Watership Down: Chapter 22 Summary & Analysis

After Holly is done telling his story, Hazel begins cleaning the rabbit’s mangled ear. Silver helps, and as he does, he and Hazel discuss the advantages and disadvantages of recruiting other creatures to help them, as Hazel did earlier with the mouse. Hazel wishes they could find a bird in need of help and find a way to get him on their side. Silver and Holly both express skepticism, but Bluebell pipes up and says that El-ahrairah successfully did something of the sort. Hazel asks for the story, but Holly suggests they silflay first. After grazing in the moonlight for a while, the rabbits listen to Bluebell’s tale.

After escaping from the marshes of Kelfazin, El-ahrairah and his people went to the meadows of Fenlo and dug a new burrow. Prince Rainbow had his eye on El-ahrairah and wanted to make sure he didn’t get up to any more tricks. One evening, Rainbow arrived at El-ahrairah’s new burrow, where El-ahrairah and Rabscuttle were sharing a hole. Prince Rainbow separated the two of them, citing their bad influence on one another, and introduced El-ahrairah to a rabbit named Hufsa instead.

After a while, El-ahrairah noticed that things were always going wrong with his plans and schemes. He believed someone in the warren was leaking information about his tricks, and set up a trap for Hufsa to determine if he was the snitch. After determining that Hufsa was indeed behind the leaks, he felt unsure of what to do. He was afraid to tell Hufsa anything, but at the same time didn’t want to kill him, as that would surely draw Rainbow’s ire.

Prince Rainbow paid a visit to El-ahrairah and commended him on having reformed himself. He invited El-ahrairah, Rabscuttle, and Hufsa to watch him plant a new garden full of carrots, and warned El-ahrairah that anyone caught stealing from the garden would be punished severely by Frith himself.  That night, in secret, El-ahrairah and Rabscuttle began devising a plan to get rid of Hufsa once and for all—and to steal the carrots, too.

While El-ahrairah enlisted the help of Yona, Rabscuttle befriended a pheasant. They both offered their animal friends favors and food in exchange for their help. That evening, El-ahrairah asked Hufsa to help him steal the carrots. Hufsa agreed and promised to come along the following evening, but El-ahrairah insisted they depart right away. On the way, they came upon Yona singing to the moon. A little while later, they found Rabscuttle’s pheasant friend swimming in a pond. After stopping to rest under a tree, they were approached by a strange creature with a red tail and long green ears, smoking a cigarette—it was Rabscuttle in disguise, and he introduced himself as a messenger of Lord Frith.

El-ahrairah at last led Hufsa to the field of carrots, where they stole a great many and returned with them to the burrow. The next afternoon, Hufsa went out, and that evening, Price Rainbow came to visit, announcing that El-ahrairah was under arrest for stealing the carrots. El-ahrairah demanded a trial by a jury of animals, and Prince Rainbow consented. Rainbow began assembling a jury of elil, knowing a jury of rabbits would acquit El-ahrairah.

That evening, at the trial, Hufsa took the stand as a witness, and El-ahrairah began asking him questions about his supposed journey to steal the carrots. As Hufsa began recounting the strange details of the raid—the singing hedgehog, the swimming pheasant, the ghastly rabbit spirit—the jury grew suspicious of Hufsa’s fanciful tale (which was of course engineered by El-ahrairah and Rabscuttle themselves). The jury told Prince Rainbow that they couldn’t possibly convict El-ahrairah, as Hufsa was obviously lying. In a huff, Prince Rainbow took Hufsa away, and El-ahrairah and his people were restored to a time of peace.