The Hobbit

jewels, nor did they bother much with trade or with tilling the earth. All this was well known to every dwarf,
     though Thorin’s family had had nothing to do with the old quarrel I have spoken of. Consequently Thorin was angry at their
     treatment of him, when they took their spell off him and he came to his senses; and also he was determined that no word of gold or jewels should be dragged out of him.
    The king looked sternly on Thorin, when he was brought before him, and asked him many questions. But Thorin would only say
     that he was starving.
    “Why did you and your folk three times try to attack my people at their merrymaking?” asked the king.
    “We did not attack them,” answered Thorin; “we came to beg, because we were starving.”
    “Where are your friends now, and what are they doing?”
    “I don’t know, but I expect starving in the forest.”
    “What were you doing in the forest?”
    “Looking for food and drink, because we were starving.”
    “But what brought you into the forest at all?” asked the king angrily.
    At that Thorin shut his mouth and would not say another word.
    “Very well!” said the king. “Take him away and keep him safe, until he feels inclined to tell the truth, even if he waits
     a hundred years.”
    Then the elves put thongs on him, and shut him in one of the inmost caves with strong wooden doors, and left him. They gave
     him food and drink, plenty of both, if not very fine; for Wood-elves were not goblins, and were reasonably well-behaved even
     to their worst enemies, when they captured them. The giant spiders were the only living things that they had no mercy upon.
    There in the king’s dungeon poor Thorin lay; and after he had got over his thankfulness for bread and meat and water, he began to wonder what had become of his unfortunate friends. It was not very long before he discovered;
     but that belongs to the next chapter and the beginning of another adventure in which the hobbit again showed his usefulness.

Chapter
IX
BARRELS OUT OF BOND
    The day after the battle with the spiders Bilbo and the dwarves made one last despairing effort to find a way out before they
     died of hunger and thirst. They got up and staggered on in the direction which eight out of the thirteen of them guessed to
     be the one in which the path lay; but they never found out if they were right. Such day as there ever was in the forest was
     fading once more into the blackness of night, when suddenly out sprang the light of many torches all round them, like hundreds
     of red stars. Out leaped Wood-elves with their bows and spears and called the dwarves to halt.
    There was no thought of a fight. Even if the dwarves had not been in such a state that they were actually glad to be captured,
     their small knives, the only weapons they had, would have been of no use against the arrows of the elves that could hit a
     bird’s eye in the dark. So they simply stopped dead and sat down and waited—all except Bilbo, who popped on his ring and slipped
     quickly to one side. That is why, when the elves bound the dwarves in a long line, one behind the other, and counted them,
     they never found or counted the hobbit.
    Nor did they hear or feel him trotting along well behind their torch-light as they led off their prisoners into the forest.
     Each dwarf was blindfold, but that did not make much difference, for even Bilbo with the use of his eyes could not see where they were going, and neither he
     nor the others knew where they had started from anyway. Bilbo had all he could do to keep up with the torches, for the elves
     were making the dwarves go as fast as ever they could, sick and weary as they were. The king had ordered them to make haste.
     Suddenly the torches stopped, and the hobbit had just time to catch them up before they began to cross the bridge. This was
     the bridge that led across the river to the king’s doors. The water flowed dark and swift and strong beneath; and at the far
     end were gates before the mouth of a huge cave that ran into the side of a steep slope covered with trees. There the great
     beeches came right down to the bank, till their feet were in the stream.
    Across the bridge the elves thrust their prisoners, but Bilbo hesitated in the rear. He did not at all like the look of the
     cavern-mouth, and he only made up his mind not to desert his friends just in time to scuttle over at the heels of the last
     elves, before the great gates of the king closed behind them