The Lord of the Rings: The Taming of Smeagol (Part Two)

 

The Tale

 

‘But that day wore on, and when afternoon faded towards evening they were still scrambling along the ridge and had found no way of escape.’

Frodo and Sam seem to hear faint sounds of pursuit behind them, the fall of a stone or the sounds of flapping feet. Even the wind through the rocks sounds like hissing through sharp teeth. But there is no other sign that Gollum may be following them.

As they pass along the ridge it bends gradually northward and gets lower, though their path is hindered by deep, worn gullies in the cliff face that drives the hobbits further from the edge. At last, they are stopped by a cleft deeper than most. Beyond it, the cliffs rise ever higher. West would lead them back into more labor and delay; to go east would take them to the outer parapet.

Frodo decides the only way to go is down into the gully before them to see where it goes, though Sam fears it will just lead to a nasty drop. The cleft turns out to be longer and deeper than it seems once they get down into it. A ways down they find ‘a few gnarled and stunted trees’, the first they had seen for days, mostly dead but straggling to the cliff’s edge. Frodo looks over and sees that the cliff is much lower here, not so sheer and full of broken stone. He estimates it is eighteen fathoms (108 feet) down.

‘And that’s enough!’ said Sam. ‘Ugh! How I do hate looking down from a height! But looking’s better than climbing.’

If they’re going to try, they need to try soon. The day is getting darker, and a storm is coming. Frodo is determined to give it a go. Sam says alright, but he’s going first. He doesn’t want to slip and take Frodo down with him. With no further preparation, he swings his legs over the brink and twists over the edge. ‘It is doubtful if he ever did anything braver in cold blood, or more unwise.’

‘No, no! Sam, you old ass!’ Frodo hauls Sam up again and tells him to be patient. Frodo will scout a way down, then call him to follow or come back up himself. Sam says it would be better to wait until morning and more light, but Frodo grudges every minute.  He lowers himself down almost a full stretch and finds a ledge with his toes. He is just reporting to Sam when he is cut short.

The speeding storm has overtaken the day and swallowed that light with a leap. At the same moment there is a crack of thunder and a blast of wind, and on that wind rides the rising shriek of a Nazgul, its terror magnified by the isolation and darkness into knives of horror and despair. Frodo involuntarily claps his hands to his ears, loses his grip, and goes slithering down the cliff with a wailing cry.

Sam flops to his belly, crawling to the edge and calling after his master. After a heart-stopping minute Frodo calls faintly back. He is all right: he has come to rest on a somewhat wider ledge, not too far down. But for some reason, he can’t see. He wonders if he’s been struck blind.

Sam wonders what can have happened to him. It is dim but not dark. He can see his master’s grey figure now, far out the reach of any outstretched hand. Suddenly the rain and hail of the storm strikes. That settles it. He is coming down anyhow, to help Frodo.

Frodo calls up that Sam should wait; he is feeling better now. ‘Wait! You can’t do anything without a rope.’

‘Rope!’ The word has triggered his memory. ‘Well, if I don’t deserve to be hung on the end of one as a warning to numbskulls! You’re nowt but a ninnyhammer, Sam Gamgee: that’s what the Gaffer said to me often enough’. He’s been carrying a forgotten coil of Elven rope from Lorien in the bottom of his pack for hundreds of miles.

He throws an end of it down to Frodo, who seems to see it as a shimmering light coming down to him in his darkness. Frodo ties it around his waist, and with Sam’s help, scrambles back up the cliff. They withdraw from the edge a ways and rest. The storm is sending down a spate of rain; if Frodo had stayed below he would have been washed away.

They discuss the luck of having the rope. Sam had taken a fancy to it and personally packed a coil, being told ‘It may be a help in many needs.’ It is soft to the hand, but thin and tough, and packs away close and light. He measures it and it comes out to thirty ells (37.5 yards, or almost 113 feet).

Frodo decides that if the rain passes before nightfall they should try again. It is already passing. He doesn’t want to spend more time up here ‘with the eyes of the Dark Country looking over the marshes.’ The clouds roll away towards Gondor and Rohan. But here the evening comes out again, with a few pale stars and a crescent moon.

They tie the rope to a nearby stump. This time Sam will go down first; they tie the other end of the rope around his waist. The climb doesn’t feel as bad as he imagined: the rope seems to give him courage. Frodo follows, although he doesn’t quite have Sam’s confidence in the slender rope. But at last they are at the bottom, and have escaped the Emyn Muil. But Sam looks up forlornly at the cliff.

‘Ninnyhammer! … Noodles! My beautiful rope!’ There it is at the top and tied to a stump, and as nice a little stair for Gollum to climb down after them. But Frodo can think of no way to get it. Sam tugs the rope regretfully. Maybe even made by Galadriel made it herself. Galadriel, he murmurs. He gives it one last pull.

To their surprise the rope comes slithering down the cliff, landing all around the startled Sam. Frodo laughs, suggesting that Sam must not have tied it very well, or that the rope frayed. Sam is offended by both suggestions. He is quite competent at knots (his Uncle Andy and his rope-walk again) and he’ll hear nothing against the work of the Elves. He believes the rope came when it was called!

Well, it came, and that’s the important thing, says Frodo. But now they have to think of their next move. They look up at the stars, and the crescent moon, now waxing brighter. ‘They do cheer the heart, don’t they? Said Sam looking up. ‘Elvish they are, somehow.’

‘Yes,” said Frodo. ‘But he [the moon] won’t be full for some days. I don’t think we’ll try the marshes by the light of half a moon.’

 

Bits and Bobs

“You’re nowt but a ninnyhammer” translates into “You’re nothing (nowt) but a simpleton (ninnyhammer)”. The term “noodles” used later also means ‘simpletons’ (see Noodles, Nitwits, and Numskulls, by Maria Leach).

Frodo’s momentary blindness seems to be related to the horror of the passing Nazgul as much as the flash of lightning; it is relieved by the light of the Elven rope.

The stars and moon (which is male in Middle-earth mythology; it is steered by the Maiar, Tilion) seem Elvish to Sam, and the Elves, ‘the People of the Stars’, have been connected with the stars since they awoke in the perpetual twilight before the rising of the Sun or Moon. Perhaps because the moon is associated with the night and stars it takes on that Elvish connotation.