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Then the gloom gathered: darkness growing<br />
in Valinor, the red blood flowing<br />
beside the sea, where the Gnomes slew<br />
the Foamriders, and stealing drew<br />
their white ships with their white sails<br />
from lamplit havens. The wind wails.<br />
The wolf howls. The ravens flee.<br />
The ice mutters in the mouths of the sea.<br />
The captives sad in Angband mourn.<br />
Thunder rumbles, the fires burn,<br />
a vast smoke gushes out, a roar—<br />
and Felagund swoons upon the floor.<br />
Behold! they are in their own fair shape,<br />
fairskinned, brighteyed. No longer gape<br />
Orclike their mouths; and now they stand<br />
betrayed into the wizard’s hand.<br />
Thus came they unhappy into woe,<br />
to dungeons no hope nor glimmer know,<br />
where chained in chains that eat the flesh<br />
and woven in webs of strangling mesh<br />
they lay forgotten, in despair.<br />
Yet not all unavailing were<br />
the spells of Felagund; for Thû<br />
neither their names nor purpose knew.<br />
These much he pondered and bethought,<br />
and in their woeful chains them sought,<br />
and threatened all with dreadful death,<br />
if one would not with traitor’s breath<br />
reveal this knowledge. Wolves should come<br />
and slow devour them one by one<br />
before the others’ eyes, and last<br />
should one alone be left aghast,<br />
then in a place of horror hung<br />
with anguish should his limbs be wrung,<br />
in the bowels of the earth be slow<br />
endlessly, cruelly, put to woe<br />
and torment, till he all declared.<br />
Even as he threatened, so it fared.<br />
From time to time in the eyeless dark<br />
two eyes would grow, and they would hark<br />
to frightful cries, and then a sound<br />
of rending, a slavering on the ground,<br />
515<br />
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