towers

journey to the cross-roads 917
turning and tossing, and sometimes murmuring. Twice Sam
thought he heard him speaking Gandalf ’s name. The time
seemed to drag interminably. Suddenly Sam heard a hiss
behind him, and there was Gollum on all fours, peering at
them with gleaming eyes.
‘Wake up, wake up! Wake up, sleepies!’ he whispered.
‘Wake up! No time to lose. We must go, yes, we must go at
once. No time to lose!’
Sam stared at him suspiciously: he seemed frightened or
excited. ‘Go now? What’s your little game? It isn’t time yet.
It can’t be tea-time even, leastways not in decent places where
there is tea-time.’
‘Silly!’ hissed Gollum. ‘We’re not in decent places. Time’s
running short, yes, running fast. No time to lose. We must
go. Wake up, Master, wake up!’ He clawed at Frodo; and
Frodo, startled out of sleep, sat up suddenly and seized him
by the arm. Gollum tore himself loose and backed away.
‘They mustn’t be silly,’ he hissed. ‘We must go. No time
to lose!’ And nothing more could they get out of him. Where
he had been, and what he thought was brewing to make him
in such a hurry, he would not say. Sam was filled with deep
suspicion, and showed it; but Frodo gave no sign of what
was passing in his mind. He sighed, hoisted his pack, and
prepared to go out into the ever-gathering darkness.
Very stealthily Gollum led them down the hillside, keeping
under cover wherever it was possible, and running, almost
bent to the ground, across any open space; but the light was
now so dim that even a keen-eyed beast of the wild could
scarcely have seen the hobbits, hooded, in their grey cloaks,
nor heard them, walking as warily as the little people can.
Without the crack of a twig or the rustle of a leaf they passed
and vanished.
For about an hour they went on, silently, in single file,
oppressed by the gloom and by the absolute stillness of the
land, broken only now and again by the faint rumbling as of
thunder far away or drumbeats in some hollow of the hills.