The Lord of the Rings Illustrated(301)

All that day the outer ridge of the Emyn Muil had been bending gradually northward, as they struggled on. Along its brink there now stretched a wide tumbled flat of scored and weathered rock, cut every now and again by trench-like gullies that sloped steeply down to deep notches in the cliff-face. To find a path in these clefts, which were becoming deeper and more frequent, Frodo and Sam were driven to their left, well away from the edge, and they did not notice that for several miles they had been going slowly but steadily downhill: the cliff-top was sinking towards the level of the lowlands.

At last they were brought to a halt. The ridge took a sharper bend northward and was gashed by a deeper ravine. On the further side it reared up again, many fathoms at a single leap: a great grey cliff loomed before them, cut sheer down as if by a knife stroke. They could go no further forwards, and must turn now either west or east. But west would lead them only into more labour and delay, back towards the heart of the hills; east would take them to the outer precipice.

‘There’s nothing for it but to scramble down this gully, Sam,’ said Frodo. ‘Let’s see what it leads to!’

‘A nasty drop, I’ll bet,’ said Sam.

The cleft was longer and deeper than it seemed. Some way down they found a few gnarled and stunted trees, the first they had seen for days: twisted birch for the most part, with here and there a fir-tree. Many were dead and gaunt, bitten to the core by the eastern winds. Once in milder days there must have been a fair thicket in the ravine, but now, after some fifty yards, the trees came to an end, though old broken stumps straggled on almost to the cliff’s brink. The bottom of the gully, which lay along the edge of a rock-fault, was rough with broken stone and slanted steeply down. When they came at last to the end of it, Frodo stooped and leaned out.

‘Look!’ he said. ‘We must have come down a long way, or else the cliff has sunk. It’s much lower here than it was, and it looks easier too.’

Sam knelt beside him and peered reluctantly over the edge. Then he glanced up at the great cliff rising up, away on their left. ‘Easier!’ he grunted. ‘Well, I suppose it’s always easier getting down than up. Those as can’t fly can jump!’

‘It would be a big jump still,’ said Frodo. ‘About, well’ – he stood for a moment measuring it with his eyes – ‘about eighteen fathoms, I should guess. Not more.’

‘And that’s enough!’ said Sam. ‘Ugh! How I do hate looking down from a height! But looking’s better than climbing.’

‘All the same,’ said Frodo, ‘I think we could climb here; and I think we shall have to try. See – the rock is quite different from what it was a few miles back. It has slipped and cracked.’

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.’