The War of the Ring (35 page)

[sic) He cried out and stood back. 'It'd take weeks this way,' he said. 'Let me try Bilbo's sword,' said Frodo. 'I will go ahead now: hold my star-glass behind me.' Frodo drew Sting (12) and made a great sweeping stroke and sprang back to avoid the lashing of the threads.

The sharp elven-blade blue-edged sparkling shore through the netted ropes and that web was destroyed. But there were others behind. Slowly Frodo hewed his way through them until at last they came to a clear way again. Sam came behind holding up the light and pushing Gollum - strangely reluctant - before him.

Gollum kept on trying to wriggle away and turn back.(13) At length they came to more webs, and when they had cut through these the tunnel came to an end.

The rock wall opened out and sprang high and the second stair was before them: walls on either side towering up to a great height - how high they could not guess, for the sky was hardly less black than the walls - and could only be discerned by an occasional glow and flicker of red on the underside of the clouds. The stair seemed endless, up, up, up. Their knees cracked. Here and there was a web across the way. They were in the very heart of the mountains. Up, up.

At last they got to the stair-head. The road opened out. Then all their suspicions of Gollum came to a head. He sprang unexpectedly out of Sam's reach forward, and thrusting Frodo aside ran out emitting a shrill sort of whistling cry, such as they had never heard him make before.

'Come here! you wretch,' cried Sam darting after him.

Gollum turned once with his eyes glittering, and then vanished quite suddenly into the gloom, and no sign of him could they find.(14)

The verso of the page, numbered '[7]', carrying the picture of the ascent to the pass,(15) has the following text.

'That's that! ' said Sam. 'What I expected. But I don't like it. I suppose now we are just exactly where he wanted to bring us.

Well, let's get moving away as quick as we can. The treacherous worm! That last whistle of his wasn't pure joy at getting out of the tunnel, it was pure wickedness of some sort. And what sort we'll soon know.'

'Likely enough,' said Frodo. 'But we could not have got even so far without him. So if we ever manage our errand, then Gollum and all his wickedness will be part of the plan.'

'So far, you say,' said Sam. 'How far? Where are we now?'

'About at the crest of the main range of Ephel-duath, I guess,'

said Frodo. 'Look!' The road opened out now: it still went on up, but no longer sheerly. Beyond and ahead there was an ominous glare in the sky, and like a great notch in the mountain wall a cleft was outlined against it - so [here is a small sketch].

On their right the wall of rock fell away and the road widened till it had no brink. Looking down Frodo saw nothing but the vast darkness of the great ravine which was the head of Morghul dale. Down in its depths was the faint glimmer of the wraith-road that led over the Morghul pass from the city. On their left sharp jagged pinnacles stood up like towers carved by the biting years, and between them were many dark crevices and clefts. But high up on the left side of the cleft to which their road led (Kirith Ungol) was a small black tower, and in it a window showed a red light.

'I don't like the look of that,' said Sam. 'This upper pass is guarded too. D'you remember he never would say if it was or no. D'you think he's gone to fetch them - orcs or something?'

'No, I don't think so,' said Frodo. 'He is up to no good, of course, but I don't think that he's gone to fetch orcs. Whatever it is, it is no slave of the Dark Lord's.' 'I suppose not,' said Sam.

'No, I suppose the whole time it has been the ring for poor Smeagol's own. That's been his scheme. But how coming up here will help him, I can't guess.' He was soon to learn.

Frodo went forward now - the last lap - and he exerted all his strength. He felt that if once he could get to the saddle of the pass and look over into the Nameless Land he would have accomplished something. Sam followed. He sensed evil all round him. He knew that they had walked into some trap, but what? He had sheathed his sword, but now he drew it in readiness. He halted for a moment, and stooped to pick up his staff with his left hand

Here the text on the 'Bodleian page' ends, but the further continuation of this extraordinarily dismembered text is found among the papers that failed to go to Marquette.(16) The next page is duly numbered '[8]' and '[9]', and continues as before in ink over pencilled drafting.

- it had a comfortable feel to his hand. As he stood up again, he saw issuing out of a crevice at the left the most monstrous and loathly form that he had ever beheld - beyond his imagination.(17) Spider-like it was in shape, but huge as a wild beast, and more terrible because of the malice and evil purpose in its eyes. These were many, clustered in its small head, and each of them held a baleful light. On great bent legs it walked -

the hairs of them stuck out like steel spines, and at each end there was a claw. The round swollen body behind its narrow neck was dark blotched with paler livid marks, but underneath its belly was pale and faintly luminous as its eyes. It stank. It moved with a sudden horrible speed running on its arms, and springing. Sam saw at once that he [sic] was hunting his master

- now a little ahead in the gloom and apparently unaware of his peril. He whipped out his sword and yelled. 'Look out! Mr Frodo! Look out! I'm - ' But he did not finish. A long clammy hand went over his mouth and another caught his neck, while something wrapped itself about his legs. Taken off his guard he fell backwards in the arms of his attacker.

'Got you!' hissed Gollum in his ear. 'At last my precious one, we've got him yes, the nasty hobbit. We takes this one. She'll get the other. O yes. Ungoliant will get him.(18) Not Smeagol. He won't hurt master, not at all. He promised. But he's got you, you nasty dirty little thing!'

The description of the fight is closely similar to that in TT (p. 335), with some difference in the detail of the wrestling.(19) After the second blow, falling across Gollum's back, the text continues: But it was enough for Gollum! Grabbing from behind was an old game for him - and had never before failed him. But everything had gone wrong with his beautiful plan, since the unexpected web in the path. Here now he was faced by a furious enemy, little less than his own size, with a stout staff. This was not for him. He had no time even to grab at the sword lying on the ground. He squealed as the staff came down once more,(20) and sprang aside onto all fours, and then leaped away like a cat in one big bound. Then with astonishing speed he ran back and vanished into the tunnel. Sweeping up his sword Sam went after him - for the moment forgetful of all else, but the red light of fury in his brain. But Gollum had gone before he could reach him. Then as the dark hole and the stench smote him, like a terrible clap of thunder the thought of Frodo came back to Sam's mind. He span round, and rushed on up the road calling.

He was too late. So far Gollum's plot had succeeded.

Frodo was lying on the ground and the monster was bending over him, so intent upon her victim that she seemed not to heed anything else until Sam was close at hand. It was not a brave deed Sam then did, for he gave no thought to it. Frodo was already bound in great cords round and round from ankle to breast, and with her great forelegs she was beginning to half lift, half drag him, but still his arms were free: one hand was on his breast, one lay spread wide, limp upon the stone, and the staff of Faramir broken under him.

At the point where Sam sees that Frodo is bound with cords the underlying pencilled draft stops; the legible fair copy in ink written over it continues, but at the same point declines very rapidly into the handwriting characteristic of initial drafting, decipherable only with labour and in this case often not at all.(21) This continues to the end of the page ('9' in the Version I text, the last page in this numeration), with Sam's attack on 'Ungoliant'. Many words and even whole sentences are totally illegible, but enough can be made out to see that in this earliest form of the story it was Sam's slash with Sting across Ungoliant's belly that caused her to leap back: there is no suggestion of the great wound she suffered when she drove her whole bulk down onto the point of the sword (TT p. 338). When she sprang back 'Sam stood reeling, his legs astride his master, but she a few paces off eyed him: and the green venom that was her blood slowly suffused the pale light of her eyes. Sting held before him, Sam now .... and ere she attacked again he found his master's hand in his bosom. It was cold and limp, and quickly but gently he took from it the glass of Galadriel.

And held it up.'

This rough drafting continues on other pages (not numbered on from '9', though that proves little); but I doubt that much more of it, if any, was written at this juncture (see p. 209). The question is not of much importance in the study of the evolution of the story, and in any case it is more convenient to pause here in the original draft.

The fact that my father had overwritten legibly in ink the original draft as far as the stinging of Frodo by Ungoliant suggests confidence in the story, while the sudden change from 'fair copy' to 'preliminary draft' at this point suggests that he now realised that important changes were required. The immediate reason for this may well have been that he observed what he had just written, as it were inadvertently: 'Then with astonishing speed [Gollum] ran back and vanished into the tunnel.... Then as the dark hole and the stench smote him...

the thought of Frodo came back to Sam's mind. He span round, and rushed on up the road calling.' But in this version the far end of the tunnel was immediately succeeded by the agonisingly long second stair, and it was only after they reached the head of it that Gollum ran off (p. 194). The picture of the ascent to the pass contained in this text (see p. 193) shows with perfect clarity the first stair climbing up to the tunnel, and the second stair climbing away beyond it.(22) It is obviously out of the question that my father imagined that Gollum fled all the way down the second stair with Sam in pursuit, and that Sam then climbed up again! I think that the developing narrative was forcing a new topography to appear even as he wrote (see below).

There seem in fact to have been several interrelated questions. One was this of topography: the relation of the stairs and the tunnel.

Another was the time and place of Gollum's disappearance. In the outline (p. 187) he is found to have vanished when they come to the head of the second stair; and in the present version he ran off with a strange whistling cry when they came to that place. And another was the question of Gollum's plan and its miscarriage. My father had written (p. 197): 'But everything had gone wrong with his beautiful plan, since the unexpected web in the path.' It certainly seems to be the case in this version that Gollum was very put out when they encountered it in the tunnel: 'We didn't expect to find this here, did we precious? No, of course not' (p. 193); and after the first webs had been cut through Gollum was 'strangely reluctant' to go on, and 'kept on trying to wriggle away and turn back.'

Leaving the 'Version I' text, now reduced to very rough drafting, at some point not determined, my father scribbled on a little bit of paper: Must be stair - stair - tunnel. Tunnel is Ungoliante's lair. The tunnel has unseen passages off. One goes right up to dungeons of tower. But orcs don't use it much because of Ungoliant. She has a great hole in the midst of path. Plan fails because she has made a web across path and is daunted by the phial-light.

Stench out of hole which phial prevents Frodo and Sam falling into. Gollum disappears and they think he may have fallen in hole. They cut their way out of web at far end. Ungoliant comes out of tunnel.

Thus the series 'first stair - tunnel - second stair' inherent in the Version 1 story is changed. The reason for this was, I think, as follows.

The arrangement 'stair - tunnel - stair' arose when there were many spiders in the pass; in the outline the tunnel seems only one part of their territory, and there are webs also across the second stair (p.

187) - the impression is given that all the cliffs and crags bordering the path are alive with them. But with the reduction of the spider-horde to one Great Spider, whose lair is very clearly in the tunnel (where the great webs were), her attack on the hobbits at the head of the second stair, high above the tunnel, becomes unsatisfactory. It was therefore not long after the emergence in Version 1 of Ungoliant as the sole breeder of the terror of Kirith Ungol that this version collapsed, and my father abandoned the writing of it in fair copy manuscript.

Associated with this would have been the decision that Gollum deserted Frodo and Sam while they were still in the tunnel.