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 impa-tiently.