The Hobbit

they were
     loaded on to flat boats.
    When the barrels were empty the elves cast them through the trapdoors, opened the water-gate, and out the barrels floated
     on the stream, bobbing along, until they were carried by the current to a place far down the river where the bank jutted out,
     near to the very eastern edge of Mirkwood. There they were collected and tied together and floated back to Lake-town, which
     stood close to the point where the Forest River flowed into the Long Lake.
    For some time Bilbo sat and thought about this water-gate, and wondered if it could be used for the escape of his friends,
     and at last he had the desperate beginnings of a plan.
    The evening meal had been taken to the prisoners. The guards were tramping away down the passages taking the torchlight with
     them and leaving everything in darkness. Then Bilbo heard the king’s butler bidding the chief of the guards good-night.
    “Now come with me,” he said, “and taste the new wine that has just come in. I shall be hard at work tonight clearing the cellars
     of the empty wood, so let us have a drink first to help the labour.”
    “Very good,” laughed the chief of the guards. “I’ll taste with you, and see if it is fit for the king’s table. There is a
     feast tonight and it would not do to send up poor stuff!”
    When he heard this Bilbo was all in a flutter, for he saw that luck was with him and he had a chance at once to try his desperate plan. He followed the two elves, until they entered a small cellar and sat down at a table on which
     two large flagons were set. Soon they began to drink and laugh merrily. Luck of an unusual kind was with Bilbo then. It must
     be potent wine to make a wood-elf drowsy; but this wine, it would seem, was the heady vintage of the great gardens of Dorwinion,
     not meant for his soldiers or his servants, but for the king’s feasts only, and for smaller bowls not for the butler’s great
     flagons.
    Very soon the chief guard nodded his head, then he laid it on the table and fell fast asleep. The butler went on talking and
     laughing to himself for a while without seeming to notice, but soon his head too nodded to the table, and he fell asleep and
     snored beside his friend. Then in crept the hobbit. Very soon the chief guard had no keys, but Bilbo was trotting as fast
     as he could along the passages towards the cells. The great bunch seemed very heavy to his arms, and his heart was often in
     his mouth, in spite of his ring, for he could not prevent the keys from making every now and then a loud clink and clank,
     which put him all in a tremble.
    First he unlocked Balin’s door, and locked it again carefully as soon as the dwarf was outside. Balin was most surprised,
     as you can imagine; but glad as he was to get out of his wearisome little stone room, he wanted to stop and ask questions,
     and know what Bilbo was going to do, and all about it.
    “No time now!” said the hobbit. “You just follow me! We must all keep together and not risk getting separated. All of us must
     escape or none, and this is our last chance. If this is found out, goodness knows where the king will put you next, with chains on your hands and feet too, I expect. Don’t argue, there’s a good fellow!”
    Then off he went from door to door, until his following had grown to twelve—none of them any too nimble, what with the dark,
     and what with their long imprisonment. Bilbo’s heart thumped every time one of them bumped into another, or grunted or whispered
     in the dark. “Drat this dwarvish racket!” he said to himself. But all went well, and they met no guards. As a matter of fact
     there was a great autumn feast in the woods that night, and in the halls above. Nearly all the king’s folk were merrymaking.
    At last after much blundering they came to Thorin’s dungeon, far down in a deep place and fortunately not far from the cellars.
    “Upon my word!” said Thorin, when Bilbo whispered to him to come out and join his friends, “Gandalf spoke true, as usual!
     A pretty fine burglar you make, it seems, when the time comes. I am sure we are all for ever at your service, whatever happens
     after this. But what comes next?”
    Bilbo saw that the time had come to explain his idea, as far as he could; but he did not feel at all sure how the dwarves
     would take it. His fears were quite justified, for they did not like it a bit, and started grumbling loudly in spite of their
     danger.
    “We shall be