The Return Of The Shadow Part 30

'I am mighty glad I saw those poor beasts safe first,' said Sam. 'I felt that something evil was near,' said Frodo. 'What was it, Gandalf? '

'I could not say,' said Gandalf, '- there was not time enough to look at the arms. They all belong to one creature, I should say, from the way they moved - but that is all I can say. Something that has..... crept, or been driven out of the dark waters under ground, I guess. There are older and fouler things than goblins in the dark places of the world.' He did not speak aloud his uncomfortable thought that the Dweller in the Pool had not seized on Frodo among all the party by accident.(22) Gandalf now went ahead and allowed his wand to glow faintly to prevent them from walking into unseen dangers in the dark. But the great stairway was sound and undamaged. There were two hundred steps, broad and shallow; and at the top they found the floor level before them.

'Let us have something to eat here on the landing, since we can't find a dining-room,' said Frodo. He had recovered from the terror of the clutching arm, and was feeling unusually hungry. The idea was welcome to all. After they had eaten Gandalf again gave them a taste of the cordial.

'It won't last much longer,' he said, 'but I think we need it after that business at the gate. And we shall need all that is left before we get through, unless we have luck. Go carefully with the water too! There are streams and wells in the Mines, but they should not be touched. We shan't get a chance of filling our bottles till we come down in Dunruin.'(23) 'How long are we going to take to get through?' asked Frodo. 'I don't know that,' answered Gandalf. 'It all depends. But going straight (without mishaps, or losing our way) we should take at least three or four marches. It cannot be less than forty miles from West-doors to Eastgate in a straight line, and we may not find the most direct pa.s.sages.'

They rested now only for a short while, as all were eager to get the journey over as quickly as possible, and were willing, tired as they were, to go on still for several hours. They had no fuel or means of making torches, and would be obliged to find the way mostly in the dark.(24) Gandalf went in front holding in his left hand his wand, the pale light of which was sufficient to show the ground before his feet. In his right hand he held the sword Glamdring, which he had kept ever since it was discovered in the trolls' lair.(25) No gleam came from it - which was some comfort; for being a sword of ancient elvish make it shone with a cold light, if goblins were at hand.

He led them forward first along the pa.s.sage in which they had halted. As the light of his wand dimly lit their dark openings other pa.s.sages and tunnels could 'be seen or guessed: sloping up, or running steeply down, or turning suddenly round hidden corners. It was most bewildering. Gandalf was guided mainly by his general sense of direction: and anyone who had been on a journey with him knew that he never lost that by dark or day, underground or above it: being better at steering in a tunnel than a goblin, and less likely to be lost in a wood than a hobbit, and surer of finding the way through night as black as the Pit than the cats of Queen Beruthiel.(26) Had that not been so, it is more than doubtful if the party would have gone a mile without disaster. For there were not only many paths to choose from, there were in many places pits at the sides of the tunnel, and dark wells in which far under the gurgling of water could be heard. Rotting strands of rope dangled above them from broken winches. There were dangerous chasms and fissures in the rock, and sometimes a chasm would open right across their path. One was so wide that Gandalf himself nearly stumbled into it. It was quite ten feet wide, and Sam stumbled in his jump and would have fallen back on the further bank if Frodo had not grabbed his hand and [? jerked) him forward.

Their march was slow, and it began to feel never-ending. They grew very weary; and yet there was no comfort in the thought of halting anywhere. Frodo's spirits had risen for a while after his escape from the water-monster; but now a deep sense of disquiet, growing to dread, crept over him once more. Though he had been healed in Rivendell of the knife stroke, it is probable that that grim adventure had left its mark, and that he was specially sensitive; and in any case he it was that bore the Ring upon its chain against his breast.(27) He felt the certainty of evil ahead, and of evil following. But he said nothing.

The travellers spoke seldom and then only in hurried whispers. There was no sound but the sound of their own feet. If they stopped for a moment they heard nothing at all, unless it were occasionally a faint sound of water trickling or dripping. Only Frodo began to hear or imagine that he heard something else: like the faint fall of soft feet following. It was never loud or near enough for him to feel certain that he heard it; but once it had started it never stopped, unless they did. And it was not an echo, for when they halted (as they did from time to time) it pattered on for some time, and then grew still.

It was about 10 o'clock in the morning when they entered the Mines.(28) They had been going for many hours (with brief halts) when Gandalf came to his first serious doubt. They had come to a wide dark arch opening into three pa.s.sages: all three led in the same general direction, East, but the left hand pa.s.sage seemed to plunge down, the right hand to climb up, while the middle way seemed to run level (but was very narrow).

'I have no memory of this place at all! ' said Gandalf, standing uncertainly under the arch. He held up his wand in the hope of finding some direction marks or an inscription that might help. But nothing of the kind was to be seen.

'I am too tired to choose,' he said, shaking his head; 'and I expect you are all as weary as I am or wearier. We had better halt here for the night - if you know what I mean. It is all night of course inside, but outside I fancy the night is already come. It is quite ten hours since we left the gate.'(29) They groped about in the darkness looking for a place where they could rest with some feeling of security. To the left of the great arch was a lower opening, and when they explored it closer they discovered that it was a stone door that was half closed, but swung back easily to a gentle thrust. Beyond there seemed to be a chamber or chambers cut in the rock.

'Steady, steady!' said Gandalf as Merry and Faramond pushed forward, glad to find somewhere where they could rest with some sort of security. 'Steady! You don't know what may be inside. I will go first.'

He went cautiously in followed by the rest. 'There!' he said, pointing with his wand to the middle of the floor. They saw before their feet a round hole like the mouth of a well. Rotting strands of rope lay at the edge and trailed down into the dark pit; fragments of broken stone lay near.

'One of you might have fallen in and still be waiting to hit the bottom,' said the wizard to Merry. 'Look before your feet! This seems to have been a kind of guard-room placed to watch those pa.s.sages,' he went on. 'The hole I expect is a well, and was doubtless once covered with a stone lid. But that is broken now, and you had better be careful of the fall.'

Sam (30) felt curiously attracted by the well; and while the others were making beds of blankets in dark corners of the room, as far as possible from the well, he crept to the edge and peered over. A chill air seemed to mount up to his face from the invisible depths. Moved by a sudden impulse, he groped for a loose stone, and let it drop. It seemed almost a whole minute before there was any sound - then far below there was a plunk, as if the stone had fallen into deep water in a cavernous place - very distant, but magnified and repeated in the hollow rock.

'What's that?' cried Gandalf. He was relieved when Sam confessed what he had done; but he was angry, and Sam could see his eyes glint in the dark. 'Fool of a fellow!' he growled. 'This is a serious journey, not a hobbit school treat. Throw yourself in next time, and then you'll be no further nuisance. Now be quiet! '

There was nothing to hear for several minutes; but then there came out of the depths faint knocks, that stopped, and were dimly echoed, and then after a short silence were repeated. It sounded strangely like signals of some sort. But after a while the knocks died away altogether and were heard no more.

'It may have nothing to do with that stone,' said Gandalf; 'and in any case it may have nothing to do with us - but of course it may be anything. Don't do anything like that again. Let's hope we get some rest undisturbed. You Sam can go on the first watch. And stay near the door, well away from the well,' he grunted, as he rolled himself in a blanket.

Sam sat miserably by the door in the pitch dark, but kept on turning round, for fear some unknown thing should crawl out of the well. He wished he could cover the hole, if only with a blanket; but he dared not go near, even though Gandalf seemed to be snoring.

Gandalf was actually not asleep, and the snores came from Boromir, who lay next him. The wizard was thinking hard again trying to recall every memory he could of his former journey in the Mines, and trying to make up his mind about the next course to take. After about an hour he got up and came over to Sam.

'Get into a blanket and have a sleep, my lad! ' he said in a more kindly tone. 'You could sleep, I guess. I can't, so I may as well do the watching.'

'I know what is the matter with me,' he muttered. 'I need a pipe; and I think I'll risk it.' The last thing Sam saw before sleep took him was a vision of the old wizard squatting on the floor s.h.i.+elding a blazing chip in his gnarled hands between his knees. The flicker for a moment showed his sharp nose and the puffs of smoke.

It was Gandalf who roused them all from sleep. He had watched all alone for about six hours and let the others rest. 'And in the meantime I have made up my mind,' he said. 'I don't like the feel of the middle way, and I don't like the smell of the left hand- there is foul air down there, or I am no guide. I shall take the right hand way - it's time we began to go up again.'

For eight dark hours, not counting two brief halts, they marched on, and met no danger, and heard nothing and saw nothing but the faint gleam of the wizard's light bobbing like a will-o'-the-wisp in front of them. The pa.s.sage they had chosen wound steadily upwards, going, as far as they could judge, in great curves, and growing steadily wider. On neither side were there now any openings to other galleries or tunnels, and the floor, though rough in many places, was sound and without pits or cracks. They went quicker than the day before, and must have covered some twenty miles or more, perhaps fifteen in a straight line eastwards. As they went upwards Frodo's spirits rose a little; but still he felt oppressed, and still at times he heard or thought he heard away behind and through the patter of their own feet a following footfall that was not an echo.

They had gone nearly as far as the hobbits could endure without rest and sleep, and they were all thinking of a place to halt for the night, when suddenly the walls to right and left vanished. They halted. Gandalf seemed well pleased. 'I think we have reached the habitable parts,' he said, 'and are no great way from the eastern side. I can feel a change in the air, and guess we are in a wide hall. I think I will risk a little light.(31) He raised his wand and for a brief moment it blazed out like a flash of lightning. Great shadows leapt up and fled, and for a second or two they saw a vast roof high above their heads. On every side stretched a huge empty hall with straight hewn walls. Four entrances they glimpsed: dark arches in the walls: one at the west by which they had come, one before them in the east, and one on either side. Then the light went out.

'That is all I shall venture on for the present,' said the wizard. 'There used to be great windows on the mountain-side, and shafts leading out to the light and the upper reaches of the mines. I think that is where we are. But it is night now, and we cannot tell till morning. If I am right, tomorrow we may actually see the morning peeping in. But in the meanwhile we had better go no further without exploration. There will still be a good way to go before we are through - the East Gates are on a much lower level than this, and it is a long road down. Let us rest if we can.'

They spent that night in the great empty hall, huddled in a corner to escape the draught - there seemed to be a steady flow of chill air in through the eastern archway. The vastness and immensity of the tunnels and excavations filled the hobbits with bewilderment.(32) 'There must have been a mighty tribe o' dwarves here at one time,' said Sam; 'and every one as busy as a badger for a hundred years to make all this - and most in hard rock too. What did they do it all for? They didn't live in these darksome holes, surely? '

'Not for long,' said Gandalf;(33) 'though the miners often took long spells underground, I believe. They found precious metals, and jewels - very abundantly in the earlier days. But the mines were most renowned for the metal which was only found here in any quant.i.ty: Moria-silver, or true-silver as some call it. Ithil (34) the Elves call it, and value it still above gold.(35) It is nearly as heavy as lead, and malleable as copper, but the dwarves could by some secret of theirs make it as hard as steel. It surpa.s.ses common silver in all save beauty, and even in that it is its equal. In their day the dwarflords of Uruktharbun (36) were more wealthy than any of the Kings of Men.'

'Well, we haven't clapped eyes on any kind of silver since we came in,' grunted Sam; 'nor any jewels neither. Nor on any dwarves.'

'I don't think we are likely to until we get further up (37) and nearer to the eastern entrances,' said Gandalf.

'I hope we do find dwarves in the end,' said Frodo. 'I would give a great deal to see old Balin. Bilbo was fond of him and would be delighted to have news of him. He visited him in Hobbiton once long ago, but that was before I went to live there.'

But these words carried his thoughts far away from the darkness; and memories of Bag-end while Bilbo was still there crowded [? thickly] into his mind. He wished with all his heart that he was back there, mowing the lawn, or pottering among the flowers, and that he had never heard of the Ring.(38) It was his turn to watch. As silence fell and one by one the others fell asleep he felt the strange dread a.s.sail him again. But though he listened endlessly through the slow hours till he was relieved he heard no sound of any footfall. Only once, far away where he guessed the western archway stood, he fancied he saw two pale points of light - almost like luminous eyes. He started - 'I must have nearly fallen asleep,' he thought; 'I was on the edge of a dream.' He rubbed his eyes and stood up, and remained standing peering into the dark until he was relieved by Merry. He quickly fell asleep, but after a while it seemed to him in his dream that he heard whispers, and saw two pale points of light approaching. He woke - and found that the others were speaking softly near him, and that a dim light was actually falling on his face. High up above the eastern arch, through a shaft near the roof, came a grey gleam. And across the hall through the northern arch light also glimmered faint and distantly.

Frodo sat up. 'Good morning! ' said Gandalf. 'For morning it is again at last. I was right, you see. Before today's over we ought to get to the Eastern Gate and see the waters of Helevorn in the Dimrilldale before us.'(39) All the same the wizard felt some doubt as to their exact position - they might be far to the north or the south of the Gates. The eastern arch was the most likely exit to choose, and the draught that flowed through it seemed to promise a pa.s.sage leading before long to the outer air; but beyond the opening there was no trace of light. 'If I could only see out of one of these shafts,' he said, 'I should know better what to do. We might wander backwards and forwards endlessly, and just miss the way out. We had better explore a little before we start. And let us go first towards the light.'

Pa.s.sing under the northern arch they went down a wide corridor and as they went the glimmer of light grew stronger. Turning a sharp corner they came to a great door on their right. It was half open, and beyond there was a large square chamber. It was only dimly lit, but to their eyes, after so long in the dark, it seemed almost dazzlingly light, and they blinked as they entered. Their feet disturbed deep dust and stumbled amongst things lying on the floor within the doorway whose shapes they could not at first make out.

They saw now that the chamber was lit by a wide shaft high up in the far wall - it slanted upwards and far above a small square patch of sky could be seen where it issued outwards. The light fell directly on a table in the midst of the chamber, a square block some three feet high upon which was laid a great slab of whitened stone.

'It looks like a tomb!' [muttered >] thought Frodo, and went forward to look at it more closely with a curious sense of foreboding. Gandalf came quickly to his side. On the slab was deeply cut in Runes:(40) BALIN SON OF BURIN LORD OF MORIA.

Gandalf and Frodo looked at one another. 'He is dead then. I feared it somehow,' said Frodo.

Although the outline for the story of the pa.s.sage of Moria continues well beyond this point (p.443), this first draft of the narrative stopped here. My father pencilled some barely legible notes on the blank remainder of the page, and years later (when, as I think, the page had become detached from the rest of the chapter: see note 40) he deciphered them as follows.

Balin son of Burin was changed to Balin son of Fundin, as in The Hobbit (see p. 444).

At the end of the narrative in ink is written, as in FR: 'Gimli cast his hood over his face.'

'Runes of? Dwarves'

'(they) look about and see broken swords and ?axe-heads and cloven s.h.i.+elds'

'The?trodden book is bloodstained & tossed in a corner. Only some can be read. Balin was slain in ? fray in Dimrill dale. They have taken the gates they are coming'

On the back of the page is a first scribbled sketch of a 'Page of Balin's Book' (see note 40).

It may be that my father did not at this time feel that he had reached the end of a chapter, and intended to continue the story; but it is known from his own words in the Foreword to the Second Edition (1966), in which he set down some recollections of the stages in the writing of the book, that he stopped for a long time at precisely this point. He said there that by the end of 1939 'the tale had not yet reached the end of Book I' (and it is clear that he referred to Book I of FR, not to Volume I of The Lord of the Rings); and that In spite of the darkness of the next five years I found that the story could not now be wholly abandoned, and I plodded on, mostly by night, till I stood by Balin's tomb in Moria. There I halted for a long while. It was almost a year later when I went on and so came to Lothlorien and the Great River late in 1941.

This can only mean that the story was broken off in Moria late in 1940. It seems impossible to accommodate these dates to such other evidence as exists on the subject. I think it extremely probable, even virtually certain, that these last chapters, taking the story from Rivendell to Moria, belong to the latter part of 1939; and indeed my father himself said, in a letter to Stanley Unwin dated 19 December 1939, that he had 'never quite ceased work' on The lard of the Rings, and that 'it has reached Chapter XVI' (Letters no. 37). The chapter-numbers at this stage are unfortunately so erratic that the evidence they provide is very difficult to use; but when it is observed that the number 'XV' was pencilled on the original ma.n.u.script of 'The Council of Elrond', and that the chapter which afterwards continued the story from the point where the present text ends - originally called 'The Mines of Moria (ii)' and afterwards 'The Bridge of Khazad-dum' - is numbered 'XVII', it seems probable that it was to 'The Mines of Moria' that my father referred in the letter of December 1939. In any case 'Chapter XVI' could not by any reckoning be one of the chapters of Book I in FR. I feel sure, therefore, that - more than a quarter of a century later - he erred in his recollection of the year. But it would be out of the question that he should err in his recollection that he 'halted for a long while by Balin's tomb in Moria.' Internal evidence in any case suggests that the 'wave' of composition which had carried the story from the Council of Elrond to the chamber of Balin's tomb came to an end here. All subsequent texts rest on a developed form of the Council and a different composition of the Company of the Ring.

There this history halts also. But before ending there remains another outline sc.r.a.p, found on the same isolated page as bears the preliminary sketches for the descent from the Red Pa.s.s (p. 431, note 1) and the spell that held the West Gate of Moria (p.444). It is in fact a continuation of the 'Sketch of the Moria chapter' given on pp. 442 - 3, which ends with the words., Pursuit is after them. Here follows the loss of Gandalf. Written in a faint pencilled scribble it is extremely difficult to read.

They are pursued by goblins and a B[lack] R[ider] [written above: a Balrog] after escaping from Balin's Tomb - they come to a bridge of slender stone over a gulf.

Gandalf turns back and holds off [?enemy], they cross the bridge but the B[lack] R[ider] leaps forward and wrestles with Gandalf. The bridge cracks under them and the last they see is Gandalf falling into the pit with the B[lack] R[ider]. There is a flash of fire and blue light up from abyss.

Their grief. Trotter now guides party.

(Of course Gandalf must reappear later - probably fall is not as deep as it seemed. Gandalf thrusts Balrog under him and so....... and eventually following the subterranean stream in the gulf he found a way out - but he does not turn up until they have had many adventures: not indeed until they are on [?borders] of Mordor and the King of Ond is being beaten in battle.) This seems to show clearly that before ever the story of the fall of Gandalf from the Bridge of Khazad-dum was written, my father fully intended that he should return.

NOTES.

1. To this point the text of this 'Sketch' was struck through, but the remainder was not.

2. See p. 437, note 35; and cf. the corresponding pa.s.sage in FR (p. 338), where Gandalf says: 'There are Orcs, very many of them. And some are large and evil: black Uruks of Mordor.'

3. In FR (p. 313) the Company moved south towards Moria by day, and they 'wandered and scrambled in a barren country of red stones. Nowhere could they see any gleam of water...'

4. My father first wrote here (changing it at once): 'Caradras dilthen the Little Redway'. For Caradras as the name of the river Redway (later Silverlode) on the other side of the Mountains see p. 433, note 15.

5. It was now the night of 5 December, and full moon was on the 7th (see p. 434, note 19).

6. This sentence was enclosed within square brackets, and the concluding words 'from whence they heard the splash of running water' struck out. These changes belong with the writing of the ma.n.u.script.

7. Though the word 'pool' is used, the reference is clearly to the lake and not to the 'pool' which they had just walked through. The 'soft bubbling noise' comes from the 'lake'.

8. The whole pa.s.sage from 'Well, here we are at last' on p.448 to this point is a rider on a slip, replacing the following in the original text: 'Here is the gate,' said Gandalf. 'This is where the road from Hollin ended, and the elves planted these trees in old days; for the west-gates were made chiefly for their use in their traffic with the dwarves.'

The replacement certainly belongs with the first writing of the chapter, for the dispatch of the ponies by Sam and Trotter is subsequently referred to in the text as written.

9. The word 'wholly' is enclosed in square brackets.

10. In FR (p. 318) the hammer and anvil are 'surmounted by a crown with seven stars', and 'more clearly than all else there shone forth in the middle of the door a single star with many rays.' The original draft has no mention of the two trees bearing crescent moons.

11. In FR the inscription on the doors is of ithildin which mirrors only starlight and moonlight (p. 318). In this original draft, of course, the time-scheme is different - the middle of the day, not early night (see note 28).

12. This was first written: 'Narfi made the Doors'.

13. Merry replaced Frodo, who replaced Boromir; it was apparently said of Boromir that he was not much disturbed by Gandalfs bristling brows, and that he secretly wished that the doors might stay shut.

14. I cannot interpret this. In FR (p. 320) Gandalf's invocation means: Elvish gate open now for us; doorway of the Dwarf-folk listen to the word [beth] of my tongue.'

15. The text of this pa.s.sage, from 'Then he sat down in silence', as first written read: Only Trotter seemed troubled. Boromir was smiling broadly behind his back. Sam ventured to whisper in Frodo's ear: 'I've never seen old Gandalf at a loss for words before,' he said. 'It looks as if we were not meant to pa.s.s these gates, somehow.'

'I have a feeling of dread,' said Frodo slowly, 'either of the gates or of something else. But I do not think Gandalf is beaten - he is thinking hard, I fancy.'

Subsequently Sam's whispered speech to Frodo was given to Merry, with the addition: 'He ought not to have sent off the ponies till he got them open.'

16. Written in pencil here: 'Sound of wolves far off at same time as swish in water'. But this would have been added when the time of their entry into the Mines had been altered; cf. FR p. 321 and note 28.

17. These words were struck out in pencil and the form Melin subst.i.tuted. In the Etymologies (V.372), stem MEL, are given Noldorin mellon and meldir 'friend', and also Quenya melin 'dear'.

18. In FR there are two doors; and despite the single door described here, the inscription bears the words 'The Doors of Durin'; Gandalf tells them: 'these doors open outwards, but nothing can open them inwards. They can swing out, or they can be broken...'

19. As first written (and not struck out) this pa.s.sage read: 'They had just time; Trotter who came last was not more than four steps up when the arms of the creature in the water came feeling and fingering the wall.'

20. In the first of these lacunas the text seems to read in it, or possibly with (in which case his wand was omitted; cf. FR p. 322, 'he thrust his staff against the doors'). In the second, the word looks like open (perhaps for opening).

21. The illegible word is just a series of wiggles; certainly not stood, the word here in FR. Just possibly, survived.

22. The actual reading here is ' - not by accident'. The sentence was enclosed in square brackets at the time of writing, but a similar sentence remains in FR.

23. Dunruin replaced, apparently at the time of writing, Carondoom (see p. 433, note 13). Subsequently Dimrilldale was written in in pencil.

24. This sentence was a replacement (to all appearance made at the time of writing., see note 31) of: In the confusion of the attack at the Westgate some of the bundles and packages had been left on the ground; but they had still with them one bundle of torches which they had brought with them in case of need, but never yet used.'

25. The words following Glamdring are enclosed in square brackets. Glamdring has appeared in the 'Sketch' for the chapter; see pp. 442-4.

26. This sentence was changed in the act of writing, the successive stages not being crossed out: 'than any cat that ever walked', 'than is the cat of Benish Armon', 'than the cats of Queen [?Tamar >] Margoliante Beruthiel' - both these names being left to stand.

27. The original pa.s.sage that follows here was enclosed in square brackets and later struck out in pencil: While the others were trying to keep up their spirits with hopeful talk, and were asking whispered questions concerning the lands [struck out: of Dunruin and Fangorn] beyond the mountains, the vale of Redway, the forest of Fangorn, and beyond, he felt the certainty...

This derives from the 'Sketch' for the chapter (see p.442).

28. In the 'Sketch' (p.442) it is said, as here, that 'it was about 10 o'clock in the morning' when they entered the Mines. This does not agree with what is said on p. 447, that when 'the sun reached the south' Gandalf 'stood up and said that it was high time to begin to search for the gates', and the sun was s.h.i.+ning across the face of the cliff when he made the signs appear. This suggests that the door was opened in the early afternoon. The sentence in the text here was altered in pencil to 'five o'clock in the evening', but it is hard to say to what form of the story this refers. In FR it was fully dark - 'the countless stars were kindled' - when they entered the Mines (pp. 320, 326), and though it was early December it was surely after five o'clock. A few lines below in the present text, however, another change in the time-scheme clearly introduces that of FR; see note 29.

29. The words 'the night is already come' were changed in pencil to 'the night is already old', and the following sentence, which had been enclosed in square brackets, was struck out. As written, the text agrees with the story that they went into the Mines at about ten in the morning - it would now be about 8 p.m. (see note 28). As changed, it agrees with FR, p. 326 ('outside the late Moon is riding westward and the middle-night has pa.s.sed').

30. 'Sam' replaced 'Merry' at the time of writing, since at the end of this episode it is Sam, not changed from Merry, who takes the first watch as a punishment for casting the stone into the well.

31. This pa.s.sage was much changed in the course of composition. At first 'Gandalf allowed two torches to be lit to help in exploration. Their light found no roof, but was sufficient to show that they had come (as they had guessed) into a wide s.p.a.ce high and broad like a great hall.' It has however been said, by a change apparently made during the initial composition (see note 24), that they had neither torches nor means of making them.

32. The pa.s.sage in FR p. 329 from 'All about them as they lay hung the darkness...' to 'the actual dread and wonder of Moria' was first drafted in the margin of the ma.n.u.script here, perhaps quite soon after the writing of the main text.

33. 'Gandalf' is an early emendation from 'Trotter', and in the following speech.

34. Ithil is an early, perhaps immediate, change from Erceleb.

35. This pa.s.sage was changed in the act of writing from: - very abundantly in the earlier days, and especially the silver. Moria-silver was (and still is) renowned; and many held it a precious This is where the conception of mithril first emerged, though not yet the name (see note 34). The reference to mithril in The Hobbit (Chapter XIII, 'Not at Home') entered in the third edition of 1966: until then the text read: 'It was of silvered steel, and ornamented with pearls, and with it went a belt of pearls and crystals.' This was changed to: 'It was of silver-steel, which the elves call mithril, and with it went a belt of pearls and crystals.'

36 Against Uruktharbun is pencilled Azanulbizar, which in FR is the Dwarvish name of Dimrill-dale. If Uruktharbun is Moria (and the next revision of this text has 'the dwarflords of Khazad-dum'), Azanulbizar may have been intended to replace it and to have referred at first to Moria; on the other hand, my father may perhaps have wished to name the 'dwarflords' as lords in the Dimrill-dale. It may be mentioned that placed in this ma.n.u.script, though written on different paper and presumably belonging to a later stage when Gimli had become a member of the Company, is a sheet of primary workings for his song in Moria; and in these occur the lines: When Durin came to Azanul and found and named the nameless pool.

In notes written years later (after the publication of The Lord of the Rings) my father observed that 'the interpretation of the Dwarf names (owing to scanty knowledge of Khuzdul) is largely uncertain, except that, since this region [i.e. Moria and Dimrill-dale] was originally a Dwarf-home and primarily named by them, the Sindarin and Westron names are probably in origin of similar senses.' He interpreted (hesitantly) Azanulbizar as containing ZN 'dark, dim', ul 'streams', and bizar a dale or valley, the whole thus meaning 'Vale of Dim Streams'.

The name Khazad-dum had already appeared in the Quenta Silmarillion (V. 274), where it was the name of the Dwarf-city in the Blue Mountains which the Elves called Nogrod.

37. The word up here is odd (and my father later put a query against it), since the statement that the East Gates were on a much lower level than the great hall where they now were is part of the original composition.

38. This pa.s.sage survives in FR (pp. 331 - 2), but there Frodo's thoughts turn to Bilbo and Bag End for a different reason - the mention by Gandalf of Bilbo's corslet of mithril-rings. Moria-silver had only just emerged (note 35), and the connection with Bilbo's mailcoat had not been made.

39. In the previous chapter the name Dimrilldale appears as a correction (p. 433, note 13), together with the first mention of the lake in the dale, there called Cla.s.smere; Mirrormere is named on the map reproduced on p. 439. The Elvish name Helevorn (in the Etymologies, V.365, translated 'black-gla.s.s') given to it here had appeared in the Quenta Silmarillion as the name of the lake in Thargelion beside which dwelt Cranthir, son of Feanor. No other Elvish name for Mirrormere is recorded in published writing, but in the notes referred to in note 36 my father said that the Sindarin name, not given in LR, was in fact Nen Cenedril 'Lake Looking- gla.s.s'. Translating Kheled-zaram as 'probably "gla.s.s-pool"', he noted: 'kheled was certainly a Dwarf word for "gla.s.s", and seems to be the origin of Sindarin beled "gla.s.s". Cf. Lake Hele(d)vorn near the Dwarf-regions in the north of Dor Caranthir [Thargelion]: it means "black gla.s.s", and is probably also a translation of a Dwarf- name (given by the Dwarves: the same is probably the case in the Moria region) such as Narag-zaram (that NRG was Khuzdul for "black" is seen in the Dwarf-name for Mordor: Nargun).'

40. As the ma.n.u.script of this chapter was found among my father's papers it ended at the foot of a page, at the words 'a great slab of whitened stone' on p. 460. I had a.s.sumed that this was where my father broke off, until, a few days before the typescript of this book was due to go to the printers, I came most unexpectedly upon a further page, beginning at the words '"It looks like a tomb!" thought Frodo', which had evidently been separated from the rest of the chapter long ago, on account of the inscriptions. It was of course too late to reproduce these in this book, but an account of the runic alphabets as my father conceived them at this time and of the writing on Balin's tomb and in the Book of Mazarbul will, I hope, be published in Volume VII.

It may be noticed here, however, that it was at this point that my father decided to abandon the Old English (or 'Hobbit') runes and to use the real runes of Beleriand, which were already in a developed form. The inscription on the tomb (Balin Son of Burin Lord of Moria) was first written in the former, and then immediately below in 'Angerthas', twice, with the same words but in runes that differ in certain points.

On the back of this newly discovered page, and as I think very probably dating from the same time, is a very roughly pencilled design of a 'Page of Balin's Book', in runes representing English spelt phonetically, which reads thus: And on the right-hand bottom corner of the page, torn off from the rest, is the name Kazaddum.