PART IV HAZEL-RAH

39. The Bridges

Boatman dance, boatman sing,

Boatman do most anything,

Dance, boatman, dance.

Dance all night till the broad daylight,

Go home with the girls in the morning.

Hey, ho, boatman row,

Sailing down the river on the Ohio.

American Folk Song

On almost any other river, Blackberry’s plan would not have worked. The punt would not have left the bank or if it had, would have run aground or been fouled by weeds or some other obstruction. But here, on the Test, there were no submerged branches and no gravel spits or beds of weed above the surface at all. From bank to bank the current, regular and unvaried, flowed as fast as a man strolling. The punt slipped downstream smoothly, without any alteration of the speed which it had gained within a few yards of leaving the bank.

Most of the rabbits had very little idea of what was happening. The Efrafan does had never seen a river and it would certainly have been beyond Pipkin or Hawkbit to explain to them that they were on a boat. They – and nearly all the others – had simply trusted Hazel and done as they were told. But all – bucks and does alike – realized that Woundwort and his followers had vanished. Wearied by all they had gone through, the sodden rabbits crouched without talking, incapable of any feeling but a dull relief and without even the energy to wonder what was going to happen next.

That they should feel any relief – dull or otherwise – was remarkable in the circumstances and showed both how little they understood their situation and how much fear Woundwort could inspire, for their escape from him seemed to be their only good fortune. The rain was still falling. Already so wet that they no longer felt it, they were nevertheless shivering with cold and weighted with their drenched fur. The punt was holding over half an inch of rainwater. There was one small, slatted floorboard and this was floating. Some of the rabbits, in the first confusion of boarding the punt, had found themselves in this water, but now all had got clear of it – most either to bows or stern, though Thethuthinnang and Speedwell were hunched on the narrow thwart, amidships. In addition to their discomfort, they were exposed and helpless. Finally, there was no way of controlling the punt and they did not know where they were going. But these last were troubles beyond the understanding of everyone but Hazel, Fiver and Blackberry.

Bigwig had collapsed beside Hazel and lay on his side, exhausted. The feverish courage had gone which had brought him from Efrafa to the river and his wounded shoulder had begun to hurt badly. In spite of the rain and the throbbing pulse down his foreleg, he felt ready to sleep where he was, stretched upon the planking. He opened his eyes and looked up at Hazel.

‘I couldn’t do it again, Hazel,’ he said.

‘You haven’t got to,’ replied Hazel.

‘It was touch and go, you know,’ said Bigwig. ‘A chance in a thousand.’

‘Our children’s children will hear a good story,’ answered Hazel, quoting a rabbit proverb. ‘How did you get that wound? It’s a nasty one.’

‘I fought a member of the Council police,’ said Bigwig.

‘A what?’ The term ‘Owslafa’ was unknown to Hazel.

‘A dirty little beast like Hufsa,’ said Bigwig.

‘Did you beat him?’

‘Oh yes – or I shouldn’t be here. I should think he’ll stop running. I say, Hazel, we’ve got the does. What’s going to happen now?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Hazel. ‘We need one of these clever rabbits to tell us. And Kehaar – where’s he gone? He’s supposed to know about this thing we’re sitting on.’

Dandelion, crouching beside Hazel, got up at the mention of ‘clever rabbits’, made his way across the puddled floor and returned with Blackberry and Fiver.

‘We’re all wondering what to do next,’ said Hazel.

‘Well,’ said Blackberry, ‘I suppose we shall drift into the bank before long and then we can get out and find cover. There’s no harm, though, in going a good long way from those friends of Bigwig’s.’

‘There is,’ said Hazel. ‘We’re stuck here in full view and we can’t run. If a man sees us we’re in trouble.’

‘Men don’t like rain,’ said Blackberry. ‘Neither do I, if it comes to that, but it makes us safer just now.’

At this moment Hyzenthlay, sitting just behind him, started and looked up.

‘Excuse me, sir, for interrupting you,’ she said, as though speaking to an officer in Efrafa, ‘but the bird – the white bird – it’s coming towards us.’

Kehaar came flying up the river through the rain and alighted on the narrow side of the punt. The does nearest to him backed away nervously.

‘Meester ’Azel,’ he said, ‘pridge come. You see ’im pridge?’

It had not occurred to any of the rabbits that they were floating beside the path up which they had come earlier that evening before the storm broke. They were on the opposite side of the hedge of plants along the bank and the whole river looked different. But now they saw, not far ahead, the bridge which they had crossed when they first came to the Test four nights before. This they recognized at once, for it looked the same as it had from the bank.

‘Maybe you go under ’im, maybe not,’ said Kehaar. ‘But you sit dere, ees trouble.’

The bridge stretched from bank to bank between two low abutments. It was not arched. Its under-side, made of iron girders, was perfectly straight – parallel with the surface and about eight inches above it. Just in time Hazel saw what Kehaar meant. If the punt did pass under the bridge without sticking, it would do so by no more than a claw’s breadth. Any creature above the level of the sides would be struck and perhaps knocked into the river. He scuttered through the warm bilge-water to the other end and pushed his way up among the wet, crowded rabbits.

‘Get down in the bottom! Get down in the bottom!’ he said. ‘Silver, Hawkbit – all of you. Never mind the water. You, and you – what’s your name? Oh, Blackavar, is it? – get everyone into the bottom. Be quick.’

Like Bigwig, he found that the Efrafan rabbits obeyed him at once. He saw Kehaar fly up from his perch and disappear over the wooden rails. The concrete abutments projected from each bank, so that the narrowed river ran slightly faster under the bridge. The punt had been drifting broadside on, but now one end swung forward, so that Hazel lost his bearings and found that he was no longer looking at the bridge but at the bank. As he hesitated, the bridge seemed to come at him in a dark mass, like snow sliding from a bough. He pressed himself into the bilge. There was a squeal and a rabbit tumbled on top of him. Then a heavy blow vibrated along the length of the punt and its smooth movement was checked. This was followed by a hollow sound of scraping. It grew dark and a roof appeared, very low above him. For a moment Hazel had the vague idea that he was underground. Then the roof vanished, the punt was gliding on and he heard Kehaar calling. They were below the bridge and still drifting downstream.

The rabbit who had fallen on him was Acorn. He had been struck by the bridge and the blow had sent him flying. However, though dazed and bruised, he seemed to have escaped injury.

‘I wasn’t quick enough, Hazel-rah,’ he said. ‘I’d better go to Efrafa for a bit.’

‘You’d be wasted,’ said Hazel. ‘But I’m afraid there’s someone at the other end who hasn’t been so lucky.’

One of the does had held back from the bilge-water and the upstream girder under the bridge had caught her across the back. It was plain that she was injured, but how badly Hazel could not tell. He saw Hyzenthlay beside her and it seemed to him that since there was nothing he could do to help, it would probably be best to let them alone. He looked round at his bedraggled, shivering comrades and then at Kehaar, spruce and brisk on the stern.

‘We ought to get back on the bank, Kehaar,’ he said. ‘How can we do it? Rabbits weren’t meant for this, you know.’

‘You not stop poat. But again is nudder pridge more. ’E stop ’im.’

There was nothing to be done but wait. They drifted on and came to a second bend, where the river curved westwards. The current did not slacken and the punt came round the bend almost in the middle of the stream, revolving as it did so. The rabbits had been frightened by what had happened to Acorn and to the doe, and remained squatting miserably, half in and half out of the bilge. Hazel crept back to the raised bow and looked ahead.

The river broadened and the current slackened. He realized that they had begun to drift more slowly. The nearer bank was high and the trees stood close and thick, but on the farther bank the ground was low and open. Grassy, it stretched away, smooth as the mown gallops on Watership Down. Hazel hoped that they might somehow drop out of the current and reach that side, but the punt moved quietly on, down the very centre of the broad pool. The open bank slipped by and now the trees towered on both sides. Downstream, the pool was closed by the second bridge, of which Kehaar had spoken.

It was old, built of darkened bricks. Ivy trailed over it and the valerian and creeping mauve toadflax. Well out from either bank stood four low arches – scarcely more than culverts, each filled by the stream to within a foot of the apex. Through them, thin segments of daylight showed from the downstream side. The piers did not project, but against each lay a little accumulation of flotsam, from which driftweed and sticks continually broke away to be carried through the bridge.

It was plain that the punt would drift against the bridge and be held there. As it approached, Hazel dropped back into the bilge-water. But this time there was no need. Broadside on, the punt struck gently against two of the piers and stopped, pinned squarely across the mouth of one of the central culverts. It could go no further.

They had floated not quite half a mile in just over fifteen minutes.

Hazel put his forepaws on the low side and looked gingerly over upstream. Immediately below, a shallow ripple spread all along the water-line, where the current met the woodwork. It was too far to jump to the shore and both banks were steep. He turned and looked upwards. The brickwork was sheer, with a projecting course half-way between him and the parapet. There was no scrambling up that.

‘What’s to be done, Blackberry?’ he asked, making his way to the bolt fixed on the bow, with its ragged remnant of painter. ‘You got us on this thing. How do we get off?’

‘I don’t know, Hazel-rah,’ replied Blackberry. ‘Of all the ways we could finish up, I never thought of this. It looks as though we’ll have to swim.’

‘Swim?’ said Silver. ‘I don’t fancy it, Hazel-rah. I know it’s no distance, but look at those banks. The current would take us down before we could get out: and that means into one of these holes under the bridge.’

Hazel tried to look through the arch. There was very little to be seen. The dark tunnel was not long – perhaps not much longer than the punt itself. The water looked smooth. There seemed to be no obstructions and there was room for the head of a swimming animal between the surface of the water and the apex of the arch. But the segment was so narrow that it was impossible to see exactly what lay on the other side of the bridge. The light was failing. Water, green leaves, moving reflections of leaves, the splashing of the raindrops and some curious thing that appeared to be standing in the water and to be made of vertical, grey lines – these were all that could be made out. The rain echoed dismally up the culvert. The hard, ringing noise from under the soffit, so much unlike any sound to be heard in an earth tunnel, was disturbing. Hazel returned to Blackberry and Silver.

‘This is as bad a fix as we’ve been in,’ he said. ‘We can’t stay here, but I can’t see any way out.’

Kehaar appeared on the parapet above them, flapped the rain out of his wings and dropped down to the punt.

‘Ees finish poat,’ he said. ‘Not vait more.’

‘But how can we get to the bank, Kehaar?’ said Hazel.

The gull was surprised. ‘Dog sveem, rat sveem. You no sveem?’

‘Yes, we can swim as long as it’s not very far. But the banks are too steep for us, Kehaar. We wouldn’t be able to stop the current taking us down one of these tunnels and we don’t know what’s at the other end.’

‘Ees goot – you get out fine.’

Hazel felt at a loss. What exactly was he to understand from this? Kehaar was not a rabbit. Whatever the Big Water was like, it must be worse than this and Kehaar was used to it. He never said much in any case and what he did say was always restricted to the simplest, since he spoke no Lapine. He was doing them a good turn because they had saved his life but, as Hazel knew, he could not help despising them for timid, helpless, stay-at-home creatures who could not fly. He was often impatient. Did he mean that he had looked at the river and considered it as if he were a rabbit? That there was slack water immediately below the bridge, with a low, shelving bank where they could get out easily? That seemed too much to hope for. Or did he simply mean that they had better hurry up and take a chance on being able to do what he himself could do without difficulty? This seemed more likely. Suppose one of them did jump out of the boat and go down with the current – what would that tell the others, if he did not come back?

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! Dam’ 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 farther 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 sound 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 underwater 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 forwards 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 foetid 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 look-out? 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 smelt. 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 bilge water, 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, hullo, 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 thwart and climbed on it.

‘Hyzenthlay,’ he said, ‘your friends can’t be any wetter, so we’ll get them to jump in now. One by one, don’t you think? Then there’ll be no risk of them scratching or hurting each other as they swim.’

In spite of what Blackavar had said, it was a long time before everyone had left the boat. There were in fact ten does altogether – though none of the rabbits knew the number – and although one or two responded to Bigwig’s patient urging, several were so much exhausted that they remained huddled where they were, or looked stupidly at the water until others were brought to take their place. From time to time Bigwig would ask one of the bucks to give a lead and in this way Acorn, Hawkbit and Bluebell all scrambled over the side. The injured doe, Thrayonlosa, was clearly in a bad way and Blackberry and Thethuthinnang swam through together, one in front of her and one behind.

As darkness closed in the rain stopped. Hazel and Blackavar went back to the bank of the pool below the bridge. The sky cleared and the oppression lifted as the thunder moved away eastwards. But it was fu Inlé before Bigwig himself came through the bridge with Silver and Fiver. It was much as ever he could keep afloat and when he reached the grating he rolled over in the water, belly uppermost, like a dying fish. He drifted into the shallows and, with Silver’s help, pulled himself out. Hazel and several of the others were waiting for him, but he cut them short with a flash of his old, bullying manner.

‘Come on, get out of the way,’ he said,’ I’m going to sleep now, Hazel, and Frith help you if you say I’m not.’

‘That’s how we go on, you see,’ said Hazel to the staring Blackavar. ‘You’ll get used to it after a bit. Now, let’s look for somewhere dry that no one else has found and then perhaps we can sleep too.’

Every dry spot among the undergrowth seemed to be crowded with exhausted, sleeping rabbits. After searching for a time they found a fallen tree-trunk, from the under side of which the bark had pulled away. They crept beneath the twigs and leaves, settled themselves in the smooth, curved trough – which soon took on some of the warmth of their bodies – and slept at once.