(iv)
Bilbo the Warrior
Finally, we should also note a major threshold in Bilbo’s character development that occurs in this chapter. Although Bilbo acquires his knife quite early in the story (in the troll’s lair, near the end of what eventually came to be Chapter II), he does not use it in fight with the goblins (Chapter IV), or against the wolves (Chapter VI). He pulls it out but does nothing more than hold it ready during his encounter with Gollum (Chapter V).27 Here in Chapter VIII he uses it to kill an enemy in self-defense, the spider having attacked first (an achievement which ‘made quite a difference to Mr Baggins. He felt a different person . . .’ – p. 309). That he is indeed ‘much bolder and fiercer’ is shortly borne out in the spider battle, where Bilbo attacks first, initiating combat to save his friends (specifically, Bombur) and kills great numbers of the giant spiders. This aspect of the hobbit’s character will see its fullest development in Plot Notes B; see p. 361ff.
‘The Enchanted Stream’
The following interpolation represents the only significant scene not in the original handwritten manuscript to be added to The Hobbit before its publication. The text comes from the First Typescript (Marq. 1/1/58 & 1/1/30), starting about the middle of typescript page 77 (1/1/58:2). As noted in the introduction, this initial typescript was not made until after the manuscript draft had reached the scene on Ravenhill (about a third of the way through Chapter XV), and thus uses the later form of the characters’ names (e.g., ‘Beorn’ for Medwed and ‘Thorin’ for Gandalf the dwarf-leader).
No drafting survives of this interpolated passage, though some must have existed: the text is too smooth and its insertion too regular to be the result of composition on the typewriter.
All this went on for what seemed to the hobbit ages upon ages; and he was always hungry, for they were very very careful with their provisions. Even so, as days followed days, and still the forest seemed just the same, they began to get anxious. The food would not last for ever: it was in fact already beginning to get low. They tried shooting at the squirrels, and they wasted many arrows before they managed to bring one down on the path. But when they roasted it it proved horrible to taste, and they shot no more squirrels.
They were thirsty too, for they had none too much water, and in all the time they had seen neither spring nor stream. This was their state when one day they found their path blocked by a running water. It flowed fast and strong but not very wide right across the way, and it was black, or looked it in the gloom. It was well that BeornTN1 had warned them against it, or they would have drunk from it, whatever its colour, and filled some of their emptied skins at its bank. As it was they only thought of how to cross it without wetting themselves in its water. There had been a bridge of wood across, but it had rotted and fallen leaving only the broken posts near the bank.TN2
Bilbo kneeling on the brink and peering forward cried: ‘There is a boat against the far bank! Now why could it not have been on this side!’TN3
‘How far do you think it is?’ asked Thorin, for [added: by now] they knew Bilbo had the sharpest eyes among them.
‘Not at all far. I shouldn’t think above twelve yards.’TN4
‘Twelve yards! I thought it was a river not a little stream,TN5 but my eyes don’t see as well as they used a hundred years ago. Still twelve yards is as good as a mile. We can’t jump it and we daren’t try to wade or swim.’
‘Can any of you throw a rope?’
‘What’s the good of that? The boat is sure to be tied up, even if we could hook it, which I doubt.’
‘I don’t believe it is tied,’ said Bilbo, ‘though of course I can’t be sure in this light; but it looks to me as if it was just drawn up on the bank, which is low just there where the path goes down to the water.’
‘Dori is the strongest, but Fili is the youngestTN6 and still has the best sight,’ said Thorin. ‘Come here Fili and see if you can see the boat Mr. Baggins is talking about.’
Fili thought he could; so when he had stared a long while to get an idea of the direction, the others brought him a rope. They had several with them, and on the end of the longest they fastened one of the large iron hooks they had used for catching their packs to the straps about their shoulders. Fili took this in his hand, balanced it for a moment, and then flung it across the stream.
Splash it fell in the water! ‘Not far enough!’ said Bilbo who was peering forward. ‘A couple of feet and you would have dropped it onto the boat. Try again. I don’t suppose the magic is strong enough to hurt you, if you just touch a bit of wet rope.’
Fili picked up the hook when he had drawn it back, rather doubtfully all the same. This time he threw it with all his strength.
‘Steady!’ said Bilbo, ‘you have thrown it right into the wood on the other side now. Draw it back gently.’ Fili hauled the rope back slowly, and after a while Bilbo said: ‘Carefully! It is lying on the boat; let’s hope the hook will catch.’
It did. The rope went taut, and Fili pulled in vain. Kili came to his help, and then Oin and Gloin. They tugged and tugged, and suddenly they all fell over on their backs. Bilbo was on the look out, however, caught the rope and with a piece of stick fended off the little black boat as it came rushing across the stream. ‘Help!’ he shouted, and Balin was just in time to seize the boat before it floated off down the current.
‘It was tied after all,’ said he, looking at the snapped painterTN7 that was still dangling from it. ‘That was a good pull, my lads; and a good job that our rope was the stronger.’
‘Who’ll cross first?’ asked Bilbo.
‘I shall,’ said Thorin, ‘and you will come with me and Fili and Balin. That’s as many as the boat will hold at a time. After that Kili and Oin and Gloin and Dori, next Ori and Nori, Bifur and Bofur; and last Dwalin and Bombur.’
‘I’m always last and I don’t like it,’ said Bombur. ‘It’s somebody’s else’s turn to-day.’
‘You should not be so fat. As you are, you must be with the last and lightest boatload. Don’t start grumbling against orders, or something bad will happen to you.’
‘There aren’t any oars. How are you going to push the boat back to the far bank?’ asked the hobbit.
‘Give me another length of rope and another hook,’ said Fili, and when they had got it ready he cast it into the darkness ahead and as high as he could throw it. Since it did not fall down again they saw that it must have stuck in the branches. ‘Get in now,’ said Fili, ‘and one of you haul on the rope that is stuck in a tree on the other side. One of the others must keep hold of the hook we used at first, and when you [> we] are safe on the other side he can hook it on and we [> you] can draw the boat back.’
In this way they were all soon on the far bank safe across the enchanted stream. Dwalin had just scrambled out with the coiled rope on his arm, and Bombur [added: (still grumbling)] was getting ready to follow, when something bad did happen. There was a flying sound of hooves on the path ahead. Out of the gloom came suddenly the shape of a flying deer. It charged into the dwarves and bowled them over, then gathered itself for a leap. High it sprang and cleared the water with a mighty jump. But it did not reach the other side in safety. Thorin was the only one who had kept his feet and his wits. As soon as they had landed he had bent his bow and fitted an arrow in case any hidden guardian of the boat appeared. Now he sent a swift and sure shot into the leaping beast. As it reached the further bank it stumbled. The shadows swallowed it up, but they heard the sound of hooves quickly falter and then grow still.
Before they could shout in praise of the shot, however, a dreadful wail from Bilbo put all thoughts of venison out of their minds. ‘Bombur has fallen in! Bombur is drowning!’ he cried. It was only too true. Bombur had only one foot on the land when the hartTN8 bore down on him, and sprang over him. He had stumbled thrusting the boat away from the bank, and then toppled back into the dark water, his hands slipping off the slimy roots at the edge, while the boat span slowly off and disappeared.TN9
&
nbsp; They could still see his hood above the water when they ran to the bank. Quickly they flung a rope with a hook towards him. His hand caught it, and they pulled him to the shore. He was drenched from hair to boots, of course, but that was not the worst. When they laid him on the bank he was already fast asleep with one hand clutching the rope so tight that they could not get it from his grasp; and fast asleep he remained in spite of all they could do.
They were still standing over him, cursing their ill luck and Bombur’s clumsiness, and lamenting the loss of the boat which made it impossible for them to go back and look for the hart, when they became aware of the dim blowing of horns in the wood and the sound as of dogs baying far off.TN10 Then they all fell silent; and as they sat it seemed they could hear the noise of a great hunt going by to the northTN11 of the path, though they saw no sign of it.
There they sat for a long while and did not dare to make a move. Bombur slept on with a smile on his fat face, as if he no longer cared for all the troubles that vexed them. Suddenly on the path ahead appeared some white deer, a hind and fawns, as snowy white as the hart had been dark. They glimmered in the shadows. Before Thorin could cry out threeTN12 of the dwarves had leaped to their feet and loosed off arrows from their bows. None seemed to find their mark. The deer turned and vanished into the trees as silently as they had come, and in vain the dwarves shot their arrows after them.
‘Stop! stop!’ shouted Thorin; but it was too late, the excited dwarves had wasted their last arrows, and now the bows that Beorn had given them were useless.
They were a gloomy party that night, and the gloom gathered still deeper on them in the following days. They had crossed the enchanted stream; but beyond it the path seemed to straggle on just as before, and in the forest they could see no change. Yet if they had known more about it and considered the meaning of the hunt and the white deer that had appeared upon their path, they would have known that they were at last drawing towards the eastern edge, and would soon have come, if they could have kept up their courage and their hope, to thinner trees and places where the sunlight came again.
But they did not know this, and they were burdened with the heavy body of Bombur, which they had to carry along with them as best they could, taking the wearisome task in turns of four each while the others shared their packs. If these had not become all too light in the last few days they would never have managed it; but a slumbering and smiling Bombur was a poor exchange for packs filled with food however heavy. In a few days a time came when there was practically nothing left to eat or drink. Nothing wholesome could they see growing in the wood, only funguses and herbs with pale leaves and unpleasant smell.
About four days from the enchanted stream they came to a part where the trees seemed mostly beeches. They were at first inclined to be cheered by the change, for here there was no undergrowth and the shadow was not so deep. There was a greenish light about them and in places they could see some distance to either side of the path. Yet all they could see was an endless vista of straight grey trunks like the pillars of some huge twilight hall.TN13 There was a breath of air and a noise of wind, but it had a sad sound. A few leaves came rustling down to remind them that outside the autumn was advancing fast; some beech-mast fell or was cast down by unseen squirrels high above, but it was hard and bitter and no use to them.TN14
Still Bombur slept and they grew very weary. Then they heard the disquieting laughter. Sometimes there was singing in the distance too. The laughter was the laughter of fair voices not of goblins, and the singing was beautiful, but it sounded eerie and strange, and they were not comforted, rather they hurried on from those parts with what strength they had left.
Two days later they found their path going downwards and before long they were in a valley filled almost entirely with a mighty growth of oaks.
‘Is there no end to this accursed forest?’ said Thorin. ‘Someone must climb a tree . . .’
The scene where Bilbo climbs the tree and sees the Purple Emperors (and spiders), while differing in word choice and detail, is substantially the same in the manuscript as the typescripts and book. However, after Bilbo’s descent the revised story once again departs from the original draft in order to cover Bombur’s waking from his enchanted sleep. We resume with the final paragraph on typescript page 81 (1/1/58:6), coming after a gap of a skipped line:
Bombur Wakes
That night they ate their very last scraps and crumbs of food; and next morning when they woke the first thing they noticed was that they were still gnawingly hungry, and the next thing was that it was raining and that here and there the drip of it was dropping heavily on the forest floor. That only reminded them that they were also parchingly thirsty, without doing anything to relieve them: you cannot quench a terrible thirst by standing under giant oaks and waiting for a chance drip to fall on your tongue. The only scrap of comfort there was came unexpectedly from Bombur.
He woke up suddenly and sat up scratching his head. He could not make out where he was at all, nor why he felt so hungry; for he had forgotten everything that had happened since they started their journey that MayTN15 morning long past. The last thing he remembered was the party at the hobbit’s house, and they had great difficulty in making him believe their tale of all the many adventures they had had since.
When he heard that there was nothing to eat, he sat down and wept, for he felt very weak and wobbly in the legs. ‘Why ever did I wake up!’ he cried. ‘I was having such beautiful dreams. I dreamed I was walking in a forest rather like this one, only lit with torches on the trees and lamps swinging from the branches and fires burning on the ground; and there was a great feast going on, going on for ever. A woodland king was there with a crown of leaves, and there was a merry singing, and I could not count or describe the things there were to eat or drink’.
‘You need not try,’ said Thorin. ‘In fact if you can’t talk about something else, you had better shut up altogether [> be silent]. We are quite annoyed enough with you as it is. If you hadn’t waked up, we should have left youTN16 to your idiotic dreams in the forest; you are no joke to carry even after weeks of short commons’.
There was nothing now to be done but to tighten the belts round their empty tummies [> stomachs], and hoist their empty sacks and packs, and trudge along the track without any great hope of ever getting to the end before they lay down and died of starvation. This they did all that day, going very slowly and wearily, while Bombur kept on wailing that his legs wouldn’t carry him and that he wanted to lie down and sleep.
‘No you don’t!’ they said. ‘Let your legs take their share, we have carried you far enough’.
All the same he suddenly refused to go a step further and flung himself on the ground. ‘Go on, if you must’, he said. ‘I’m just going to lie here and sleep and dream of food, if I can’t get it any other way. I hope I never wake up again’.
At that very moment Balin, who was a little way ahead, called out: ‘What was that? I thought I saw a twinkle of light in the forest’.
They all looked, and a longish way off, it seemed, they saw a red twinkle in the dark; then another and another sprang out beside it. Even Bombur got up, and they hurried along then not caring if it was trolls or goblins. The light was in front of them and to the left of the path, and when at last they had drawn level with it, it seemed plain that torches and fires were burning under the trees, but a good way off their track.
‘It looks as if my dreams were coming true’, gasped Bombur puffing up behind. He wanted to rush straight off into the wood after the lights. But the others remembered only too well the warnings of the wizard and of Beorn.
‘A feast would be no good, if we never got back alive from it’, said Thorin.
‘But without a feast we shan’t remain alive much longer anyway’ said Bombur, and Bilbo heartily agreed with him. They argued about it backwards and forwards for a long while, until they agreed in the end to send out a couple of spies to creep near the lights and find out more about them.
But then they could not agree on who was to be sent: no one seemed keen [> anxious] to run the chance of being lost and never finding their friends again. And so it was that their hunger won in the end, because Bombur would keep on describing all the good things that were being eaten, according to his dream, in the woodland feast; and they all left the path and plunged into the forest together.
From this point on, the typescript continues much as in the published book, with only slight changes in wording. The passage about how ‘The smell of the roast meats was so enchanting’ (emphasis mine) first appears in the typescript, with all its (in retrospect) ominous connotations; especially when linked later in the same paragraph with the phrase ‘as if by magic’, which had already been present.
The account of their second attempt to petition the feasters for succor is developed further in the First Typescript than in the original manuscript: here the dwarves cannot find Bilbo because the hobbit is wearing his ring, and it’s only by luck that Dori stumbles over him in the dark. And again it’s luck that the dwarves do not discover his secret, since they can’t tell in the ‘inky darkness’ that he was invisible when they found him. Also appearing for the first time in the typescript version is the expanded dialogue of Bilbo when they wake him from the spell of sleep that stepping into the elf-ring had cast on him:
When they got to the edge of the circle of lights, Bilbo was pushed forward, and he hastily slipped on the ring. But it was no good. Out went all the lights again; and if it had been difficult collecting themselves before it was far worse this time. They simply could not find the hobbit. Everytime they counted it only made thirteen, and though they shouted and called ‘Bilbo Baggins! Hobbit! You dratted hobbit! Hi, hobbit, confusticate you!’ and other things of that sort, there was no answer. In the end by good luck Dori found him. He fell over what he thought was a log, and he found it was the hobbit curled up fast asleep.
The History of the Hobbit Page 45
