Shortly afterwards the rabbits set out across the park to the north. Bigwig soon found that he was not up to a long journey. His wound was painful and the shoulder muscle would not stand hard use. Hazel was still lame and the does, though willing and obedient, showed that they knew little about the life of hlessil. It was a trying time.
In the days that followed - days of clear sky and fine weather - Blackavar proved his worth again and again, until Hazel came to rely on him as much as on any of his veterans. There was a great deal more to him than anyone could have guessed. When Bigwig had determined not to come out of Efrafa without Blackavar, he had been moved entirely by pity for a miserable, helpless victim of Woundwort's ruthlessness. It turned out, however, that Blackavar, when not crushed by humiliation and ill-treatment, was a good cut above the ordinary. His story was an unusual one. His mother had not been born an Efrafan. She had been one of the rabbits taken prisoner when Woundwort attacked the warren at Nutley Copse. She had mated with an Efrafan captain and had had no other mate. He had been killed on Wide Patrol. Blackavar, proud of his father, had grown up with the resolve to become an officer in the Owsla. But together with this - and paradoxically - there had come to him from his mother a certain resentment against Efrafa and a feeling that they should have no more of him than he cared to give them. Captain Mallow, to whose Mark - the Right Fore - he had been sent on trial, had praised his courage and endurance but had not failed to notice the proud detachment of his nature. When the Right Flank needed a junior officer to help Captain Chervil, it was Avens and not Blackavar who had been selected by the Council. Blackavar, who knew his own worth, felt convinced that his mother's blood had prejudiced the Council against him. While still full of his wrongs he had met Hyzenthlay and made himself a secret friend and adviser of the discontented does in the Right Fore. He had begun by urging them to try to get the Council's consent to their leaving Efrafa. If they had succeeded they would have asked for him to be allowed to go with them. But when the does' deputation to the Council failed, Blackavar turned to the idea of escape. At first he had meant to take the does with him but his nerve, strained to the limit, as Bigwig's had been, by the dangers and uncertainties of conspiracy, had given way and in the end he had simply made a dash on his own, to be caught by Campion. Under the punishment inflicted by the Council his mercurial spirit had fallen low and he had become the apathetic wretch the sight of whom had so much shocked Bigwig. Yet at the whispered message in the hraka-pit this spirit had flickered up again where another's might well have failed to do so, and he had been ready to set all on the hazard and have another shot. Now, free among these easy-going strangers, he saw himself as a trained Efrafan, using his skill to help them in their need. Although he did all that he was told, he did not hesitate to make suggestions as well, particularly when it came to reconnoitring and looking for signs of danger. Hazel, who was ready to accept advice from anybody when he thought it was good, listened to most of what he said and was content to leave it to Bigwig - for whom, naturally, Blackavar entertained a tremendous respect - to see that he did not over-reach himself in his warm-hearted, rather candid zeal.
After two or three days of slow, careful journeying, with many halts in cover, they found themselves, late one afternoon, once more in sight of Caesar's Belt, but further west than before, close to a little copse at the top of some rising ground. Everyone was tired and when they had fed - 'Evening silflay every day, just as you promised,' said Hyzenthlay to Bigwig - Bluebell and Speedwell suggested that it might be worth while to dig some scrapes in the light soil under the trees and live there for a day or two. Hazel felt willing enough, but Fiver needed persuasion.
'I know we can do with a rest, but somehow I don't altogether like it, Hazel-rah,' he said. 'I suppose I've got to try to think why?'
'Not on my account,' answered Hazel. 'But I doubt you'll shift the others this time. One or two of these does are "ready for mudder", as Kehaar would say, and that's the real reason why Bluebell and the rest are prepared to be at the trouble of digging scrapes. Surely it'll be all right at that rate, won't it? You know what they say - "Rabbit underground, rabbit safe and sound".'
'Well, you may be right,' said Fiver. 'That Vilthuril's a beautiful doe. I'd like a chance to get to know her better. After all, it's not natural to rabbits, is it? - on and on day after day.'
Later, however, when Blackavar returned with Dandelion from a patrol they had undertaken on their own initiative, he came out more strongly against the idea.
'This is no place to stop, Hazel-rah,' he said. 'No Wide Patrol would bivouac here. It's fox country. We ought to try to get further before dark.'
Bigwig's shoulder had been hurting him a good deal during the afternoon and he felt low and surly. It seemed to him that Blackavar was being clever at other people's expense. If he got his way they would have to go on, tired as they were, until they came to somewhere which was suitable by Efrafan standards. There they would be as safe - no more and no less - than they would have been if they had stayed at this copse; but Blackavar would be the clever fellow who had saved them from a fox that had never existed outside his own fancy. His Efrafan scoutcraft act was getting to be a bore. It was time someone called his bluff.
'There are likely to be foxes anywhere about the downs,' said Bigwig sharply. 'Why is this fox country more than anywhere else?'
Tact was a quality which Blackavar valued about as much as Bigwig did; and now he made the worst possible reply.
'I can't exactly tell you why,' he said. 'I've formed a strong impression, but it's hard to explain quite what it's based on.'
'Oh, an impression, eh?' sneered Bigwig. 'Did you see any hraka? Pick up any scent? Or was it just a message from little green mice singing under a toadstool?'
Blackavar felt hurt. Bigwig was the last rabbit he wanted to quarrel with.
'Ye think I'm a fool, then,' he answered, his Efrafan accent becoming more marked. 'No, there was neether hraka ner scent, but I still think that this is a place where a fox comes. On these patrols we used to do, ye know, we -'
'Did you see or smell anything?' said Bigwig to Dandelion.
'Er - well, I'm not really quite sure,' said Dandelion. 'I mean, Blackavar seems to know an awful lot about patrolling and he asked me whether I didn't feel a sort of -'
'Well, we can go on like this all night,' said Bigwig. 'Blackavar, do you know that earlier this summer, before we had the benefit of your experience, we went for days across every kind of country - fields, heather, woods, downs - and never lost one rabbit?'
'It's the idea of scrapes, that's all,' said Blackavar apologetically. 'New scrapes get noticed; and digging can be heard a surprisingly long way, ye know.'
'Let him alone,' said Hazel, before Bigwig could speak again. 'You didn't get him out of Efrafa to bully him. Look, Blackavar, I suppose I've got to decide this. I think you're probably right and there is a certain amount of risk. But we're at risk all the time until we get back to our warren and everyone's so tired that I think we might just as well stop here for a day or two. We shall be all the better for it.'
Enough scrapes were finished by soon after sunset and next day, sure enough, all the rabbits felt a great deal better for a night underground. As Hazel had foreseen, there was some mating and a scuffle or two, but no one was hurt. By the evening a kind of holiday spirit prevailed. Hazel's leg was stronger and Bigwig felt fitter than at any time since he went into Efrafa. The does, harassed and bony two days before, were beginning to look quite sleek.
On the second morning, silflay did not begin until some time after dawn. A light wind was blowing straight into the north bank of the copse, where the scrapes had been dug, and Bluebell, when he came up, swore he could smell rabbits on it.
'It's old Holly pressing his chin glands for us, Hazel-rah,' he said. 'A rabbit's sneeze on the morning breeze sets homesick hearts aglow -'
'Sitting with his rump in a chicory clump and longing for a nice plump doe,' replied Hazel.
'That won't do, Hazel-rah,' said Bluebell. 'He's got two does up there.'
'Only hutch-does,' replied Hazel. 'I dare say they're fairly tough and fast by now, but all the same they'll never be quite like our own kind. Clover, for instance - she'd never go far from the hole on silflay, because she knew she couldn't run as fast as we can. But these Efrafan does, you see - they've been kept in by sentries all their lives. Yet now there aren't any, they wander about quite happily. Look at those two, right away under the bank there. They feel they can - oh great Frith!'
As he spoke a tawny shape, dog-like, sprang out of the overhanging nut-bushes as silently as light from behind a cloud. It landed between the two does, grabbed one by the neck and dragged her up the bank in a flash. The wind veered and the reek of fox came over the grass. With stamping and flashing of tails every rabbit on the slope dashed for cover.
Hazel and Bluebell found themselves crouched with Blackavar. The Efrafan was matter-of-fact and detached.
'Poor little beast,' he said. 'You see, their instincts are weakened by life in the Mark. Fancy feeding under bushes on the windward side of a wood! Never mind, Hazel-rah, these things happen. But look, I tell you what. Unless there are two hombil, which would be very bad luck, we've got till ni-Frith at least to get away. That homba won't be hunting any more for some time. I suggest we all move on as soon as we can.'
With a word of agreement, Hazel went out to call the rabbits together. They made a scattered but swift run to the north-east, along the edge of a field of ripening wheat. No one spoke of the doe. They had covered more than three-quarters of a mile before Bigwig and Hazel halted to rest and to make sure that no one had fallen behind. As Blackavar came up with Hyzenthlay, Bigwig said,