Out came the stream, pouring out of Elahrairah's ear. It flooded the whole place. It flooded the King up to his neck. The King became terrified.

"Take her; take your doe!" he cried. "Go away, Elahrairah! Only leave me in peace!"

"No, you go!" commanded Elahrairah. "Release my doe. Then take your disgusting followers and leave my Down forever!"

That morning Elahrairah was reunited with Nur-Rama, and on the Down was left neither hide nor hair of King Fur-Rocious and his followers. That was the only war that Elahrairah ever fought, and that is how he won it.

There was a scuffle from up one of the runs, and in a moment Buckthorn came down, his fur glistening with raindrops.

"Hazel-rah, it's cleared up beautifully!" he said. "The rain's stopped, and it's going to be a fine evening."

A few moments later there was no one left in the Honeycomb except for Bluebell, washing his back and recovering his breath after telling his story.

4

The Fox in the Water

Den Brer Fox know dat he bin swop off mighty bad.

JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS, Uncle Remus

"Foxes," said Dandelion, moving a little further into the evening sunshine and nibbling a sprig of burnet, "foxes are bad, I've always understood, if they take to living near you. We've never been troubled by a fox while we've been here thank Frith, and I hope it stays that way."

"But they've got such a strong smell," said Bigwig, "and besides, you can very often catch a glimpse of them, however cunning they are, because of the color."

"I know. But if a fox happens to take up near a warren, that is bad, because it's very difficult for the rabbits to be on the alert always, all the time."

They say (Dandelion went on), El-ahrairah and his warren were once troubled by a fox that made an earth near them. Actually, there was a pair of foxes and they raised a litter, and as both were continually hunting for food, the warren had no peace. It wasn't that they actually lost many rabbits--although they did lose some--but the continual tension and fear began to get the warren down. Everyone was looking to El-ahrairah for some answer to the problem, but he seemed as much at a loss as everyone else. He said little or nothing and everyone supposed that he must be turning the matter over in his mind. But the days went by, and nothing changed for the better. The anxiety was beginning to upset the does.

And then, one morning, El-ahrairah was nowhere to be found. He had disappeared. Even Rabscuttle, his captain of Owsla, could not tell where he might have gone. When he didn't return 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 have gone. 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.

Tags: Richard Adams Watership Down Classics
Source: readsnovelonline.net