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."Good-bye!" said Gandalf to Thorin."And good-bye to you all, good-bye!Straight through the forest is your way now.Don't stray off the track!-if you do, itis a thousand to one you will never find it again and never get out of Mirkwood;and then I don't suppose I, or any one else, will ever see you again.""Do we really have to go through?" groaned the hobbit."Yes, you do!" said the wizard, "if you want to get to the other side.You musteither go through or give up your quest.And I am not going to allow you to backout now, Mr.Baggins.I am ashamed of you for thinking of it.You have got tolook after all these dwarves for me," he laughed."No! no!" said Bilbo."I didn't mean that.I meant, is there no way round?""There is, if you care to go two hundred miles or so out of your way north, andtwice that south.But you wouldn't get a safe path even then.There are no safepaths in this part of the world.Remember you are over the Edge of the Wild now,and in for all sorts of fun wherever you go.Before you could get round Mirkwoodin the North you would be right among the slopes of the Grey Mountains, andthey are simply stiff with goblins, hobgoblins, and rest of the worst description.Before you could get round it in the South, you would get into the land of theNecromancer; and even you.Bilbo, won't need me to tell you tales of that black sorcerer.I don't advise you to go anywhere near the places overlooked by his darktower! Stick to the forest-track, keep your spirits up, hope for the best, and with atremendous slice of luck you may come out one day and see the Long Marsheslying below you, and beyond them, high in the East, the Lonely Mountain wheredear old Smaug lives, though I hope he is not expecting you.""Very comforting you are to be sure," growled Thorin."Good-bye! If youwon't come with us, you had better get off without any more talk!""Good-bye then, and really good-bye!" said Gandalf, and he turned his horseand rode down into the West.But he could not resist the temptation to have thelast word.Before he had passed quite out of hearing he turned and put his hands tohis mouth and called to them.They heard his voice come faintly: "Good-bye! Begood, take care of yourselves-and DON'T LEAVE THE PATH!"Then he galloped away and was soon lost to sight."O good-bye and go away!"grunted the dwarves, all the more angry because they were really filled withdismay at losing him.Now began the most dangerous part of all the journey.They each shouldered the heavy pack and the water-skin which was theirshare, and turned from the light that lay on the lands outside and plunged into theforest. Chapter 8Flies and SpidersThey walked in single file.The entrance to the path was like a sort of archleading into a gloomy tunnel made by two great trees that leant together, too oldand strangled with ivy and hung with lichen to bear more than a few blackenedleaves.The path itself was narrow and wound in and out among the trunks.Soonthe light at the gate was like a little bright hole far behind, and the quiet was sodeep that their feet seemed to thump along while all the trees leaned over them andlistened.As theft eyes became used to the dimness they could see a little way toeither side in a sort of darkened green glimmer.Occasionally a slender beam ofsun that had the luck to slip in through some opening in the leaves far above, andstill more luck in not being caught in the tangled boughs and matted twigsbeneath, stabbed down thin and bright before them.But this was seldom, and itsoon ceased altogether.There were black squirrels in the wood.As Bilbo's sharp inquisitive eyes gotused to seeing things he could catch glimpses of them whisking off the path andscuttling behind tree-trunks.There were queer noises too, grunts, scufflings, andhurryings in the undergrowth, and among the leaves that lay piled endlessly thickin places on the forest-floor; but what made the noises he could not see.Thenastiest things they saw were the cobwebs: dark dense cobwebs with threadsextraordinarily thick, often stretched from tree to tree, or tangled in the lowerbranches on either side of them.There were none stretched across the path, butwhether because some magic kept it clear, or for what other reason they could notguess.It was not long before they grew to hate the forest as heartily as they had hatedthe tunnels of the goblins, and it seemed to offer even less hope of any ending.Butthey had to go on and on, long after they were sick for a sight of the sun and of thesky, and longed for the feel of wind on their faces.There was no movement of airdown under the forest-roof, and it was everlastingly still and dark and stuffy.Eventhe dwarves felt it, who were used to tunnelling, and lived at times for long whileswithout the light of the sun; but the hobbit, who liked holes to make a house in butnot to spend summer days in, felt he was being slowly suffocated.The nights were the worst.It then became pitch-dark not what you call pitch-dark, but really pitch; so black that you really could see nothing.Bilbo triedflapping his hand in front of his nose, but he could not see it at all.Well, perhaps it is not true to say that they could see nothing: they could see eyes.They slept allclosely huddled together, and took it in turns to watch; and when it was Bilbo'sturn he would see gleams in the darkness round them, and sometimes pairs ofyellow or red or green eyes would stare at him from a little distance, and thenslowly fade and disappear and slowly shine out again in another place.Andsometimes they would gleam down from the branches just above him; and thatwas most terrifying.But the eyes that he liked the least were horrible pale bulboussort of eyes."Insect eyes" he thought, "not animal eyes, only they are much toobig."Although it was not yet very cold, they tried lighting watch-fires at night, butthey soon gave that up.It seemed to bring hundreds and hundreds of eyes allround them, though the creatures, whatever they were, were careful never to lettheir bodies show in the little flicker of the flames.Worse still it brought thousandsof dark-grey and black moths, some nearly as big as your hand, flapping andwhirring round their ears.They could not stand that, nor the huge bats, black as atop-hat, either; so they gave up fires and sat at night and dozed in the enormousuncanny darkness.All this went on for what seemed to the hobbit ages upon ages; and he wasalways hungry, for they were extremely careful with their provisions.Even so, asdays followed days, and still the forest seemed just the same, they began to getanxious.The food would not last for ever: it was in fact already beginning to getlow.They tried shooting at the squirrels, and they wasted many arrows before theymanaged to bring one down on the path.But when they roasted it, it provedhorrible to taste, and they shot no more squirrels.They were thirsty too, for they had none too much water, and in all the timethey had seen neither spring nor stream.This was their state when one day theyfound their path blocked by a running water
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