'I'll tell you how,' said Hazel. 'The bird. The bird will go and search for us.'
'Hazel-rah,' cried Blackberry, 'what a marvellous idea! That bird could find out in a day what we couldn't discover for ourselves in a thousand! But are you certain it can be persuaded to do it? Surely as soon as it gets better, it'll simply fly away and leave us?'
'I can't tell,' answered Hazel. 'All we can do is feed it and hope for the best. But Bigwig, since you seem to be getting on with it so well, perhaps you can explain to it how much this means to us. It has only to fly over the downs and let us know what it sees.'
'You leave him to me,' said Bigwig. 'I think I know how to do it.'
Hazel's anxiety and the reason for it were soon known to all the rabbits and there was not one who did not realize what they were up against. There was nothing very startling in what he had said. He was simply the one - as a Chief Rabbit ought to be - through whom a strong feeling, latent throughout the warren, had come to the surface. But his plan to make use of the gull excited everyone and was seen as something that not even Blackberry could have hit upon. Reconnaissance is familiar to all rabbits - indeed it is second nature - but the idea of making use of a bird, and one so strange and savage, convinced them that Hazel, if he could really do it, must be as clever as El-ahrairah himself.
For the next few days a lot of hard work went into feeding Kehaar. Acorn and Pipkin, boasting that they were the best insect-catchers in the warren, brought in great numbers of beetles and grasshoppers. At first the gull's principal hardship was lack of water. He suffered a good deal and was reduced to tearing at the stems of the long grasses for moisture. However, during his third night in the warren it rained for three or four hours and puddles formed on the track. A cluttery spell set in, as it often does in Hampshire when hay-time approaches. High winds from the south laid the grass flat all day, turning it to a dull, damascene silver. The great branches of the beeches moved little but spoke loudly. There were squalls of rain on the wind. The weather made Kehaar restless. He walked about a good deal, watched the flying clouds and snapped up everything the foragers brought. Searching became harder, for in the wet the insects burrowed into the deep grass and had to be scratched out.
One afternoon Hazel, who now shared a burrow with Fiver as in the old days, was woken by Bigwig to be told that Kehaar had something to say to him. He made his way to Kehaar's lobby without coming above ground. The first thing he noticed was that the gull's head was moulting and turning white, though a dark-brown patch remained behind each eye. Hazel greeted him and was surprised to be answered in a few words of halting, broken Lapine. Evidently Kehaar had prepared a short speech.
'Meester 'Azel, ees rabbits vork 'ard,' said Kehaar. 'I no finish now. Soon I go fine.'
'That's good news,' said Hazel. 'I'm glad.'
Kehaar relapsed into hedgerow vernacular.
'Meester Pigvig, 'e plenty good fella.'
'Yes, he is.'
' 'E say you no getting mudders. Ees finish mudders. Plenty trouble for you.'
'Yes, that's true. We don't know what to do. No mothers anywhere.'
'Listen. I get peeg, fine plan. I go fine now. Ving, 'e better. Vind finish, den I fly. Fly for you. Find plenty mudders, tell you vere dey are, ya?'
'Why, what a splendid idea, Kehaar! How clever of you to think of it! You very fine bird.'
'Ees finish mudders for me dis year. Ees too late. All mudders sitting on nest now. Eggs come.'
'I'm sorry.'
"Nudder time I get mudder. Now I fly for you.'
'We'll do everything we possibly can to help you.'
The next day the wind dropped and Kehaar made one or two short flights. However, it was not until three days later that he felt able to set out on his search. It was a perfect June morning. He was snapping up numbers of the little, white-shelled, downland snails from the wet grass and cracking them in his great beak, when he suddenly turned to Bigwig and said, 'Now I fly for you.'
He opened his wings. The two-foot span arched above Bigwig, who sat perfectly still while the white feathers beat the air round his head in a kind of ceremonious farewell. Laying his ears flat in the fanned draught, he stared up at Kehaar as the gull rose, rather heavily, into the air. When he flew his body, so long and graceful on the ground, took on the appearance of a thick, stumpy cylinder, from the front of which his red beak projected between his round, black eyes. For a few moments he hovered, his body rising and falling between his wings. Then he began to climb, sailed sideways over the grass and disappeared northwards below the edge of the escarpment. Bigwig returned to the hanger with the news that Kehaar had set out.
The gull was away several days - longer than the rabbits had expected. Hazel could not help wondering whether he really would return, for he knew that Kehaar, like themselves, felt the mating urge and he thought it quite likely that after all he would be off to the Big Water and the raucous, teeming gull-colonies of which he had spoken with such feeling to Bigwig. As far as he was able he kept his anxiety to himself, but one day when they were alone, he asked Fiver whether he thought Kehaar would return.
'He will return,' said Fiver unhesitatingly.
'And what will he bring with him?'
'How can I tell?' replied Fiver. But later, when they were underground, silent and drowsy, he said suddenly, 'The gifts of El-ahrairah. Trickery; great danger; and blessing for the warren.' When Hazel questioned him again, he seemed to be unaware that he had spoken and could add nothing more.
Bigwig spent most of the hours of daylight watching for Kehaar's return. He was inclined to be surly and short and once, when Bluebell remarked that he thought Meester Pigvig's fur cap was moulting in sympathy for absent friends, he showed a flash of his old sergeant-major spirit and cuffed and abused him twice round the Honeycomb, until Holly intervened to save his faithful jester from further trouble.
It was late one afternoon, with a light north wind blowing and the smell of hay drifting up from the fields of Sydmonton, when Bigwig came hurtling down into the Honeycomb to announce that Kehaar was back. Hazel suppressed his excitement and told everyone to keep out of the way while he went to see him alone. On second thoughts, however, he took Fiver and Bigwig with him.
The three of them found Kehaar back in his lobby. It was full of droppings, messy and malodorous. Rabbits will not excrete underground and Kehaar's habit of fouling his own nest had always disgusted Hazel. Now, in his eagerness to hear his news, the guano smell seemed almost welcome.
'Glad to see you back, Kehaar,' he said. 'Are you tired?'