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Immediately Bigwig fell upon him, scratching and kicking. Holly fought back. His followers closed in, looking for an opening to join the fight and pin Bigwig down. Suddenly, from the top of the bank, Buckthorn flung himself headlong into the scuffle, knocked one of the guards flying with a kick from his back legs and then closed with the other. He was followed a moment later by Dandelion, who landed full on the rabbit whom Buckthorn had kicked. Both guards broke clear, looked round for a moment and then leaped up the bank into the wood. Holly struggled free of Bigwig and crouched on his haunches, scuffling his front paws and growling, as rabbits will when angry. He was about to speak when Hazel faced him.
            "Go," said Hazel, firmly and quietly, "or we'll kill you."
            "Do you know what this means?" replied Holly. "I am Captain of Owsla. You know that, don't you?"
            "Go," repeated Hazel, "or you will be killed."
            "It is you who will be killed," replied Holly. Without another word he, too, went back up the bank and vanished
    into the wood.
            Dandelion was bleeding from the shoulder. He licked the wound for a few moments and then turned to Hazel.
            "They won't be long coming back, you know, Hazel," he said. "They've gone to turn out the Owsla, and then
    we'll be for it right enough."
            "We ought to go at once," said Fiver.
            "Yes, the time's come now, all right," replied Hazel. "Come on, down to the stream. Then we'll follow the bank--that'll help us to keep together."
            "If you'll take my advice--" began Bigwig.
            "If we stay here any longer I shan't be able to," answered Hazel.
            With Fiver beside him, he led the way out of the ditch and down the slope. In less than a minute the little band of rabbits had disappeared into the dim, moonlit night.
     
     
     
    5.       In the Woods
     
    These young rabbits ... must move out if they are to survive. In a wild and free state they ... stray sometimes for miles ... wandering until they find a suitable environment.
     
    R.M. Lockley, The Private Life of the Rabbit
     
     
    It was getting on toward moonset when they left the fields and entered the wood. Straggling, catching up with one another, keeping more or less together, they had wandered over half a mile down the fields, always following the course of the brook. Although Hazel guessed that they must now have gone further from the warren than any rabbit he had ever talked to, he was not sure whether they were yet safely away: and it was while he was wondering--not for the first time--whether he could hear sounds of pursuit that he first noticed the dark masses of the trees and the brook disappearing among them.
            Rabbits avoid close woodland, where the ground is shady, damp and grassless and they feel menaced by the undergrowth. Hazel did not care for the look of the trees. Still, he thought, Holly would no doubt think twice before following them into a place like that, and to keep beside the brook might well prove safer than wandering about the fields in one direction and another, with the risk of finding themselves, in the end, back at the warren. He decided to go straight into the wood without consulting Bigwig, and to trust that the rest would follow.
            "If we don't run into any trouble and the brook takes us through the wood," he thought, "we really shall be clear of the warren and then we can look for somewhere to rest for a bit. Most of them still seem to be more or less all right, but Fiver and Pipkin will have had as much as they can stand before long."
            From the moment he entered it, the wood seemed full of noises. There was a smell of damp leaves and moss,
    and everywhere the splash of water went whispering about. Just inside, the brook made a little fall into a pool, and the sound, enclosed among the trees, echoed as