each short slope only to find another above it. To Hazel, it seemed a likely place for a weasel: or the white owl, perhaps, might fly along the escarpment at twilight, looking inward with its stony eyes, ready to turn a few feet sideways and pick off the shelf anything that moved. Some elil wait for their prey, but the white owl is a seeker and he comes in silence.
As Hazel still went up, the south wind began to blow and the June sunset reddened the sky to the zenith. Hazel, like nearly all wild animals, was unaccustomed to look up at the sky. What he thought of as the sky was the horizon, usually broken by trees and hedges. Now, with his head pointing upward, he found himself gazing at the ridge, as over the skyline came the silent, moving, red-tinged cumuli. Their movement was disturbing, unlike that of trees or grass or rabbits. These great masses moved steadily, noiselessly and always in the same direction. They were not of his world.
'O Frith,' thought Hazel, turning his head for a moment to the bright glow in the west, 'are you sending us to live among the clouds? If you spoke truly to Fiver, help me to trust him.' At this moment he saw Dandelion, who had run well ahead, squatting on an anthill clear against the sky. Alarmed, he dashed forward.
'Dandelion, get down!' he said. 'Why are you sitting up there?'
'Because I can see,' replied Dandelion, with a kind of excited joy. 'Come and look! You can see the whole world.'
Hazel came up to him. There was another anthill nearby and he copied Dandelion, sitting upright on his hind legs and looking about him. He realized now that they were almost on level ground. Indeed, the slope was no more than gentle for some way back along the line by which they had come; but he had been preoccupied with the idea of danger in the open and had not noticed the change. They were on top of the down. Perched above the grass, they could see far in every direction. Their surroundings were empty. If anything had been moving they would have seen it immediately: and where the turf ended, the sky began. A man, a fox-even a rabbit-coming over the down would be conspicuous. Fiver had been right. Up here, they would have clear warning of any approach.
The wind ruffled their fur and tugged at the grass, which smelled of thyme and self-heal. The solitude seemed like a release and a blessing. The height, the sky and the distance went to their heads and they skipped in the sunset. 'O Frith on the hills!' cried Dandelion. 'He must have made it for us!'
'He may have made it, but Fiver thought of it for us,' answered Hazel. 'Wait till we get him up here! Fiver- rah!'
'Where's Hawkbit?' said Dandelion suddenly.
Although the light was still clear, Hawkbit was not to be seen anywhere on the upland. After staring about for some time, they ran across to a little mound some way away and looked again. But they saw nothing except a field mouse, which came out of its hole and began furricking in a path of seeded grasses.
'He must have gone down,' said Dandelion.
'Well, whether he has or not,' said Hazel, 'we can't go on looking for him. The others are waiting and they may be in danger. We must go down ourselves.'
'What a shame to lose him, though,' said Dandelion, 'just when we'd reached Fiver's hills without losing anyone. He's such a duffer; we shouldn't have brought him up. But how could anything have got hold of him here, without our seeing?'
'No, he's gone back, for sure,' said Hazel. 'I wonder what Bigwig will say to him? I hope he won't bite him again. We'd better get on.'
'Are you going to bring them up tonight?' asked Dandelion.
'I don't know,' said Hazel. 'It's a problem. Where's the shelter to be found?'
They made for the steep edge. The light was beginning to fail. They picked their direction by a clump of stunted trees which they had passed on their way up. These formed a kind of dry oasis-a little feature common on the downs. Half a dozen thorns and two or three elders grew together above and below a bank. Between them the ground was bare and the naked chalk showed a pallid, dirty white under the cream-colored elder bloom. As they approached, they suddenly saw Hawkbit sitting among the thorn trunks, cleaning his face with his paws.
'We've been looking for you,' said Hazel. 'Where in the world have you been?'
'I'm sorry, Hazel,' replied Hawkbit meekly. 'I've been looking at these holes. I thought they might be some good to us.'
In the low bank behind him were three rabbit holes. There were two more flat on the ground, between the thick, gnarled roots. They could see no footmarks and no droppings. The holes were clearly deserted.
'Have you been down?' asked Hazel, sniffing round.
'Yes, I have,' said Hawkbit. 'Three of them, anyway. They're shallow and rather rough, but there's no smell of death or disease and they're perfectly sound. I thought they might do for us-just for the moment, anyway.'
In the twilight a swift flew screaming overhead and Hazel turned to Dandelion.
'News! News!' he said. 'Go and get them up here.'
Thus it fell to one of the rank and file to make a lucky find that brought them at last to the downs: and probably saved a life or two, for they could hardly have spent the night in the open, either on or under the hill, without being attacked by some enemy or other.
19. Fear in the Dark
The holes certainly were rough-'Just right for a lot of vagabonds[9] like us,' said Bigwig-but the exhausted and those who wander in strange country are not particular about therr quarters. At least there was room for twelve rabbits and the burrows were dry. Two of the runs-the ones among the thorn trees-led straight down to burrows scooped out of the top of the chalk subsoil. Rabbits do not line their sleeping places and a hard, almost rocky floor is uncomfortable for those not accustomed to it. The holes in the bank, however, had runs of the usual bow shape, leading down to the chalk and then curving up again to burrows with floors of trampled earth. There were no connecting passages, but the rabbits were too weary to care. They slept four to a burrow, snug and secure. Hazel remained awake for some time, licking Buckthorn's leg, which was stiff and tender. He was reassured to find no smell of infection, but all that he had ever heard about rats decided him to see that Buckthorn got a good deal of rest and was kept out of the dirt until the wound was better. 'That's the third one of us to get hurt: still, all in all, things could have been far worse,' he thought, as he fell asleep.
The short June darkness slipped by in a few hours. The light returned early to the high down, but the rabbits did not stir. Well after dawn they were still sleeping, undisturbed in a silence deeper than they had ever known. Nowadays, among fields and woods, the noise level by day is high-too high for some kinds of animal to tolerate. Few places are far from human noise-cars, buses, motorcycles, tractors, lorries. The sound of a housing estate in the morning is audible a long way off. People who record birdsong generally do it very early-before six o'clock-if they can. Soon after that, the invasion of distant noise in most woodland becomes too constant and too loud. During the last fifty years the silence of much of the country has been destroyed. But here, on Watership Down, there floated up only faint traces of the daylight noise below.
The sun was well up, though not yet as high as the down, when Hazel woke. With him in the burrow were
