towers

the taming of sméagol 791
they came at last to the end of it, Frodo stooped and leaned
out.
‘Look!’ he said. ‘We must have come down a long way, or
else the cliff has sunk. It’s much lower here than it was, and
it looks easier too.’
Sam knelt beside him and peered reluctantly over the edge.
Then he glanced up at the great cliff rising up, away on their
left. ‘Easier!’ he grunted. ‘Well, I suppose it’s always easier
getting down than up. Those as can’t fly can jump!’
‘It would be a big jump still,’ said Frodo. ‘About, well’ –
he stood for a moment measuring it with his eyes – ‘about
eighteen fathoms, I should guess. Not more.’
‘And that’s enough!’ said Sam. ‘Ugh! How I do hate looking
down from a height! But looking’s better than climbing.’
‘All the same,’ said Frodo, ‘I think we could climb here;
and I think we shall have to try. See – the rock is quite
different from what it was a few miles back. It has slipped
and cracked.’
The outer fall was indeed no longer sheer, but sloped outwards
a little. It looked like a great rampart or sea-wall whose
foundations had shifted, so that its courses were all twisted
and disordered, leaving great fissures and long slanting edges
that were in places almost as wide as stairs.
‘And if we’re going to try and get down, we had better try
at once. It’s getting dark early. I think there’s a storm coming.’
The smoky blur of the mountains in the East was lost in a
deeper blackness that was already reaching out westwards
with long arms. There was a distant mutter of thunder borne
on the rising breeze. Frodo sniffed the air and looked up
doubtfully at the sky. He strapped his belt outside his cloak
and tightened it, and settled his light pack on his back; then
he stepped towards the edge. ‘I’m going to try it,’ he said.
‘Very good!’ said Sam gloomily. ‘But I’m going first.’
‘You?’ said Frodo. ‘What’s made you change your mind
about climbing?’
‘I haven’t changed my mind. But it’s only sense: put the
one lowest as is most likely to slip. I don’t want to come down