Where were Gandalf and Hannah? Of that neither the Dwarves and Bilbo nor the Goblins had any idea, and the Goblins did not wait to find out. It was deep, deep, dark, such as only Goblins that have taken to living in the heart of the mountains can see through. The passages there were crossed and tangled in all directions, but the Goblins knew their way, as well as you do to the nearest post-office; and the way went down and down, and it was horribly stuffy. The goblins were very rough, and pinched unmercifully, and chuckled and laughed in their horrible stony voices; and Bilbo was more unhappy even than when the troll had picked him up by his toes. He wished again and again for his nice hobbit-hole. Not for the last time.

Now there came a glimmer red of light before them. The Goblins began to sing, or croak, keeping time with the flap of their feet on the stone, and shaking their prisoners as well.

Clap! Snap! the black crack!

Grib, grab! Pinch, nab!

And down, down to Goblin-town

You go, my lad!

Clash, crash! Crush, smash!

Hammer and tongs! Knocker and gongs!

Pound, pound, down underground!

Ho, ho! my lad!

Swish, smack! Whip crack!

Batter and beat! Yammer and bleat!

Work, work! Nor dare to shirk,

While Goblins quaff, and Goblins laugh,

Round and round far underground

Below, my lad!

It sounded truly terrifying. The walls echoed to the clap, snap! And the crush, smash! And to the ugly laughter of their ho, ho! my lad! The general meaning of the song was only too plain; for now the Goblins took out whips and whipped them with a swish, smack!, and set them running as fast as they could in front of them; and more than one of the Dwarves were already yammering and bleating like anything, when they stumbled into a big cavern.

It was lit by a great red fire in the middle, and by torches along the walls, and it was full of Goblins. They all laughed and stamped and clapped their hands, when the Dwarves (with poor little Bilbo at the back and nearest to the whips) came running in, while the goblin-drivers whooped and cracked their whips behind. The ponies were already huddled in a corner; and there were all the baggages and packages lying broken open, and being rummaged by goblins, and smelt by goblins, and fingered by goblins, and quarreled over by goblins.

I am afraid that was the last they ever saw of those excellent little ponies, including the jolly sturdy little fellow that Elrond had leant to Gandalf, since a horse was not suitable for the mountain-paths. For Goblins eat horses and ponies and donkeys (and other much more dreadful things), and they are always hungry. Just now however the prisoners were thinking only of themselves. The Goblins chained their hands behind their backs and linked them all together in a line and dragged them to the far end of the cavern with Bilbo tugging at the end of the row.

There in the shadows on a large flat stone, surrounded by piled up skulls and trophies form enemies to make a throne, sat a tremendous Goblin with a huge head and an equally large goiter, and armed Goblins were standing round him carrying the axes and bent swords that they use. Now Goblins are cruel, wicked, and bad-hearted. They make no beautiful things, but they make clever ones. They can tunnel and mine as well as any but the most skilled Dwarves, when they take the trouble, though they are usually very untidy and dirty. Hammers, axes, swords, daggers, pickaxes, tongs, and also instruments of torture, they make very well, or get other people to make to their design, prisoners and slaves have to work till they die for want of air and light. They did not hate Dwarves especially, no more than they hated everybody and everything, and particularly the orderly and prosperous; in some parts wicked Dwarves had even made alliances with them. Anyway, Goblins don't care who they catch, as long as it is done smart and secret, and the prisoners are not able to defend themselves.

"Who are these miserable persons?" said the Great Goblin. "Spies? Thieves? Assassins?"

"Dwarves, and this, your Malevolence!" said one of the drivers, pulling at Bilbo's chain so that he fell forward onto his knees. "We found them sheltering on our Front Porch."

"What do you mean by it?" said the Great Goblin turning to Thorin. "Up to no good, I'll warrant! Well, don't just stand there! Search them! Every crack! Every crevice!" On Nori they found several artifacts of silver and gold.

"It is my belief, your Great Protuberance, that they are in league with Elves!" said one of the searchers, presenting his king with a silver candlestick.

"Made in Rivendell," read the Great Goblin upon inspecting its base. "Ah, Second Age. Couldn't give it away," he said, tossing it away carelessly. Upon hearing this, Bilbo and all the Dwarves stared at Nori in disbelief. They had quite obviously been nicked.

"Just a couple of keepsakes," Nori said defensively.

"What are you doing in these parts?" the Great Goblin demanded. Thorin moved to answer, but Óin placed a hand on his shoulder to stop him. Seeing as Thorin was being hunted by the orcs, it might not be a good idea for him to draw attention to himself in this den of iniquity.

"Uh, don't worry, lads. I'll handle this," said Óin as he stepped forth.

"No tricks! I want the truth," said the Great Goblin. "Warts and all."

"You're going to have to speak up. Your boys flattened my trumpet," said Óin, holding up his squashed hearing horn as evidence.

"I'll flatten more than your trumpet!" the Great Goblin snapped, angered by the dwarf's impertinence.

"If it's more information you want, then I'm the one you should speak to," Bofur said quickly, redirecting his attention before he hurt the older dwarf.

"Mm-hm?" said the Great Goblin, wanting to hear more.

"We were on the road. Well, it's not so much a road as a path. Actually, it's not even that, come to think of it. It's more like a track," said Bofur, not quite knowing what to say all at once in a moment, when obviously the exact truth would not do at all. "Anyway, the point is we were on this road, like a path, like a track. And then we weren't. Which is a problem, because we were supposed to be..."

"Shut up," the Great Goblin muttered, quickly tiring of his seemingly aimless rambling.

"... in Dunland last Tuesday," Bofur finished lamely.

"Visiting distant relations," Dori chimed in helpfully.

"Some inbreds on me mother's side," Bofur added.

"Shut up!" the Great Goblin shouted impatiently, deciding he had heard quite enough of their ridiculous excuses already. Bofur wisely shut his mouth this time.

"They are liars, O truly tremendous one!" said one of the drivers. "Several of our people were struck by lightning in the cave, when we invited these creatures to come below; and they are as dead as stones!"

"If they will not talk, we'll make them squawk! Bring up the Mangler! Bring up the Bone-breaker," ordered the Great Goblin. "Start with the youngest."

"Wait!" shouted Thorin.

"Well, well, well!" said the Great Goblin as the noble Dwarf stepped forward to face him. "Look who it is. Thorin son of Thráin, son of Thrór, King Under the Mountain. Oh, but I'm forgetting—you don't have a mountain, and you're not a king, which makes you nobody, really." Several goblins snickered mockingly. "Still, I know someone who would pay a pretty price for your head. Just a head; nothing attached," continued the Great Goblin with a wheezing cackle. "Perhaps you know of whom I speak. An old enemy of yours. A pale orc, astride a white warg."

"Azog the Defiler was destroyed," said Thorin sternly, not wanting to believe what he had just heard. "He was slain battle long ago." That villain should have died of the wounds he gave the orc for killing his grandfather.

"So you think his defiling days are done, do you?" sneered the Great Goblin with another cackle. "Send word to the pale orc," he ordered one of his messengers. "Tell him I have found his prize."

The little goblin coughed and cackled as he flew away on a wire to deliver his king's message, whizzing past the entrance to an old, disused tunnel just in time to miss Gandalf and Hannah as they silently crept out through the opening in the rock, keeping low and to the shadows, while the remaining goblins' attention was still focused on the dwarves.

There came suddenly from the goblin still inspecting the dwarves' belongings a terrible shriek as he dropped the sword Thorin had been carrying with a clatter, acting as though he had been burned.

The Great Goblin gave a truly awful howl of rage when he looked at it, and all his soldiers gnashed their teeth, clashed their shields, and stamped. They knew the sword at once. It had killed hundreds of goblins in its time, when the fair elves of Gondolin hunted them the hills or did battle before their walls. They had called it Orcrist, Goblin-cleaver, but the goblins called it simply Biter. They hated it and hated worse anyone who carried it.

"Murderers and elf-friends!" the Great Goblin shouted. "Slash them! Beat them! Bite them! Gnash them! Take them away to dark holes and never let them see the light again!" He was in such a rage that he jumped off his seat and himself rushed at Thorin with his mouth open. Gandalf and Hannah took that as their cue to act.

Gandalf raised his staff, and just at that moment all the lights in the cavern went out as Hannah chucked one of her larger homemade smoke bombs into the great fire. It went off poof! into a tower of blue glowing smoke, right up to the roof, that scattered piercing white sparks all among the goblins.

The yells and yammering, croaking, jabbering and jabbering; howls, growls, and curses; shrieking and skriking that followed were beyond description. Several hundred wild cats and wolves being roasted slowly alive together would not have compared with it. The sparks were burning holes in the goblins, and the smoke that now fell from the roof made the air too thick for even their eyes to see through. Soon they were falling over one another and rolling in heaps on the floor, biting and kicking and fighting as if they had all gone mad.

Suddenly a sword flashed in its own light. Bilbo saw it go right through the Great Goblin as he stood dumbfounded in the middle of the rage. He fell dead, and the goblin soldiers fled before the sword shrieking into the darkness.

The sword went back into its sheath. "Follow me, quick!" said a voice fierce and quiet; and before Bilbo understood what had happened he was trotting along again, as fast as he could trot, at the end of the line, down more dark passages with the yells of the goblins growing fainter behind him. A pale light was leading them on.

"Quicker, quicker!" said another softer, but no less urgent, voice. "The torches will soon be relit."

"Half a minute!" said Bofur, who was at the back next to Bilbo, and a decent fellow. He made the hobbit scramble onto his shoulders as best he could with his tied hands, and then off they all went at a run, with a clink of chains, and many a stumble, since they had no hands to steady themselves with. Not for a long while did they stop, and by that time they must have been right down in the very mountain's heart.

Then Gandalf lit up his wand. Of course it was Gandalf, and the second voice had clearly belonged to Hannah, whom they could now see was right beside him; but just then they were too busy to ask how the two of them had got there. The wizard took out his sword again, and again it flashed in the dark by itself. It burned with a rage that made it seem as if goblins were about; now it was bright as blue flame for delight in the killing of the great lord of the cave. It made no trouble whatever of cutting through the goblin-chains and setting all the prisoners free as quickly as possible. This sword's name was Glamdring the Foe-hammer, if you remember. The goblins just called it Beater, and hated it worse than Biter if possible. Orcrist, too, had been saved; for Gandalf had brought it along as well, snatching it from one of the terrified guards. Gandalf thought of most things; and though he could not do everything, he could do a great deal for friends in a tight corner.

"Are we all here?" said he, handing Thorin's sword back to him with a bow. "Let me see: one—that's Thorin; two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven; where are Fili and Kili? Here they are, twelve, thirteen—and here's Mr. Baggins: fourteen! Well, well! It might be worse, and then again it might be a good deal better. No ponies, and no food, and no knowing quite where we are, and hordes of angry goblins just behind! On we go!"

On they went. Gandalf was quite right: they began to hear goblin noises and horrible cries far behind in the passages they had come through. That sent them on faster than ever, and as poor Bilbo could not possibly go half as fast—for dwarves can roll along at a tremendous pace, I can tell you, when they have to—they took it in turn to carry him on their backs.

Still goblins go faster than dwarves, and these goblins knew the way better (they had made the paths themselves), and were madly angry; so that do what they could the dwarves heard the cries and howls getting closer and closer. Soon they could hear even the flap of the goblin feet, many many feet which seemed only just round the last corner. The blink of red torches could be seen behind them in the tunnel they were following; and they were getting deadly tired.

"Why, oh why did I ever leave my hobbit-hole!" said poor Bilbo bumping up and down on Bombur's back.

"Why, oh why did I ever bring a wretched little hobbit on a treasure hunt!" said poor Bombur, who was fat and staggered along with sweat dripping down his nose in his heat and terror.

At this point, Gandalf fell behind, and Hannah and Thorin with him. They turned a sharp corner. "About turn!" he shouted. "Draw your sword, Thorin! Loose your arrows, Hannah!"

There was nothing else to be done; and the goblins did not like it. They came scurrying round the corner in full cry, and found Goblin-cleaver and Foe-hammer shining cold and bright right in their astonished eyes as one arrow after another flew at them. The ones in front dropped their torches and gave one yell before they were killed. The ones behind yelled still more, and leaped back, knocking over those that were running after them. "Biter and Beater!" they shrieked; and soon they were all in confusion, and most of them were hustling back the way they had come.

It was quite a long while before any of then dared to turn that corner. By that time the dwarves had gone on again, a long, long, way on into the dark tunnels of the goblins' realm. When the goblins discovered that, they put out their torches and they slipped on soft shoes, and they chose out their very quickest runners with the sharpest eyes and ears. These ran forward, as swift as weasels in the dark, and with hardly any more noise than bats.

That is why neither Bilbo, nor the Dwarves, nor Hannah, nor even Gandalf heard them coming. Nor did they seem them. But they were seen by the goblins that ran up silently behind, for Gandalf was letting his wand give out a faint light to help the dwarves as they went along.

Quite suddenly Dori, now at the back carrying Bilbo, was grabbed from behind in the dark. He shouted and fell; and the hobbit rolled off his shoulders into the blackness, bumped his head on a hard rock, and lost consciousness as he disappeared into the dark. Meanwhile, Dori, unsure of the hobbit's fate but faced with certain danger in the form of the goblin currently attacking him. Hearing Dori cry out, the others immediately turned and doubled back to save him. Hannah quickly shot Dori's attacker before he could stab him, and Gandalf and Thorin slew the next wave of goblins. Everyone did their best to fight off the sudden onslaught as the rest of the goblins caught up to the scouts they had sent ahead, but what really saved them was actually the moment when Hannah found that she had run out of arrows and resorted to using a homemade flash grenade, hoping a sudden flash of light might scare the goblins off with the way they had reacted to the sparks from her smoke bomb.

"Fire in the hole!" she yelled as she pulled its pin and threw it amongst the horde of goblins scrambling towards them. The dwarves, not knowing what sort of weapon she might have thrown did their best to get out of the way and duck for cover as the grenade went off with a bang, lighting up the whole tunnel with a blinding flash of white light that made the goblins screech and howl and curse fiercely as they made another hasty retreat.

"Follow me, everybody!" Gandalf shouted, rousing the stunned dwarves. Once again, the company ran along the dark path with all the speed they could muster. They had no doubt the goblins would be back once they had recovered.

They were doing well until they reached a rickety wooden bridge that had been made to form a crossing over a deep ravine. In their rush to get away, they had not bothered to stop and test how much of a load it could bear, and once Bombur stepped aboard, the company's combined weight sent the weakened section of the span they were on crashing down. The Dwarves and Hannah all gave cries and shouts of fear and alarm as they hurtled towards the ground below, clinging to the wooden planks as the ends of the bridge battered and scraped against the walls of the narrowing ravine. It was a rough landing, and there was very little bridge left by the end, but fortunately for them, it had slowed their descent enough so that they were able to survive without sustaining wounds any more serious than some nasty bumps and bruises.

"Well, that could have been worse," Bofur said as they all groaned. Gandalf winced as he quickly righted himself, already preparing to move on.

"Hey, watch your hands!" Hannah scolded Kili when she realized he was touching some rather inappropriate places as a result of their awkward landing, though it had happened quite by accident. Fili seemed amused at the trouble his brother had found himself in, but Kili was not and hastily apologized as she pushed away from him and rolled off what was left of the bridge. And none too soon, for almost as soon as Hannah moved, the rest of the bridge came crashing down on top of the dwarves, who all gave a shout and moaned in pain.

"You've got to be joking!" said Dwalin moodily while the others groaned and cursed as they hit and kicked away the rotted wooden planks.

"Gandalf!" Kili shouted when he saw movement in the dark and realized the goblins had returned, and were now crawling down the sides of the ravine after them. Their numbers appeared to have somehow tripled since their last attack.

"There's too many. We can't fight them," said Dwalin.