'Keep torch on 'un, then. Noice and steady!'
Dandelion and Haystack scrambled over the bank and dropped into the lane. Hazel, with the torch-beam behind him, had almost reached the other ditch when he felt a sharp blow on one of his hind legs and a hot, stinging pain along his side. The report of the cartridge sounded an instant later. As he somersaulted into a clump of nettles in the ditch-bottom, he remembered vividly the scent of bean-flowers at sunset. He had not known that the men had a gun.
Hazel crawled through the nettles, dragging his injured leg. In a few moments the men would shine their torch on him and pick him up. He stumbled along the inner wall of the ditch, feeling the blood flowing over his foot. Suddenly he was aware of a draught against one side of his nose, a smell of damp, rotten matter and a hollow, echoing sound at his very ear. He was beside the mouth of a land-drain which emptied into the ditch - a smooth, cold tunnel, narrower than a rabbit-hole, but wide enough. With flattened ears and belly pressed to the wet floor he crawled up it, pushing a little pile of thin mud in front of him, and lay still as he felt the thud of boots coming nearer.
'I don' roightly know, John, whether you 'it 'e er not.'
'Ah, I 'it 'un all roight. That's blood down there, see?'
'Ah well, but that don't signify. 'E might be a long ways off be now. I reckon you've lost 'e.'
'I reckon 'e's in them nettles.'
' 'Ave a look then.'
'No 'e ain't.'
'Well, us can't go beggarin' up and down 'ere 'alf bloody night. We got to catch them as got out th'utch. Didn't ought 'ave fired be roights, John. Froightened they off, see? You c'n 'ave a look for 'im tomorrow, if 'e's 'ere.'
The silence returned, but still Hazel lay motionless in the whispering chill of the tunnel. A cold lassitude came over him and he passed into a dreaming, inert stupor, full of cramp and pain. After a time, a thread of blood began to trickle over the lip of the drain into the trampled, deserted ditch.
Bigwig, crouched close to Blackberry in the straw of the cattle-shed, leapt to flight at the sound of the shot two hundred yards up the lane. He checked himself and turned to the others.
'Don't run!' he said quickly. 'Where do you want to run to, anyway? No holes here.'
'Farther away from the gun,' replied Blackberry, white-eyed.
'Wait!' said Bigwig, listening. 'They're running down the lane. Can't you hear them?'
'I can hear only two rabbits,' answered Blackberry, after a pause, 'and one of them sounds exhausted.'
They looked at each other and waited. Then Bigwig got up again.
'Stay here, all o
f you,' he said. 'I'll go and bring them in.'
Out on the verge he found Dandelion urging Haystack, who was lamed and spent.
'Come in here quickly,' said Bigwig. 'For Frith's sake, where's Hazel?'
'The men have shot him,' replied Dandelion.
They reached the other five rabbits in the straw. Dandelion did not wait for their questions.
'They've shot Hazel,' he said.' They'd caught that Laurel and put him back in the hutch. Then they came after us. The three of us were at the end of a blocked ditch. Hazel went out of his own accord, to distract their attention while we got away. But we didn't know they had a gun.'
'Are you sure they killed him?' said Speedwell.
'I didn't actually see him hit, but they were very close to him.'
'We'd better wait,' said Bigwig.
They waited a long time. At last Blackberry and Bigwig went cautiously back up the lane. They found the bottom of the ditch trampled by boots and streaked with blood, and returned to tell the others.
The journey back, with the three limping hutch rabbits, lasted more than two weary hours. All were dejected and wretched. When at last they reached the foot of the down Bigwig told Blackberry, Speedwell and Hawkbit to leave them and go on to the warren. They approached the wood just at first light and a rabbit ran to meet them through the wet grass. It was Fiver. Blackberry stopped and waited beside him while the other two went on in silence.
'Fiver,' he said, 'there's bad news. Hazel -'