Page 127 - The Hobbit

as a protection against enemies of all sorts, and especially against the dragon of

the Mountain. From Lake-town the barrels were brought up the Forest River.
Often they were just tied together like big rafts and poled or rowed up the stream;
sometimes they were loaded on to flat boats.

When the barrels were empty the elves cast them through the trapdoors,
opened the water-gate, and out the barrels floated on the stream, bobbing along,
until they were carried by the current to a place far down the river where the bank
jutted out, near to the very eastern edge of Mirkwood. There they were collected

and tied together and floated back to Lake-town, which stood close to the point
where the Forest River flowed into the Long Lake.

For some time Bilbo sat and thought about this water-gate, and wondered if it
could be used for the escape of his friends, and at last he had the desperate
beginnings of a plan.
The evening meal had been taken to the prisoners. The guards were tramping

away down the passages taking the torch-light with them and leaving everything
in darkness. Then Bilbo heard the king's butler bidding the chief of the guards
good-night.

"Now come with me," he said, "and taste the new wine that has just come in. I
shall be hard at work tonight clearing the cellars of the empty wood, so let us have
a drink first to help the labour."
"Very good," laughed the chief of the guards. "I'll taste with you, and see if it is

fit for the king's table. There is a feast tonight and it would not do to send up poor
stuff!"

When he heard this Bilbo was all in a flutter, for he saw that luck was with

him and he had a chance at once to try his desperate plan. He followed the two
elves, until they entered a small cellar and sat down at a table on which two large
flagons were set. Soon they began to drink and laugh merrily. Luck of an unusual
kind was with Bilbo then. It must be potent wine to make a wood-elf drowsy; but

this wine, it would seem, was the heady vintage of the great gardens of Dorwinion,
not meant for his soldiers or his servants, but for the king's feasts only, and for
smaller bowls, not for the butler's great flagons.

Very soon the chief guard nodded his head, then he laid it on the table and fell
fast asleep. The butler went on talking and laughing to himself for a while without
seeming to notice, but soon his head too nodded to the table, and he fell asleep and
snored beside his friend. Then in crept the hobbit. Very soon the chief guard had