The Hobbit

turn to see what Gollum was doing. There
     was a hissing and cursing almost at his heels at first, then it stopped. All at once there came a blood-curdling shriek, filled
     with hatred and despair. Gollum was defeated. He dared go no further. He had lost: lost his prey, and lost, too, the only
     thing he had ever cared for, his precious. The cry brought Bilbo’s heart to his mouth, but still he held on. Now faint as
     an echo, but menacing, the voice came behind:
    “Thief, thief, thief! Baggins! We hates it, we hates it, we hates it for ever!”
    Then there was a silence. But that too seemed menacing to Bilbo. “If goblins are so near that he smelt them,” he thought,
     “then they’ll have heard his shrieking and cursing. Careful now, or this way will lead you to worse things.”
    The passage was low and roughly made. It was not too difficult for the hobbit, except when, in spite of all care, he stubbed
     his poor toes again, several times, on nasty jagged stones in the floor. “A bit low for goblins, at least for the big ones,”
     thought Bilbo, not knowing that even the big ones, the orcs of the mountains, go along at a great speed stooping low with
     their hands almost on the ground.
    Soon the passage that had been sloping down began to go up again, and after a while it climbed steeply. That slowed Bilbo
     down. But at last the slope stopped, the passage turned a corner and dipped down again, and there, at the bottom of a short
     incline, he saw, filtering round another corner—a glimpse of light. Not red light, as of fire or lantern, but a pale out-of-doors
     sort of light. Then Bilbo began to run.
    Scuttling as fast as his legs would carry him he turned the last corner and came suddenly right into an open space, where
     the light, after all that time in the dark, seemed dazzlingly bright. Really it was only a leak of sunshine in through a doorway,
     where a great door, a stone door, was left standing open.
    Bilbo blinked, and then suddenly he saw the goblins: goblins in full armour with drawn swords sitting just inside the door,
     and watching it with wide eyes, and watching the passage that led to it. They were aroused, alert, ready for anything.
    They saw him sooner than he saw them. Yes, they saw him. Whether it was an accident, or a last trick of the ring before it
     took a new master, it was not on his finger. With yells of delight the goblins rushed upon him.
    A pang of fear and loss, like an echo of Gollum’s misery, smote Bilbo, and forgetting even to draw his sword he struck his
     hands into his pockets. And there was the ring still, in his left pocket, and it slipped on his finger. The goblins stopped
     short. They could not see a sign of him. He had vanished. They yelled twice as loud as before, but not so delightedly.
    “Where is it?” they cried.
    “Go back up the passage!” some shouted.
    “This way!” some yelled. “That way!” others yelled. “Look out for the door,” bellowed the captain. Whistles blew, armour clashed,
     swords rattled, goblins cursed and swore and ran hither and thither, falling over one another and getting very angry. There
     was a terrible outcry, to-do, and disturbance.
    Bilbo was dreadfully frightened, but he had the sense to understand what had happened and to sneak behind a big barrel which
     held drink for the goblin-guards, and so get out of the way and avoid being bumped into, trampled to death, or caught by feel.
    “I must get to the door, I must get to the door!” he kept on saying to himself, but it was a long time before he ventured
     to try. Then it was like a horrible game of blind-man’s-buff. The place was full of goblins running about, and the poor little
     hobbit dodged this way and that, was knocked over by a goblin who could not make out what he had bumped into, scrambled away
     on all fours, slipped between the legs of the captain just in time, got up, and ran for the door.
    It was still ajar, but a goblin had pushed it nearly to. Bilbo struggled but he could not move it. He tried to squeeze through
     the crack. He squeezed and squeezed, and he stuck! It was awful. His buttons had got wedged on the edge of the door and the
     door-post. He could see outside into the open air: there were a few steps running down into a narrow valley between tall mountains;
     the sun came out from behind a cloud and shone bright on the outside of the door—but he could not get through.
    Suddenly one of the goblins inside shouted: “There is a shadow