"Who's in the next room? -- who?
A figure wanWith a message to one in there of something due?
Shall I know him anon?""Yea, he; and he brought such; and you'll know him anon."Thomas Hardy, Who's in the Next Room?
The holes certainly were rough -- "Just right for a lot of vagabonds* like us,"said Bigwig -- but the exhausted and those who wander in strange country are notparticular about therr quarters. At least there was room for twelve rabbits and theburrows were dry. Two of the runs -- the ones among the thorn trees -- ledstraight down to burrows scooped out of the top of the chalk subsoil. Rabbits donot line their sleeping places and a hard, almost rocky floor is uncomfortable forthose not accustomed to it. The holes in the bank, however, had runs of the usualbow shape, leading down to the chalk and then curving up again to burrows withfloors of trampled earth. There were no connecting passages, but the rabbits weretoo weary to care. They slept four to a burrow, snug and secure. Hazel remainedawake for some time, licking Buckthorn's leg, which was stiff and tender. He wasreassured to find no smell of infection, but all that he had ever heard about ratsdecided him to see that Buckthorn got a good deal of rest and was kept out of thedirt until the wound was better. "That's the third one of us to get hurt: still, all inall, things could have been far worse," he thought, as he fell asleep.
The short June darkness slipped by in a few hours. The light returned early tothe high down, but the rabbits did not stir. Well after dawn they were stillsleeping, undisturbed in a silence deeper than they had ever known. Nowadays,among fields and woods, the noise level by day is high -- too high for some kindsof animal to tolerate. Few places are far from human noise -- cars, buses,motorcycles, tractors, lorries. The sound of a housing estate in the morning isaudible a long way off. People who record birdsong generally do it very early --before six o'clock -- if they can. Soon after that, the invasion of distant noise inmost woodland becomes too constant and too loud. During the last fifty years thesilence of much of the country has been destroyed. But here, on Watership Down,there floated up only faint traces of the daylight noise below.
The sun was well up, though not yet as high as the down, when Hazel woke.
With him in the burrow were Buckthorn, Fiver and Pipkin. He was nearest to themouth of the hole and did not wake them as he slipped up the run. Outside, hestopped to pass hraka and then hopped through the thorn patch to the opengrass. Below, the country was covered with early-morning mist which wasbeginning to clear. Here and there, far off, were the shapes of trees and roofs,from which streamers of mist trailed down like broken waves pouring from rocks.
The sky was cloudless and deep blue, darkening to mauve along the whole rim ofthe horizon. The wind had dropped and the spiders had already gone well downinto the grass. It was going to be a hot day.
Hazel rambled about in the usual way of a rabbit feeding -- five or six slow,rocking hops through the grass; a pause to look round, sitting up with ears erect;then busy nibbling for a short time, followed by another move of a few yards. Forthe first time for many days he felt relaxed and safe. He began to wonder whetherthey had much to learn about their new home.
"Fiver was right," he thought. "This is the place for us. But we shall need to getused to it and the fewer mistakes we make the better. I wonder what became ofthe rabbits who made these holes? Did they stop running or did they just moveaway? If we could only find them they could tell us a lot."At this moment he saw a rabbit come rather hesitantly out of the hole furthestfrom himself. It was Blackberry. He, too, passed hraka, scratched himself andthen hopped into the full sunlight and combed his ears. As he began to feed,Hazel came up and fell in with him, nibbling among the grass tussocks andwandering on wherever his friend pleased. They came to a patch of milkwort -- ablue as deep as that of the sky -- with long stems creeping through the grass andeach minute flower spreading its two upper petals like wings. Blackberry sniffedat it, but the leaves were tough and unappetizing.
"What is this stuff, do you know?" he asked.
"No, I don't," said Hazel. "I've never seen it before.""There's a lot we don't know," said Blackberry. "About this place, I mean. Theplants are new, the smells are new. We're going to need some new ideasourselves.""Well, you're the fellow for ideas," said Hazel. "I never know anything until youtell me.""But you go in front and take the risks first," answered Blackberry. "We've allseen that. And now our journey's over, isn't it? This place is as safe as Fiver said itwould be. Nothing can get near us without our knowing: that is, as long as we cansmell and see and hear.""We can all do that.""Not when we're asleep: and we can't see in the dark.""It's bound to be dark at night," said Hazel, "and rabbits have got to sleep.""In the open?""Well, we can go on using these holes if we want to, but I expect a good manywill lie out. After all, you can't expect a bunch of bucks to dig. They might make ascrape or two -- like that day after we came over the heather -- but they won't domore than that.""That's what I've been thinking about," said Blackberry. "Those rabbits we left-- Cowslip and the rest -- a lot of the things they did weren't natural to rabbits --pushing stones into the earth and carrying food underground and Frith knowswhat.""The Threarah's lettuce was carried underground, if it comes to that.""Exactly. Don't you see, they'd altered what rabbits do naturally because theythought they could do better? And if they altered their ways, so can we if we like.
You say buck rabbits don't dig. Nor they do. But they could, if they wanted to.
Suppose we had deep, comfortable burrows to sleep in? To be out of bad weatherand underground at night? Then we would be safe. And there's nothing to stop ushaving them, except that buck rabbits won't dig. Not can't -- won't.""What's your idea, then?" asked Hazel, half interested and half reluctant. "Doyou want us to try to turn these holes into a regular warren?""No, these holes won't do. It's easy to see why they've been deserted. Only alittle way down and you come to this hard white stuff that no one can dig. Theymust be bitterly cold in winter. But there's a wood just over the top of the hill. Igot a glimpse of it last night when we came. Suppose we go up higher now, justyou and I, and have a look at it?"They ran uphill to the summit. The beech hanger lay some little way off to thesoutheast, on the far side of a grassy track that ran along the ridge.
"There are some big trees there," said Blackberry. "The roots must have brokenup the ground pretty deep. We could dig holes and be as well off as ever we werein the old warren. But if Bigwig and the others won't dig or say they can't -- well,it's bare and bleak here. That's why it's lonely and safe, of course; but when badweather comes we shall be driven off the hills for sure.""It never entered my head to try to make a lot of bucks dig regular holes," saidHazel doubtfully, as they returned down the slope. "Rabbit kittens need holes, ofcourse; but do we?""We were all born in a warren that was dug before our mothers were born,"said Blackberry. "We're used to holes and not one of us has ever helped to digone. And if ever there was a new one, who dug it? A doe. I'm quite sure, myself,that if we don't change our natural ways we shan't be able to stay here very long.
Somewhere else, perhaps; but not here.""It'll mean a lot of work.""Look, there's Bigwig come up now and some of the others with him. Why notput it to them and see what they say?"During silflay, however, Hazel mentioned Blackberry's idea to no one butFiver. Later on, when most of the rabbits had finished feeding and were eitherplaying in the grass or lying in the sunshine, he suggested that they might goacross to the hanger -- "Just to see what sort of a wood it is." Bigwig and Silveragreed 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 windbreakcommon on the downs. It consisted almost entirely of well-grown beeches. Thegreat, smooth trunks stood motionless in their green shade, the branchesspreading flat, one above another in crisp, light-dappled tiers. Between the treesthe 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 couldsee so far between the trees. The continuous, gentle rustling of the beech leaveswas 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 thenortheast corner. Here there was a bank from which they looked out over theempty 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 makesome holes here. I'm ready to try, anyway."The others were taken aback. Pipkin, however, readily joined Hazel at the footof the bank and soon two or three more began scratching at the light soil. Thedigging was easy and although they often broke off to feed or merely to sit in thesun, 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 gavecover from the sky: and kestrels, they soon realized, were common in thissolitude. Although kestrels seldom prey on anything bigger than a rat, they willsometimes attack young rabbits. No doubt this is why most grown rabbits will notremain under a hovering kestrel. Before long, Acorn spotted one as it flew upfrom the south. He stamped and bolte............