The Hobbit

hauled up, and he found that
     he was in the midst of a bobbing and bumping mass of casks and tubs all pressing together to pass under the arch and get out
     into the open stream. He had as much as he could do to prevent himself from being hustled and battered to bits; but at last
     the jostling crowd began to break up and swing off, one by one, under the stony arch and away. Then he saw that it would have
     been no good even if he had managed to get astride his barrel, for there was no room to spare, not even for a hobbit, between its top and the suddenly stooping roof where the gate was.
    Out they went under the overhanging branches of the trees on either bank. Bilbo wondered what the dwarves were feeling and
     whether a lot of water was getting into their tubs. Some of those that bobbed along by him in the gloom seemed pretty low
     in the water, and he guessed that these had dwarves inside.
    “I do hope I put the lids on tight enough!” he thought, but before long he was worrying too much about himself to remember
     the dwarves. He managed to keep his head above the water, but he was shivering with the cold, and he wondered if he would
     die of it before the luck turned, and how much longer he would be able to hang on, and whether he should risk the chance of
     letting go and trying to swim to the bank.
    The luck turned all right before long: the eddying current carried several barrels close ashore at one point and there for
     a while they stuck against some hidden root. Then Bilbo took the opportunity of scrambling up the side of his barrel while
     it was held steady against another. Up he crawled like a drowned rat, and lay on the top spread out to keep the balance as
     best he could. The breeze was cold but better than the water, and he hoped he would not suddenly roll off again when they
     started off once more.
    Before long the barrels broke free again and turned and twisted off down the stream, and out into the main current. Then he
     found it quite as difficult to stick on as he had feared; but he managed it somehow, though it was miserably uncomfortable. Luckily he was very light, and the barrel was a good big one and being rather
     leaky had now shipped a small amount of water. All the same it was like trying to ride, without bridle or stirrups, a round-bellied
     pony that was always thinking of rolling on the grass.
    In this way at last Mr. Baggins came to a place where the trees on either hand grew thinner. He could see the paler sky between
     them. The dark river opened suddenly wide, and there it was joined to the main water of the Forest River flowing down in haste
     from the king’s great doors. There was a dim sheet of water no longer overshadowed, and on its sliding surface there were
     dancing and broken reflections of clouds and of stars. Then the hurrying water of the Forest River swept all the company of
     casks and tubs away to the north bank, in which it had eaten out a wide bay. This had a shingly shore under hanging banks
     and was walled at the eastern end by a little jutting cape of hard rock. On the shallow shore most of the barrels ran aground,
     though a few went on to bump against the stony pier.
    There were people on the look-out on the banks. They quickly poled and pushed all the barrels together into the shallows,
     and when they had counted them they roped them together and left them till the morning. Poor dwarves! Bilbo was not badly
     off now. He slipped from his barrel and waded ashore, and then sneaked along to some huts that he could see near the water’s
     edge. He no longer thought twice about picking up a supper uninvited if he got the chance, he had been obliged to do it for
     so long, and he knew now only too well what it was to be really hungry, not merely politely interested in the dainties of a well-filled larder. Also he had caught a glimpse of
     a fire through the trees, and that appealed to him with his dripping and ragged clothes clinging to him cold and clammy.
    There is no need to tell you much of his adventures that night, for now we are drawing near the end of the eastward journey
     and coming to the last and greatest adventure, so we must hurry on. Of course helped by his magic ring he got on very well
     at first, but he was given away in the end by his wet footsteps and the trail of drippings that he left wherever he went or
     sat; and also he began to snivel, and wherever he tried to hide he was found out by the terrific explosions of his suppressed