Watership Down: Chapters 1-17

There was a shrewd, buoyant air about him as he sat up, looked round and rubbed both front paws over his nose.

Nearly all warrens have an Owsla, or group of strong or clever rabbits—second-year or older—surrounding the Chief Rabbit and his doe and exercising authority. Owslas vary. In one warren, the Owsla may be the band of a warlord: in another, it may consist largely of clever patrollers or garden-raiders.

Lettuce-stealing isn’t my idea of a jolly life, nor sentry duty in the burrow.

Again, if Fiver was right and the whole warren was in imminent peril, then of course they ought to welcome any rabbit who was ready to join them.

Each one of them saw himself as El-ahrairah, who could be impudent to Frith and get away with it.

In front of him stood Bigwig, sodden wet, undaunted, single-minded — the very picture of decision.

Yet in this ubiquitous restlessness there was nothing alarming, for the whole forest took part in it and the only sound was the soft, steady movement of the leaves.

There was something furtive and hesitant about him and Hazel glanced at him sharply, wondering for a moment whether he could have sickness or poison on him.

The hares on the down, stupid and torpid with cold, were resigned to sinking further and further into the freezing heart of snow and silence.

During the morning the digging proceeded in a light-hearted and intermittent way.

He decided that he himself, at any rate, would be perfectly candid and plain.

Hazel, however, returned and sat pensive at the lip of the hole, looking out at the silent, rippling veils of rain that drifted across and across the little valley between the two copses.

But then, if a lot of rabbits were afraid of some newcomers and wanted to deceive them — get them down a hole and attack them — they’d start — wouldn’t they? — by sending someone who was plausible.

Then he remembered how Bigwig, after his reconnaissance on the previous day, had spoken of the little white sticks in the grass.

Rabbits are lively at nightfall, and when evening rain drives them underground they still feel gregarious.