The Hobbit

snap and a clang. No trace of a keyhole
     was there left on the inside. They were shut in the Mountain!
    And not a moment too soon. They had hardly gone any distance down the tunnel when a blow smote the side of the Mountain like
     the crash of battering-rams made of forest oaks and swung by giants. The rock boomed, the walls cracked and stones fell from
     the roof on their heads. What would have happened if the door had still been open I don’t like to think. They fled further
     down the tunnel glad to be still alive, while behind them outside they heard the roar and rumble of Smaug’s fury. He was breaking
     rocks to pieces, smashing wall and cliff with the lashings of his huge tail, till their little lofty camping ground, the scorched
     grass, the thrush’s stone, the snail-covered walls, the narrow ledge, and all disappeared in a jumble of smithereens, and
     an avalanche of splintered stones fell over the cliff into the valley below.
    Smaug had left his lair in silent stealth, quietly soared into the air, and then floated heavy and slow in the dark like a
     monstrous crow, down the wind towards the west of the Mountain, in the hopes of catching unawares something or somebody there,
     and of spying the outlet to the passage which the thief had used. This was the outburst of his wrath when he could find nobody
     and see nothing, even where he guessed the outlet must actually be.
    After he had let off his rage in this way he felt better and he thought in his heart that he would not be troubled again from
     that direction. In the meanwhile he had further vengeance to take. “Barrel-rider!” he snorted. “Your feet came from the waterside
     and up the water you came without a doubt. I don’t know your smell, but if you are not one of those men of the Lake, you had their help. They shall see me and remember who is the real King under the Mountain!”
    He rose in fire and went away south towards the Running River.

Chapter
XIII
NOT AT HOME
    In the meanwhile, the dwarves sat in darkness, and utter silence fell about them. Little they ate and little they spoke. They
     could not count the passing of time; and they scarcely dared to move, for the whisper of their voices echoed and rustled in
     the tunnel. If they dozed, they woke still to darkness and to silence going on unbroken. At last after days and days of waiting,
     as it seemed, when they were becoming choked and dazed for want of air, they could bear it no longer. They would almost have
     welcomed sounds from below of the dragon’s return. In the silence they feared some cunning devilry of his, but they could
     not sit there for ever.
    Thorin spoke: “Let us try the door!” he said. “I must feel the wind on my face soon or die. I think I would rather be smashed
     by Smaug in the open than suffocate in here!” So several of the dwarves got up and groped back to where the door had been.
     But they found that the upper end of the tunnel had been shattered and blocked with broken rock. Neither key nor the magic
     it had once obeyed would ever open that door again.
    “We are trapped!” they groaned. “This is the end. We shall die here.”
    But somehow, just when the dwarves were most despairing, Bilbo felt a strange lightening of the heart, as if a heavy weight had gone from under his waistcoat.
    “Come, come!” he said. “‘While there’s life there’s hope!’ as my father used to say, and ‘Third time pays for all.’ I am going
down
the tunnel once again. I have been that way twice, when I knew there was a dragon at the other end, so I will risk a third
     visit when I am no longer sure. Anyway the only way out is down. And I think this time you had better all come with me.”
    In desperation they agreed, and Thorin was the first to go forward by Bilbo’s side.
    “Now do be careful!” whispered the hobbit, “and as quiet as you can be! There may be no Smaug at the bottom, but then again
     there may be. Don’t let us take any unnecessary risks!”
    Down, down they went. The dwarves could not, of course, compare with the hobbit in real stealth, and they made a deal of puffing
     and shuffling which echoes magnified alarmingly; but though every now and again Bilbo in fear stopped and listened, not a
     sound stirred below. Near the bottom, as well as he could judge, Bilbo slipped on his ring and went ahead. But he did not
     need it: the darkness was complete, and they were all invisible, ring or no ring. In fact so black was it that the