A Long Strange Journey

Out of the Frying-Pan and into the Fire

"I am so dreadfully hungry," groaned Bilbo, who was suddenly aware that he had not had a meal since the night before the night before last. Just think of that for a hobbit! His stomach felt all empty and loose and his legs all wobbly, now that the excitement was over.

"Can't help it," said Gandalf, "unless you would like to go back and ask the goblins nicely to have your pony back and your luggage."

Poor things... thought Hannah, feeling terribly sorry for the unfortunate dear animals.

"No thank you!" said Bilbo, knowing all too well what would happen should he be caught.

"Very well then, we must just tighten our belts and trudge on—or we shall be made into supper, and that will be much worse than having none ourselves," said Gandalf.

"We may very well find something we can nibble on as we go," added Hannah. There was generally something edible to be found in nature if you knew where to look and were prepared to lower your standards enough. Why cousins from her father's side had somehow managed to survive by eating tulip bulbs when they were still living in the Old Country, before coming to live in England too, in order to flee from the Nazis.

So as they went on Bilbo and Hannah looked from side to side for something to eat; but the blackberries were still only in flower, and of course there were no nuts, nor even hawthorn-berries. They nibbled a bit of sorrel, and they drank from a small mountain-stream that crossed the path, and they shared three wild strawberries that they found on its bank between them, but it was not much good.

They still went on and on. The rough path disappeared. The bushes, and the long grasses, between the boulders, the patches of rabbit-cropped turf, the thyme and the sage and the marjoram, and the yellow rockroses all vanished, and they found themselves at the top of a wide steep slope of fallen stones, the remains of a landslide. When they began to go down this, rubbish and small pebbles rolled away from their feet; soon larger bits of split stone went clattering down and started other pieces below them slithering and rolling; then lumps of rocks were disturbed and bounded off, crashing down with a dust and a noise. Before long the whole slope above them and below seemed on the move, and they were sliding away, huddled together, all in a fearful confusion of slipping, rattling, cracking slabs and stones.

It was the trees at the bottom that saved them. They slid into the edge of a climbing wood of pines that here stood right up the mountain slope from the deeper darker forests of the valleys below. Some caught hold of the trunks and swung themselves into lower branches, some (like Hannah and Bilbo) got behind a tree to shelter from the onslaught of the rocks. Soon the danger was over, the slide had stopped, and the last faint crashes could be heard as the largest of the disturbed stones went bounding and spinning among the bracken and the pine-roots far below.

"Well! That has got us on a bit," said Gandalf; "and even goblins tracking us will have a job to come down here quietly."

"I daresay," grumbled Bombur; "but they won't find it difficult to send stones bouncing down on our heads." The dwarves (and Bilbo and Hannah) were feeling far from happy, and were rubbing their bruised and damaged legs and feet.

"Nonsense! We are going to turn aside here out of the path of the slide," said the wizard. "We must be quick! Look at the light!"

The sun had long gone behind the mountains. Already the shadows were deepening about them, though far away through the trees and over the black tops of those growing lower down they could still see the evening lights on the plains beyond. They limped along now as fast as they were able down the gentle slopes of a pine forest in a slanting path leading steadily southwards. At times they were pushing through a sea if bracken with tall fronds rising right above the hobbit's head; at times they were marching along quiet as quiet over a floor of pine-needles; and all the while the forest gloom got heavier and the forest silence deeper. There was no wind that evening to bring even a sea-sighing into the branches of the trees.