There was silence while Bigwig and Holly took in the news. At last Bigwig said, "Will they stay there tonight?"

"I think so," replied Blackberry. "I'm sure Hazel won't be able to manage the hill until he's a good deal stronger."

"I'll go down there," said Bigwig. "I can help to make the ditch a bit more comfortable, and probably Fiver will be able to do with someone else to help to look after Hazel"

"I should hurry, then, if I were you," said Blackberry. "The sun will be down soon."

"Hah!" said Bigwig, "If I meet a stoat, it'd better look out, that's all. I'll bring you one back tomorrow, shall I?" He raced off and disappeared over the edge.

"Let's go and get the others together," said Holly. "Come on, Blackberry, you'll have to tell the whole thing, from the beginning."

The three quarters of a mile in the blazing heat, from Nuthanger to the foot of the hill, had cost Hazel more pain and effort than anything in his life. If Fiver had not found him, he would have died in the drain. When Fiver's urging had penetrated his dark, ebbing stupor, he had at first actually tried not to respond. It was so much easier to remain where he was, on the far side of the suffering he had undergone. Later, when he found himself lying in the green gloom of the ditch, with Fiver searching his wounds and a.s.suring him that he could stand and move, still he could not face the idea of setting out to return. His torn side throbbed and the pain in his leg seemed to have affected his senses. He felt dizzy and could not hear or smell properly. At last, when he understood that Fiver and Blackberry had risked a second journey to the farm, in the broadest of daylight, solely to find him and save his life, he forced himself to his feet and began to stumble down the slope to the road. His sight was swimming and he had to stop again and again. Without Fiver's encouragement he would have lain down once more and given up. In the road, he could not climb the bank and had to limp along the verge until he could crawl under a gate. Much later, as they came under the pylon line, he remembered the overgrown ditch at the foot of the hill and set himself to reach it. Once there, he lay down and at once returned to the sleep of total exhaustion.

When Bigwig arrived, just before dark, he found Fiver s.n.a.t.c.hing a quick feed in the long gra.s.s. It was out of the question to disturb Hazel by digging, and they spent the night crouched beside him on the narrow floor.

Coming out in the gray light before dawn, the first creature Bigwig saw was Kehaar, foraging between the elders. He stamped to attract his attention and Kehaar sailed across to him with one beat of his wings and a long glide.

"Meester Pigvig, you find Meester 'Azel?"

"Yes," said Bigwig, "he's in the ditch here."

" 'E not dead?"

"No, but he's wounded and very weak. The farm man shot him with a gun, you know."

"You get black stones out?"

"How do you mean?"

"Alvays vid gun ees coming liddle black stones. You never see?"

"No, I don't know about guns."

"Take out black stones, 'e get better. 'E come now, ya?"

"I'll see," said Bigwig. He went down to Hazel and found him awake and talking to Fiver. When Bigwig told him that Kehaar was outside he dragged himself up the short run and into the gra.s.s.

"Dis d.a.m.n gun," said Kehaar. " 'E put liddle stones for 'urt you. I look, ya?"

"I suppose you'd better," said Hazel. "My leg's still very bad, I'm afraid."

He lay down and Kehaar's head flicked from side to side as though he were looking for snails in Hazel's brown fur. He peered closely up the length of the torn flank.

"Ees not stones 'ere," he said. "Go in, go out--no stop. Now I see you leg. Maybe 'urt you, not long."

Two shotgun pellets were buried in the muscle of the haunch. Kehaar detected them by smell and removed them exactly as he might have picked spiders out of a crack. Hazel had barely time to flinch before Bigwig was sniffing at the pellets in the gra.s.s.

"Now ees more bleed," said Kehaar. "You stay, vait maybe vun, two day. Den goot like before. Dose rabbits up dere, all vait, vait for Meester 'Azel. I tell dem 'e come." He flew off before they could reply.

As things turned out, Hazel stayed three days at the foot of the hill. The hot weather continued and for much of the time he sat under the elder branches, dozing above ground like some solitary hlessi and feeling his strength returning. Fiver stayed with him, keeping the wounds clean and watching his recovery. Often they would say nothing for hours together, lying in the rough, warm gra.s.s while the shadows moved to evening, until at last the local blackbird c.o.c.ked its tail and tuck-tucked away to roost. Neither spoke of Nuthanger Farm, but Hazel showed plainly enough that for the future Fiver, when he gave advice, would have no hard task to get him to accept it.

"Hrairoo," said Hazel one evening, "what would we have done without you? We'd none of us be here, would we?"

"You're sure we are are here, then?" asked Fiver. here, then?" asked Fiver.

"That's too mysterious for me," replied Hazel. "What do you mean?"

"Well, there's another place--another country, isn't there? We go there when we sleep; at other times, too; and when we die. El-ahrairah comes and goes between the two as he wants, I suppose, but I could never quite make that out, from the tales. Some rabbits will tell you it's all easy there, compared with the waking dangers that they understand. But I think that only shows they don't know much about it. It's a wild place, and very unsafe. And where are we really--there or here?"

"Our bodies stay here--that's good enough for me. You'd better go and talk to that Silverweed fellow--he might know more."

"Oh, you remember him? I felt that when we were listening to him, you know. He terrified me and yet I knew that I understood him better than anyone else in that place. He knew where he belonged, and it wasn't here. Poor fellow, I'm sure he's dead. They'd got him, all right--the ones in that country. They don't give their secrets away for nothing, you know. But look! Here come Holly and Blackberry, so we'd better feel sure we're here just for the moment, anyway."

Holly had already come down the hill on the previous day to see Hazel and tell again the story of his escape from Efrafa. When he had spoken of his deliverance by the great apparition in the night, Fiver had listened attentively and asked one question, "Did it make a noise?" Later, when Holly had gone back, he told Hazel that he felt sure there was some natural explanation, though he had no idea what it could be. Hazel, however, had not been greatly interested. For him, the important thing was their disappointment and the reason for it. Holly had achieved nothing and this was entirely due to the unexpected unfriendliness of the Efrafan rabbits. This evening, as soon as they had begun to feed, Hazel returned to the matter.

"Holly," he said, "we're hardly any nearer to solving our problem, are we? You've done wonders and got nothing to show for it, and the Nuthanger raid was only a silly lark, I'm afraid--and an expensive one for me, at that. The real hole has still got to be dug."

"Well," said Holly, "you say it was only a lark, Hazel, but at least it gave us two does: and they're the only two we've got."

"Are they any good?"

The kind of ideas that have become natural to many male human beings in thinking of females--ideas of protection, fidelity, romantic love and so on--are, of course, unknown to rabbits, although rabbits certainly do form exclusive attachments much more frequently than most people realize. However, they are not romantic and it came naturally to Hazel and Holly to consider the two Nuthanger does simply as breeding stock for the warren. This was what they had risked their lives for.

"Well, it's hard to say, yet," replied Holly. "They're doing their best to settle down with us--Clover particularly. She seems very sensible. But they're extraordinarily helpless, you know--I've never seen anything like it--and I'm afraid they may turn out to be delicate in bad weather. They might survive next winter and then again they might not. But you weren't to know that when you got them out of the farm."

"With a bit of luck, they might each have a litter before the winter," said Hazel. "I know the breeding season's over, but everything's so topsy-turvy with us here that there's no saying."

"Well, you ask me what I think," said Holly. "I'll tell you. I think they're precious little to be the only thing between us and the end of everything we've managed to do so far. I think they may very well not have any kittens for some time, partly because this isn't the season and partly because the life's so strange to them. And when they do, the kittens will very likely have a lot of this man-bred hutch stock in them. But what else is there to hope for? We must do the best we can with what we've got."

"Has anyone mated with them yet?" asked Hazel.

"No, neither of them has been ready so far. But I can see some fine old fights breaking out when they are."

"That's another problem. We can't go on with nothing but these two does."

"But what else can we do?"

"I know what what we've got to do," said Hazel, "but I still can't see we've got to do," said Hazel, "but I still can't see how how. We've got to go back and get some does out of Efrafa."

"You might as well say you were going to get them out of Inle, Hazel-rah. I'm afraid I can't have given you a very clear description of Efrafa."

"Oh, yes, you have--the whole idea scares me stiff. But we're going to do it."

"It can't be done."

"It can't be done by fighting or fair words, no. So it will have to be done by means of a trick."

"There's no trick will get the better of that lot, believe me. There are far more of them than there are of us: they're very highly organized: and I'm only telling the truth when I say that they can fight, run and follow a trail every bit as well as we can, and a lot of them, much better."

"The trick," said Hazel, turning to Blackberry, who all this time had been nibbling and listening in silence, "the trick will have to do three things. First, it will have to get the does out of Efrafa and secondly it will have to put paid to the pursuit. For a pursuit there's bound to be and we can't expect another miracle. But that's not all. Once we're clear of the place, we've got to become impossible to find--beyond the reach of any Wide Patrol."

"Yes," said Blackberry doubtfully. "Yes, I agree. To succeed we should have to manage all those things."

"Yes. And this trick, Blackberry, is going to be devised by you."

The sweet, carrion scent of dogwood filled the air; in the evening sunshine, the insects hummed around the dense white cymes hanging low above the gra.s.s. A pair of brown-and-orange beetles, disturbed by the feeding rabbits, took off from a gra.s.s stem and flew away, still coupled together.

"They mate. We don't," said Hazel, watching them go. "A trick, Blackberry: a trick to put us right once and for all."

"I can see how to do the first thing," said Blackberry. "At least, I think I can. But it's dangerous. The other two I can't see at all yet and I'd like to talk it over with Fiver."

"The sooner Fiver and I get back to the warren the better," said Hazel. "My leg's good enough now, but all the same I think we'll leave it for tonight. Good old Holly, will you tell them that Fiver and I will come early tomorrow morning? It worries me to think that Bigwig and Silver may start fighting about Clover at any moment."

"Hazel," said Holly, "listen. I don't like this idea of yours at all. I've been in Efrafa and you haven't. You're making a bad mistake and you might very well get us all killed."

It was Fiver who replied. "It ought to feel like that, I know," he said, "but somehow it doesn't: not to me. I believe we can do it. Anyway, I'm sure Hazel's right when he says it's the only chance we've got. Suppose we go on talking about it for a bit?"

"Not now," said Hazel. "Time for underground down here--come on. But if you two race up the hill, you'll probably be in time for some more sunshine at the top. Good night."

29.Return and Departure

He which hath no stomach to this fight, Let him depart, his pa.s.sport shall be made And crowns for convoy put into his purse.

We would not die in that man's company That fears his fellowship, to die with us.

Shakespeare, Henry V Henry V The following morning all the rabbits were out at silflay by dawn and there was a good deal of excitement as they waited for Hazel. During the previous few days Blackberry had had to repeat several times the story of the journey to the farm and the finding of Hazel in the drain. One or two had suggested that Kehaar must have found Hazel and told Fiver secretly. But Kehaar denied this and, when pressed, replied cryptically that Fiver was one who had traveled a good deal further than he had himself. As for Hazel, he had acquired, in everyone's eyes, a kind of magical quality. Of all the warren, Dandelion was the last rabbit to fail to do justice to a good story and he had made the most of Hazel's heroic dash out of the ditch to save his friends from the farmers. No one had even suggested that Hazel might have been reckless in going to the farm. Against all odds he had got them two does: and now he was bringing their luck back to the warren.

Just before sunrise Pipkin and Speedwell saw Fiver coming through the wet gra.s.s near the summit of the down. They ran out to meet him and waited with him until Hazel came up to them. Hazel was limping and had evidently found the climb a strain, but after resting and feeding for a short time he was able to run down to the warren almost as fast as the others. The rabbits crowded round. Everyone wanted to touch him. He was sniffed and tussled with and rolled over in the gra.s.s until he felt almost as though he were being attacked. Human beings, on occasions of this kind, are usually full of questions, but the rabbits expressed their delight simply by proving to themselves through their senses that this was really Hazel-rah. It was all he could do to stand up to the rough play. "I wonder what would happen if I lay down under it?" he thought. "They'd kick me out, I dare say. They wouldn't have a crippled Chief Rabbit. This is a test as well as a welcome, even though they don't know it themselves. I'll test them, the rascals, before I'm done."

He pushed Buckthorn and Speedwell off his back and broke away to the edge of the wood. Strawberry and Boxwood were on the bank and he joined them and sat washing and combing himself in the sunrise.

"We can do with a few well-behaved fellows like you," he said to Boxwood. "Look at that rough lot out there--they nearly finished me off! What on earth do you make of us and how are you settling down?"

"Well, of course we find it strange," said Boxwood, "but we're learning. Strawberry here has been helping me a great deal. We were just seeing how many smells I could tell on the wind, but that's something that'll only come slowly. The smells are awfully strong on a farm, you know, and they don't mean much when you live behind wire. As far as I can make out, you all live by smell."

"Don't take too many risks to begin with," said Hazel. "Keep near the burrows--don't go out alone--all that sort of thing. And how about you, Strawberry? Are you better?"

"More or less," answered Strawberry, "as long as I sleep a lot and sit in the sun, Hazel-rah. I've been terrified half out of my wits--that's the bottom of it. I've had the shivers and the horrors for days. I kept thinking I was back in Efrafa."

"What was it like in Efrafa?" asked Hazel.

"I'd rather die than go back to Efrafa," said Strawberry, "or risk going anywhere near it. I don't know which was worse, the boredom or the fear. All the same," he added after a few moments, "there are rabbits there who'd be the same as we are if they could only live naturally, like us. Several would be glad to leave the place if they only could."

Before they went underground Hazel talked to almost all the rabbits. As he expected, they were disappointed over the failure at Efrafa and full of indignation at the ill-treatment of Holly and his companions. More than one thought, like Holly, that the two does were likely to give rise to trouble.

"There should have been more, Hazel," said Bigwig. "We shall all be at each other's throats, you know--I don't see how it's to be helped."

Late in the afternoon Hazel called everyone into the Honeycomb.

"I've been thinking things over," he said. "I know you must all have been really disappointed not to have got rid of me at Nuthanger Farm the other day, so I've decided to go a bit further next time."

"Where?" asked Bluebell.

"To Efrafa," replied Hazel, "if I can get anyone to come with me: and we shall bring back as many does as the warren needs."

There were murmurs of astonishment, and then Speedwell asked, "How?"

"Blackberry and I have got a plan," said Hazel, "but I'm not going to explain it now, for this reason. You all know that this is going to be a dangerous business. If any of you get caught and taken into Efrafa, they'll make you talk, all right. But those who don't know a plan can't give it away. I'll explain it later on, at the proper time."

"Are you going to need many rabbits, Hazel-rah?" asked Dandelion. "From all I hear, the whole lot of us wouldn't be enough to fight the Efrafans."

"I hope we shan't have to fight at all," replied Hazel, "but there's always the possibility. Anyway, it'll be a long journey home with the does, and if by any chance we meet a Wide Patrol on the way, there have got to be enough of us to deal with them."

"Would we have to go into Efrafa?" asked Pipkin timidly.

"No," said Hazel, "we shall--"

"I never thought, Hazel," interrupted Holly, "I never thought that the time would come when I should feel obliged to speak against you. But I can only say again that this is likely to be a complete disaster. I know what you think--you're counting on General Woundwort not having anyone as clever as Blackberry and Fiver. You're quite right--I don't think he has. But the fact remains that no one can get a bunch of does away from that place. You all know that I've spent my life patrolling and tracking in the open. Well, there are rabbits in the Efrafan Owsla who are better at it than I am--I'm admitting it: and they'll hunt you down with your does and kill you. Great Frith! We all have to meet our match some time or other! I know you want only to help us all, but do be sensible and give this scheme up. Believe me, the best thing to do with a place like Efrafa is to stay as far away from it as possible."

Talk broke out all over the Honeycomb. "That must be right!" "Who wants to be torn to pieces?" "That rabbit with the mutilated ears--" "Well, but Hazel-rah must know what's doing." "It's too far." "I don't want to go."

Hazel waited patiently for quiet. At last he said, "It's like this. We can stay here and try to make the best of things as they are, or we can put them right once and for all. Of course there's a risk: anyone knows that who's heard what happened to Holly and the others. But haven't we faced one risk after another, all the way from the warren we left? What do you mean to do? Stay here and scratch each other's eyes out over two does, when there are plenty in Efrafa that you're afraid to go and get, even though they'd be only too glad to come and join us?"

Someone called out, "What does Fiver think?"

"I'm certainly going," said Fiver quietly. "Hazel's perfectly right and there's nothing the matter with his plan. But I promise you this, all of you. If I do come, later on, to feel any kind of misgiving, I shan't keep it to myself."

"And if that happens, I shan't ignore it," said Hazel.

There was silence. Then Bigwig spoke.

"You may as well all know that I'm going," he said, "and we shall have Kehaar with us, if that appeals to you at all."

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?"