Buckthorn, Fiver and Pipkin. He was nearest to the mouth of the hole and did not wake them as he slipped up the run. Outside, he stopped to pass hraka and then hopped through the thorn patch to the open grass. Below, the country was covered with early-morning mist which was beginning to clear. Here and there, far off, were the shapes of trees and roofs, from which streamers of mist trailed down like broken waves pouring from rocks. The sky was cloudless and deep blue, darkening to mauve along the whole rim of the horizon. The wind had dropped and the spiders had already gone well down into the grass. It was going to be a hot day.
Hazel rambled about in the usual way of a rabbit feeding-five or six slow, rocking hops through the grass; a pause to look round, sitting up with ears erect; then busy nibbling for a short time, followed by another move of a few yards. For the first time for many days he felt relaxed and safe. He began to wonder whether they had much to learn about their new home.
'Fiver was right,' he thought. 'This is the place for us. But we shall need to get used to it and the fewer mistakes we make the better. I wonder what became of the rabbits who made these holes? Did they stop running or did they just move away? If we could only find them they could tell us a lot.'
At this moment he saw a rabbit come rather hesitantly out of the hole furthest from himself. It was Blackberry. He, too, passed hraka, scratched himself and then hopped into the full sunlight and combed his ears. As he began to feed, Hazel came up and fell in with him, nibbling among the grass tussocks and wandering on wherever his friend pleased. They came to a patch of milkwort-a blue as deep as that of the sky-with long stems creeping through the grass and each minute flower spreading its two upper petals like wings. Blackberry sniffed at it, but the leaves were tough and unappetizing.
'What is this stuff, do you know?' he asked.
'No, I don't,' said Hazel. 'I've never seen it before.'
'There's a lot we don't know,' said Blackberry. 'About this place, I mean. The plants are new, the smells are new. We're going to need some new ideas ourselves.'
'Well, you're the fellow for ideas,' said Hazel. 'I never know anything until you tell me.'
'But you go in front and take the risks first,' answered Blackberry. 'We've all seen that. And now our journey's over, isn't it? This place is as safe as Fiver said it would be. Nothing can get near us without our knowing: that is, as long as we can smell and see and hear.'
'We can all do that.'
'Not when we're asleep: and we can't see in the dark.'
'It's bound to be dark at night,' said Hazel, 'and rabbits have got to sleep.'
'In the open?'
'Well, we can go on using these holes if we want to, but I expect a good many will lie out. After all, you can't expect a bunch of bucks to dig. They might make a scrape or two-like that day after we came over the heather-but they won't do more than that.'
'That's what I've been thinking about,' said Blackberry. 'Those rabbits we left-Cowslip and the rest-a lot of the things they did weren't natural to rabbits-pushing stones into the earth and carrying food underground and Frith knows what.'
'The Threarah's lettuce was carried underground, if it comes to that.'
'Exactly. Don't you see, they'd altered what rabbits do naturally because they thought they could do better? And if they altered their ways, so can we if we like. You say buck rabbits don't dig. Nor they do. But they could, if they wanted to. Suppose we had deep, comfortable burrows to sleep in? To be out of bad weather and underground at night? Then we would be safe. And there's nothing to stop us having them, except that buck rabbits won't dig. Not can't-won't.'
'What's your idea, then?' asked Hazel, half interested and half reluctant. 'Do you want us to try to turn these holes into a regular warren?'
'No, these holes won't do. It's easy to see why they've been deserted. Only a little way down and you come to this hard white stuff that no one can dig. They must be bitterly cold in winter. But there's a wood just over the top of the hill. I got a glimpse of it last night when we came. Suppose we go up higher now, just you and I, and have a look at it?'
They ran uphill to the summit. The beech hanger lay some little way off to the southeast, on the far side of a grassy track that ran along the ridge.
'There are some big trees there,' said Blackberry. 'The roots must have broken up the ground pretty deep. We could dig holes and be as well off as ever we were in the old warren. But if Bigwig and the others won't dig or say they can't-well, it's bare and bleak here. That's why it's lonely and safe, of course; but when bad weather comes we shall be driven off the hills for sure.'
'It never entered my head to try to make a lot of bucks dig regular holes,' said Hazel doubtfully, as they returned down the slope. 'Rabbit kittens need holes, of course; but do we?'
'We were all born in a warren that was dug before our mothers were born,' said Blackberry. 'We're used to holes and not one of us has ever helped to dig one. And if ever there was a new one, who dug it? A doe. I'm quite sure, myself, that if we don't change our natural ways we shan't be able to stay here very long. Somewhere else, perhaps; but not here.'
'It'll mean a lot of work.'
'Look, there's Bigwig come up now and some of the others with him. Why not put it to them and see what they say?'
During silflay, however, Hazel mentioned Blackberry's idea to no one but Fiver. Later on, when most of the rabbits had finished feeding and were either playing in the grass or lying in the sunshine, he suggested that they might go across to the hanger-'Just to see what sort of a wood it is.' Bigwig and Silver agreed at once and in the end no one stayed behind.
It was different from the meadow copses they had left: a narrow belt of trees, four or five hundred yards long but barely fifty wide; a kind of windbreak common on the downs. It consisted almost entirely of well-grown beeches. The great, smooth trunks stood motionless in their green shade, the branches spreading flat, one above another in crisp, light-dappled tiers. Between the trees the ground was open and offered hardly any cover. The rabbits were perplexed. They could not make out why the wood was so light and still and why they could see so far between the trees. The continuous, gentle rustling of the beech leaves was unlike the sounds to be heard in a copse of nut bushes, oak and silver birch.
Moving uncertainly in and out along the edge of the hanger, they came to the northeast corner. Here there was a bank from which they looked out over the empty stretches of grass beyond. Fiver, absurdly small beside the hulking Bigwig, turned to Hazel with an air of happy confidence.
'I'm sure Blackberry's right, Hazel,' he said. 'We ought to do our best to make some holes here. I'm ready to try, anyway.'
The others were taken aback. Pipkin, however, readily joined Hazel at the foot of the bank and soon two or three more began scratching at the light soil. The digging was easy and although they often broke off to feed or merely to sit in the sun, before midday Hazel was out of sight and tunneling between the tree roots.
The hanger might have little or no undergrowth but at least the branches gave cover from the sky: and kestrels, they soon realized, were common in this solitude. Although kestrels seldom prey on anything bigger than a rat, they will sometimes attack young rabbits. No doubt this is why most grown rabbits will not remain under a hovering kestrel. Before long, Acorn spotted one as it flew up from the south. He stamped and bolted into the trees, followed by the other rabbits who were in the open. They had not long come out and resumed digging when they saw another-or perhaps the same one-hovering some way off, high over the very fields that they had crossed the previous morning. Hazel placed Buckthorn as a sentry while the day's haphazard work went on, and twice more during the afternoon the alarm was given. In the early evening they were disturbed by a horseman cantering along the ridge track that passed the north end of the wood. Otherwise they saw nothing larger than a pigeon all day.
After the horseman had turned south near the summit of Watership and disappeared in the distance, Hazel returned to the edge of the wood and looked out northward toward the bright, still fields and the dim pylon line stalking away into the distance north of Kingsclere. The air was cooler and the sun was beginning once more to reach the north escarpment.
'I think we've done enough,' he said, 'for today, anyway. I should like to go down to the bottom of the hill and find some really good grass. This stuff's all right in its way but it's rather thin and dry. Does anyone feel like
