Watership Down: Chapters 18-29

The north-facing escarpment of Watership Down, in shadow since early morning, now caught the western sun for an hour before twilight.

Since leaving the warren of the snares they had become warier, shrewder, a tenacious band who understood each other and worked together.

The grass undulated about them.

Between them the ground was bare and the naked chalk showed a pallid, dirty white under the cream-colored elder bloom.

Immediately the kestrel came lower in an oblique glide, closed its wings and dropped.

He checked himself in some confusion and, to forestall Bigwig’s rebuke, spoke to Hazel at once.

We need daylight and to that extent it is utilitarian, but moonlight we do not need.

They live in colonies where they forage and feed, chatter and fight all day long. Solitude and reticence are unnatural to them.

But beyond the light movements of birds and the first buzzing of the flies immediately around them, they could hear nothing but the continual susurration of the trees.

Hazel jumped lightly on it and from there to the thick planks, which were old and soft-surfaced, dusty and covered with chaff.

“I have come to talk to you. Can you understand me?”
The answer was in slightly strange but perfectly intelligible Lapine.
“Yes, we understand you. My name is Boxwood. Where do you come from?”

The cat had stopped short and was licking one paw with a pretense of nonchalance.

When several creatures — men or animals — have worked together to overcome something offering resistance and have at last succeeded, there follows often a pause — as though they felt the propriety of paying respect to the adversary who has put up so good a fight.

After a good deal of delay, during which the cat left the woodpile and began to move stealthily round toward the side of the shed, Blackberry managed to get them out into the farmyard.

When he had spoken of his deliverance by the great apparition in the night, Fiver had listened attentively and asked one question, “Did it make a noise?”