

  "A silly show-off?" said Hazel. "Well, we'll just see whether Bigwig and Blackberry think so."

  "Risking your life and other rabbits' lives for something that's of little or no value to us," said Fiver. "Oh, yes, of course the others will go with you. You're their Chief Rabbit. You're supposed to decide what's sensible and they trust you. Persuading them will prove nothing, but three or four dead rabbits will prove you're a fool, when it's too late."

  "Oh, be quiet," answered Hazel. "I'm going to sleep."

  During silflay next morning, with Pipkin for a respectful chorus, he told the others about his visit to the farm. As he had expected, Bigwig jumped at the idea of a raid to free the hutch rabbits.

  "It can't go wrong," he said. "It's a splendid idea, Hazel! I don't know how you open a hutch, but Blackberry will see to that. What annoys me is to think you ran from that cat. A good rabbit's a match for a cat, any day. My mother went for one once and she fairly gave it something to remember, I can tell you: scratched its fur out like willow herb in autumn! Just leave the farm cats to me and one or two of the others!"

  Blackberry took a little more convincing: but he, like Bigwig and Hazel himself, was secretly disappointed not to have gone on the expedition with Holly: and when the other two pointed out that they were relying on him to tell them how to get the hutch open, he agreed to come.

  "Do we need to take everyone?" he asked. "You say the dog's tied up and I suppose there can't be more than three cats. Too many rabbits will only be a nuisance in the dark: someone will get lost and we shall have to spend time looking for him."

  "Well, Dandelion, Speedwell and Hawkbit, then," said Bigwig, "and leave the others behind. Do you mean to go tonight, Hazel-rah?"

  "Yes, the sooner the better," said Hazel. "Get hold of those three and tell them. Pity it's going to be dark-we could have taken Kehaar: he'd have enjoyed it."

  However, their hopes for that night were disappointed, for the rain returned before dusk, settling in on a northwest wind and carrying up the hill the sweet-sour smell of flowering privet from cottage hedges below. Hazel sat on the bank until the light had quite faded. At last, when it was clear that the rain was going to stay for the night, he joined the others in the Honeycomb. They had persuaded Kehaar to come down out of the wind and wet, and one of Dandelion's tales of El-ahrairah was followed by an extraordinary story that left everyone mystified but fascinated, about a time when Frith had to go away on a journey, leaving the whole world to be covered with rain. But a man built a great floating hutch that held all the animals and birds until Frith returned and let them out.

  "It won't happen tonight, will it, Hazel-rah?" asked Pipkin, listening to the rain in the beech leaves outside. "There's no hutch here."

  "Kehaar'll fly you up to the moon, Hlao-roo," said Bluebell, "and you can come down on Bigwig's head like a birch branch in the frost. But there's time to go to sleep first."

  Before Fiver slept, however, he talked again to Hazel about the raid.

  "I suppose it's no good asking you not to go?" he said.

  "Look here," answered Hazel, "have you got one of your bad turns about the farm? If you have, why not say so straight out? Then we'd all know where we were."

  "I've no feelings about the farm one way or the other," said Fiver. "But that doesn't necessarily mean it's all right. The feelings come when they will-they don't always come. Not for the lendri, not for the crow. If it comes to that, I've no idea what's happening to Holly and the others. It might be good or bad. But there's something that frightens me about you yourself, Hazel: just you, not any of the others. You're all alone, sharp and clear, like a dead branch against the sky."

  "Well, if you mean you can see trouble for me and not for any of the others, tell them and I'll leave it to them to decide whether I ought to keep out of it. But that's giving up a lot, Fiver, you know. Even with your word for it, someone's bound to think I'm afraid."

  "Well, I say it's not worth the risk, Hazel. Why not wait for Holly to come back? That's all we have to do."

  "I'll be snared if I wait for Holly. Can't you see that the very thing I want is to have these does here when he comes back? But look, Fiver, I'll tell you what. I've come to trust you so much that I'll take the greatest care. In fact, I won't even go into the farmyard myself. I'll stay outside, at the top of the lane: and if that's not meeting your fears halfway, then I don't know what is."

  Fiver said no more and Hazel turned his thoughts to the raid and the difficulty he foresaw of getting the hutch rabbits to go the distance back to the warren.

  The next day was bright and dry, with a fresh wind that cleared up what remained of the wet. The clouds came racing over the ridge from the south as they had on the May evening when Hazel first climbed the down. But now they were higher and smaller, settling at last int
o a mackerel sky like a beach at low tide. Hazel took Bigwig and Blackberry to the edge of the escarpment, whence they could look across to Nuthanger on its little hill. He described the approach and went on to explain how the rabbit hutch was to be found. Bigwig was in high spirits. The wind and the prospect of action excited him and he spent some time with Dandelion, Hawkbit and Speedwell, pretending to be a cat and encouraging them to attack him as realistically as they could. Hazel, whose talk with Fiver had somewhat clouded him, recovered as he watched them tussling over the grass and ended by joining in himself, first as an attacker and then as the cat, staring and quivering for all the world like the Nuthanger tabby.

  "I shall be disappointed if we don't meet a cat after all this," said Dandelion, as he waited for his turn to run at a fallen beech branch from one side, claw it twice and dash out again. "I feel a really dangerous animal."

  "You vatch heem, Meester Dando," said Kehaar, who was hunting for snails in the grass nearby, "Meester Pigvig, 'e vant you t'ink all vun peeg yoke; make you prave. Cat 'e no yoke. You no see 'im, you no 'ear 'im. Den yomp! 'E come."

  "But we're not going there to eat, Kehaar," said Bigwig. "That makes all the difference. We shan't stop watching for cats the whole time."

  "Why not eat the cat?" said Bluebell. "Or bring one back here for breeding? That ought to improve the warren stock no end."

  Hazel and Bigwig had decided that the raid should be carried out as soon after dark as the farm was quiet. This meant that they would cover the half mile to the outlying sheds at sunset, instead of risking the confusion of a night journey over ground that only Hazel knew. They could steal a meal among the swedes, halt till darkness and cover the short distance to the farm after a good rest. Then-provided they could cope with the cats-there would be plenty of time to tackle the hutch; whereas if they were to arrive at dawn they would be working against time before men came on the scene. Finally, the hutch rabbits would not be missed until the following morning.