The Hobbit

were thinking equally gloomy thoughts,
     although when they had said good-bye to Elrond in the high hope of a midsummer morning, they had spoken gaily of the passage
     of the mountains, and of riding swift across the lands beyond. They had thought of coming to the secret door in the Lonely
     Mountain, perhaps that very next last moon of Autumn—“and perhaps it will be Durin’s Day” they had said. Only Gandalf had
     shaken his head and said nothing. Dwarves had not passed that way for many years, but Gandalf had, and he knew how evil and
     danger had grown and thriven in the Wild, since the dragons had driven men from the lands, and the goblins had spread in secret
     after the battle of the Mines of Moria. Even the good plans of wise wizards like Gandalf and of good friends like Elrond go
     astray sometimes when you are off on dangerous adventures over the Edge of the Wild; and Gandalf was a wise enough wizard
     to know it.
    He knew that something unexpected might happen, and he hardly dared to hope that they would pass without fearful adventure
     over those great tall mountains with lonely peaks and valleys where no king ruled. They did not. All was well, until one day
     they met a thunderstorm—more than a thunderstorm, a thunder-battle. You know how terrific a really big thunderstorm can be down in the land and in a river-valley; especially at times when two great thunderstorms meet and clash.
     More terrible still are thunder and lightning in the mountains at night, when storms come up from East and West and make war.
     The lightning splinters on the peaks, and rocks shiver, and great crashes split the air and go rolling and tumbling into every
     cave and hollow; and the darkness is filled with overwhelming noise and sudden light.
    Bilbo had never seen or imagined anything of the kind. They were high up in a narrow place, with a dreadful fall into a dim
     valley at one side of them. There they were sheltering under a hanging rock for the night, and he lay beneath a blanket and
     shook from head to toe. When he peeped out in the lightning-flashes, he saw that across the valley the stone-giants were out,
     and were hurling rocks at one another for a game, and catching them, and tossing them down into the darkness where they smashed
     among the trees far below, or splintered into little bits with a bang. Then came a wind and a rain, and the wind whipped the
     rain and the hail about in every direction, so that an overhanging rock was no protection at all. Soon they were getting drenched
     and their ponies were standing with their heads down and their tails between their legs, and some of them were whinnying with
     fright. They could hear the giants guffawing and shouting all over the mountainsides.
    “This won’t do at all!” said Thorin. “If we don’t get blown off, or drowned, or struck by lightning, we shall be picked up
     by some giant and kicked sky-high for a football.”

    The Mountain-path
    “Well, if you know of anywhere better, take us there!” said Gandalf, who was feeling very grumpy, and was far from happy about
     the giants himself.
    The end of their argument was that they sent Fili and Kili to look for a better shelter. They had very sharp eyes, and being
     the youngest of the dwarves by some fifty years they usually got these sort of jobs (when everybody could see that it was
     absolutely no use sending Bilbo). There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something (or so Thorin said to the young
     dwarves). You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after. So it
     proved on this occasion.
    Soon Fili and Kili came crawling back, holding on to the rocks in the wind. “We have found a dry cave,” they said, “not far
     round the next corner; and ponies and all could get inside.”
    “Have you
thoroughly
explored it?” said the wizard, who knew that caves up in the mountains were seldom unoccupied.
    “Yes, yes!” they said, though everybody knew they could not have been long about it; they had come back too quick. “It isn’t
     all that big, and it does not go far back.”
    That, of course, is the dangerous part about caves: you don’t know how far they go back, sometimes, or where a passage behind
     may lead to, or what is waiting for you inside. But now Fili and Kili’s news seemed good enough. So they all got up and prepared
     to move. The wind was howling and the thunder still growling, and they had a business