The Hobbit

nearly far enough to be comfortable before the ghastly head of Smaug was thrust against the opening behind. Luckily
     the whole head and jaws could not squeeze in, but the nostrils sent forth fire and vapour to pursue him, and he was nearly
     overcome, and stumbled blindly on in great pain and fear. He had been feeling rather pleased with the cleverness of his conversation
     with Smaug, but his mistake at the end shook him into better sense.
    “Never laugh at live dragons, Bilbo you fool!” he said to himself, and it became a favourite saying of his later, and passed
     into a proverb. “You aren’t nearly through this adventure yet,” he added, and that was pretty true as well.
    The afternoon was turning into evening when he came out again and stumbled and fell in a faint on the ‘doorstep’. The dwarves
     revived him, and doctored his scorches as well as they could; but it was a long time before the hair on the back of his head and his heels grew properly
     again: it had all been singed and frizzled right down to the skin. In the meanwhile his friends did their best to cheer him
     up; and they were eager for his story, especially wanting to know why the dragon had made such an awful noise, and how Bilbo
     had escaped.
    But the hobbit was worried and uncomfortable, and they had difficulty in getting anything out of him. On thinking things over
     he was now regretting some of the things he had said to the dragon, and was not eager to repeat them. The old thrush was sitting
     on a rock near by with his head cocked on one side, listening to all that was said. It shows what an ill temper Bilbo was
     in: he picked up a stone and threw it at the thrush, which merely fluttered aside and came back.
    “Drat the bird!” said Bilbo crossly. “I believe he is listening, and I don’t like the look of him.”
    “Leave him alone!” said Thorin. “The thrushes are good and friendly—this is a very old bird indeed, and is maybe the last
     left of the ancient breed that used to live about here, tame to the hands of my father and grandfather. They were a long-lived
     and magical race, and this might even be one of those that were alive then, a couple of hundreds of years or more ago. The
     Men of Dale used to have the trick of understanding their language, and used them for messengers to fly to the Men of the
     Lake and elsewhere.”
    “Well, he’ll have news to take to Lake-town all right, if that is what he is after,” said Bilbo; “though I don’t suppose there are any people left there that trouble with thrush-language.”
    “Why what has happened?” cried the dwarves. “Do get on with your tale!”
    So Bilbo told them all he could remember, and he confessed that he had a nasty feeling that the dragon guessed too much from
     his riddles added to the camps and the ponies. “I am sure he knows we came from Lake-town and had help from there; and I have
     a horrible feeling that his next move may be in that direction. I wish to goodness I had never said that about Barrel-rider;
     it would make even a blind rabbit in these parts think of the Lake-men.”
    “Well, well! It cannot be helped, and it is difficult not to slip in talking to a dragon, or so I have always heard,” said
     Balin anxious to comfort him. “I think you did very well, if you ask me—you found out one very useful thing at any rate, and
     got home alive, and that is more than most can say who have had words with the likes of Smaug. It may be a mercy and a blessing
     yet to know of the bare patch in the old Worm’s diamond waistcoat.”
    That turned the conversation, and they all began discussing dragon-slayings historical, dubious, and mythical, and the various
     sorts of stabs and jabs and undercuts, and the different arts devices and stratagems by which they had been accomplished.
     The general opinion was that catching a dragon napping was not as easy as it sounded, and the attempt to stick one or prod
     one asleep was more likely to end in disaster than a bold frontal attack. All the while they talked the thrush listened, till
     at last when the stars began to peep forth, it silently spread its wings and flew away. And all the while they talked and the shadows lengthened Bilbo became more and more unhappy and his foreboding
     grew.
    At last he interrupted them. “I am sure we are very unsafe here,” he said, “and I don’t see the point of sitting here. The
     dragon has withered all the pleasant green, and anyway the night has come