Authors: Richard Adams
There was a buzz of surprise.
"Of course, there are some of us who ought to stay here," said Hazel. "The farm rabbits can't be expected to go; and I'm not asking anyone who went the first time to go back again."
"I'll come, though," said Silver. "I hate General Woundwort and his Council with all my guts and if we're really going to make fools of them I want to be there, as long as I don't have to go back inside the place--that I couldn't face. But, after all, you're going to need someone who knows the way."
"I'll come," said Pipkin. "Hazel-rah saved my--I mean, I'm sure he knows what's--" He became confused. "Anyway, I'll come," he repeated, in a very nervous voice.
There was a scuffling in the run that led down from the wood and Hazel called, "Who's that?"
"It's I, Hazel-rah--Blackberry."
"Blackberry!" said Hazel. "Why, I thought you'd been here all the time. Where have you been?"
"Sorry not to have come before," said Blackberry. I've been talking to Kehaar, as a matter of fact, about the plan. He's improved it a good deal. If I'm not mistaken, General Woundwort's going to look remarkably silly before we've finished. I thought at first that it couldn't be done, but now I feel sure it can."
"Come where the grass is greener," said Bluebell,
"And the lettuces grow in rows,
"And a rabbit of free demeanor
"Is known by his well-scratched nose.
"I think I shall have to come, just to satisfy my curiosity. I've been opening and shutting my mouth like a baby bird to know about this plan and no one puts anything in. I suppose Bigwig's going to dress up as a hrududu and drive all the does across the field."
Hazel turned on him sharply. Bluebell sat up on his hind legs and said, "Please, General Woundwort, sir, I'm only a little hrududu and I've left all my petrol on the grass, so if you wouldn't mind eating the grass, sir, while I just give this lady a ride--"
"Bluebell," said Hazel, "shut up!"
"I'm sorry, Hazel-rah," replied Bluebell in surprise. "I didn't mean any harm. I was only trying to cheer everyone up a bit. After all, most of us feel frightened at the idea of going to this place and you can't blame us, can you? It sounds horribly dangerous."
"Well, look here," said Hazel, "we'll finish this meeting now. Let's wait and see what we decide--that's the rabbits' way. No one has to go to Efrafa who doesn't want to, but it's clear enough that some of us mean to go. Now I'm off to talk to Kehaar myself."
He found Kehaar just inside the trees, snapping and tearing with his great beak at a foul-smelling piece of flaking brown flesh which seemed to be hanging from a tracery of bones. He wrinkled his nose in disgust at the odor, which filled the wood around and was already attracting ants and bluebottles.
"What on earth is that, Kehaar?" he asked. "It smells appalling!"
"You not know? Heem feesh, feesh, come from Peeg Vater. Ees goot."
"Come from Big Water? (Ugh!) Did you find it there?"
"Na, na. Men have heem. Down to farm ees plenty peeg rubbish place, all t'ings dere. I go for food, find heem, all smell like Peeg Vater, pick heem up, pring heem back: make me t'ink all about Peeg Vater." He began to tear again at the half-eaten kipper. Hazel sat choking with nausea and disgust as Kehaar lifted it entire and beat it against a beech root, so that small fragments flew round them. He collected himself and made an effort.
"Kehaar," he said, "Bigwig says you told him you'd come and help us to get the mothers out of the big warren."
"Ya, ya, I come for you. Meester Pigvig, 'e need me for 'elp 'im. Van 'e dere, 'e talk to me, I not rabbit. Ees goot, ya?"
"Yes, rather. It's the only possible way. You're a good friend to us, Kehaar."
"Ya, ya, 'elp you for get mudders. But now ees dis, Meester 'Azel. Always I vant Peeg Vater now--alvays, alvays. Ees hearing Peeg Vater, vant to fly to Peeg Vater. Now soon you go for get mudders, I 'elp you, 'ow you like. Den, ven you getting mudders, I leave you dere, fly avay, no come back. But I come back anudder time, ya? Come in autumn, in vinter I come live 'ere vid you, ya?"
"We shall miss you, Kehaar. But when you come back we'll have a fine warren here, with lots of mothers. You'll be able to feel proud of all you did to help us."
"Ya, vill be so. But Meester 'Azel, ven you go? I vant 'elp you, but I no vant vait for go Peeg Vater. Ees hard now for stay, you know? Dis vat you do, do heem queek, ya?"
Bigwig came up the run, put his head out of the hole and stopped in horror.
"Frith up a tree!" he said. "What a fearful smell! Did you kill it, Kehaar, or did it die under a stone?"
"You like, Meester Pigvig? I pring you nice liddle pit, ya?"
"Bigwig," said Hazel, "go and tell all the others that we're setting off at daybreak tomorrow. Holly will be Chief Rabbit here until we get back and Buckthorn, Strawberry and the farm rabbits are to stay with him. Anyone else who wants to stay will be perfectly free to do so."
"Don't worry," said Bigwig, from the hole. "I'll send them all up to silflay with Kehaar. They'll go anywhere you like before a duck can dive."
PART III
Efrafa
30.
A New Journey
An undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is.
Company Prospectus of the South Sea Bubble
With the exception of Buckthorn and the addition of Bluebell, the rabbits who set off from the southern end of the beech hanger early the next morning were those who had left Sandleford with Hazel five weeks before. Hazel had said nothing more to persuade them, feeling that it would be better simply to leave things to set in his favor. He knew that they were afraid, for he was afraid himself. Indeed, he guessed that they, like himself, could not be free from the thought of Efrafa and its grim Owsla. But working against this fear was their longing and need to find more does and the knowledge that there were plenty of does in Efrafa. Then there was their sense of mischief. All rabbits love to trespass and steal and when it comes to the point very few will admit that they are afraid to do so; unless (like Buckthorn or Strawberry on this occasion) they know that they are not fit and that their bodies may let them down in the pinch. Again, in speaking about his secret plan, Hazel had aroused their curiosity. He had hoped that, with Fiver behind him, he could lure them with hints and promises: and he had been right. The rabbits trusted him and Fiver, who had gotten them out of Sandleford before it was too late, crossed the Enborne and the common, taken Bigwig out of the wire, founded the warren on the downs, made an ally of Kehaar and produced two does against all odds. There was no telling what they would do next. But they were evidently up to something; and since Bigwig and Blackberry seemed to be confidently in on it, no one was ready to say that he would rather stay out; especially since Hazel had made it clear that anyone who wished could remain at home and welcome--implying that if he was so poor-spirited as to choose to miss the exploit, they could do without him. Holly, in whom loyalty was second nature, had said no more to queer the pitch. He accompanied them as far as the end of the wood with all the cheerfulness he could muster; only begging Hazel, out of hearing of the rest, not to underrate the danger. "Send news by Kehaar when he reaches you," he said, "and come back soon."
Nevertheless, as Silver guided them southward along higher ground to the west of the farm, almost all, now that they were actually committed to the adventure, felt dread and apprehension. They had heard enough about Efrafa to daunt the stoutest heart. But before reaching it--or wherever they were going--they had to expect two days on the open down. Foxes, stoats, weasels--any of these might be encountered, and the only recourse would be flight above ground. Their progress was straggling and broken, slower than that which Holly had made with his picked band of three. Rabbits strayed, took alarm, stopped to rest. After a time Hazel divided them into groups, led by Silver, Bigwig and himself. Yet still they moved slowly, like climbers on a rock face, first some and then others taking their turn to cross the same piece of ground.
But at least the cover was good. June was moving toward July and high summer. Hedgerows and verges were at their rankest and thickest. The rabbits sheltered in dim green sun-flecked caves of grass, flowering marjoram and cow parsley; peered round spotted hairy-stemmed clumps of viper's bugloss, blooming red and blue above their heads; pushed between towering stalks of yellow mullein. Sometimes they scuttled along open turf, colored like a tapestry meadow with self-heal, centaury and tormentil. Because of their anxiety about elil and because they were nose to ground and unable to see far ahead, the way seemed long.
Had their journey been made in years gone by, they would have found the downs far more open, without standing crops, grazed close by sheep; and they could hardly have hoped to go far unobserved by enemies. But the sheep were long gone and the tractors had plowed great expanses for wheat and barley. The smell of the green, standing corn was round them all day. The mice were numerous and so were the kestrels. The kestrels were disturbing, but Hazel had been right when he guessed that a healthy, full-grown rabbit was too large a quarry for them. At all events, no one was attacked from above.
Some time before ni-Frith, in the heat of the day, Silver paused in a little patch of thorn. There was no breeze and the air was full of the sweet, chrysanthemum-like smell of the flowering compositae of dry uplands--corn chamomile, yarrow and tansy. As Hazel and Fiver came up and squatted beside him, he looked out across the open ground ahead.
"There, Hazel-rah," he said, "that's the wood that Holly didn't like."
Two or three hundred yards away and directly across their line, a belt of trees ran straight across the down, stretching in each direction as far as they could see. They had come to the line of the Portway--only intermittently a road--which runs from north of Andover, through St. Mary Bourne with its bells and streams and watercress beds, through Bradley Wood, on across the downs and so to Tadley and at last to Silchester--the Romans' Calleva Atrebatum. Where it crosses the downs, the line is marked by Caesar's Belt, a strip of woodland as straight as the road, narrow indeed but more than three miles long. In this hot noonday the trees of the Belt were looped and netted with darkest shadow. The sun lay outside, the shadows inside the trees. All was still, save for the grasshoppers and the falling finch song of the yellowhammer on the thorn. Hazel looked steadily for a long time, listening with raised ears and wrinkling his nose in the unmoving air.
"I can't see anything wrong with it," he said at last. "Can you, Fiver?"
"No," replied Fiver. "Holly thought it was a strange kind of wood and so it is, but there don't seem to be any men there. All the same, someone ought to go and make sure, I suppose. Shall I?"
The third group had come up while Hazel had been gazing at the Belt, and now all the rabbits were either nibbling quietly or resting, with ears laid flat, in the light green sun-and-shade of the thorn thicket
"Is Bigwig there?" asked Hazel.
Throughout the morning Bigwig had seemed unlike himself--silent and preoccupied, with little attention for what was going on around him. If his courage had not been beyond question, it might have been thought that he was feeling nervous. During one long halt Bluebell had overheard him talking with Hazel, Fiver and Blackberry, and later had told Pipkin that it sounded for all the world as though Bigwig were being reassured. "Fighting, yes, anywhere," he had heard him say, "but I still reckon that this game is more in someone else's line than mine." "No," replied Hazel, "you're the only one that can do it: and remember, this isn't sport, if the farm raid was. Everything depends on it." Then, realizing that Bluebell could hear him, he added, "Anyway, keep on thinking about it and try to get used to the idea. We must get on now." Bigwig had gone moodily down the hedgerow to collect his group.
Now he came out of a nearby clump of mugwort and flowering thistle and joined Hazel under the thorn.
"What do you want?" he asked abruptly.
"King of Cats" (Pfeffa-rah), answered Hazel, "would you like to go and have a look in those trees? And if you find any cats or men or anything like that, just chase them off, would you, and then come and tell us it's all right?"