Tales from Watership Down by Richard Adams Read Free Book Online Page B

the next day or the next, there were rabbits who said to one another that he must have deserted them and gone to find a new warren. They felt very low about it, especially when later that day the fox killed another rabbit.
    El-ahrairah had wandered away almost in a trance. He felt that he needed time and solitude to think; but even more he felt the need to find, to discover, something that would give him an answer to the warren’s terrible problem.
    He spent two days on the outskirts of a village. Nothing molested him, but his mind grew no clearer. One evening, as he was lying half asleep in a ditch outside a garden, he was startled by rustling and movement nearby. It proved to be no enemy, however, but only Yona the hedgehog, hunting for food. El-ahrairah greeted him as a friend, and they talked for a while.
    “It’s so hard to find the slugs, El-ahrairah,” said the hedgehog. “They seem to be fewer and fewer, especially in the autumn. I don’t know where they get to.”
    “I can tell you,” said El-ahrairah. “They are in all the gardens round here, in this village. The gardens are full of vegetables and flowers and all manner of greenstuff, and that is what attracts the slugs. If you want slugs, Yona, go into the gardens of the human beings.”
    “But they will kill me,” said Yona.
    “No, they will not,” said El-ahrairah. “It has been made clear to me. They will welcome you, because they will know you have come to eat the slugs. They will do everything they can to encourage you to stay. You will find that I’m right.”
    So Yona went into the gardens of the human beings, and there he thrived, just as El-ahrairah had said. And from that day to this, hedgehogs have frequented human gardens and been welcome.
    El-ahrairah wandered on, his mind still heavy with perplexity. He left the village and soon he came to farmland, where all kinds of crops were being grown. Here, on the outskirts, he found rabbits. They were strangers to him, but they knew who he was and asked his advice.
    “Look, El-ahrairah,” said their Chief Rabbit, “here’s a fine field of greenstuff, as fit to eat as ever was. But the farmer knows how clever we are. He’s surrounded it with wire and he’s buried the wire so deep in the ground that we can’t burrow under it. Look how deep our best diggers havegone. But they haven’t been able to get under the wire. What’s to be done?”
    “There’s no use in trying further,” said El-ahrairah. “You’d simply be wasting your time. Give it up.”
    Just at that moment, down flew a flock of rooks. The Chief Rook alighted beside El-ahrairah and spoke to him.
    “We mean to fly in there and strip the place. What’s to stop us?”
    “The man is waiting for you,” said El-ahrairah. “He is hiding in the bushes with his gun. If you go in there you will be shot.”
    But the Chief Rook would not listen to El-ahrairah and led his flock over the high wire fence and into the field of greens. At once two guns began firing, and before the flock could get away, four of them had been killed. El-ahrairah advised the rabbits to leave the place altogether alone, and so they did.
    They say that after that El-ahrairah wandered far and wide, and everywhere he went he gave the animals and birds good advice and help. He met mice and water rats and even an otter, which did him no harm; yet he seemed no nearer to what he was seeking.
    At last, one day, he came to a great expanse of common land, where the black, peaty soil was covered with miles of heather, juniper and silver birch trees. Here, in the boggy places, there were fly-catching plants and marsh pimpernel, and the wheatears darted from place to place, saying nothing to El-ahrairah, for they did not know him. He went onas a stranger and at last, tired out, lay down in a sunny place, without a thought for the possibility that a stray stoat or weasel might happen along.
    As he lay dozing, he felt the presence of some creature close by and opened his