Poor Hazel looked about him. Silver was licking Bigwig's wounded shoulder. Blackberry was fidgeting on and off the thwart, strung up, able to feel only too clearly all that Hazel felt himself. As he still hesitated, Kehaar let out a squawk.
'Yark! Damn rabbits no goot. Vat I do, I show you.'
He tumbled clumsily off the raised bow. There was no gap between the punt and the dark mouth of the culvert. Sitting low in the water like a mallard, he floated into the tunnel and vanished. Peering after him, Hazel could at first see nothing. Then he made out Kehaar's shape black against the light at the far end. It floated into daylight, turned sideways and passed out of the restricted view.
'What does that prove?' said Blackberry, his teeth chattering. 'He may have flown off the surface or put his great webbed feet down. It's not he that's soaked through and shivering and twice as heavy with wet fur.'
Kehaar reappeared on the parapet above.
'You go now,' he said shortly.
Still the wretched Hazel hung back. His leg had begun to hurt again. The sight of Bigwig-Bigwig of all rabbits-at the end of his tether, half unconscious, playing no part in this desperate exploit, lowered his courage still more. He knew that he had not got it in him to jump into the water. The horrible situation was beyond him. He stumbled on the slippery planking and, as he sat up, found Fiver beside him.
'I'll go, Hazel,' said Fiver quietly. 'I think it'll be all right.'
He put his front paws on the edge of the bow. Then, on the instant, all the rabbits froze motionless. One of the does stamped on the puddled floor of the punt. From above came the sounds of approaching footsteps and men's voices, and the smell of a burning white stick.
Kehaar flew away. Not a rabbit moved. The footsteps grew nearer, the voices louder. They were on the bridge above, no further away than the height of a hedge. Every one of the rabbits was seized by the instinct to run, to go underground. Hazel saw Hyzenthlay looking at him and returned her stare, willing her with all his might to keep still. The voices, the smell of men's sweat, of leather, of white sticks, the pain in his leg, the damp, chuckling tunnel at his very ear-he had known them all before. How could the men not see him? They must see him. He was lying at their feet. He was wounded. They were coming to pick him up.
Then the sounds and smells were receding into the distance, the thudding of the footsteps diminished. The men had crossed the bridge without looking over the parapet. They were gone.
Hazel came to. 'That settles it,' he said. 'Everyone's got to swim. Come on, Bluebell, you say you're a water rabbit. Follow me.' He got on the thwart and went along it to the side.
But it was Pipkin that he found next to him.
'Quick, Hazel-rah,' said Pipkin, twitching and trembling. 'I'll come, too. Only be quick.'
Hazel shut his eyes and fell over the side into the water.
As in the Enborne, there was an instant shock of cold. But more than this, and at once, he felt the pull of the current. He was being drawn away by a force like a high wind, yet smooth and silent. He was drifting helplessly down a suffocating, cold run, with no hold for his feet. Full of fear, he paddled and struggled, got his head up and took a breath, scrabbled his claws against rough bricks under water and lost them again as he was dragged on. Then the current slackened, the run vanished, the dark became light and there were leaves and sky above him once more. Still struggling, he fetched up against something hard, bumped off it, struck it again and then for a moment touched soft ground. He floundered forward and found that he was dragging himself through liquid mud. He was out on a clammy bank. He lay panting for several moments and then wiped his face and opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was Pipkin, plastered with mud, crawling to the bank a few feet away.
Full of elation and confidence, all his terrors forgotten, Hazel crawled over to Pipkin and together they slipped into the undergrowth. He said nothing and Pipkin did not seem to expect him to speak. From the shelter of a clump of purple loosestrife they looked back at the river.
The water came out from the bridge into a second pool. All round, on both banks, trees and undergrowth grew close. There was a kind of swamp here and it was hard to tell where water ended and woodland began. Plants grew in clumps both in and out of the muddy shallows. The bottom was covered with fine silt and mud that was half water and in this the two rabbits had made furrows as they dragged themselves to shore. Running diagonally across the pool, from the brickwork of the bridge near the opposite bank to a point a little below them on their own side, was a grating of thin, vertical iron rods. In the cutting season the river weed, drifting in tangled mats from the fishing reaches above, was held against this grating and raked out of the pool by men in waders, who piled it to be used as compost. The left bank was a great rubbish heap of rotting weed among the trees. It was a green, rank-smelling place, humid and enclosed.
'Good old Kehaar!' said Hazel, gazing with satisfaction round the fetid solitude. 'I should have trusted him.'
As he spoke, a third rabbit came swimming out from under the bridge. The sight of him, struggling in the current like a fly in a spider's web, filled them both with fear. To watch another in danger can be almost as bad as sharing it. The rabbit fetched up against the grating, drifted a little way along it, found the bottom and crawled out of the turbid water. It was Blackavar. He lay on his side and seemed unaware of Hazel and Pipkin when they came up to him. After a little while, however, he began to cough, vomited some water and sat up.
'Are you all right?' asked Hazel.
'More or less,' said Blackavar. 'But have we got to do much more tonight, sir? I'm very tired.'
'No, you can rest here,' said Hazel. 'But why did you risk it on your own? We might already have gone under, for all you knew.'
'I thought you gave an order,' replied Blackavar.
'I see,' said Hazel. 'Well, at that rate you're going to find us a sloppy lot, I'm afraid. Was there anyone else who looked like coming when you jumped in?'
'I think they're a bit nervous,' answered Blackavar. 'You can't blame them.'
'No, but the trouble is that anything can happen,' said Hazel, fretting. 'They may all go tharn, sitting there. The men may come back. If only we could tell them it's all right-'
'I think we can, sir,' said Blackavar. 'Unless I'm wrong, it's only a matter of slipping up the bank there and down the other side. Shall I go?'
Hazel was disconcerted. From what he had gathered, this was a disgraced prisoner from Efrafa-not even a member of the Owsla, apparently-and he had just said that he felt exhausted. He was going to take some living up to.
'We'll both go,' he said. 'Hlao-roo, can you stay here and keep a lookout? With any luck, they'll start coming through to you. Help them if you can.'
Hazel and Blackavar slipped through the dripping undergrowth. The grass track which crossed the bridge ran above them, at the top of a steep bank. They climbed the bank and looked out cautiously from the long grass at the verge. The track was empty and there was nothing to be heard or smelled. They crossed it and reached the end of the bridge on the upstream side. Here the bank dropped almost sheer to the river, some six feet below. Blackavar scrambled down without hesitation, but Hazel followed more slowly. Just above the bridge, between it and a thorn bush upstream, was a ledge of turf which overhung the water. Out in the river, a few feet away, the punt lay against the weedy piers.
'Silver!' said Hazel. 'Fiver! Come on, get them into the water. It's all right below the bridge. Get the does in first, if you can. There's no time to lose. The men may come back.'
It was no easy matter to rouse the torpid, bewildered does and make them understand what they had to do. Silver went from one to another. Dandelion, as soon as he saw Hazel on the bank, went at once to the bow and plunged in. Speedwell followed, but as Fiver was about to go Silver stopped him.
'If all our bucks go, Hazel,' he said, 'the does will be left alone and I don't think they'll manage it.'
'They'll obey Thlayli, sir,' said Blackavar, before Hazel could reply. 'I think he's the one to get them started.'
Bigwig was still lying in the bilgewater, in the place he had taken up when they came to the first bridge. He seemed to be asleep, but when Silver nuzzled him he raised his head and looked about in a dazed manner.
'Oh, hello, Silver,' he said. 'I'm afraid this shoulder of mine's going to be a bother. I feel awfully cold, too. Where's Hazel?'
Silver explained. Bigwig got up with difficulty and they saw that he was still bleeding. He limped to the
