towers

the taming of sméagol 801
Drawing his grey hood well over his face, Sam crept stealthily
towards the cliff.
‘Careful!’ whispered Frodo coming behind. ‘Don’t alarm
him! He’s much more dangerous than he looks.’
The black crawling shape was now three-quarters of the
way down, and perhaps fifty feet or less above the cliff ’s foot.
Crouching stone-still in the shadow of a large boulder the
hobbits watched him. He seemed to have come to a difficult
passage or to be troubled about something. They could hear
him snuffling, and now and again there was a harsh hiss of
breath that sounded like a curse. He lifted his head, and they
thought they heard him spit. Then he moved on again. Now
they could hear his voice creaking and whistling.
‘Ach, sss! Cautious, my precious! More haste less speed.
We musstn’t rissk our neck, musst we, precious? No, precious
– gollum!’ He lifted his head again, blinked at the moon, and
quickly shut his eyes. ‘We hate it,’ he hissed. ‘Nassty, nassty
shivery light it is – sss – it spies on us, precious – it hurts our
eyes.’
He was getting lower now and the hisses became sharper
and clearer. ‘Where iss it, where iss it: my Precious, my
Precious? It’s ours, it is, and we wants it. The thieves, the
thieves, the filthy little thieves. Where are they with my
Precious? Curse them! We hates them.’
‘It doesn’t sound as if he knew we were here, does it?’
whispered Sam. ‘And what’s his Precious? Does he mean
the——’
‘Hsh!’ breathed Frodo. ‘He’s getting near now, near
enough to hear a whisper.’
Indeed Gollum had suddenly paused again, and his large
head on its scrawny neck was lolling from side to side as
if he was listening. His pale eyes were half unlidded. Sam
restrained himself, though his fingers were twitching. His
eyes, filled with anger and disgust, were fixed on the wretched
creature as he now began to move again, still whispering and
hissing to himself.
At last he was no more than a dozen feet from the ground,