'Oh, that's you, Fiver, is it?' said Bigwig, noticing him for the first time. 'Good, I was coming to look for you. I've been thinking about what you said to the Chief Rabbit. Tell me, is it a sort of tremendous hoax to make yourself important, or is it true?'
'It
'Then you'll be leaving the warren?'
They were all startled by the bluntness with which Bigwig went to the point. Dandelion muttered, 'Leave the warren, Frithrah!' while Blackberry twitched his ears and looked very intently, first at Bigwig and then at Hazel.
It was Hazel who replied. 'Fiver and I will be leaving the warren tonight,' he said deliberately. 'I don't know exactly where we shall go, but we'll take anyone who's ready to come with us.'
'Right,' said Bigwig, 'then you can take me.'
The last thing Hazel had expected was the immediate support of a member of the Owsla. It crossed his mind that although Bigwig would certainly be a useful rabbit in a tight corner, he would also be a difficult one to get on with. He certainly would not want to do what he was told-or even asked-by an outskirter. 'I don't care if he is in the Owsla,' thought Hazel. 'If we get away from the warren, I'm not going to let Bigwig run everything, or why bother to go?' But he answered only, 'Good. We shall be glad to have you.'
He looked round at the other rabbits, who were all staring either at Bigwig or at himself. It was Blackberry who spoke next.
'I think I'll come,' he said. 'I don't quite know whether it's you who've persuaded me, Fiver. But anyway, there are too many bucks in this warren, and it's pretty poor fun for any rabbit that's not in the Owsla. The funny thing is that you feel terrified to stay and I feel terrified to go. Foxes here, weasels there, Fiver in the middle, begone dull care!'
He pulled out a burnet leaf and ate it slowly, concealing his fear as best he could; for all his instincts were warning him of the dangers in the unknown country beyond the warren.
'If we believe Fiver,' said Hazel, 'it means that we think no rabbits at all ought to stay here. So between now and the time when we go, we ought to persuade as many as we can to join us.'
'I think there are one or two in the Owsla who might be worth sounding,' said Bigwig. 'If I can talk them over, they'll be with me when I join you tonight. But they won't come because of Fiver. They'll be juniors, discontented fellows like me. You need to have heard Fiver yourself to be convinced by him. He's convinced me. It's obvious that he's been sent some kind of message, and I believe in these things. I can't think why he didn't convince the Threarah.'
'Because the Threarah doesn't like anything he hasn't thought of for himself,' answered Hazel. 'But we can't bother with him any more now. We've got to try to collect some more rabbits and meet again here, fu Inle. And we'll start fu Inle, too: we can't wait longer. The danger's coming closer all the time-whatever it is-and, besides, the Threarah isn't going to like it if he finds out that you've been trying to get at rabbits in the Owsla, Bigwig. Neither is Captain Holly, I dare say. They won't mind odds and ends like us clearing off, but they won't want to lose you. If I were in your place, I'd be careful whom I picked to talk to.'
4. The Departure
Fu Inle means 'after moonrise.' Rabbits, of course, have no idea of precise time or of punctuality. In this respect they are much the same as primitive people, who often take several days over assembling for some purpose and then several more to get started. Before such people can act together, a kind of telepathic feeling has to flow through them and ripen to the point when they all know that they are ready to begin. Anyone who has seen the martins and swallows in September, assembling on the telephone wires, twittering, making short flights singly and in groups over the open, stubbly fields, returning to form longer and even longer lines above the yellowing verges of the lanes-the hundreds of individual birds merging and blending, in a mounting excitement, into swarms, and these swarms coming loosely and untidily together to create a great, unorganized flock, thick at the center and ragged at the edges, which breaks and re-forms continually like clouds or waves-until that moment when the greater part (but not all) of them know that the time has come: they are off, and have begun once more that great southward flight which many will not survive; anyone seeing this has seen at work the current that flows (among creatures who think of themselves primarily as part of a group and only secondarily, if at all, as individuals) to fuse them together and impel them into action without conscious thought or will: has seen at work the angel which drove the First Crusade into Antioch and drives the lemmings into the sea.
It was actually about an hour after moonrise and a good while before midnight when Hazel and Fiver once more came out of their burrow behind the brambles and slipped quietly along the bottom of the ditch. With them was a third rabbit, Hlao-Pipkin-a friend of Fiver. (Hlao means any small concavity in the grass where moisture may collect-e.g., the dimple formed by a dandelion or thistle cup.) He too was small, and inclined to be timid, and Hazel and Fiver had spent the greater part of their last evening in the warren in persuading him to join them. Pipkin had agreed rather hesitantly. He still felt extremely nervous about what might happen once they left the warren, and had decided that the best way to avoid trouble would be to keep close to Hazel and do exactly what he said.
The three were still in the ditch when Hazel heard a movement above. He looked up quickly.
'Who's there?' he said. 'Dandelion?'
'No, I'm Hawkbit,' said the rabbit who was peering over the edge. He jumped down among them, landing rather heavily. 'Do you remember me, Hazel? We were in the same burrow during the snow last winter. Dandelion told me you were going to leave the warren tonight. If you are, I'll come with you.'
Hazel could recall Hawkbit-a rather slow, stupid rabbit whose company for five snowbound days underground had been distinctly tedious. Still, he thought, this was no time to pick and choose. Although Bigwig might succeed in talking over one or two, most of the rabbits they could expect to join them would not come from the Owsla. They would be outskirters who were getting a thin time and wondering what to do about it. He was running over some of these in his mind when Dandelion appeared.
'The sooner we're off the better, I reckon,' said Dandelion. 'I don't much like the look of things. After I'd persuaded Hawkbit here to join us, I was just starting to talk to a few more, when I found that Toadflax fellow had followed me down the run. 'I want to know what you're up to, he said, and I don't think he believed me when I told him I was only trying to find out whether there were any rabbits who wanted to leave the Warren. He asked me if I was sure I wasn't working up some kind of plot against the Threarah and he got awfully angry and suspicious. It put the wind up me, to tell you the truth, so I've just brought Hawkbit along and left it at that.'
'I don't blame you,' said Hazel. 'Knowing Toadflax, I'm surprised he didn't knock you over first and ask questions afterward. All the same, let's wait a little longer. Blackberry ought to be here soon.'
Time passed. They crouched in silence while the moon shadows moved northward in the grass. At last, just as Hazel was about to run down the slope to Blackberry's burrow, he saw him come out of his hole, followed by no less than three rabbits. One of these, Buckthorn, Hazel knew well. He was glad to see him, for he knew him for a tough, sturdy fellow who was considered certain to get into the Owsla as soon as he reached full weight.
'But I dare say he's impatient,' thought Hazel, 'or he may have come off worst in some scuffle over a doe
