The Lord of the Rings

The others swung round and saw the waters of the lake seething, as if a host of snakes were swimming up from the southern end.
    Out from the water a long sinuous tentacle had crawled; it was pale-green and luminous and wet. Its fingered end had hold of Frodo’s foot, and was dragging him into the water. Sam on his knees was now slashing at it with a knife.
    The arm let go of Frodo, and Sam pulled him away, crying out for help. Twenty other arms came rippling out. The dark water boiled, and there was a hideous stench.
    ‘Into the gateway! Up the stairs! Quick!’ shouted Gandalf leapingback. Rousing them from the horror that seemed to have rooted all but Sam to the ground where they stood, he drove them forward.
    They were just in time. Sam and Frodo were only a few steps up, and Gandalf had just begun to climb, when the groping tentacles writhed across the narrow shore and fingered the cliff-wall and the doors. One came wriggling over the threshold, glistening in the starlight. Gandalf turned and paused. If he was considering what word would close the gate again from within, there was no need. Many coiling arms seized the doors on either side, and with horrible strength, swung them round. With a shattering echo they slammed, and all light was lost. A noise of rending and crashing came dully through the ponderous stone.
    Sam, clinging to Frodo’s arm, collapsed on a step in the black darkness. ‘Poor old Bill!’ he said in a choking voice. ‘Poor old Bill! Wolves and snakes! But the snakes were too much for him. I had to choose, Mr. Frodo. I had to come with you.’
    They heard Gandalf go back down the steps and thrust his staff against the doors. There was a quiver in the stone and the stairs trembled, but the doors did not open.
    ‘Well, well!’ said the wizard. ‘The passage is blocked behind us now, and there is only one way out – on the other side of the mountains. I fear from the sounds that boulders have been piled up, and the trees uprooted and thrown across the gate. I am sorry; for the trees were beautiful, and had stood so long.’
    ‘I felt that something horrible was near from the moment that my foot first touched the water,’ said Frodo. ‘What was the thing, or were there many of them?’
    ‘I do not know,’ answered Gandalf; ‘but the arms were all guided by one purpose. Something has crept, or has been driven out of dark waters under the mountains. There are older and fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the world.’ He did not speak aloud his thought that whatever it was that dwelt in the lake, it had seized on Frodo first among all the Company.
    Boromir muttered under his breath, but the echoing stone magnified the sound to a hoarse whisper that all could hear: ‘In the deep places of the world! And thither we are going against my wish. Who will lead us now in this deadly dark?’
    ‘I will,’ said Gandalf, ‘and Gimli shall walk with me. Follow my staff !’
    As the wizard passed on ahead up the great steps, he held his staff aloft, and from its tip there came a faint radiance. The wide stairway was sound and undamaged. Two hundred steps they counted, broadand shallow; and at the top they found an arched passage with a level floor leading on into the dark.
    ‘Let us sit and rest and have something to eat, here on the landing, since we can’t find a dining-room!’ said Frodo. He had begun to shake off the terror of the clutching arm, and suddenly he felt extremely hungry.
    The proposal was welcomed by all; and they sat down on the upper steps, dim figures in the gloom. After they had eaten, Gandalf gave them each a third sip of the
miruvor
of Rivendell.
    ‘It will not last much longer, I am afraid,’ he said; ‘but I think we need it after that horror at the gate. And unless we have great luck, we shall need all that is left before we see the other side! Go carefully with the water, too! There are many streams and wells in the Mines, but they should not be touched. We may not have a chance of filling our skins and bottles till we come down into Dimrill Dale.’
    ‘How long is that going to take us?’ asked Frodo.
    ‘I cannot say,’ answered Gandalf. ‘It depends on many chances. But going straight, without mishap or losing our way, we shall take three or four marches, I expect. It cannot be less than forty miles from West-door to East-gate in a direct line, and the road may wind much.’
    After only a brief rest they started on their way again. All were