The Tale
‘The red glare over Mordor
died away.’ The morning twilight grows darker as vapors rise over the mountains
in the east [the Ephel Duath, ‘Mountains of Shadow’], blocking the sun. Frodo
and Sam eat a little, but Gollum is restless and will only take a little water.
He does not settle down but searches around a bit, then suddenly disappears.
It’s Sam’s turn to sleep
first, and he falls into a fitful, fretful sleep, plagued with dreams of looking
for his pipe in a strangely wretched version of Bag End. He wakes up, realizing
his pipe is in his pack, but of course he has no leaf. He looks around. It is almost
dark, it seems. How long has he been asleep? Only about three hours, Frodo
replies. It’s not even noon. But it’s getting darker and darker.
Sam wonders if a storm is
coming. He hears what sounds like thunder, or drums. Frodo says that’s been
going on for hours, and the earth is trembling. There’s been no sign of Gollum.
Sam hopes he hasn’t gotten lost, though he can’t abide the wretch and he’s
never been of any use. Frodo reminds him of the Dead Marshes. Still, Sam
grumbles, he might be up to some sort of tricks, and if Gollum himself gets
caught he’d likely rat them out in a minute and then they’ll be in trouble. The
ground rumbles even louder and trembles. Frodo thinks they’re in trouble already.
‘Maybe,’ said Sam; ‘but where
there’s life there’s hope, as my Gaffer used to say, and need of vittles,
as he mostways used to add. You have a bite, Mr. Frodo, and then a bit of
sleep.’
The afternoon wears on,
getting darker and darker in a colorless gloom, stifling but not warm. Sam
watches Frodo’s unquiet sleep as his master tosses and turns and sometimes
murmurs Gandalf’s name. Suddenly he hears a hiss, and Gollum is with them, crawling
on all fours, eyes gleaming. ‘Wake up, sleepies!’ he whispers, excited or
frightened. They must leave at once!
Sam is suspicious; it isn’t
even teatime yet, at least in decent places where they have tea. As Gollum
points out, however, they aren’t in decent places, and must get going. He claws at Frodo, who starts up and grabs him
in alarm. Gollum backs away and insists they must move now and gives no further
information. Frodo sighs and prepares to journey out into the deepening
darkness. Gollum leads them carefully
and quietly, running almost bent to the ground. The hobbits, with their
elven-cloaks and hobbit stealth, pass almost invisibly through the shadows.
They walk for an hour or so
across a broken slope that leads south, the quiet of the land troubled only by
the drumming thunder that rolls mysteriously far away. At last, they approach a
belt of trees, ancient and vast, their tops gaunt and broken. Gollum breaks his
silence to announce that they are at the Cross-roads. There are no other paths;
they must go that way if they are to proceed.
They move along, as ‘soft-footed
as hunting cats’, until they come to a great ring in the middle of the trees,
where four roads meet, north, south, east, and west. The trees surround it like
the pillars of an ancient hall. To the east, plunging into darkness, is the
road they must take.
Standing there, Frodo
suddenly becomes aware of a light on Sam’s face. It is the sun in the west,
which has finally sunk low enough to escape the pall of clouds. The brief glow
illuminates an ancient statue of some old king, ’still and solemn as the great
stone kings of Argonath.’ It has been beheaded and defiled with graffiti by the
orcs, and a one-eyed stone placed in travesty on its broken neck.
But Frodo notices the old
king’s head rolled away by the roadside, lit by the setting sun. It gleams,
crowned by trailing flowers like small white stars, golden stonecrop in its
hair. The old king has a crown again.
‘They cannot conquer forever!’
said Frodo. And then suddenly the brief glimpse was gone. The Sun dipped and
vanished, and as if at the shuttering of a lamp, black night fell.’
Bits and Bobs
Abide means
"to be able to live with or put up with." If you can't abide something, it means you can't stand it. If you can abide it,
it means you can live with it. Sam has so far actually been able to abide with
Gollum; it just hasn’t been comfortably.
The earliest example of the saying 'Where there's life, there's hope' has been traced to the Roman playwright Terence (died 139 BC). Such 'gnomic' sayings sprinkled all throughout the LOTR give the impression of a continuity of folkloric wisdom.
‘Vittles’ is, of course, the
lower-class way of pronouncing ‘victuals’ (though I don’t know if anyone ever actually
pronounced it as it is spelled), meaning food supplies or provisions. [Alteration (influenced
by Late Latin vīctuālia, provisions) of Middle English vitaille,
from Old French, from Late Latin vīctuālia, provisions, from
neuter pl. of Latin vīctuālis, of nourishment, from vīctus,
nourishment, from past participle of vīvere, to live]. The fact that the
Gaffer uses it suggest his rough-and-ready nature; the word in now most
associated with hillbillies and cowboys.
The word coronal (here
used in relation to the wreath of flowers around the old king’s head) means a
binding or an encircling of the head like a crown.
And of course, Gollum’s use
of the childlike, nursery word sleepies just makes him more endearing
and tragic.
Illustrators seem to love
the image of the King at the Cross-roads. It is one of those moments (like Sam
spotting the star high above the reeks of Mordor) that suggests ‘They cannot
conquer forever!’
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