In his haste to escape, Bilbo nearly crashed into Thorin, who had braved the tunnel to meet him.

"You're alive!" said Thorin.

"Not for much longer!" said Bilbo.

"Did you find the Arkenstone?"

"The dragon's coming!" cried the hobbit.

"The Arkenstone!" said Thorin sternly. "Did you find it?"

Seeing the look in the Dwarf's eyes, Bilbo hesitated for a moment.

"No, we have to get out," said the hobbit taking a step to leave, but the Dwarf stopped him by placing his sword in front of him to block the way. "Thorin." Thorin used his sword to push Bilbo back. "Thorin!" The Dwarf kept his sword pointed at the hobbit looking at him threateningly, but then he noticed that the hobbit's eyes were no longer on the blade before him. Bilbo, who could stand no longer after everything he had just been through, stumbled and fell in a faint. It was only then that Thorin became fully aware of what he had been about to do to his little friend, and finally noticed that the hobbit had not escaped entirely unscathed.

The evening had grown late into the night when Thorin came carrying the hobbit back out on to the 'doorstep'. The Dwarves revived him, and doctored his scorches as well as they could; but it was a long time before the hair on the back of his head and heels grew properly again: it had all been singed and frizzled right down to the skin. In the meanwhile his friends did their best to cheer him up; they were eager for his story, especially wanting to know why the dragon had made such an awful noise, and how Bilbo had escaped.

But the hobbit was worried and uncomfortable, and they had difficulty in getting anything out of him. On thinking things over he was now regretting some of the things he had said to the dragon, and was not eager to repeat them. And any way there was no time for any of that at the moment. Smaug was still to be reckoned with. It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.

The Dragon's rage had passed beyond description—the sort of rage that is only seen when rich folk that have more than they can enjoy suddenly lose something that they have long had but have never before used or wanted, though not a single coin had actually been taken. His fire belched forth, the hall smoked, he shook the mountain-roots. He thrust his head in vain at the little hole, and then coiling his length together, roaring like thunder underground, he sped from his deep lair through its great door, out into the huge passages of the mountain-palace and up towards the Front Gate.

To hunt the whole mountain till he gad caught the thief and had torn and trampled him was his one thought. He issued from the Gate, the waters rose in fierce whistling steam, and he soared blazing into the air and settled on the mountain-top in a spout of green and scarlet flame. The Dwarves heard the awful rumor of his flight, and they crouched against the walls of the grassy terrace cringing under boulders, hoping somehow to escape the frightful eyes of the hunting dragon.

There they would have all been killed, if it had not been for Bilbo once again. "Quick! Quick!" he gasped. "The door! The tunnel! It's no good here."

Roused by these words they were just about to creep inside the tunnel when Bifur gave a cry: "My cousins! Bombur and Bofur—we have forgotten them, they are down in the valley!"

"They will be slain, and all our ponies too, and all our stores lost!" moaned the others. "We can do nothing."

"Nonsense!" said Thorin, recovering his dignity. "We cannot leave them. Get inside Mr. Baggins and Balin, and you two Fili and Kili—the dragon shan't have all of us. Now you others, where are the ropes? Be quick!"

Those were perhaps the worst moments they had been through yet. The horrible sounds of Smaug's anger were echoing in the stony hollows far above; at any moment he might come blazing down or fly whirling round and find them there, near the cliff's edge hauling madly on the ropes. Up came Bofur, and still all was safe. Up came Bombur, puffing and blowing while the ropes creaked, and still all was safe. Up came some tools and bundles of stores, and then danger was upon them.

A whirring noise was heard. A red light touched the points of standing rocks. The dragon came.

They had barely time to fly back to the tunnel, pulling and dragging their bundles, when Smaug came hurtling from the North, licking the mountain-sides with flame, beating his great wings with noise like a roaring wind. His hot breath shriveled the grass before the door, and drove in through the crack they had left and scorched them as they lay hid. Flickering fired leaped up and the black rock-shadows danced. Then darkness fell as he passed again. The ponies screamed in terror, burst their ropes and galloped wildly off. The dragon swooped and turned to pursue them and was gone.

"That'll be the end of our poor beasts!" said Balin. "Nothing can escape Smaug once he sees it. Here we are and here we shall have to stay, unless one fancies tramping the long open miles back to the river with Smaug on the watch!"

It was not a pleasant thought! They crept further down the tunnel, and there they lay and shivered though it was warm and stuffy, until dawn came pale through the crack of the door. Every now and again through the night they could hear the roar of the flying dragon grow and then pass and fade, as he hunted round and round the mountain-sides.

Smaug guessed from the ponies, and from the traces of the camps he had discovered, that men had indeed come up with the Dwarves at some point from the river and the lake and that they had scaled the mountain-side from the valley where the ponies had been standing; but the door withstood his searching eye, and the little high-walled bay had kept out his fiercest flames. Long he hunted in vain till the dawn chilled his wrath and he went back to his golden couch to sleep—and to gather new strength. He would not forget or forgive the theft, not if a thousand years turned him to smoldering stone, but he could afford to wait. Slow and silent he crept back into his lair and half closed his eyes.

When morning came the terror of the Dwarves grew less. They realized that dangers of this kind were inevitable when dealing with such a guardian, and that it was no good giving up yet. Nor could they get away just now, as Balin had pointed out. Their ponies were lost or killed, and they would have to wait some time before Smaug relaxed his watch sufficiently for them to dare the long way on foot. Luckily they had saved enough stores to last them still for some time.

They debated long on what was to be done, but they could think of no way of getting rid of Smaug—which had always been a weak point in their plans, as Bilbo felt inclined to point out. Then as is the nature of folk that are thoroughly perplexed, they began to grumble at the hobbit, blaming him for what had at first so pleased them: for going bravely into Smaug's lair and stirring up his wrath so soon. They also lamented and criticized his decision to leave Hannah behind with the Elves, as surely the apprentice of a wizard, who must have been taught a great many of her master's enchantments and spells, could have been of some use to them in this desperate situation.

"What else do you suppose a burglar is to do?" asked Bilbo angrily. "I was not engaged to kill dragons, that is warrior's work, but to steal treasure. I made the best beginning I could. Did you expect me to trot back with the whole hoard of Thrór on my back? If there is any grumbling to be done, I think I might have a say. You ought to have brought five hundred burglars, not one. I am sure it reflects great credit on your grandfather, but you cannot pretend that you ever made the vast extent of his wealth clear to me. I should want hundreds of years to bring it all up,"—the dragon had been quite right about that part—"if I was fifty times as big, and Smaug as tame as a rabbit. And you know perfectly well why Hannah herself decided not to come with us. Shame on you for thinking to make an injured girl brave such danger!"

After that of course the Dwarves begged his pardon. "What then do you propose we do, Mr. Baggins?" asked Thorin.

"I have no idea at the moment—if you mean about removing the treasure, that obviously depends entirely on some new turn of luck and the getting rid of Smaug. Getting rid of dragons is not at all in my line, but 'every worm has his weak spot,' as my father used to say, though I am sure it was not from personal experience, and I believe that I have discovered Smaug's."

"What is it?" cried the Dwarves. "Do get on with your tale!"

So Bilbo told them all he could remember, and he confessed that he had a nasty feeling that the dragon guessed too much from his riddles added to the camps and ponies. "I am sure he knows we came from Lake-town and had help from there; and I have a horrible feeling that his next move may be in that direction. I wish to goodness I had never said that about Barrel-rider; it would make even a blind rabbit in these parts think of the Lake-men." The old thrush was sitting on the rock nearby with his head cocked to one side, listening to all that was said. (They had risked going back out on to the 'doorstep' for a bit of fresh air.) It shows what an ill temper Bilbo was in: he picked up a stone and threw it at the thrush, which merely fluttered aside and came back.

"Drat the bird!" said Bilbo crossly. "I believe he is listening, and I don't like the look of him."

"Leave him alone!" said Thorin. "The thrushes are good and friendly—this is a very old bird indeed, and is maybe the last left of the ancient breed that used to live about here, tame to the hands of my father and grandfather. They were a long-lived and magical race, and this might even be one of those that were alive then, a couple of hundred years or more ago. The Men of Dale used to have the trick of understanding their language, and used them for messengers to fly to the Men of the Lake and elsewhere."

"Well, he'll have news to take to Lake-town all right, if that is what he is after," said Bilbo; "I only hope there still people left there that trouble with thrush-language so that he can tell them to run."

"Well, well! It cannot be helped, and it is difficult not to slip in talking to a dragon, or so I have always heard," said Balin, anxious to comfort him. "I think you did very well, if you ask me—you found out one very useful thing at any rate, and got home alive, and that is more than most can say who have had words with the likes of Smaug. It may be a mercy and a blessing yet to know of the bare patch in the old Worm's diamond waistcoat."

That turned the conversation, and they began discussing dragon-slayings historical, dubious, and mythical, and all the various sorts of stabs and jabs and undercuts, and the different arts, devices, and stratagems by which they had been accomplished. The general opinion was that catching a dragon napping was not as easy as it sounded, and the attempt to stick one or prod one asleep was more likely to end in disaster than a bold frontal attack. All the while they talked the thrust listened, till at last when the stars began to peep forth, it silently spread its wings and flew away. And all the while they talked and the shadows lengthened Bilbo became more and more unhappy and his foreboding grew.

At last he interrupted them. "I am sure we are very unsafe here," he said, "and I don't see the point of sitting here. The dragon has withered all the pleasant green, and anyway the night has come and it is cold. But I feel it in my bones that this place will be attacked again. Smaug knows how I came down to his hall, and you can trust him to guess where the other end of the tunnel is. He will break all this side of the Mountain to bits, if necessary, to stop up our entrance, and if we are smashed with it the better he will like it."

"You are very gloomy, Mr. Baggins!" said Kili. "Why has not Smaug blocked the lower end, then, if he is so eager to keep us out?"

"That's right. He has not, or we would have heard him," said Fili.

"I don't know, I don't know—he could be trying to lure me in again, I suppose, or perhaps because he is waiting till after tonight's hunt, or because he does not want to damage his bedroom if he can help it—but I wish you would not argue," said Bilbo. "Smaug will be coming out at any minute now, and our only hope is to get well in the tunnel and shut the door."

He seemed so much in earnest that the Dwarves at last did as he said, though they delayed shutting the door—it seemed a desperate plan, for no one knew whether or how they could get it open again from the inside, and the thought of being shut in a place from which the only way out led through the dragon's lair was not one they liked. Also everything seemed quite quiet, both outside and down the tunnel. So for a longish while they sat inside not far down from the half-open door and went on talking.

The talk turned to the dragon's wicked words about the Dwarves. Bilbo wished he had never heard them, or at least that he could feel quite certain that the Dwarves now were absolutely honest when they declared that they had never thought at all about what would happen after the treasure had been won. But having already had one of his friends point a sword at him over a jewel the hobbit found his confidence somewhat shaken, though the Dwarf seemed to have recovered from the spark of whatever madness had gripped him in that moment. "We knew it would be a desperate venture," said Thorin, "and we know that still; and I still think that when we have won it will be the time enough to think what to do about it. As for your share, Mr. Baggins, I assure you we are more than grateful and shall choose your own fourteenth, as soon as we have anything to divide. I am sorry if you are worried about transport, and I admit the difficulties are great—the lands have not become less wild with the passing of time, rather the reverse—but we will do whatever we can for you, and take our share of the cost when the time comes. Believe me or not as you like!"

From that the talk turned to the great hoard itself and to the things that Thorin and Balin remembered. They wondered if they were still lying there unharmed in the hall below: the spears that were made for the armies of the great King Bladorthin (long since dead), each had a thrice-forged head and their shafts were inlaid with cunning gold, but they were never delivered or paid for; shield made for warriors long dead; the great golden cup of Thrór, two-handed, hammered and carven with birds and flowers whose eyes and petals were of jewels; coats of mail gilded and silvered and impenetrable; the white gems of Lasgalen, which had once belonged to the Elvenking of Mirkwood, that had been crafted into a magnificent necklace that shone like pure starlight (the very one Bilbo had already heard tell of from Hannah); the necklace of Girion, Lord of Dale, made of five hundred emeralds green as grass, which he gave for the arming of his eldest son in a coat of Dwarf-linked rings the like of which had never been made before, for it was wrought of pure silver to the power and strength of triple steel. But fairest of all was the great white gem, which Bilbo had been sent in to retrieve, the Heart of the Mountain, the Arkenstone of Thráin.

"The Arkenstone! The Arkenstone!" murmured Thorin in the dark, half dreaming with his chin upon his knees. "It was a globe with a thousand facets; it shone like silver in the firelight, like water in the sun, like snow under the stars, like rain upon the Moon!"

From his description Bilbo knew the stone that he had found earlier was indeed the one and only Arkenstone, but the enchanted desire of the hoard had fallen from the hobbit. All through their talk he was only half listening to them. He sat nearest to the door with one ear cocked for any beginnings of a sound without, his other was alert for echoes beyond the murmurs of the Dwarves, for any whisper of movement far below.

Darkness grew deeper and he grew even more uneasy. "Shut the door!" he begged them. "I fear that dragon in my marrow. I like this silence far less than the uproar of last night. Shut the door before it is too late!"

Something in his voice gave the Dwarves an uncomfortable feeling. Slowly Thorin shook off his dreams and getting up he kicked away the stone that wedged the door. Then they thrust upon it, and it closed with a snap and a clang. No trace of a keyhole was there left on the inside. They were shut in the Mountain!

And not a moment too soon. They had hardly gone any distance down the tunnel when a blow smote the side of the Mountain like the crash of battering-rams made of forest oaks and swung by giants. The rock boomed, the walls cracked and stones fell from the roof on their heads. What would have happened if the door had still been open I don't like to think. They fled further down the tunnel glad to still be alive, while behind them outside they heard the roar and rumble of Smaug's fury. He was breaking rocks to pieces, smashing wall and cliff with the lashings of his huge tail, till their little lofty camping ground, the scorched grass, the thrush's stone, the snail-covered walls, the narrow ledge, and all disappeared in a jumble of smithereens, and an avalanche of splintered stones fell over the cliff into the valley below.

Smaug had left his lair in silent stealth, quietly soared into the air, and then floated heavy and slow in the dark like a monstrous crow, down the wind towards the west of the Mountain, in the hopes of catching unawares something or somebody there, and of spying the outlet to the passage which the thief had used. This was the outburst of his wrath when he could find nobody and see nothing, even where he guessed the outlet must actually be.

After he had let off his rage in this way he felt better and he thought in his heart that he would not be troubled again from that direction. In the meanwhile he had further vengeance to take. "Barrel-rider!" he snorted. "Your feet came from the waterside and up the water without a doubt. I don't know your smell, but if you are not one of those men of the Lake, you had their help. They shall see me and remember who is the real King under the Mountain!"

He rose in fire and went away south towards the Running River.

In the meanwhile, the Dwarves sat in the darkness, and utter silence fell about them. Little they ate and little they spoke. They could not count the passing time; and they had scarcely dared to move, for the whisper of their voices echoed and rustled in the tunnel. If they dozed, they woke still to darkness and to silence going on unbroken. At last after days and days of waiting, as it seemed, when they were becoming choked and dazed for want of air, they could bear it no longer. They would almost have welcomed sounds from bellows of the dragon's return. In the silence they feared some cunning devilry of his, but they could not sit there forever.