The Willows in Winter by William Horwood, Patrick Benson

means that our friend, loved by us all,”
and here even some of the weasels, and one or two of the stoats, looked
genuinely sorry, “will be drowned.”
    But as he said this there was another of those
ominous roaring and splutterings which had been
coming from the direction of distant Toad Hall for days past.
    “What is that?” asked the Rat.
    Badger shrugged, and the others shook their
heads. “Just Toad, that’s all that is. Toad making a noisy
nuisance of himself. Best to ignore it, whatever it
is. Now, I ask you all, very seriously indeed, to consider very
carefully our difficulty and to see if one of us — and there are many of us
here — cannot come up with a solution. There must be a way of—”
    The roaring sound was increasing, and fast.
    “— there is certain to
be —”
    The roaring sound was beginning to shake the
very trees.
    “There must —”
    The roaring sound was coming at them like
thunder out of a clear sky, rolling and roaring and shaking and terrible, so
that the Badger’s words were utterly drowned, and every weasel and stoat there,
and many more besides, dived for cover as the Badger, ‘Water Rat, and Mole’s
Nephew turned their startled gaze up-river.
    But it was not up-river that they needed to
look so much as above-river, a few feet above-river as it seemed, where a black
shadow grew into a dark monster, and that monster into a wild roaring
unstoppable rushing thing that flew, and sparked, and shattered its way through
the air right past them and just above the swollen river itself.
    From which monster, quite unmistakable even
above that earth-shattering roar of engines and propellers and wind through
wire, came the triumphant laugh of a creature all there thought and hoped they
had long since seen the last of: an Ecstatic Toad.
    Then Badger and Water Rat, the only two who
dared to keep their eyes open — Mole’s Nephew yielding to instinct and diving
to the ground — saw something more terrible than the braying laughter that they
heard: they saw Toad himself waving at them as he roared demonically by, his
eyes wide and wild, his mouth open, his hands raised in a salute of unutterable
jubilation, as if to make sure that all knew what it was that was rushing by
just out of reach, and frightening the wits out of every sensible animal for
miles around.
    Then he was gone as suddenly as he had come,
away down-river, up higher into the sky, the roaring continuing about them
after he had gone and then following after him and fading in his wake as he and
the contraption which carried him rose in a steep climb into the air, higher
and higher, and higher still, till it was nearly vertical. Then, astonishingly,
and now out of earshot, it continued its mesmeric ascent till it slowly, magically, amazingly looped the loop and roared off to
become a tiny speck.
    All was silent when it had gone, and remained
silent for a very long time after, as the Badger and the Rat stared
open-mouthed into the distant and now empty sky, and Mole’s Nephew rose shakily
to his feet once more.
    Eventually first one and then another, and then
a third weasel and stoat popped their cowardly heads out of whatever rabbit
hole or bramble bush they had escaped into, or up from whatever tree root or
mossy bank they had tried to hide behind.
    Badger looked at Water Rat and Water Rat looked
at Badger.
    “Are you thinking what I am thinking, Badger?”
    “I am thinking, Water Rat, that what goes up
must unfortunately come down, and that when it does it would be as well if you
and I were there to meet it. There to admonish it. And there to permit it to go
up again for one purpose only, which is, in the little time we may have left,
to help us search the rest of the river bank where Mole may be!”
    The Rat could not have put it better himself,
nor did he try to. When the Badger was in this mood there was no stopping him,
and no wise animal would have tried.
    “You weasels and stoats continue the search,”
Water Rat