The Hobbit

of sparks and smoke. Bilbo had escaped only just in time!
    Soon the light of the burning was faint below, a red twinkle on the black floor; and they were high up in the sky, rising
     all the time in strong sweeping circles. Bilbo never forgot that flight, clinging onto Dori’s ankles. He moaned “my arms,
     my arms!”; but Dori groaned “my poor legs, my poor legs!”
    At the best of times heights made Bilbo giddy. He used to turn queer if he looked over the edge of quite a little cliff; and
     he had never liked ladders, let alone trees (never having had to escape from wolves before). So you can imagine how his head
     swam now, when he looked down between his dangling toes and saw the dark lands opening wide underneath him, touched here and
     there with the light of the moon on a hill-side rock or a stream in the plains.
    The pale peaks of the mountains were coming nearer, moonlit spikes of rock sticking out of black shadows. Summer or not, it
     seemed very cold. He shut his eyes and wondered if he could hold on any longer. Then he imagined what would happen if he did
     not. He felt sick.
    The flight ended only just in time for him, just before his arms gave way. He loosed Dori’s ankles with a gasp and fell onto
     the rough platform of an eagle’s eyrie. There he lay without speaking, and his thoughts were a mixture of surprise at being
     saved from the fire, and fear lest he fall off that narrow place into the deep shadows on either side. He was feeling very
     queer indeed in his head by this time after the dreadful adventures of the last three days with next to nothing to eat, and
     he found himself saying aloud: “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!”
    “No you don’t!” he heard Dori answering, “because the bacon knows that it will get back in the pan sooner or later; and it
     is to be hoped we shan’t. Also eagles aren’t forks!”
    “O no! Not a bit like storks—forks, I mean,” said Bilbo sitting up and looking anxiously at the eagle who was perched close
     by. He wondered what other nonsense he had been saying, and if the eagle would think it rude. You ought not to be rude to
     an eagle, when you are only the size of a hobbit, and are up in his eyrie at night!
    The eagle only sharpened his beak on a stone and trimmed his feathers and took no notice.
    Soon another eagle flew up. “The Lord of the Eagles bids you to bring your prisoners to the Great Shelf,” he cried and was off again. The other seized Dori in his claws
     and flew away with him into the night leaving Bilbo all alone. He had just strength to wonder what the messenger had meant
     by ‘prisoners,’ and to begin to think of being torn up for supper like a rabbit, when his own turn came.
    The eagle came back, seized him in his talons by the back of his coat, and swooped off. This time he flew only a short way.
     Very soon Bilbo was laid down, trembling with fear, on a wide shelf of rock on the mountain-side. There was no path down on
     to it save by flying; and no path down off it except by jumping over a precipice. There he found all the others sitting with
     their backs to the mountain wall. The Lord of the Eagles also was there and was speaking to Gandalf.
    It seemed that Bilbo was not going to be eaten after all. The wizard and the eagle-lord appeared to know one another slightly,
     and even to be on friendly terms. As a matter of fact Gandalf, who had often been in the mountains, had once rendered a service
     to the eagles and healed their lord from an arrow-wound. So you see ‘prisoners’ had meant ‘prisoners rescued from the goblins’
     only, and not captives of the eagles. As Bilbo listened to the talk of Gandalf he realized that at last they were going to
     escape really and truly from the dreadful mountains. He was discussing plans with the Great Eagle for carrying the dwarves
     and himself and Bilbo far away and setting them down well on their journey across the plains below.

    The Misty Mountains Looking West from the Eyrie towards Goblin Gate
    The Lord of the Eagles would not take them anywhere near where men lived. “They would shoot at us with their great bows of yew,” he said, “for they would think we were after their sheep. And at other times they would
     be right. No! we are glad to cheat the goblins of their sport, and glad to repay our thanks to you, but we will not risk ourselves
     for dwarves in the