'But what is this bird?' interrupted Holly.
'Well, I can't quite make out,' answered Bigwig. 'But if I understand him properly - and I'm not at all sure that I do - he says that where he comes from there are thousands of his kind - more than we can possibly imagine. Their flocks make the whole air white and in the breeding season their nests are like leaves in a wood - so he says.'
'But where? I've never seen one, even.'
'He says,' said Bigwig, looking very straight at Holly,'he says that a long way from here the earth stops and there isn't any more.'
'Well, obviously it stops somewhere. What is there beyond?'
'Water.'
'A river, you mean?'
'No,' said Bigwig, 'not a river. He says there's a vast place of water, going on and on. You can't see to the other side. There isn't another side. At least there is, because he's been there. Oh, I don't know - I must admit I can't altogether understand it.'
'Was it telling you that it's been outside the world and come back again? That must be untrue.'
'I don't know,' said Bigwig, 'but I'm sure he's not lying. This water, apparently, moves all the time and keeps breaking against the earth: and when he can't hear that, he misses it. That's his name - Kehaar. It's the noise the water makes.'
The others were impressed in spite of themselves.
'Well, why's it here?' asked Hazel.
'He shouldn't be. He ought to have been off to this Big Water place a long time ago, to breed. Apparently a lot of them come away in winter, because it gets so cold and wild. Then they go back in summer. But he's been hurt once already this spring. It was nothing much, but it held him up. He rested and hung around a rookery for a bit. Then he got stronger and left them, and he was coming along when he stopped in the farmyard and met this foul cat.'
'So when it's better it'll go on again?' said Hazel.
'Yes.'
'We've been wasting our time, then.'
'Why, Hazel, what is it you have in mind?'
'Go and get Blackberry and Fiver: we'd better have Silver too. Then I'll explain.'
The quiet of the evening silflay, when the western sun shone straight along the ridge, the grass tussocks threw shadows twice as long as themselves and the cool air smelt of thyme and dog roses, was something which they had all come to enjoy even more than former evenings in the meadows of Sandleford. Although they could not know it, the down was more lonely than it had been for hundreds of years. There were no sheep, and villagers from Kingsclere and Sydmonton no longer had any occasion to walk over the hills, either for business or for pleasure. In the fields of Sandleford the rabbits had seen men almost every day. Here, since their arrival, they had seen one and him on a horse. Looking round the little group that gathered on the grass, Hazel saw that all of them - even Holly - were looking stronger, sleeker and in better shape than when they had first come to the down. Whatever might lie ahead, at least he could feel that he had not failed them so far.
'We're doing well here,' he began, 'or so it seems to me. We're certainly not a bunch of hlessil any more. But all the same, there's something on my mind. I'm surprised, as a matter of fact, that I should be the first one of us to start thinking about it. Unless we can find the answer, then this warren's as good as finished, in spite of all we've done.'
'Why, how can that be, Hazel?' said Bigwig.
'Do you remember Nildro-hain?' asked Hazel.
'She stopped running. Poor Strawberry.'
'I know. And we have no does - not one - and no does means no kittens and in a few years no warren.'
It may seem incredible that the rabbits had given no thought to so vital a matter. But men have made the same mistake more than once - left the whole business out of account, or been content to trust to luck and the fortune of war. Rabbits live close to death and when death comes closer than usual, thinking about survival leaves little room for anything else. But now, in the evening sunshine on the friendly, empty down, with a good burrow at his back and the grass turning to pellets in his belly, Hazel knew that he was lonely for a doe. The others were silent and he could tell that his words had sunk in.
The rabbits grazed or lay basking in the sun. A lark went twittering up into the brighter sunshine above, soared and sang and came slowly down, ending with a sideways, spread-wing glide and a wagtail's run through the grass. The sun dipped lower. At last Blackberry said, 'What's to be done? Set out again?'
'I hope not,' said Hazel. 'It all depends. What I'd like to do is get hold of some does and bring them here.'
'Where from?'
'Another warren.'
'But are there any on these hills? How do we find out? The wind never brings the least smell of rabbits.'