Campion, Mr Adams tells us, was close to a complete collapse by the time he led his handful of survivors into Efrafa. In fact, and difficult though it may be to believe, the great soldier was nearly tharn.

All rabbits can run, and many rabbits can fight. But any rabbit, if he is driven hard enough, will reach a point where he is mentally not capable of either. His wits desert him, and he simply crouches, transfixed and shivering, and waits for the stoat to leap, the farmer's gun to bark. This is the condition known as tharn, and it is usually caused by fear. In Campion's case, perhaps a more accurate word would have been "despair." Despair, and sheer, all-consuming exhaustion.

It was two full days since he had rallied what was left of the army from its unthinkable defeat on Watership Down. Two days and one appalling night, during which his nerves had been stretched to their limit : cajoling, chivvying, trying desperately to inspire as the General would have inspired his tattered survivors... Ranging ahead to scout for danger, dashing back to the tail of the limping column to harry the stragglers - so that he covered four times the distance of any rabbit under his command... Cuffing down the suicidal mutiny which erupted in the false dawn of the second day, when they had wanted to stop and rest... Himself half maddened by the smell of their blood, stricken with guilt as well as horror as one by one they were picked off.

For the elil, the rabbits' Thousand Enemies, had got the wind of the retreat, and their losses, to stoats and foxes, buzzards and farmyard cats, had been relentless. Of the nearly thirty elite officers and rabbits who had set out under the General's command in the glorious "Great Patrol", Campion had brought six home.