Page 132 - The Hobbit

Back to gardens on the hills
Where the berry swells and fills

Under sunlight, under day!
South away! and South away!
Down the swift dark stream you go
Back to lands you once did know!

Now the very last barrel was being rolled to the doors! In despair and not

knowing what else to do, poor little Bilbo caught hold of it and was pushed over
the edge with it. Down into the water he fell, splash! into the cold dark water with
the barrel on top of him. He came up again spluttering and clinging to the wood
like a rat, but for all his efforts he could not scramble on top. Every time he tried,

the barrel rolled round and ducked him under again. It was really empty, and
floated light as a cork. Though his ears were full of water, he could hear the elves
still singing in the cellar above. Then suddenly the trapdoors fell to with a boom

and their voices faded away. He was in the dark tunnel, floating in icy water, all
alone-for you cannot count friends that are all packed up in barrels.
Very soon a grey patch came up in the darkness ahead. He heard the creak of
the water-gate being hauled up, and he found that he was in the midst of a bobbing

and bumping mass of casks and tubs all pressing together to pass under the arch
and get out into the open stream. He had as much as he could do to prevent
himself from being hustled and battered to bits; but at last the jostling crowd

began to break up and swing off, one by one, under the stone arch and away. Then
he saw that it would have been no good even if he had managed to get astride his
barrel, for there was no room to spare, not even for a hobbit, between its top and
the suddenly stooping roof where the gate was.

Out they went under the overhanging branches of the trees on either bank.
Bilbo wondered what the dwarves were feeling and whether a lot of water was

getting into their tubs. Some of those that bobbed along by him in the gloom
seemed pretty low in the water, and he guessed that these had dwarves inside.
"I do hope I put the lids on tight enough!" he thought, but before long he was
worrying too much about himself to remember the dwarves. He managed to keep

his head above the water, but he was shivering with the cold, and he wondered if
he would die of it before the luck turned, and how much longer he would be able
to hang on, and whether he should risk the chance of letting go and trying to swim
to the bank.