Watership Down (71 page)

It was a fine, clear evening in mid-October, about six weeks later. Although leaves remained on the beeches and the sunshine was warm, there was a sense of growing emptiness over the wide space of the down. The flowers were sparser. Here and there a yellow tormentil showed in the grass, a late harebell or a few shreds of purple bloom on a brown, crisping tuft of self-heal. But most of the plants still to be seen were in seed. Along the edge of the wood a sheet of wild clematis showed like a patch of smoke, all its sweet-smelling flowers turned to old man's beard. The songs of the insects were fewer and intermittent. Great stretches of the long grass, once the teeming jungle of summer, were almost deserted, with only a hurrying beetle or a torpid spider left out of all the myriads of August. The gnats still danced in the bright air, but the swifts that had swooped for them were gone and instead of their screaming cries in the sky, the twittering of a robin sounded from the top of a spindle tree. The fields below the hill were all cleared. One had already been plowed and the polished edges of the furrows caught the light with a dull glint, conspicuous from the ridge above. The sky, too, was void, with a thin clarity like that of water. In July the still blue, thick as cream, had seemed close above the green trees, but now the blue was high and rare, the sun slipped sooner to the west and, once there, foretold a touch of frost, sinking slow and big and drowsy, crimson as the rose hips that covered the briar. As the wind freshened from the south, the red and yellow beech leaves rasped together with a brittle sound, harsher than the fluid rustle of earlier days. It was a time of quiet departures, of the sifting away of all that was not staunch against winter.

       
Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it. For them there is no winter food problem. They have fires and warm clothes. The winter cannot hurt them and therefore increases their sense of cleverness and security. For birds and animals, as for poor men, winter is another matter. Rabbits, like most wild animals, suffer hardship. True, they are luckier than some, for food of a sort is nearly always to be had. But under snow they may stay underground for days at a time, feeding only by chewing pellets. They are more subject to disease in winter and the cold lowers their vitality. Nevertheless, burrows can be snug and warm, especially when crowded. Winter is a more active mating season than the late summer and the autumn, and the time of greatest fertility for the does starts about February. There are fine days when silflay is still enjoyable. For the adventurous, garden-raiding has its charms. And underground there are stories to be told and games to be played--bob-stones and the like. For rabbits, winter remains what it was for men in the middle ages--hard, but bearable by the resourceful and not altogether without compensations.

       
On the west side of the beech hanger, in the evening sun, Hazel and Fiver were sitting with Holly, Silver and Groundsel. The Efrafan survivors had been allowed to join the warren and after a shaky start, when they were regarded with dislike and suspicion, were settling down pretty well, largely because Hazel was determined that they should.

       
Since the night of the siege, Fiver had spent much time alone and even in the Honeycomb, or at morning and evening silflay, was often silent and preoccupied. No one resented this--"He looks right through you in such a nice, friendly way," as Bluebell put it--for each in his own manner recognized that Fiver was now more than ever governed, whether he would or no, by the pulse of that mysterious world of which he had once spoken to Hazel during the late June days they had spent together at the foot of the down. It was Bigwig who said--one evening when Fiver was absent from the Honeycomb at story time--that Fiver was one who had paid more dearly than even himself for the night's victory over the Efrafans. Yet to his doe, Vilthuril, Fiver was devotedly attached, while she had come to understand him almost as deeply as ever Hazel had.

       
Just outside the beech hanger, Hyzenthlay's litter of four young rabbits were playing in the grass. They had first been brought up to graze about seven days before. If Hyzenthlay had had a second litter she would by this time have left them to look after themselves. As it was, however, she was grazing close by, watching their play and every now and then moving in to cuff the strongest and stop him bullying the others.

       
"They're a good bunch, you know," said Holly. "I hope we get some more like those."

       
"We can't expect many more until toward the end of the winter," said Hazel, "though I dare say there'll be a few."

       
"We can expect anything, it seems to me," said Holly.

       
"Three litters born in autumn--have
you
ever heard of such a thing before? Frith didn't mean rabbits to mate in the high summer."

       
"I don't know about Clover," said Hazel. "She's a hutch rabbit: it may be natural to her to breed at any time, for all I know. But I'm sure that Hyzenthlay and Vilthuril started their litters in the high summer because they'd had no natural life in Efrafa. For all that, they're the only two who
have
had litters, as yet."

       
"Frith never meant us to go out fighting in the high summer, either, if that comes to that," said Silver. "Everything that's happened is unnatural--the fighting, the breeding--and all on account of Woundwort. If he wasn't unnatural, who was?"

       
"Bigwig was right when he said he wasn't like a rabbit at all," said Holly. "He was a fighting animal--fierce as a rat or a dog. He fought because he actually felt safer fighting than running. He was brave, all right. But it wasn't natural; and that's why it was bound to finish him in the end. He was trying to do something that Frith never meant any rabbit to do. I believe he'd have hunted like the elil if he could."

       
"He isn't dead, you know," broke in Groundsel.

       
The others were silent.

       
"He hasn't stopped running," said Groundsel passionately. "Did you see his body? No. Did anyone? No. Nothing could kill him. He made rabbits bigger than they've ever been--braver, more skillful, more cunning. I know we paid for it. Some gave their lives. It was worth it, to feel we were Efrafans. For the first time ever, rabbits didn't go scurrying away. The elil feared us. And that was on account of Woundwort--him and no one but him. We weren't good enough for the General. Depend upon it, he's gone to start another warren somewhere else. But no Efrafan officer will ever forget him."

       
"Well, now I'll tell you something," began Silver. But Hazel cut him short.

       
"You mustn't say you weren't good enough," he said. "You did everything for him that rabbits could do and a great deal more. And what a lot we learned from you! As for Efrafa, I've heard it's doing well under Campion, even if some things aren't quite the same as they used to be. And listen--by next spring, if I'm right, we shall have too many rabbits here for comfort. I'm going to encourage some of the youngsters to start a new warren between here and Efrafa; and I think you'll find Campion will be ready to send some of his rabbits to join them. You'd be just the right fellow to start that scheme off."

       
"Won't it be difficult to arrange?" asked Holly.

       
"Not when Kehaar comes," said Hazel, as they began to hop easily back toward the holes at the northeast corner of the hanger. "He'll turn up one of these days, when the storms begin on that Big Water of his. He can take a message to Campion as quickly as you'd run down to the iron tree and back."

       
"By Frith in the leaves, and I know someone who'll be glad to see him!" said Silver. "Someone not so very far away."

       
They had reached the eastern end of the trees and here, well out in the open where it was still sunny, a little group of three young rabbits--bigger than Hyzenthlay's--were squatting in the long grass, listening to a hulking veteran, lop-eared and scarred from nose to haunch--none other than Bigwig, captain of a very free-and-easy Owsla. These were the bucks of Clover's litter and a likely lot they looked.

       
"Oh, no, no, no, no," Bigwig was saying. "Oh, my wings and beak, that won't do! You--what's your name--Scabious--look, I'm a cat and I see you down at the bottom of my garden chewing up the lettuces. Now, what do I do? Do I come walking up the middle of the path waving my tail? Well, do I?"

       
"Please, sir, I've never seen a cat," said the young rabbit.

       
"No, you haven't yet," admitted the gallant captain. "Well, a cat is a horrible thing with a long tail. It's covered with fur and has bristling whiskers and when it fights it makes fierce, spiteful noises. It's cunning, see?"

       
"Oh, yes, sir," answered the young rabbit. After a pause, he said politely, "Er--you lost your tail?"

       
"Will you tell us about the fight in the storm, sir?" asked one of the other rabbits, "and the tunnel of water?"

       
"Yes, later on," said the relentless trainer. "Now look, I'm a cat, right? I'm asleep in the sun, right? And you're going to get past me, right? Now then--"

       
"They pull his leg, you know," said Silver, "but they'd do anything for him." Holly and Groundsel had gone underground and Silver and Hazel moved out once more into the sun.

       
"I think we all would," replied Hazel. "If it hadn't been for him that day, the dog would have come too late. Woundwort and his lot wouldn't have been above ground. They'd have been down below, finishing what they'd come to do."

       
"He beat Woundwort, you know," said Silver. "He had him beat before the dog came. That was what I was going to say just now, but it was as well I didn't, I suppose."

       
"I wonder how they're getting on with that winter burrow down the hill," said Hazel. "We're going to need it when the hard weather comes. That hole in the roof of the Honeycomb doesn't help at all. It'll close up naturally one day, I suppose, but meanwhile it's a confounded nuisance."

       
"Here come the burrow-diggers, anyway," said Silver.

       
Pipkin and Bluebell came over the crest, together with three or four of the does.

       
"Ah ha, ah ha, O Hazel-rah," said Bluebell. "The burrow's snug, it hath been dug, t'is free from beetle, worm and slug. And in the snow, when down we go--"
    

       
"Then what a lot to you we'll owe," said Hazel. "I mean it, too. The holes are concealed, are they?"

       
"Just like Efrafa, I should think," said Bluebell. "As a matter of fact, I brought one up with me to show you. You can't see it, can you? No--well, there you are. I say, just look at old Bigwig with those youngsters over there. You know, if he went back to Efrafa now they couldn't decide which Mark to put him in, could they? He's got them all."

       
"Come over to the evening side of the wood with us, Hazel-rah?" said Pipkin. "We came up early on purpose to have a bit of sunshine before it gets dark."

       
"All right," answered Hazel good-naturedly. "We've just come back from there, Silver and I, but I don't mind slipping over again for a bit."

       
"Let's go out to that little hollow where we found Kehaar that morning," said Silver. "It'll be out of the wind. D'you remember how he cursed at us and tried to peck us?"

       
"And the worms we carried?" said Bluebell. "Don't forget them."

       
As they came near the hollow they could hear that it was not empty. Evidently some of the other rabbits had had the same idea.

       
"Let's see how close we can get before they spot us," said Silver. "Real Campion style--come on."

       
They approached very quietly, upwind from the north. Peeping over the edge, they saw Vilthuril and her litter of four lying in the sun. Their mother was telling the young rabbits a story.

       
"So after they had swum the river," said Vilthuril, "El-ahrairah led his people on in the dark, through a wild, lonely place. Some of them were afraid, but he knew the way and in the morning he brought them safely to some green fields, very beautiful, with good, sweet grass. And here they found a warren; a warren that was bewitched. All the rabbits in this warren were in the power of a wicked spell. They wore shining collars round their necks and sang like the birds and some of them could fly. But for all they looked so fine, their hearts were dark and tharn. So then El-ahrairah's people said, 'Ah, see, these are the wonderful rabbits of Prince Rainbow. They are like princes themselves. We will live with them and become princes, too.' "

       
Vilthuril looked up and saw the newcomers. She paused for a moment and then went on.

       
"But Frith came to Rabscuttle in a dream and warned him that that warren was enchanted. And he dug into the ground to find where the spell was buried. Deep he dug, and hard was the search, but at last he found that wicked spell and dragged it out. So they all fled from it, but it turned into a great rat and flew at El-ahrairah. Then El-ahrairah fought the rat, up and down, and at last he held it, pinned under his claws, and it turned into a great white bird which spoke to him and blessed him."