Watership Down (21 page)

       
During silflay, however, Hazel mentioned Blackberry's idea to no one but Fiver. Later on, when most of the rabbits had finished feeding and were either playing in the grass or lying in the sunshine, he suggested that they might go across to the hanger--"Just to see what sort of a wood it is." Bigwig and Silver agreed at once and in the end no one stayed behind.

       
It was different from the meadow copses they had left: a narrow belt of trees, four or five hundred yards long but barely fifty wide; a kind of windbreak common on the downs. It consisted almost entirely of well-grown beeches. The great, smooth trunks stood motionless in their green shade, the branches spreading flat, one above another in crisp, light-dappled tiers. Between the trees the ground was open and offered hardly any cover. The rabbits were perplexed. They could not make out why the wood was so light and still and why they could see so far between the trees. The continuous, gentle rustling of the beech leaves was unlike the sounds to be heard in a copse of nut bushes, oak and silver birch.

       
Moving uncertainly in and out along the edge of the hanger, they came to the northeast corner. Here there was a bank from which they looked out over the empty stretches of grass beyond. Fiver, absurdly small beside the hulking Bigwig, turned to Hazel with an air of happy confidence.

       
"I'm sure Blackberry's right, Hazel," he said. "We ought to do our best to make some holes here. I'm ready to try, anyway."

       
The others were taken aback. Pipkin, however, readily joined Hazel at the foot of the bank and soon two or three more began scratching at the light soil. The digging was easy and although they often broke off to feed or merely to sit in the sun, before midday Hazel was out of sight and tunneling between the tree roots.

       
The hanger might have little or no undergrowth but at least the branches gave cover from the sky: and kestrels, they soon realized, were common in this solitude. Although kestrels seldom prey on anything bigger than a rat, they will sometimes attack young rabbits. No doubt this is why most grown rabbits will not remain under a hovering kestrel. Before long, Acorn spotted one as it flew up from the south. He stamped and bolted into the trees, followed by the other rabbits who were in the open. They had not long come out and resumed digging when they saw another--or perhaps the same one--hovering some way off, high over the very fields that they had crossed the previous morning. Hazel placed Buckthorn as a sentry while the day's haphazard work went on, and twice more during the afternoon the alarm was given. In the early evening they were disturbed by a horseman cantering along the ridge track that passed the north end of the wood. Otherwise they saw nothing larger than a pigeon all day.

       
After the horseman had turned south near the summit of Watership and disappeared in the distance, Hazel returned to the edge of the wood and looked out northward toward the bright, still fields and the dim pylon line stalking away into the distance north of Kingsclere. The air was cooler and the sun was beginning once more to reach the north escarpment.

       
"I think we've done enough," he said, "for today, anyway. I should like to go down to the bottom of the hill and find some really good grass. This stuff's all right in its way but it's rather thin and dry. Does anyone feel like coming with me?"

       
Bigwig, Dandelion and Speedwell were ready, but the others preferred to graze their way back to the thorn trees and go underground with the sun. Bigwig and Hazel picked the line that offered most cover and, with the others following, set out on the four or five hundred yards to the foot of the hill. They met no trouble and were soon feeding in the grass at the edge of the wheatfield, the very picture of rabbits in an evening landscape. Hazel, tired though he was, did not forget to look for somewhere to bolt if there should be an alarm. He was lucky enough to come upon a short length of old, overgrown ditch, partly fallen in and so heavily overhung with cow parsley and nettles that it was almost as sheltered as a tunnel; and all four of them made sure that they could reach it quickly from the open.

       
"That'll be good enough at a pinch," said Bigwig, munching clover and sniffing at the fallen bloom from a wayfaring tree. "My goodness, we've learned a few things since we left the old warren, haven't we? More than we'd have learned in a lifetime back there. And digging! It'll be flying next, I suppose. Have you noticed that this soil's quite different from the soil in the old warren? It smells differently and it slides and falls quite differently, too."

       
"That reminds me," said Hazel. "I meant to ask you. There was one thing at that terrible warren of Cowslip's that I admired very much--the great burrow. I'd like to copy it. It's a wonderful idea to have a place underground where everybody can be together--talk and tell stories and so on. What do you think? Could it be done?"

       
Bigwig considered. "I know this," he said. "If you make a burrow too big the roof starts falling in. So if you want a place like that you'll need something to hold the roof up. What did Cowslip have?"

       
"Tree roots."

       
"Well, there are those where we're digging. But are they the right sort?"

       
"We'd better get Strawberry to tell us what he knows about the great burrow; but it may not be much, I'm sure he wasn't alive when it was dug."

       
"He may not be dead when it falls in either. That warren's tharn as an owl in daylight. He was wise to leave when he did."

       
Twilight had fallen over the cornfield, for although long red rays still lit the upper down, the sun had set below. The uneven shadow of the hedge had faded and disappeared. There was a cool smell of moisture and approaching darkness. A cockchafer droned past. The grasshoppers had fallen silent.

       
"Owls'll be out," said Bigwig. "Let's go up again."

       
At this moment, from out in the darkening field, there came the sound of a stamp on the ground. It was followed by another, closer to them,
 
and they caught a glimpse of a white tail. They both immediately ran to the ditch. Now that they had to use it in earnest, they found it even narrower than they had thought. There was just room to turn round at the far end and as they did so Speedwell and Dandelion tumbled in behind them.

       
"What is it?" asked Hazel. "What did you hear?"

       
"There's something coming up the line of the hedge," replied Speedwell. "An animal. Making a lot of noise, too."

       
"Did you see it?"

       
"No, and I couldn't smell it either. It's downwind. But I heard it plainly enough."

       
"I heard it, too," said Dandelion. "Something fairly big--as big as a rabbit, anyway--moving clumsily but trying to keep concealed, or so it seemed to me."

       
"Homba?"

       
"No, that we
should
have smelled," said Bigwig, "wind or no wind. From what you say, it sounds like a cat. I hope it's not a stoat.
Hoi, hoi, u embleer hrair!
What a nuisance! We'd better sit tight for a bit. But get ready to bolt if it spots us."

       
They waited. Soon it grew dark. Only the faintest light came through the tangled summer growth above them. The far end of the ditch was so much overgrown that they could not see out of it, but the place where they had come in showed as a patch of sky--an arc of very dark blue. As the time passed, a star crept out from among the overhanging grasses. It seemed to pulsate in a rhythm as faint and uneven as that of the wind. At length Hazel turned his eyes away from watching it.

       
"Well, we can snatch some sleep here," he said. "The night's not cold. Whatever it was you heard, we'd better not risk going out."

       
"Listen," said Dandelion. "What's that?"

       
For a moment Hazel could hear nothing. Then he caught a distant but clear sound--a kind of wailing or crying, wavering and intermittent. Although it did not sound like any sort of hunting call, it was so unnatural that it filled him with fear. As he listened, it ceased.

       
"What in Frith's name makes a noise like that?" said Bigwig, his great fur cap hackling between his ears.

       
"A cat?" said Speedwell, wide-eyed.

       
"That's no cat!" said Bigwig, his lips drawn back in a stiffened, unnatural grimace, "That's no cat! Don't you know what it is? Your mother--" He broke off. Then he said, very low, "Your mother told you, didn't she?"

       
"No!" cried Dandelion. "No! It's some bird--some rat--wounded--"

       
Bigwig stood up. His back was arched and his head nodded on his stiffened neck.

       
"The Black Rabbit of Inlé," he whispered, "What else--in a place like this?"

       
"Don't talk like that!" said Hazel. He could feel himself trembling, and braced his legs against the sides of the narrow cut.

       
Suddenly the noise sounded again, nearer: and now there could be no mistake. What they heard was the voice of a rabbit, but changed out of all recognition. It might have come from the cold spaces of the dark sky outside, so unearthly and desolate was the sound. At first there was only a wailing. Then, distinct and beyond mistaking, they heard--they all heard--words.

       
"Zorn! Zorn!"
*
cried the dreadful, squealing voice. "All dead! O zorn!"

       
Dandelion whimpered. Bigwig was scuffling into the ground.

       
"Be quiet!" said Hazel. "And stop kicking that earth over me! I want to listen,"

       
At that moment, quite distinctly, the voice cried, "Thlayli! O Thlayli!"

       
At this, all four rabbits felt the trance of utter panic. They grew rigid. Then Bigwig, his eyes set in a fixed, glazed stare, began to jerk his way up the ditch toward the opening. "You have to go," he muttered, so thickly that Hazel could hardly catch the words. "You have to go when he calls you."

       
Hazel felt so much frightened that he could no longer collect his wits. As on the riverbank, his surroundings became unreal and dream-like. Who--or what--was calling Bigwig by name? How could any living creature in this place know his name? Only one idea remained to him--Bigwig must be prevented from going out, for he was helpless. He scrambled past him, pressing him against the side of the ditch.

       
"Stay where you are," he said, panting, "Whatever sort of rabbit it is, I'm going to see for myself." Then, his legs almost giving way beneath him, he pulled himself out into the open.

       
For a few moments he could see little or nothing; but the smells of dew and elder bloom were unchanged and his nose brushed against cool grass blades. He sat up and looked about him. There was no creature nearby.

       
"Who's there?" he said.

       
There was silence, and he was about to speak again when the voice replied, "Zorn! O zorn!"

       
It came from the hedge along the side of the field. Hazel turned toward the sound and in a few moments made out, under a clump of hemlock, the hunched shape of a rabbit. He approached it and said, "Who are you?" but there was no reply. As he hesitated, he heard a movement behind him.

       
"I'm here, Hazel," said Dandelion, in a kind of choking gasp.

       
Together they went closer. The figure did not move as they came up. In the faint starlight they both saw a rabbit as real as themselves: a rabbit in the last stages of exhaustion, its back legs trailing behind its flattened rump as though paralyzed: a rabbit that stared, white-eyed, from one side to the other, seeing nothing, yet finding no respite from its fear, and then fell to licking wretchedly at one ripped and bloody ear that drooped across its face: a rabbit that suddenly cried and wailed as though entreating the Thousand to come from every quarter to rid it of a misery too terrible to be borne.

       
It was Captain Holly of the Sandleford Owsla.

*
Bigwig's word was
hlessil
, which I have rendered in various places in the story as wanderers, scratchers, vagabonds. A
hlessi
is a rabbit living in the open, without a hole. Solitary bucks and unmated rabbits who are wandering do this for quite long periods, especially in summer. Bucks do not usually dig much in any case, although they will scratch shallow shelters or make use of existing holes where these are available. Real digging is done for the most part by does preparing for litters.

*
Zorn
means "finished" or "destroyed," in the sense of some terrible catastrophe.