Tales From Watership Down by Richard Adams

Author:Richard Adams [Adams, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Juvenile Fiction, cookie429, Kat, Extratorrents, Literary, Animals, Rabbits
ISBN: 9780613067546
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Published: 1996-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

11

El-ahrairah and the Lendri

Tommy Brock … was not nice in his habits.

He ate wasp nests and frogs and worms: and he

waddled about by moonlight, digging things up.

BEATRIX POTTER, “The Tale of Mr. Tod”

Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier

to act than to think.

HANNAH ARENDT, quoted in W. H. Auden, A Certain World

For a few days (said Dandelion) after they had left poor Burdock and his rabbits, El-ahrairah and Rabscuttle traveled on uneventfully through the long-grass meadows and the summer weather.

One evening, as they were making themselves comfortable in the straw on the floor of an old barn, Rabscuttle said, “We’re not far from home now, master. I can feel it all through my body, can’t you?”

“Well, I can’t feel it all through your body,” replied El-ahrairah, who was often unable to resist gently testing Rabscuttle, “but I can feel it, all right. All the same, I’ve got the notion that we may have to get past some big obstacle or other before we get there. We’d better keep a good lookout and go carefully. It would be a pity, wouldn’t it, to stop running so close to home?”

It was getting late in the afternoon of the next day when they came in sight of a thick forest. It was no ordinary forest, as they could see. To right and left it stretched way into the distance, and there seemed to be no gaps or openings which might have been the beginnings of paths through the tangle of trees and undergrowth.

“I’m afraid there’s no help for it,” said El-ahrairah, when he had gazed at the forest and pondered for some time. “Through that nasty-looking place we’ll have to go. I can tell that, can’t you?”

“All too clearly, master, I’m afraid,” answered Rabscuttle, sitting down in the grass and cleaning his face with his front paws. “But we can’t do it on our own. We’re going to need some kind of help. It would never do just to go plunging into a place like that by ourselves. We’d be lost in half an hour and dead in half a day.”

“What sort of help, though?” asked El-ahrairah. “We’d better start by trying to find someone who knows a bit more about it than we do.”

They had not gone far toward the forest before they came upon a huge rat, almost as big as El-ahrairah himself. It was sitting in the sun and no doubt, thought the rabbits, meditating on the details of some vile and murderous scheme. Neither of them liked the look of it at all, but all the same, thought El-ahrairah, as the rat eyed him silently with an evil and cunning expression, we’ve got to start somewhere. He greeted the rat politely and sat down beside it on the edge of a ditch.

“I wonder if you can give us some advice,” he began. “We’ve got to get through that forest.”

“What for?” asked the rat, its whiskers twitching unpleasantly.

“To get home,” said El-ahrairah.

“Then how in bones and blazes do you come to be here?” asked the rat.

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