Hamnpork's Death and Darktan's Succession as Clan Leader is the moment when the Clan loses its old leader and Darktan begins to lead in his place. Hamnpork's final concern is whether he still holds authority; Darktan's first acts after his death show that leadership must mean more than answering yes. He must decide how the Clan will remember the dead, and then give frightened rats a reason to act together.

The journey back and Hamnpork's last night

Hamnpork returns from the stables in a state of near collapse. Confused and half asleep, he manages to hold on to Sardines' tail as the rats make their slow way back through gutters and drains, keeping to the cover of night. Sardines doubts that the old rat will manage the washing lines. By the time they reach the cellar, Darktan and Sardines are walking on either side of him, and Hamnpork can barely move his legs.

A candle is still burning in the cellar. Hamnpork opens one eye long enough to ask whether he is still the leader; Darktan tells him that he is. The answer preserves Hamnpork's dignity in the moment, but cannot change what is happening. Hamnpork says that he will dream in the tunnel of the Big Rat and never wake, and laments that this is not how an old rat should die: not like this, and not in the light. His words connect the death to the Clan's uneasy relation with light and fire. Earlier, Dangerous Beans had argued that a controlled flame could declare the Clan separate from darkness and from ordinary rats; to Hamnpork, the candle had remained troubling, a waste of food and a possible source of trouble.

Darktan nods to Sardines, who snuffs the candle with his hat. In the damp underground dark, Hamnpork whispers that Darktan needs to know something. Sardines strains to hear the old leader's last words, but the account does not disclose what Hamnpork says. A few seconds later Sardines shivers, sensing that the world has changed. A match flares, the candle is lit again, and Hamnpork is lying very still. Darktan confirms that he is gone.

Burial and the transfer of authority

The rats immediately raise the practical question of whether they should eat Hamnpork. Darktan says that they should bury him instead and mark the place so that they know where he is. The instruction is a break from the ordinary treatment of a dead rat: the group feels relief at not having to eat him, though the account also notes, with characteristically blunt humor, that even a respected rat could be unpleasantly whiffy.

The meaning of marking the grave is uncertain to the younger rats. One asks whether Darktan means the way they mark places where they bury things; another explains that this means widdling on them. Darktan looks to Sardines, who only shrugs. The small exchange exposes the pressure of the new position: once leader, Darktan finds that everyone waits for him to decide what to do. The white rat is still absent, and Darktan recognizes that he is on his own. He chooses to let the Clan mark the grave in its customary way, but adds that they should draw a sign on the ground above Hamnpork as well. The decision keeps a familiar rat practice while making the burial a deliberate memorial.

Sardines then argues that Darktan is already the rat the others can follow. He points to Darktan's having faced the Bone Rat and returned, and to the teeth-marks Darktan wears like a belt. More importantly, Sardines frames Darktan's decision over Hamnpork's body as proof that he was thinking for both the old and the young. A leader at a time of crisis cannot simply be the strongest rat; the Clan needs someone whose actions show that he is considering everyone. Sardines' words help turn Darktan's solitary responsibility into recognition by the group.

From a frightened crowd to a Clan

The succession takes place against a wider crisis in which fear can undo the very capacities that distinguish the changed rats. When rats run past Peaches and Dangerous Beans in a panic, one squeals, gibbers, and runs on; Dangerous Beans realizes that they have forgotten how to talk. This is not merely fear in individual animals but a collective breakdown of communication. Darktan has also explained the danger of an uncoordinated mob: one rat may think and be brave, while many rats overwhelmed by one another's panic act like a single animal without a brain.

That contrast gives Darktan's emerging authority a practical purpose. The candle's flame had once let Dangerous Beans describe the Clan as separate, not just rats; in the moments around Hamnpork's death, that shared identity must become action. Darktan later faces young, worried rats and turns their fear into a collective account of what they are: rats with brains, able to think and not simply run from darkness, fire, noises, traps, or poison. He invokes the Dark Wood and the Bone Rat, using the image of the feared figure to argue that those who face it need not be ruled by fear. His speech does not erase danger; it gives the group a common way to meet it.

The importance of that change becomes visible when the Clan later confronts Spider's enemy rats. The Clan advances together in a line; when an enemy attacks, the line closes around it, and when the opposing rats break in terror, the Clan divides into pairs to pursue them. The battle ends within seconds. The scene sets coordinated action against panic: where frightened rats had lost speech and fled as a mass, the Clan can hold formation and respond to changing circumstances. Darktan's succession is therefore not only a replacement of one leader by another, but part of the Clan's movement from a vulnerable crowd toward a thinking, cooperating group.

Significance

Hamnpork's final question keeps the old hierarchy present until the moment it can no longer function. Darktan initially answers that Hamnpork is still leader, then assumes the burden of deciding what happens next. He refuses the easy reduction of the dead leader to food, gives the Clan a way to mark his grave, and accepts the loneliness of being the one whose judgment others await. Sardines helps the rats see those choices as leadership rather than mere improvisation.

The scene also refuses to make succession a simple triumph. Darktan is left without the absent white rat, with a worried group and a crisis still unfolding; Sardines' encouragement does not remove those pressures. Instead, the transition is measured by what Darktan does under them. The Clan's later discipline gives that decision a consequence beyond the cellar: its members can act as individuals within a coordinated whole. Hamnpork's death closes one form of authority, while Darktan's burial decision and rallying speech begin to establish another, grounded in shared identity, thought, and cooperation.