As if this weren’t enough, they went on to explain that the channel they were in was plagued by carrion crows and the occasional kestrel, which dived and pecked at any creature, alive or dead, caught in it. They had taken a mole only hours before Bracken’s arrival, and constantly squabbled and pecked over a dead hare that lay further away down the channel.
‘There’s no cover here. You can’t burrow. And the stench of the roaring owls is enough to kill a mole,’ exclaimed Boswell.
‘And there’s no food—that’s why…’ The other mole didn’t finish; he didn’t want to remind Bracken of the circumstances of their first meeting.
‘What’s your name?’ asked Bracken, taking the initiative for the first time.
‘Mullion, from the Pasture system. It’s near Duncton Hill.’
‘I have heard of it,’ said Bracken irritably.
‘He hadn’t,’ said Mullion, pointing at Boswell.
They talked for a while—Bracken was too tired to do much else—and kept well in to the side of the channel, using some plant debris as cover. It seemed that Mullion had come over the marshes a week before, when it was frozen, in search of a mole who had left the pastures. A friend of his, he said. As for Boswell, he had made his way along the path used by the roaring owls, nearly been hypnotised by them, and then slipped and tumbled headlong down the embankment, trying to escape crows one night. Bracken wanted to know much more about him and where he had come from and why, but this was not the moment to ask. The lack of food showed on them both, and the fact that Mullion had survived a full week said much for his basic strength.
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.’
