Tales from Watership Down (12 page)

Now, the truth was that El-ahrairah knew a little more about marshes than most rabbits, for he had once lived in the dreary marshes of Kelfazin. He had realized that to cross this marsh was the only chance for these rabbits and that since their Chief Rabbit could not, he himself would have to lead them. But he had not thought at all about what this would actually be like. Now, almost at once, he began to learn. He had gone only a little way into the marsh when he started to cross a patch of open ground and suddenly found himself sinking to the full length of his front paws. He pulled back just in time and bumped up against
Burdock, whom he had told to follow him, so that it might at least seem to the rabbits that their Chief was leading them. He paused, considering, and then tried a few steps to his left. Again he found himself sinking and drew back. To his right, then? Thinking that it would be no better, he forced himself to try it. This time he went further before the ground gave way beneath him. He pulled himself clear, lay down and rolled completely over to one side, once and then twice before standing up. The ground was firm.

He waited for Burdock and Celandine to join him and then set off along the edge of the ground where he had begun to sink. After covering some distance he turned again to his left, trying the ground step by step. This time he did not sink, and allowed himself to hope that he might have gone round the edge of the quagmire. If he had, he thought, he might be able to start going forward again, keeping the moon behind him.

He went very cautiously, trying every patch of ground before putting his weight on it. Sometimes the ground bore him, and sometimes his paws sank in almost before he could withdraw them. Now that the full moon was giving him more light, he looked ahead very carefully, trying to see whether there was any difference, however slight, between safe and unsafe ground; but he could see no difference at all. Sniffing, however, proved another matter. The drier ground had a different smell from the swamp, and by nosing his way he was able to make a little headway, though only slowly and often crookedly. His westward advance was minimal, for
often he had to go a long distance to right or left before once more inching his way forward. Once, he came upon a kind of broad, muddy pond, its standing water deep and still enough to reflect the moonlight. He went a long way round it, guessing that the edges would be nothing but watery mud.

After what seemed half the night, he began to feel himself tiring. Constantly pulling his paws back out of the mire was bad enough, but on top of this was the continual strain of smelling and probing every foot of ground before entrusting his weight to it. How far across the marsh had they really gone, and anyway how wide was the marsh? He guessed now that they would not have crossed it by sunrise and would still be in it next day—perhaps all day and the next night as well. The rabbits would have to rest, and their rest could only be in the open, with not even a bush or a hedge for cover. They wouldn’t like that, and neither would he. When and if they came out of the marsh, what sort of a place would they come to?

He broke off these reflections to resume concentration on his next step. That was still the only way, he thought: one step, and then another, and another, and constantly pulling his paws back just in time. Twice he disturbed moorhens, which flew angrily and noisily away, no doubt feeling it against all nature that rabbits—rabbits!—should be here in the middle of the night.

In aftertimes, El-ahrairah used to say that of all his adventures, this crossing of the marsh by night was the worst. Several times he thought that he would never get out of it
alive. In a way he felt glad that there was no choice but to struggle on, because if there had been, he would have taken it without hesitation. The moon showed nothing on all sides but a desolate, empty place, fraught everywhere with horrible danger and offering no shelter or refuge at all. His body would not take long to sink under the slime, he thought. And what then? Rabscuttle would have to take over. He had better give him some instruction.

When they set out, he had placed Rabscuttle in the rear, to look after stragglers and dropouts. He sent a message back down the line for him to come up and join him. Rabscuttle seemed to be a lifetime coming. When at last he appeared, El-ahrairah asked him what it was like at the back. How were the rabbits doing?

“Better than I’d feared,” said Rabscuttle. “No one’s actually dropped out and had to be left behind. All of them still feel sure that they’re going to get there—wherever it is. And as luck would have it, they’ve got a good storyteller. Rabbit name of Chicory. He’s kept going with one story after another. So they don’t drop out, because they want to know what happens next, you see. Anyway, what can I do to help you, master?”

El-ahrairah explained, and stayed with Rabscuttle until he was sure he had got the idea. Then he left him to sniff his way forward, and remained to watch the rabbits go past. Rabscuttle, he thought, had been right. They were for the most part in good heart and certainly not tired out by simply going where they were led. His own fatigue and low
spirits he could attribute only to the load of responsibility he had taken on himself: that, and the labor of sounding out the way, of finding dangerous ground and pulling back from it in time. He waited for Chicory and was amused to hear that he was telling the story of the King’s Lettuce. At the far end of the column he found a small, very young rabbit, who was having difficulty in keeping up. He encouraged him warmly and accompanied him for a short distance before returning to Rabscuttle and Burdock.

Rabscuttle, as he had expected, was fully up to the unpleasant job and doing very well—better than himself, he thought. He seemed to find it positively amusing when his front paws sank into the mud. He obviously did not think he was in any danger or, if he did, was concealing it very well. What was more, he seemed to be on excellent terms with Burdock and Celandine, and had even allowed Celandine to take over from himself for a short time. “Nothing to it, nothing to it,” he kept saying, and “Oops!” when Celandine went in up to his shoulders.

Soon the sky behind them began to lighten as daylight returned after the short summer night. When the sun rose, El-ahrairah looked ahead in the hope of seeing whatever lay on the other side of the marsh, but could see nothing except the same dismal wilderness. How long, he wondered, before they began to feel hungry and exhausted? If a whole day in the marsh lay before them, they would probably begin to split up into groups of the strong and not-so-strong; and, worse, to try to find food for themselves, wandering
here and there. That would be fatal. He told Burdock and Celandine of his anxiety and suggested that they should fall back among their rabbits and do all they could to keep them together. “If only they’ll do as I say,” said Celandine. “They’ve all got used to pleasing themselves about that, you know. The truth is, we’ve had it far too easy for far too long.” To this El-ahrairah could think of no answer.

He was just about to take over the lead from Rabscuttle when a heron flew down nearby and began wading beside them. It was not disposed to be friendly. “What on earth are you wretched rabbits doing here?” it squawked to Rabscuttle. “This marsh belongs to me and my family. We don’t want you rabbits here. Why don’t you get out?”

El-ahrairah explained that this was exactly what they were trying to do. He told the heron about the rats and about their forced march by night.

“You mean you want to get out as soon as you can?” asked the heron. “If that’s all you want, I’ll be glad enough to show you the way.”

“We’d be more than happy to be guided by you,” said El-ahrairah. “But don’t forget that we can’t wade, and mud you think of as safe, with your long legs, is deadly dangerous for us. Have we far to go to get out?”

“Not far,” replied the heron tersely.

“That’s the best news I’ve ever heard,” said El-ahrairah.

He himself took up a position immediately behind the heron, and as he had feared, it proved dangerous. In spite of
what he had said, the heron simply did not understand that the rabbits could not wade, and when El-ahrairah tried to explain this, it grew first impatient and then angry. At last, after quietly enduring its insults and abuse for some considerable time, he persuaded it to lead them over ground into which they would not sink and to avoid places treacherous to rabbits though not to itself. Once it had grasped the difference, the heron’s guidance proved helpful, though not altogether reliable. Its manner remained sharp and unfriendly, and El-ahrairah thought it felt that a few rabbits drowned in the bog would be neither here nor there. Its contempt for them was plain, and it was all El-ahrairah could do to keep his temper.

They did make progress, however, and went faster than before; and he was forced to admit to himself that they went safely over ground which he would never have trusted solely on his own account. In spite of what the heron had said, they seemed to go a very long way. At ni-Frith they were still struggling among the reeds and tussocks, without a sign of anything better. El-ahrairah’s gnawing dilemma was that he dared not entrust the leadership to anyone else, even to the almost exhausted Rabscuttle, and dared not a second time leave the front and drop back to encourage the rabbits and keep them up together. He himself felt as tired as he had ever been in his life, and in spite of Rabscuttle’s best efforts to conceal it, he could tell that he, too, was almost worn out. So what sort of shape could the other rabbits be in? He told Rabscuttle to wait for the last ones to reach him and then report what things were like at the back.

He begged the heron to stop while they had a rest, but it did so with such bad grace that he feared it would leave them.

“Why can’t your confounded rabbits fly?” it asked. “You’d be out of here directly if you could fly, like any reasonable creature.”

“I only wish we could,” replied El-ahrairah, “but it can only be by the will of Lord Frith that we can’t.”

At this moment, he found Rabscuttle beside him. “Master, there are two rabbits missing. And now they’re nearly all in pretty poor shape down at the back.”

Would the whole band fall to pieces? wondered El-ahrairah. They had better get on before it did. He begged the heron to be so kind as to continue.

Then, in no time at all, or so it seemed, he saw a line of horse chestnut trees topping a green bank well above their own level. Soon they were scrambling upward, and the ground beneath their paws was dry. “We’re across, aren’t we?” he asked the heron. “We’re out of the marsh?”

“Yes,” replied the heron. “Don’t ever come back, will you?” And so saying, without waiting to be thanked, it flew away, mounting with great, slow strokes of its heavy wings.

El-ahrairah was up the bank in no time. The exposed roots of one of the chestnuts were bone dry under his paws. Rabscuttle was beside him. He had never felt so deeply relieved.

The next rabbit he saw was Burdock, sitting nearby to watch his rabbits as they clambered out of the marsh and up the bank. Burdock might have been a useless Chief Rabbit
in a crisis, but now he showed that there was another side to him. He knew all his rabbits by name and greeted each one, congratulating him or her and praising their courage and determination. And they, for their part, showed plainly enough that they liked and respected him. He spoke, too, about the rabbits who were missing, and was clearly very sorry for their loss. “Yarrow and Kingcup,” he said to El-ahrairah with obvious regret and sorrow. “Two of the best rabbits in the warren. We could have spared almost anyone but those two.” El-ahrairah, who had not troubled himself to learn many of the rabbits’ names, felt ashamed.

Climbing the bank, they found themselves on the edge of a wide, luxuriant meadow where the tall midsummer grass had not yet been cut. The exhausted rabbits crept into it, ate and at once fell asleep. “Let them do as they please,” said Burdock. “They’ve earned it.” El-ahrairah saw no reason to disagree.

Most of the rabbits remained sleeping or resting in the long grass of the meadow until early morning of the following day. But before that, on the previous evening, El-ahrairah and Rabscuttle had been awake and looking over the surroundings. The first and most obvious thing, on which they were strongly in agreement, was that they were too close to a farmhouse and its yard and barns.

“I don’t know what they’ll decide to do,” said El-ahrairah, “but they can’t stay here for long, that’s certain. A sudden invasion by a whole bunch of rabbits quite nearby—that’s something the farm people are going to notice at once. And you know what that means: guns, dogs, even poison, perhaps—downright persecution, anyway. They’ll have to get away from here.”

“What, back through the marsh, master?” asked Rabscuttle. “Surely they wouldn’t do it, would they?”

“Well, if they do, it’ll be without you and me,” replied El-ahrairah. “We have to be getting on with our little stroll home.”

At this moment they were joined by Burdock and Celandine, who were full of praise and gratitude for the part El-ahrairah and Rabscuttle had played in the crossing of the marsh.

“We could never have done it without you,” said Burdock.

“Do you mean to go back?” asked El-ahrairah. “I suppose the rats must have come through and gone by now.”

Burdock was emphatic that nothing would induce him to go back across the marsh. “And I’m sure that goes for all of us,” he said. “There’d be no point in it. I haven’t really gone all round here yet, but there seem to be masses of food and just about everything rabbits could possibly wish for. There’s a whole vegetable garden just along there, for a start.”

“Well, it’s not for me to advise you,” said El-ahrairah. “We’re just a couple of wandering hlessil. But do you mind me asking—have you had much experience of human beings and what they do to rabbits?”