The Hobbit

devouring people waked suddenly from their sleep. So the Wargs had no intention of going away and letting the
     people up the trees escape, at any rate not until morning. And long before that, they said, goblin soldiers would be coming
     down from the mountains; and goblins can climb trees, or cut them down.
    Now you can understand why Gandalf, listening to their growling and yelping, began to be dreadfully afraid, wizard though
     he was, and to feel that they were in a very bad place, and had not yet escaped at all. All the same he was not going to let
     them have it all their own way, though he could not do very much stuck up in a tall tree with wolves all round on the ground below. He gathered the huge pine-cones from the branches of the tree. Then he set one alight with bright blue fire,
     and threw it whizzing down among the circle of the wolves. It struck one on the back, and immediately his shaggy coat caught
     fire, and he was leaping to and fro yelping horribly. Then another came and another, one in blue flames, one in red, another
     in green. They burst on the ground in the middle of the circle and went off in coloured sparks and smoke. A specially large
     one hit the chief wolf on the nose, and he leaped in the air ten feet, and then rushed round and round the circle biting and
     snapping even at the other wolves in his anger and fright.
    The dwarves and Bilbo shouted and cheered. The rage of the wolves was terrible to see, and the commotion they made filled
     all the forest. Wolves are afraid of fire at all times, but this was a most horrible and uncanny fire. If a spark got in their
     coats it stuck and burned into them, and unless they rolled over quick they were soon all in flames. Very soon all about the
     glade wolves were rolling over and over to put out the sparks on their backs, while those that were burning were running about
     howling and setting others alight, till their own friends chased them away and they fled off down the slopes crying and yammering
     and looking for water.
    “What is all this uproar in the forest tonight?” said the Lord of the Eagles. He was sitting, black in the moonlight, on the
     top of a lonely pinnacle of rock at the eastern edge of the mountains. “I hear wolves’ voices! Are the goblins at mischief
     in the woods?”
    He swept up into the air, and immediately two of his guards from the rocks at either hand leaped up to follow him. They circled
     up in the sky and looked down upon the ring of the Wargs, a tiny spot far far below. But eagles have keen eyes and can see
     small things at a great distance. The Lord of the Eagles of the Misty Mountains had eyes that could look at the sun unblinking,
     and could see a rabbit moving on the ground a mile below even in the moonlight. So though he could not see the people in the
     trees, he could make out the commotion among the wolves and see the tiny flashes of fire, and hear the howling and yelping
     come up faint from far beneath him. Also he could see the glint of the moon on goblin spears and helmets, as long lines of
     the wicked folk crept down the hillsides from their gate and wound into the wood.
    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. They did not love goblins, or fear them. When they took any notice
     of them at all (which was seldom, for they did not eat such creatures), they swooped on them and drove them shrieking back
     to their caves, and stopped whatever wickedness they were doing. The goblins hated the eagles and feared them, but could not
     reach their lofty seats, or drive them from the mountains.
    Tonight the Lord of the Eagles was filled with curiosity to know what was afoot; so he summoned many other eagles to him,
     and they flew away from the mountains, and slowly circling ever round and round they came down, down, down towards the ring of the wolves and the meeting-place of the goblins.
    A very good thing too! Dreadful things had been going on down there. The wolves that had caught fire and fled into the forest
     had set it alight in several places. It was high summer, and on this eastern side of the mountains there had been little rain
     for some time. Yellowing bracken, fallen branches, deep-piled pine-needles, and here and there dead trees, were soon in flames.
     All round the clearing of the Wargs fire was leaping. But the wolf-guards did not leave