'I don't believe they can fight, Hazel,' said Pipkin. 'Although they're so big, they don't seem like fighters to me. Not like Bigwig and Silver.'
'You notice a lot, don't you, Hlao-roo?' said Hazel. 'Do you notice it's raining harder than ever? I've got enough grass in my stomach for a bit. We'll go down again now, but let's keep to ourselves for a while.'
'Why not sleep?' said Blackberry. 'It's over a night and a day now and I'm dropping.'
They returned down a different hole and soon found a dry, empty burrow, where they curled up together and slept in the warmth of their own tired bodies.
When Hazel woke he perceived at once that it was morning - some time after sunrise, by the smell of it. The scent of apple blossom was plain enough. Then he picked up the fainter smells of buttercups and horses. Mingled with these came another. Although it made him uneasy, he could not tell for some moments what it was. A dangerous smell, an unpleasant smell, a totally unnatural smell - quite close outside: a smoke smell - something was burning. Then he remembered how Bigwig, after his reconnaissance on the previous day, had spoken of the little white sticks in the grass. That was it. A man had been walking over the ground outside. That must have been what had awakened him.
Hazel lay in the warm, dark burrow with a delightful sense of security. He could smell the man. The man could not smell him. All the man could smell was the nasty smoke he was making. He fell to thinking of the shape in the well-pit, and then dropped into a drowsy half-dream, in which El-ahrairah said that it was all a trick of his to disguise himself as Poison-tree and put the stones in the wall, to engage Strawberry's attention while he himself was getting acquainted with Nildro-hain.
Pipkin stirred and turned in his sleep, murmuring, Sayn lay narn, marli? ('Is groundsel nice, mother?') and Hazel, touched to think that he must be dreaming of old days, rolled over on his side to give him room to settle again. At that moment, however, he heard a rabbit approaching down some run close by. Whoever it was, he was calling - and stamping as well, Hazel noticed - in an unnatural way. The sound, as Blackberry had said, was not unlike bird-song As he came closer, Hazel could distinguish the word.
'Flayrah! Flayrah!'
The voice was Strawberry's. Pipkin and Blackberry were waking, more at the stamping than the voice, which was thin and novel, not striking through their sleep to any deep instinct. Hazel slipped out of the burrow into the run and at once came upon Strawberry busily thumping a hind leg on the hard earth floor.
'My mother used to say, "If you were a horse the ceiling would fall down",' said Hazel. 'Why do you stamp underground?'
'To wake everyone,' answered Strawberry. 'The rain went on nearly all night, you know. We generally sleep right through the early morning if it's rough weather. But it's turned fine now.'
'Why actually wake everybody, though?'
'Well, the man's gone by and Cowslip and I thought the flayrah ought not to lie about for long. If we don't go and get it the rats and rooks come and I don't like fighting rats. I expect it's all in a day's work to an adventurous lot like you.'
'I don't understand.'
'Well, come along with me. I'm just going back along this run for Nildro-hain. We haven't got a litter at present, you see, so she'll come out with the rest of us.'
Other rabbits were making their way along the run and Strawberry spoke to several of them, more than once remarking that he would enjoy taking their new friends across the field. Hazel began to realize that he liked Strawberry. On the previous day he had been too tired and bewildered to size him up. But now that he had had a good sleep, he could see that Strawberry was really a harmless, decent sort of fellow. He was touchingly devoted to the beautiful Nildro-hain; and he evidently had moods of gaiety and a great capacity for enjoyment. As they came up in
to the May morning he hopped over the ditch and skipped into the long grass as blithe as a squirrel. He seemed quite to have lost the preoccupied air that had troubled Hazel the night before. Hazel himself paused in the mouth of the hole, as he always had behind the bramble curtain at home, and looked out across the valley.
The sun, risen behind the copse, threw long shadows from the trees south-westwards across the field. The wet grass glittered and near-by a nut-tree sparkled iridescent, winking and gleaming as its branches moved in the light wind. The brook was swollen and Hazel's ears could distinguish the deeper, smoother sound, changed since the day before. Between the copse and the brook, the slope was covered with pale lilac lady's smocks, each standing separately in the grass, a frail stalk of bloom above a spread of cressy leaves. The breeze dropped and the little valley lay completely still, held in long beams of light and enclosed on either side by the lines of the woods. Upon this clear stillness, like feathers on the surface of a pool, fell the calling of a cuckoo.
'It's quite safe, Hazel,' said Cowslip behind him in the hole.' I know you're used to taking a good look round when you silflay, but here we generally go straight out.'
Hazel did not mean to alter his ways or take instructions from Cowslip. However, no one had pushed him and there was no point in bickering over trifles. He hopped across the ditch to the farther bank and looked round him again. Several rabbits were already running down the field towards a distant hedge dappled white with great patches of may-bloom. He saw Bigwig and Silver and went to join them, flicking the wet off his front paws step by step, like a cat.
'I hope your friends have been looking after you as well as these fellows have looked after us, Hazel,' said Bigwig.' Silver and I really feel at home again. If you ask me, I reckon we've all made a big change for the better. Even if Fiver's wrong and nothing terrible has happened back at the old warren, I'd still say we're better off here. Are you coming along to feed?'
'What is this business about going to feed, do you know?' asked Hazel.
'Haven't they told you? Apparently there's flayrah to be had down the fields. Most of them go every day.'
(Rabbits usually eat grass, as everyone knows. But more appetizing food, e.g. lettuce or carrots, for which they will make an expedition or rob a garden, is flayrah.)
'Flayrah? But isn't it rather late in the morning to raid a garden?' said Hazel, glancing at the distant roofs of the farm behind the trees.
'No, no,' said one of the warren rabbits, who had overheard him. 'The flayrah's left in the field, usually near the place where the brook rises. We either eat it there or bring it back - or both. But we'll have to bring some back today. The rain was so bad last night that no one went out and we ate almost everything in the warren.'
The brook ran through the hedgerow, and there was a cattle-wade in the gap. After the rain the edges were a swamp, with water standing in every hoof-print. The rabbits gave them a wide berth and came through by another gap farther up, close to the gnarled trunk of an old crab-apple tree. Beyond, surrounding a thicket of rushes, stood an enclosure of posts and rails half as high as a man. Inside it, the king-cups bloomed and the brook whelmed up from its source.
On the pasture near-by Hazel could see scattered, russet-and-orange-coloured fragments, some with feathery, light-green foliage showing up against the darker grass. They gave off a pungent, horsey smell, as if freshly, cut. It attracted him. He began to salivate and stopped to pass hraka. Cowslip, coming up near-by, turned towards him with his unnatural smile. But now Hazel, in his eagerness, paid no attention. Powerfully drawn, he ran out of the hedgerow towards the scattered ground. He came to one of the fragments, sniffed it and tasted it. It was carrot.
Hazel had eaten various roots in his life, but only once before had he tasted carrot, when a cart-horse had spilt a nose-bag near the home warren. These were old carrots, some half-eaten already by mice or fly. But to the rabbits they were redolent with luxury, a feast to drive all other feelings out of mind. Hazel sat nibbling and biting, the rich, full taste of the cultivated roots filling him with a wave of pleasure. He hopped about the grass, gnawing one piece after another, eating the green tops along with the slices. No one interrupted him. There seemed to be plenty for all. From time to time, instinctively, he looked up and sniffed the wind, but his caution was half-hearted. 'If elil come, let them,' he thought. 'I'll fight the lot. I couldn't run, anyway. What a country! What a warren! No wonder they're all as big as hares and smell like princes!' 'Hullo, Pipkin! Fill yourself up to the ears! No more shivering on the banks of streams for you, old chap!'
'He won't know how to shiver in a week or two,' said Hawkbit, with his mouth full. 'I feel so much better for this! I'd follow you anywhere, Hazel. I wasn't myself in the heather that night. It's bad when you know you can't get underground. I hope you understand.'