The Hobbit

by J.R.R. Tolkien

His head was in a whirl of hope and wonder. It seemed that the ring he had was a magic ring: it made you invisible!

and he had other senses that the darkness had sharpened: hearing and smell.

He had lost: lost his prey, and lost, too, the only thing he had ever cared for, his precious.

“Thief, thief, thief! Baggins! We hates it, we hates it, we hates it for ever!”

They were aroused, alert, ready for anything.

Whether it was an accident, or a last trick of the ring before it took a new master, it was not on his finger.

He gave Bilbo a queer look from under his bushy eyebrows, as he said this, and the hobbit wondered if he guessed at the part of his tale that he had left out.

“They will be out after us in hundreds when night comes on;

“O yes!” he said in answer to more questions from the hobbit. “You lose track of time inside goblin-tunnels. Today’s Thursday, and it was Monday night or Tuesday morning that we were captured.

we are too far to the North,

You would have laughed (from a safe distance), if you had seen the dwarves sitting up in the trees with their beards dangling down, like old gentlemen gone cracked and playing at being boys. Fili and Kili were at the top of a tall larch like an enormous Christmas tree. Dori, Nori, Ori, Oin, and Gloin were more comfortable in a huge pine with regular branches sticking out at intervals like the spokes of a wheel. Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, and Thorin were in another. Dwalin and Balin had swarmed up a tall slender fir with few branches and were trying to find a place to sit in the greenery of the topmost boughs. Gandalf, who was a good deal taller than the others, had found a tree into which they could not climb, a large pine standing at the very edge of the glade. He was quite hidden in its boughs, but you could see his eyes gleaming in the moon as he peeped out.

And Bilbo? He could not get into any tree, and was scuttling about from trunk to trunk, like a rabbit that has lost its hole and has a dog after it. “You’ve left the burglar behind again!”

Still Dori did not let Bilbo down.

Now it seemed that a great goblin-raid had been planned for that very night. The Wargs had come to meet the goblins and the goblins were late. The reason, no doubt, was the death of the Great Goblin, and all the excitement caused by the dwarves and Bilbo and the wizard, for whom they were probably still hunting.

And long before that, they said, goblin soldiers would be coming down from the mountains; and goblins can climb trees, or cut them down.

Eagles are not kindly birds. Some are cowardly and cruel. But the ancient race of the northern mountains were the greatest of all birds; they were proud and strong and noble-hearted.

He moaned “my arms, my arms!”; but Dori groaned “my poor legs, my poor legs!”

“Now I know what a piece of bacon feels like when it is suddenly picked out of the pan on a fork and put back on the shelf!”

But all night he dreamed of his own house and wandered in his sleep into all his different rooms looking for something that he could not find nor remember what it looked like.

The ring??

The dwarves groaned and looked most distressed, and Bilbo wept.

“We shall see, we shall see!” he said, “and I think I have earned already some of your dragon-gold—when you have got it.”

“If you must know more, his name is Beorn. He is very strong, and he is a skin-changer.”

He is a skin-changer. He changes his skin:

The drones were bigger than your thumb, a good deal, and the bands of yellow on their deep black bodies shone like fiery gold.

As for Bilbo he could easily have trotted through his legs without ducking his head to miss the fringe of the man’s brown tunic.

Be off now as quick as you may!”

Don’t stray off the track!—if you do, it is a thousand to one you will never find it again and never get out of Mirkwood; and then I don’t suppose I, or any one else, will ever see you again.”

You must either go through or give up your quest. And I am not going to allow you to back out now, Mr. Baggins. I am ashamed of you for thinking of it. You have got to look after all these dwarves for me,”

don’t advise you to go anywhere near the places overlooked by his dark tower!

The nastiest things they saw were the cobwebs: dark dense cobwebs with threads extraordinarily thick, often stretched from tree to tree, or tangled in the lower branches on either side of them.

“Bombur has fallen in! Bombur is drowning!”

but it was too late, the excited dwarves had wasted their last arrows, and now the bows that Beorn had given them were useless.

“The forest goes on for ever and ever and ever in all directions! Whatever shall we do? And what is the use of sending a hobbit!”

for he had forgotten everything that had happened since they started their journey that May morning long ago. The last thing that he remembered was the party at the hobbit’s house, and they had great difficulty in making him believe their tale of all the many adventures they had had since.

A woodland king was there with a crown of leaves, and there was a merry singing, and I could not count or describe the things there were to eat and drink.”

“What was that? I thought I saw a twinkle of light in the forest.”

There were many people there, elvish-looking folk, all dressed in green and brown and sitting on sawn rings of the felled trees in a great circle.

No sooner had the first stepped into the clearing than all the lights went out as if by magic. Somebody kicked the fire and it went up in rockets of glittering sparks and vanished.

By that time they had, of course, quite forgotten in what direction the path lay, and they were all hopelessly lost, at least till morning.

and any way I hope they won’t do anything nasty to him.”

But the cries of the others got steadily further and fainter, and though after a while it seemed to him they changed to yells and cries for help in the far distance, all noise at last died right away, and he was left alone in complete silence and darkness.

Then the great spider, who had been busy tying him up while he dozed, came from behind him and came at him.

also Bilbo had slipped on his ring before he started. That is why the spiders neither saw nor heard him coming.

They were talking about the dwarves!

Old fat spider spinning in a tree! Old fat spider can’t see me! Attercop! Attercop! Won’t you stop, Stop your spinning and look for me?

you are fat and lazy. You cannot trap me, though you try, in your cobwebs crazy.

Knowing the truth about the vanishing did not lessen their opinion of Bilbo at all; for they saw that he had some wits, as well as luck and a magic ring—and all three are very useful possessions.

Then the Wood-elves had come to him, and bound him, and carried him away.

were descended from the ancient tribes that never went to Faerie

They dwelt most often by the edges of the woods, from which they could escape at times to hunt, or to ride and run over the open lands by moonlight or starlight;