the rope through his fingers thoughtfully. ‘Have it your own way, Mr. Frodo,’ he said at last, ‘but I think the rope came off itself – when I called.’ He coiled it up and stowed it lovingly in his pack.
‘It certainly came,’ said Frodo, ‘and that’s the chief thing. But now we’ve got to think of our next move. Night will be on us soon. How beautiful the stars are, and the Moon!’
‘They do cheer the heart, don’t they?’ said Sam looking up. ‘Elvish they are, somehow. And the Moon’s growing. We haven’t seen him for a night or two in this cloudy weather. He’s beginning to give quite a light.’
‘Yes,’ said Frodo; ‘but he won’t be full for some days. I don’t think we’ll try the marshes by the light of half a moon.’
Under the first shadows of night they started out on the next stage of their journey. After a while Sam turned and looked back at the way they had come. The mouth of the gully was a black notch in the dim cliff. ‘I’m glad we’ve got the rope,’ he said. ‘We’ve set a little puzzle for that footpad, anyhow. He can try his nasty flappy feet on those ledges!’
They picked their steps away from the skirts of the cliff, among a wilderness of boulders and rough stones, wet and slippery with the heavy rain. The ground still fell away sharply. They had not gone very far when they came upon a great fissure that yawned suddenly black before their feet. It was not wide, but it was too wide to jump across in the dim light. They thought they could hear water gurgling in its depths. It curved away on their left northward, back towards the hills, and so barred their road in that direction, at any rate while darkness lasted.
‘We had better try a way back southwards along the line of the cliff, I think,’ said Sam. ‘We might find some nook there, or even a cave or something.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Frodo. ‘I’m tired, and I don’t think I can scramble among stones much longer tonight – though I grudge the delay. I wish there was a clear path in front of us: then I’d go on till my legs gave way.’
They did not find the going any easier at the broken feet of the Emyn Muil. Nor did Sam find any nook or hollow to shelter in: only bare stony slopes frowned over by the cliff, which now rose again, higher and more sheer as they went back. In the end, worn out, they just cast themselves on the ground under the lee of a boulder lying not far from the foot of the precipice. There for some time they sat huddled mournfully together in the cold stony night, while sleep crept upon them in spite of all they could do to hold it off. The moon now rode high and clear. Its thin white light lit up the faces of the rocks and drenched the cold frowning walls of the cliff, turning all the wide looming darkness into a chill pale grey scored with black shadows.
‘Well!’ said Frodo, standing up and drawing his cloak more closely round him. ‘You sleep for a bit Sam and take my blanket. I’ll walk up and down on sentry for a while.’ Suddenly he stiffened, and stooping he gripped Sam by the arm. ‘What’s that?’ he whispered. ‘Look over there on the cliff!’
Sam looked and breathed in sharply through his teeth. ‘Ssss!’ he said. ‘That’s what it is. It’s that Gollum! Snakes and adders! And to think that I thought that we’d puzzle him with our bit of a climb! Look at him! Like a nasty crawling spider on a wall.’
Down the face of a precipice, sheer and almost smooth it seemed in the pale moonlight, a small black shape was moving with its thin limbs splayed out. Maybe its soft clinging hands and toes were finding crevices and holds that no hobbit could ever have seen or used, but it looked as if it was just creeping down on sticky pads, like some large prowling thing of insect-kind. And it was coming down head first, as if it was smelling its way. Now and again it lifted its head slowly, turning it right back on its long skinny neck, and the hobbits caught a glimpse of two small pale gleaming lights, its eyes that blinked at the moon for a moment and then were