towers

the taming of sméagol 799
Under the first shadows of night they started out on the
next stage of their journey. After a while Sam turned and
looked back at the way they had come. The mouth of the
gully was a black notch in the dim cliff. ‘I’m glad we’ve got
the rope,’ he said. ‘We’ve set a little puzzle for that footpad,
anyhow. He can try his nasty flappy feet on those ledges!’
They picked their steps away from the skirts of the cliff,
among a wilderness of boulders and rough stones, wet and
slippery with the heavy rain. The ground still fell away
sharply. They had not gone very far when they came upon a
great fissure that yawned suddenly black before their feet. It
was not wide, but it was too wide to jump across in the dim
light. They thought they could hear water gurgling in its
depths. It curved away on their left northward, back towards
the hills, and so barred their road in that direction, at any
rate while darkness lasted.
‘We had better try a way back southwards along the line
of the cliff, I think,’ said Sam. ‘We might find some nook
there, or even a cave or something.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Frodo. ‘I’m tired, and I don’t think I
can scramble among stones much longer tonight – though I
grudge the delay. I wish there was a clear path in front of us:
then I’d go on till my legs gave way.’
They did not find the going any easier at the broken feet
of the Emyn Muil. Nor did Sam find any nook or hollow to
shelter in: only bare stony slopes frowned over by the cliff,
which now rose again, higher and more sheer as they went
back. In the end, worn out, they just cast themselves on the
ground under the lee of a boulder lying not far from the
foot of the precipice. There for some time they sat huddled
mournfully together in the cold stony night, while sleep crept
upon them in spite of all they could do to hold it off. The
moon now rode high and clear. Its thin white light lit up the
faces of the rocks and drenched the cold frowning walls of
the cliff, turning all the wide looming darkness into a chill
pale grey scored with black shadows.