The Hobbit

turned his horse and rode down into the West. But he could not
     resist the temptation to have the last word. Before he had passed quite out of hearing he turned and put his hands to his
     mouth and called to them. They heard his voice come faintly: “Good-bye! Be good, take care of yourselves—and DON’T LEAVE THE
     PATH!”
    Then he galloped away and was soon lost to sight. “O good-bye and go away!” grunted the dwarves, all the more angry because
     they were really filled with dismay at losing him. Now began the most dangerous part of all the journey. They each shouldered
     the heavy pack and the water-skin which was their share, and turned from the light that lay on the lands outside and plunged
     into the forest.

Chapter
VIII
FLIES AND SPIDERS
    They walked in single file. The entrance to the path was like a sort of arch leading into a gloomy tunnel made by two great
     trees that leant together, too old and strangled with ivy and hung with lichen to bear more than a few blackened leaves. The
     path itself was narrow and wound in and out among the trunks. Soon the light at the gate was like a little bright hole far
     behind, and the quiet was so deep that their feet seemed to thump along while all the trees leaned over them and listened.
    As their eyes became used to the dimness they could see a little way to either side in a sort of darkened green glimmer. Occasionally
     a slender beam of sun that had the luck to slip in through some opening in the leaves far above, and still more luck in not
     being caught in the tangled boughs and matted twigs beneath, stabbed down thin and bright before them. But this was seldom,
     and it soon ceased altogether.
    There were black squirrels in the wood. As Bilbo’s sharp inquisitive eyes got used to seeing things he could catch glimpses
     of them whisking off the path and scuttling behind tree-trunks. There were queer noises too, grunts, scufflings, and hurryings
     in the undergrowth, and among the leaves that lay piled endlessly thick in places on the forest-floor; but what made the noises
     he could not see. 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. There were none stretched across the path, but whether because some magic kept
     it clear, or for what other reason they could not guess.
    It was not long before they grew to hate the forest as heartily as they had hated the tunnels of the goblins, and it seemed
     to offer even less hope of any ending. But they had to go on and on, long after they were sick for a sight of the sun and
     of the sky, and longed for the feel of wind on their faces. There was no movement of air down under the forest-roof, and it
     was everlastingly still and dark and stuffy. Even the dwarves felt it, who were used to tunnelling, and lived at times for
     long whiles without the light of the sun; but the hobbit, who liked holes to make a house in but not to spend summer days
     in, felt that he was being slowly suffocated.
    The nights were the worst. It then became pitch-dark—not what you call pitch-dark, but really pitch: so black that you really
     could see nothing. Bilbo tried flapping his hand in front of his nose, but he could not see it at all. Well, perhaps it is
     not true to say that they could see nothing: they could see eyes. They slept all closely huddled together, and took it in
     turns to watch; and when it was Bilbo’s turn he would see gleams in the darkness round them, and sometimes pairs of yellow
     or red or green eyes would stare at him from a little distance, and then slowly fade and disappear and slowly shine out again
     in another place. And sometimes they would gleam down from the branches just above him; and that was most terrifying. But the eyes that he liked the least were horrible pale bulbous sort of eyes. “Insect eyes,” he thought, “not animal eyes,
     only they are much too big.”
    Although it was not yet very cold, they tried lighting watch-fires at night, but they soon gave that up. It seemed to bring
     hundreds and hundreds of eyes all round them, though the creatures, whatever they were, were careful never to let their bodies
     show in the little flicker of the flames. Worse still it brought thousands of dark-grey and black moths, some nearly as big
     as your hand, flapping and whirring round their ears. They could not stand that, nor the huge bats,