'Can I come, Hazel-rah?' asked Bluebell, who had been waiting about, a little way off.
'Yes, all right,' said Hazel good-naturedly, as he began to limp along the bank upstream.
They soon realized that the woodland on this left bank was lonely, thick and overgrown-denser than the nut copses and bluebell woods of Sandleford. Several times they heard the drumming of a great woodpecker, the shyest of birds. As Blackberry was suggesting that perhaps they might look for a hiding place somewhere in this jungle, they became aware of another sound-the falling water which they had heard on their approach the day before. Soon they reached a place where the river curved round in a bend from the east, and here they came upon the broad, shallow fall. It was no more than a foot high-one of those artificial falls, common on the chalk streams, made to attract trout. Several were already rising to the evening hatch of fly. Just above the fall a plank footbridge crossed the river. Kehaar flew up, circled the pool and perched on the hand rail.
'This is more sheltered and lonely than the bridge we crossed last night,' said Blackberry. 'Perhaps we could make some use of it. You didn't know about this bridge, Kehaar, did you?'
'Na, not know, not see heem. But ees goot pridge-no von come.'
'I'd like to go across, Hazel-rah,' said Blackberry.
'Well, Fiver's the rabbit for that,' replied Hazel. 'He simply loves crossing bridges. You carry on. I'll come behind, with Bigwig and Bluebell here.'
The five rabbits hopped slowly along the planks, their great, sensitive ears full of the sound of the falling water. Hazel, who was not sure of his footing, had to stop several times. When at length he reached the further side, he found that Fiver and Blackberry had already gone a little way downstream below the fall and were looking at some large object sticking out from the bank. At first he thought that it must be a fallen tree trunk, but as he came closer he saw that, although it was certainly wooden, it was not round, but flat, or nearly flat, with raised edges-some man thing. He remembered how once, long ago, sniffing over a farm rubbish heap with Fiver, he had come upon a similar object-large, smooth and flat. (That had, in fact, been an old, discarded door.) It had been of no use to them and they had left it alone. His inclination was to leave this alone, too.
One end of the thing was pressed into the bank, but along its length it diverged, sticking out slightly into the stream. There were ripples round it, for under the banks the current was as swift as in midstream, on account of weed-cutting and sound camp-sheeting. As Hazel came nearer, he saw that Blackberry had actually scrambled on the thing. His claws made a faint hollow sound on the wood, so there must be water underneath. Whatever it might be, the thing did not extend downward to the bottom: it was lying on the water.
'What are you after, Blackberry?' he said rather sharply.
'Food,' replied Blackberry. 'Flayrah. Can't you smell it?'
Kehaar had alighted on the middle of the thing, and was snapping away at something white. Blackberry scuttered along the wood toward him and began to nibble at some kind of greenstuff. After a little while Hazel also ventured out on the wood and sat in the sunshine, watching the flies on the warm, varnished surface and sniffing the strange river smells that came up from the water.
'What is this man thing, Kehaar?' he asked. 'Is it dangerous?'
'Na, no dangerous. You not know? Ees poat. At Peeg Vater is many, many poat. Men make dem, go on vater. Ees no harm.'
Kehaar went on pecking at the broken pieces of stale bread. Blackberry, who had finished the fragments of lettuce he had found, was sitting up and looking over the very low side, watching a stone-colored, black-spotted trout swim up into the fall. The «boat» was a miniature punt, used for reed-cutting-little more than a raft, with a single thwart amidships. Even when it was unmanned, as now, there were only a few inches of freeboard.
'You know,' said Fiver from the bank, 'seeing you sitting there reminds me of that other wooden thing you found when the dog was in the wood and you got Pipkin and me over the river. Do you remember?'
'I remember shoving you along,' said Bigwig. 'It was jolly cold.'
'What puzzles me,' said Blackberry, 'is why this boat thing doesn't go along. Everything in this river goes along, and fast, too-see there.' He looked out at a piece of stick floating down on the even two-mile-an-hour current. 'So what's stopping this thing from going?'
Kehaar had a short-way-with-landlubbers manner which he sometimes used to those of the rabbits that he did not particularly like. Blackberry was not one of his favorites: he preferred straightforward characters such as Bigwig, Buckthorn and Silver.
'Ees rope. You like bite heem, den you go damn queek, all de vay.'
'Yes, I see,' said Fiver. 'The rope goes round that metal thing where Hazel's sitting: and the other end's fixed on the bank here. It's like the stalk of a big leaf. You could gnaw it through and the leaf-the boat-would drop off the bank.'
'Well, anyway, let's go back now,' said Hazel, rather dejectedly. 'I'm afraid we don't seem to be any nearer to finding what we're looking for, Kehaar. Can you possibly wait until tomorrow? I had the idea that we might all move to somewhere a bit drier before tonight-higher up in the wood, away from the river.'
'Oh, what a pity!' said Bluebell. 'Do you know, I'd quite decided to become a water rabbit.'
'A what?' asked Bigwig.
'A water rabbit,' repeated Bluebell. 'Well, there are water rats and water beetles and Pipkin says that last night he saw a water hawk. So why not a water rabbit? I shall float merrily along-'
'Great golden Frith on a hill!' cried Blackberry suddenly. 'Great jumping Rabscuttle! That's it! That's it! Bluebell, you
Fiver paused. 'Yes, I
'Here, wait a moment,' said Hazel. 'We're just simple rabbits, Bigwig and I. Do you mind explaining?'
Then and there, while the black gnats settled on their ears, by the plank bridge and the pouring waterfall, Blackberry and Fiver explained.
'Could you just go and try the rope, Hazel-rah?' added Blackberry, when he had finished. 'It may be too thick.'
They went back to the punt.
'No, it's not,' said Hazel, 'and it's stretched tight, of course, which makes it much easier to gnaw. I can gnaw that, all right.'
'Ya, ees goot,' said Kehaar. 'You go fine. But you do heem queek, ya? Maybe somet'ing change. Man come, take poat-you know?'
'There's nothing more to wait for,' said Hazel. 'Go on, Bigwig, straightaway, and may El-ahrairah go with you. And remember, you're the leader now. Send word by Kehaar what you want us to do; we shall all be here, ready to back you up.'
Afterward, they all remembered how Bigwig had taken his orders. No one could say that he did not practice what he preached. He hesitated a few moments and then looked squarely at Hazel.
'It's sudden,' he said. 'I wasn't expecting it tonight. But that's all to the good-I hated waiting. See you later.'
He touched his nose to Hazel's, turned and hopped away into the undergrowth. A few minutes later, guided by Kehaar, he was running up the open pasture north of the river, straight for the brick arch in the overgrown railway embankment and the fields that lay beyond.
34. General Woundwort
Like an obelisk towards which the principal streets of a town converge, the strong will of a proud spirit stands prominent and commanding in the middle of the art of war.
