The Hobbit

while wondering in what direction the path lay, and in what direction he should
     go first to look for the dwarves.
    “O! why did we not remember Beorn’s advice, and Gandalf’s!” he lamented. “What a mess we are in now! We! I only wish it was
we
: it is horrible being all alone.”
    In the end he made as good a guess as he could at the direction from which the cries for help had come in the night—and by
     luck (he was born with a good share of it) he guessed more or less right, as you will see. Having made up his mind he crept
     along as cleverly as he could. Hobbits are clever at quietness, especially in woods, as I have already told you; also Bilbo
     had slipped on his ring before he started. That is why the spiders neither saw nor heard him coming.
    He had picked his way stealthily for some distance, when he noticed a place of dense black shadow ahead of him, black even
     for that forest, like a patch of midnight that had never been cleared away. As he drew nearer, he saw that it was made by
     spider-webs one behind and over and tangled with another. Suddenly he saw, too, that there were spiders huge and horrible
     sitting in the branches above him, and ring or no ring he trembled with fear lest they should discover him. Standing behind
     a tree he watched a group of them for some time, and then in the silence and stillness of the wood he realised that these
     loathsome creatures were speaking one to another. Their voices were a sort of thin creaking and hissing, but he could make
     out many of the words that they said. They were talking about the dwarves!
    “It was a sharp struggle, but worth it,” said one. “What nasty thick skins they have to be sure, but I’ll wager there is good
     juice inside.”
    “Aye, they’ll make fine eating, when they’ve hung a bit,” said another.
    “Don’t hang ’em too long,” said a third. “They’re not as fat as they might be. Been feeding none too well of late, I should
     guess.”
    “Kill ’em, I say,” hissed a fourth; “kill ’em now and hang ’em dead for a while.”
    “They’re dead now, I’ll warrant,” said the first. “That they are not. I saw one a-struggling just now. Just coming round again,
     I should say, after a bee-autiful sleep. I’ll show you.”
    With that one of the fat spiders ran along a rope till it came to a dozen bundles hanging in a row from a high branch. Bilbo
     was horrified, now that he noticed them for the first time dangling in the shadows, to see a dwarvish foot sticking out of
     the bottoms of some of the bundles, or here and there the tip of a nose, or a bit of beard or of a hood.
    To the fattest of these bundles the spider went—“It is poor old Bombur, I’ll bet,” thought Bilbo—and nipped hard at the nose
     that stuck out. There was a muffled yelp inside, and a toe shot up and kicked the spider straight and hard. There was life
     in Bombur still. There was a noise like the kicking of a flabby football, and the enraged spider fell off the branch, only
     catching itself with its own thread just in time.
    The others laughed. “You were quite right,” they said, “the meat’s alive and kicking!”
    “I’ll soon put an end to that,” hissed the angry spider climbing back onto the branch.
    Bilbo saw that the moment had come when he must do something. He could not get up at the brutes and he had nothing to shoot
     with; but looking about he saw that in this place there were many stones lying in what appeared to be a now dry little watercourse.
     Bilbo was a pretty fair shot with a stone, and it did not take him long to find a nice smooth egg-shaped one that fitted his hand cosily. As a boy he used to practise throwing stones at things, until rabbits and squirrels, and
     even birds, got out of his way as quick as lightning if they saw him stoop; and even grownup he had still spent a deal of
     his time at quoits, dart-throwing, shooting at the wand, bowls, ninepins and other quiet games of the aiming and throwing
     sort—indeed he could do lots of things, besides blowing smoke-rings, asking riddles and cooking, that I haven’t had time to
     tell you about. There is no time now. While he was picking up stones, the spider had reached Bombur, and soon he would have
     been dead. At that moment Bilbo threw. The stone struck the spider plunk on the head, and it dropped senseless off the tree,
     flop to the ground, with all its legs curled up.
    The next stone went whizzing through a big web, snapping its