Bracken was aware that he had brought them both some kind of hope, though why he could not imagine.
‘We’ve both tried everything,’ said Boswell.
‘Why did you say a mole couldn’t do it by himself but might together with others?’ Bracken asked him.
‘No reason, just instinct. A mole like me only survives with others, you see.’ He looked at his crippled paw and shrugged. ‘Moles don’t often realise that two’s better than one.’
‘Or three’s better than two,’ said Mullion.
‘Quite,’ said Boswell.
They looked at Bracken, waiting for him to speak, and for the first time in his life Bracken understood that he had to lead other moles. They were right; there was no time. With each passing hour he would grow weaker, as Mullion had done. Better get on with it.
At that moment, as a reminder of the dangers they faced, the cawing above them of a crow, which hung as a shadow in the sky, shattered through the constant rumbling noise of the roaring owls as it lunged down towards where they crouched, its eyes peering down into the channel. Its claws hung loose, relaxed and deadly under its body as its harsh caw shot about them. Then it wheeled away again.
‘Right,’ said Bracken, ‘we’re getting out of here. There must be a way. I’m going to have a look around for myself. Don’t move—and don’t fight. I’ll be back and we’ll work something out.’
They watched him creep off along the bottom of the wall, a look of hope in Mullion’s eyes and a look of confidence in Boswell’s.
The channel, which was about two hundred moleyards long, had few features. Its walls were smooth and impossible to climb; its floor was wet with drifts of sand where water had flooded in the past. At either end the channel was cut off abruptly by a deeper channel that appeared to flow from the marsh and on through the embankment by huge tunnels visible to Bracken but inaccessible because the water flow was too fast and furious, and now very nearly on a level with the channel he was in. Five pipes, like the one he had tumbled down, drained into it from the marsh, ten or twelve molefeet above the bottom of the channel, which sloped gently down from a central point either way to the bigger, lateral drainageways at the bottom. Water drained steadily down from the five pipes.
On the embankment side there were a couple of evil-smelling pipes set into the wall and sloping up into the darkness of the embankment itself, their outlets low enough for Bracken to be able to snout out the fumes and stench that came from them. From the black stains running from them down the wall he guessed that they were unpleasant inside.
The sense of exposure was quite frightening—nomole likes to be on unburrowable ground. As Bracken was thinking about what to do, he heard a shout behind him, and Mullion came running.
‘The water’s rising,’ he said. ‘It’s creeping up towards where we were from the other channel.’
He was right. The thaw of the snow and ice on the marsh must have brought a rush of water into the bigger channels and now it was creeping quite steadily up towards them from either end of the channel.
‘Well, we can’t fly,’ said Bracken sardonically, ‘so we had better do something.’
A check down the other end, where Bracken had been, confirmed that the level had risen even since he had last been there. The dead hare, which lay grotesquely huddled against the channel wall and smelt of death, began to flop and float about in the rising waters, while their channel began to grow wet and treacherous from the increasing outflow from the marsh drainage pipes leading into it.
‘What about those tunnels up into the embankment?’ Bracken said finally to them both.
‘It’s what I said,’ replied Boswell, ‘but Mullion says it’s not possible.’
‘Too steep and slippery, quite apart from the poisonous smell. You can’t even get started,’ said Mullion.
The water crept nearer and they all moved up towards the centre of the channel. The walls seemed higher and more impassable with each second, almost leaning over and crushing down upon them.
‘What about swimming out?’ said Mullion.
‘Never swum in my life,’ said Bracken.
‘You’d learn quick enough,’ said Boswell. ‘Even I can do it. But the water in those channels is too fierce.’
At the far end of the channel a massive white and grey gull dived squawking on the hare, which was now half submerged in water. There was a plash and splash as the gull’s claws swept the water, trying vainly to lift the hare out, and then it was up and away into the dull sky. A black beetle suddenly came crawling by in the sand, heading up the centre of the channel, as if it knew that the water was rising. Mullion took it for his own and crunched it nervously as they all thought what to do.
Bracken went and took another look up into the round tunnel pipes into the embankment and then impatiently scrambled up into one of them. His back paws had almost disappeared before he came sliding out again and fell into a roll on the channel floor.
‘See what I mean?’ said Mullion. He was beginning to sound desperate.
‘No, I don’t,’ said Bracken. ‘You can get a grip if you stretch far enough ahead because I could feel that the tunnel has an edge across it—it’s not all smooth like the marsh one I came down.’ He climbed up again, Mullion nudging him up a little from behind and this time his whole body disappeared and he was gone.
‘What’s he doing?’ asked Mullion, increasingly worried by the water at his paws.
‘Finding a way out, I expect,’ said Boswell calmly. Then he added for Mullion’s benefit, ‘It’s not as bad as it seems, you know. We can all swim if necessary—though our chances would be low. But we’re not going to drown in the next five minutes.’
There were shouts from the pipe and Bracken came slithering down backwards out of it, covered in mud. He hung for a moment from its edge, his back paws scrabbling for a hold on the smooth wall, and then fell the short distance to the channel floor.
‘Well, it’s possible,’ he said breathlessly. ‘It doesn’t go anywhere much because there’s no wind current and I can sense that it doesn’t. But at the very least we might—if we’re careful and if you do exactly what I say—avoid the water when it rises. There might even be some food up there—though how it would survive in that roaring-owl stench I don’t know.’
The water began to rise towards their bellies and was now threatening to sweep them off their feet as Bracken quickly outlined his plan. The pipe was in sections, each unfortunately longer than the length of a mole. But where they joined there was a gap in the pipe large enough to sneak a talon or two in and hold a mole secure.
‘The trouble is,’ said Bracken, ‘negotiating your way up to the next hold—that’s how I slipped the first time.’
‘Are we taking him?!’ asked Mullion suddenly, looking at Boswell.
‘Yes,’ said Bracken coldly, in a voice that allowed no argument. His plan was that Mullion should go first, being biggest, and stretch forward to the hold Bracken had managed to reach. Then Boswell should follow, clambering up over Mullion to get a grip—a thought that seemed to annoy Mullion and amuse Boswell, who was the only one among them apparently quite unaffected by the position they faced. Then Mullion was to go to the next hold as Bracken joined Boswell, who would then go on up to Mullion again.
‘That’s the theory. Now let’s get on with it,’ said Bracken urgently, the water now almost lifting Boswell off his feet. ‘And remember you two—one slip and we’ll probably all go sliding down into this lot.’