Watership Down - Adams Richard George - Страница 109

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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."

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