But already the crow was making off, flying low with slow, heavy wing-beats. They watched it clear the farther hedge and disappear into the wood beyond the river. In the silence there was a gentle, tearing sound as a grazing cow moved nearer.
Bigwig strolled over to Pipkin, muttering a ribald Owsla lampoon.
'Hoi, hoi u embleer Hrair,
M' saion ule hraka vair.'*
'Come on, Hlao-roo,' he said.' You can get your head out now. Having quite a day, aren't we?'
He turned away and Pipkin tried to follow him. Hazel remembered that Fiver had said he thought he was injured. Now, as he watched him limping and staggering up the slope, it occurred to him that he might actually be wounded in some way. He kept trying to put his near-side front paw to the ground and then drawing it up again, hopping on three legs.
'I'll have a look at him as soon as they're settled under cover,' he thought. 'Poor little chap, he won't be able to get much further like that.'
At the top of the slope Buckthorn was already leading the way into the beanfield. Hazel reached the hedge, crossed a narrow turf verge on the other side and found himself looking straight down a long, shadowy aisle between two rows of beans. The earth was soft and crumbling, with a scattering of the weeds that are found in cultivated fields - fumitory, charlock, pimpernel and mayweed, all growing in the green gloom under the bean leaves. As the plants moved in the breeze, the sunlight dappled and speckled back and forth over the brown soil, the white pebbles and weeds. Yet in this ubiquitous restlessness there was nothing alarming, for the whole forest took part in it and the only sound was the soft, steady movement of the leaves. Far along the bean-row, Hazel glimpsed Buckthorn's back and followed him into the depths of the field.
Soon after, all the rabbits had come together in a kind of hollow. Far around, on all sides, stood the orderly rows of beans, securing them against hostile approach, roofing them over and covering their scent. They could hardly have been safer underground. Even a little food could be had at a pinch, for here and there were a few pale twists of grass and here and there a dandelion.
'We can sleep here all day,' said Hazel. 'But I suppose one of us ought to stay awake; and if I take the first turn it'll give me a chance to have a look at your paw, Hlao-roo. I think you've got something in it.'
Pipkin, who was lying on his left side, breathing quickly and heavily, rolled over and stretched out his front paw, underside turned upwards. Hazel peered closely into the thick, coarse hair (a rabbit's foot has no pads) and after a few moments saw what he had expected - the oval shank of a snapped-off thorn sticking out through the skin. There was a little blood and the flesh was torn.
'You've got a big thorn in there, Hlao,' he said. 'No wonder you couldn't run. We'll have to get it out.'
Getting the thorn out was not easy, for the foot had become so tender that Pipkin winced and pulled away even from Hazel's tongue. But after a good deal of patient effort Hazel succeeded in working out enough of the stump to get a grip with his teeth. The thorn came out smoothly and the wound bled. The spine was so long and thick that Hawkbit, who happened to be close by, woke Speedwell to have a look at it.
'Frith above, Pipkin!' said Speedwell, sniffing at the thorn where it lay on a pebble. 'You'd better collect a few more like that: then you can make a notice board and frighten Fiver. You might have poked the lendri's eye out for us, if you'd only known.'
'Lick the place, Hlao,' said Hazel. 'Lick it until it feels better and then go to sleep.'
10. The Road
and the Common
Timorous answered, that they ... had got up that difficult place: but, said he, the further we go, the more danger we meet with; wherefore we turned, and are going back again.
John Bunyan The Pilgrim's Progress
After some time, Hazel woke Buckthorn. Then he scratched a shallow nest in the earth and slept. One watch succeeded another through the day, though how the rabbits judged the passing of the time is something that civilized human beings have lost the power to feel. Creatures that have neither clocks nor books are alive to all manner of knowledge about time and the weather; and about direction too, as we know from their extraordinary migratory and homing journeys. The changes in the warmth and dampness of the soil, the falling of the sunlight patches, the altering movement of the beans in the light wind, the direction and strength of the air currents along the ground - all these were perceived by the rabbit awake.
The sun was beginning to set when Hazel woke to see Acorn listening and sniffing in the silence, between two white-skinned flints. The light was thicker, the breeze had dropped and the beans were still. Pipkin was stretched out a little way away. A yellow-and-black burying beetle, crawling across the white fur of his belly, stopped, waved its short, curved antennae and then moved on again. Hazel grew tense with sudden misgiving. He knew that these beetles come to dead bodies, on which they feed and lay their eggs. They will dig away the earth from under the bodies of small creatures, such as shrew-mice and fallen fledglings, and then lay their eggs on them before covering them with soil. Surely Pipkin could not have died in his sleep? Hazel sat up quickly. Acorn started and turned towards him and the beetle scurried away over the pebbles as Pipkin moved and woke.
'How's the paw?' said Hazel. Pipkin put it to the ground. Then he stood on it.
'It feels much better,' he said. 'I think I shall be able to go as well as the others now. They won't leave me behind, will they?'
Hazel rubbed his nose behind Pipkin's ear. 'No one's going to leave anyone else behind,' he said. 'If you had to stay, I'd stay with you. But don't pick up any more thorns, Hlao-roo, because we may have to go a long way.'
The next moment all the rabbits leapt up in panic. From close at hand the sound of a shot tore across the fields. A peewit rose screaming. The echoes came back in waves, like a pebble rolling round a box, and from the wood across the river came the clattering of wood-pigeons' wings among the branches. In an instant the rabbits were running in all directions through the bean-rows, each one tearing by instinct towards holes that were not there.
Hazel stopped short on the edge of the beans. Looking about him, he could see none of the others. He waited, trembling, for the next shot: but there was silence. Then he felt, vibrating along the ground, the steady tread of a man going away beyond the crest over which they had come that morning. At that moment Silver appeared, pushing his way through the plants close by.
'I hope it's the crow, don't you?' said Silver.
'I hope no one's been silly enough to bolt out of this field,' answered Hazel. 'They're all scattered. How can we find them?'
'I don't think we can,' said Silver. 'We'd better go back to where we were. They'll come in time.'
It was in fact a long time before all the rabbits had come back to the hollow in the middle of the field. As he waited, Hazel realized more fully than ever how dangerous was their position, without holes, wandering in country they did not know. The lendri, the dog, the crow, the marksman - they had been lucky to escape them. How long would their luck hold? Would they really be able to travel on as far as Fiver's high place - wherever it might be?