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The outer fall was indeed no longer sheer, but sloped outwards a little. It looked like a great rampart or sea-wall whose foundations had shifted, so that its courses were all twisted and disordered, leaving great fissures and long slanting edges that were in places almost as wide as stairs.
‘And if we’re going to try and get down, we had better try at once. It’s getting dark early. I think there’s a storm coming.’
The smoky blur of the mountains in the East was lost in a deeper blackness that was already reaching out westwards with long arms. There was a distant mutter of thunder borne on the rising breeze. Frodo sniffed the air and looked up doubtfully at the sky. He strapped his belt outside his cloak and tightened it, and settled his light pack on his back; then he stepped towards the edge. ‘I’m going to try it,’ he said.
‘Very good!’ said Sam gloomily. ‘But I’m going first.’
‘You?’ said Frodo. ‘What’s made you change your mind about climbing?’
‘I haven’t changed my mind. But it’s only sense: put the one lowest as is most likely to slip. I don’t want to come down atop of you and knock you off – no sense in killing two with one fall.’
Before Frodo could stop him, he sat down, swung his legs over the brink, and twisted round, scrabbling with his toes for a foothold. It is doubtful if he ever did anything braver in cold blood, or more unwise.
‘No, no! Sam, you old ass!’ said Frodo. ‘You’ll kill yourself for certain, going over like that without even a look to see what to make for. Come back!’ He took Sam under the armpits and hauled him up again. ‘Now, wait a bit and be patient!’ he said. Then he lay on the ground, leaning out and looking down; but the light seemed to be fading quickly, although the sun had not yet set. ‘I think we could manage this,’ he said presently. ‘I could at any rate; and you could too, if you kept your head and followed me carefully.’
‘I don’t know how you can be so sure,’ said Sam. ‘Why! You can’t see to the bottom in this light. What if you comes to a place where there’s nowhere to put your feet or your hands?’
‘Climb back, I suppose,’ said Frodo.
‘Easy said,’ objected Sam. ‘Better wait till morning and more light.’
‘No! Not if I can help it,’ said Frodo with a sudden strange vehemence. ‘I grudge every hour, every minute. I’m going down to try it out. Don’t you follow till I come back or call!’
Gripping the stony lip of the fall with his fingers he let himself gently down, until when his arms were almost at full stretch, his toes found a ledge. ‘One step down!’ he said. ‘And this ledge broadens out to the right. I could stand there without a hold. I’ll—’ his words were cut short.
The hurrying darkness, now gathering great speed, rushed up from the East and swallowed the sky. There was a dry splitting crack of thunder right overhead. Searing lightning smote down into the hills. Then came a blast of savage wind, and with it, mingling with its roar, there came a high shrill shriek. The hobbits had heard just such a cry far away in the Marish as they fled from Hobbiton, and even there in the woods of the Shire it had frozen their blood. Out here in the waste its terror was far greater: it pierced them with cold blades of horror and despair, stopping heart and breath. Sam fell flat on his face. Involuntarily Frodo loosed his hold and put his hands over his head and ears. He swayed, slipped, and slithered downwards with a wailing cry.
Sam heard him and crawled with an effort to the edge. ‘Master, master!’ he called. ‘Master!’
He heard no answer. He found he was shaking all over, but he gathered his breath, and once again he shouted: ‘Master!’ The wind seemed to blow his voice back into his throat, but as it passed, roaring up the gully and away over the hills, a faint answering cry came to his ears:
‘All right, all right! I’m here. But I can’t see.’
Frodo was calling with a weak voice. He was not actually very far away. He had slid and not fallen, and had come up with a jolt to his feet on a wider ledge not many yards lower down. Fortunately the rock-face at this point leaned well back and the wind had pressed him against the cliff, so that he had not toppled over. He steadied himself a little, laying his face against the cold stone, feeling his heart pounding. But either the darkness had grown complete, or else his eyes had lost their sight. All was black about him. He wondered if he had been struck blind. He took a deep breath.
‘Come back! Come back!’ he heard Sam’s voice out of the blackness above.
‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I can’t see. I can’t find any hold. I can’t move yet.’
‘What can I do, Mr. Frodo? What can I do?’ shouted Sam, leaning out dangerously far. Why could not his master see? It was dim, certainly, but not as dark as all that. He could see Frodo below him, a grey forlorn figure splayed against the cliff. But he was far out of the reach of any helping hand.
There was another crack of thunder; and then the rain came. In a blinding sheet, mingled with hail, it drove against the cliff, bitter cold.
‘I’m coming down to you,’ shouted Sam, though how he hoped to help in that way he could not have said.
‘No, no! wait!’ Frodo called back, more strongly now. ‘I shall be better soon. I feel better already. Wait! You can’t do anything without a rope.’
‘Rope!’ cried Sam, talking wildly to himself in his excitement and relief. ‘Well, if I don’t deserve to be hung on the end of one as a warning to numbskulls! You’re nowt but a ninnyhammer, Sam Gamgee: that’s what the Gaffer said to me often enough, it being a word of his. Rope!’
‘Stop chattering!’ cried Frodo, now recovered enough to feel both amused and annoyed. ‘Never mind your gaffer! Are you trying to tell yourself you’ve got some rope in your pocket? If so, out with it!’
‘Yes, Mr. Frodo, in my pack and all. Carried it hundreds of miles, and I’d clean forgotten it!’
‘Then get busy and let an end down!’
Quickly Sam unslung his pack and rummaged in it. There indeed at the bottom was a coil of the silken-grey rope made by the folk of Lórien. He cast an end to his master. The darkness seemed to lift from Frodo’s eyes, or else his sight was returning. He could see the grey line as it came dangling down, and he thought it had a faint silver sheen. Now that he had some point in the darkness to fix his eyes on, he felt less giddy. Leaning his weight forward, he made the end fast round his waist, and then he grasped the line with both hands.
