The Wind in the Willows
knew a good rhyme for something or other.
But the Mole was not there.
He listened for a time. The house seemed very quiet.
Then he called “Moly!” several times, and, receiving no answer, got up
and went out into the hall.
The Mole’s cap was missing from its accustomed peg. His goloshes, which
always lay by the umbrella-stand, were also gone.
The Rat left the house, and carefully examined the muddy surface of the
ground outside, hoping to find the Mole’s tracks. There they were, sure
enough. The goloshes were new, just bought for the winter, and the
pimples on their soles were fresh and sharp. He could see the imprints
of them in the mud, running along straight and purposeful, leading
direct to the Wild Wood.
The Rat looked very grave, and stood in deep thought for a minute or
two. Then he re-entered the house, strapped a belt round his waist,
shoved a brace of pistols into it, took up a stout cudgel that stood in
a corner of the hall, and set off for the Wild Wood at a smart pace.
It was already getting towards dusk when he reached the first fringe of
trees and plunged without hesitation into the wood, looking anxiously
on either side for any sign of his friend. Here and there wicked little
faces popped out of holes, but vanished immediately at sight of the
valorous animal, his pistols, and the great ugly cudgel in his grasp;
and the whistling and pattering, which he had heard quite plainly on
his first entry, died away and ceased, and all was very still. He made
his way manfully through the length of the wood, to its furthest edge;
then, forsaking all paths, he set himself to traverse it, laboriously
working over the whole ground, and all the time calling out cheerfully,
“Moly, Moly, Moly! Where are you? It’s me—it’s old Rat!”
He had patiently hunted through the wood for an hour or more, when at
last to his joy he heard a little answering cry. Guiding himself by the
sound, he made his way through the gathering darkness to the foot of an
old beech tree, with a hole in it, and from out of the hole came a
feeble voice, saying “Ratty! Is that really you?”
The Rat crept into the hollow, and there he found the Mole, exhausted
and still trembling. “O Rat!” he cried, “I’ve been so frightened, you
can’t think!”
“O, I quite understand,” said the Rat soothingly. “You shouldn’t really
have gone and done it, Mole. I did my best to keep you from it. We
river-bankers, we hardly ever come here by ourselves. If we have to
come, we come in couples, at least; then we’re generally all right.
Besides, there are a hundred things one has to know, which we
understand all about and you don’t, as yet. I mean passwords, and
signs, and sayings which have power and effect, and plants you carry in
your pocket, and verses you repeat, and dodges and tricks you practise;
all simple enough when you know them, but they’ve got to be known if
you’re small, or you’ll find yourself in trouble. Of course if you were
Badger or Otter, it would be quite another matter.”
“Surely the brave Mr. Toad wouldn’t mind coming here by himself, would
he?” inquired the Mole.
“Old Toad?” said the Rat, laughing heartily. “He wouldn’t show his face
here alone, not for a whole hatful of golden guineas, Toad wouldn’t.”
The Mole was greatly cheered by the sound of the Rat’s careless
laughter, as well as by the sight of his stick and his gleaming
pistols, and he stopped shivering and began to feel bolder and more
himself again.
“Now then,” said the Rat presently, “we really must pull ourselves
together and make a start for home while there’s still a little light
left. It will never do to spend the night here, you understand. Too
cold, for one thing.”
“Dear Ratty,” said the poor Mole, “I’m dreadfully sorry, but I’m simply
dead beat and that’s a solid fact. You _must_ let me rest here a while
longer, and get my strength back, if I’m to get home at all.”
“O, all right,” said the good-natured Rat, “rest away. It’s pretty
nearly pitch dark now, anyhow; and there ought to be a bit of a moon
later.”
So the Mole got well into the dry leaves and stretched himself out, and
presently dropped off into sleep, though of a broken and troubled sort;
while the Rat covered himself up, too, as best he might, for warmth,
and lay patiently waiting, with a pistol in his paw.
When at last the Mole woke up, much refreshed and in his usual spirits,
the Rat said, “Now then! I’ll just take a look outside and see if
everything’s quiet, and then we really must be off.”
He went to the entrance of their retreat and put his head out. Then the
Mole heard him saying quietly to himself, “Hullo! hullo! here—is—a—go!”
“What’s up, Ratty?” asked the Mole.
“_Snow_ is up,” replied the Rat briefly; “or rather, _down_. It’s
snowing hard.”
The Mole came and crouched beside him, and, looking out, saw the wood
that had been so dreadful to him in quite a changed aspect. Holes,
hollows, pools, pitfalls, and other black menaces to the wayfarer were
vanishing fast, and a gleaming carpet of faery was springing up
everywhere, that looked too delicate to be trodden upon by rough feet.
A fine powder filled the air and caressed the cheek with a tingle in
its touch, and the black boles of the trees showed up in a light that
seemed to come from below.
“Well, well, it can’t be helped,” said the Rat, after pondering. “We
must make a start, and take our chance, I suppose. The worst of it is,
I don’t exactly know where we are. And now this snow makes everything
look so very different.”
It did indeed. The Mole would not have known that it was the same wood.
However, they set out bravely, and took the line that seemed most
promising, holding on to each other and pretending with invincible
cheerfulness that they recognized an old friend in every fresh tree
that grimly and silently greeted them, or saw openings, gaps, or paths
with a familiar turn in them, in the monotony of white space and black
tree-trunks that refused to vary.
An hour or two later—they had lost all count of time—they pulled up,
dispirited, weary, and hopelessly at sea, and sat down on a fallen
tree-trunk to recover their breath and consider what was to be done.
They were aching with fatigue and bruised with tumbles; they had fallen
into several holes and got wet through; the snow was getting so deep
that they could hardly drag their little legs through it, and the trees
were thicker and more like each other than ever. There seemed to be no
end to this wood, and no beginning, and no difference in it, and, worst
of all, no way out.
“We can’t sit here very long,” said the Rat. “We shall have to make
another push for it, and do something or other. The cold is too awful
for anything, and the snow will soon be too deep for us to wade
through.” He peered about him and considered. “Look here,” he went on,
“this is what occurs to me. There’s a sort of dell down here in front
of us, where the ground seems all hilly and humpy and hummocky. We’ll
make our way down into that, and try and find some sort of shelter, a
cave or hole with a dry floor to it, out of the snow and the wind, and
there we’ll have a good rest before we try again, for we’re both of us
pretty dead beat. Besides, the snow may leave off, or something may
turn up.”
So once more they got on their feet, and struggled down into the dell,
where they hunted about for a cave or some corner that was dry and a
protection from the keen wind and the whirling snow. They were
investigating one of the hummocky bits the Rat had spoken of, when
suddenly the Mole tripped up and fell forward on his face with a
squeal.
“O my leg!” he cried. “O my poor shin!” and he sat up on the snow and
nursed his leg in both his front paws.
“Poor old Mole!” said the Rat kindly.
“You don’t seem to be having much luck to-day, do you? Let’s have a
look at the leg. Yes,” he went on, going down on his knees to look,
“you’ve cut your shin, sure enough. Wait till I get at my handkerchief,
and I’ll tie it up for you.”
“I must have tripped over a hidden branch or a stump,” said the Mole
miserably. “O, my! O, my!”
“It’s a very clean cut,” said the Rat, examining it again attentively.
“That was never done by a branch or a stump. Looks as if it was made by
a sharp edge of something in metal. Funny!” He pondered awhile, and
examined the humps and slopes that surrounded them.
“Well, never mind what done it,” said the Mole, forgetting his grammar
in his pain. “It hurts just the same, whatever done it.”
But the Rat, after carefully tying up the leg with his handkerchief,
had left him and was busy scraping in the snow. He scratched and
shovelled and explored, all four legs working busily, while the Mole
waited impatiently, remarking at intervals, “O, _come_ on, Rat!”
Suddenly the Rat cried “Hooray!” and then
“Hooray-oo-ray-oo-ray-oo-ray!” and fell to executing a feeble jig in
the snow.
“What _have_ you found, Ratty?” asked the Mole, still nursing his leg.
“Come and see!” said the delighted Rat, as he jigged on.
The Mole hobbled up to the spot and had a good look.
“Well,” he said at last, slowly, “I SEE it right enough. Seen the same
sort of thing before, lots of times. Familiar object, I call it. A
door-scraper! Well, what of it? Why dance jigs around a door-scraper?”
“But don’t you see what it _means_, you—you dull-witted animal?” cried
the Rat impatiently.
“Of course I see what it means,” replied the Mole. “It simply means
that some VERY careless and forgetful person has left his door-scraper
lying about in the middle of the Wild Wood, _just_ where it’s _sure_ to
trip _everybody_ up. Very thoughtless of him, I call it. When I get
home I shall go and complain about it to—to somebody or other, see if I
don’t!”
“O, dear! O, dear!” cried the Rat, in despair at his obtuseness. “Here,
stop arguing and come and scrape!” And he set to work again and made
the snow fly in all directions around him.
After some further toil his efforts were rewarded, and a very shabby
door-mat lay exposed to view.
“There, what did I tell you?” exclaimed the Rat in great triumph.
“Absolutely nothing whatever,” replied the Mole, with perfect
truthfulness. “Well now,” he went on, “you seem to have found another
piece of domestic litter, done for and thrown away, and I suppose
you’re perfectly happy. Better go ahead and dance your jig round that
if you’ve got to, and get it over, and then perhaps we can go on and
not waste any more time over rubbish-heaps. Can we EAT a doormat? or
sleep under a door-mat? Or sit on a door-mat and sledge home over the
snow on it, you exasperating rodent?”
“Do—you—mean—to—say,” cried the excited Rat, “that this door-mat
doesn’t _tell_ you anything?”
“Really, Rat,” said the Mole, quite pettishly, “I think we’d had enough
of this folly. Who ever heard of a door-mat _telling_ anyone anything?
They simply don’t do it. They are not that sort at all. Door-mats know
their place.”
“Now look here, you—you thick-headed beast,” replied the Rat, really
angry, “this must stop. Not another word, but scrape—scrape and scratch
and dig and hunt round, especially on the sides of the hummocks, if you
want to sleep dry and warm to-night, for it’s our last chance!”
The Rat attacked a snow-bank beside them with ardour, probing with his
cudgel everywhere and then digging with fury; and the Mole scraped
busily too, more to oblige the Rat than for any other reason, for his
opinion was that his friend was getting light-headed.
Some ten minutes’ hard work, and the point of the Rat’s cudgel struck
something that sounded hollow. He worked till he could get a paw
through and feel; then called the Mole to come and help him. Hard at it
went the two animals, till at last the result of their labours stood
full in view of the astonished and hitherto incredulous Mole.