Sauron Defeated (7 page)

....... [?painted] with the Eye.

A [? babble] of talk in the common tongue now broke out.

'Nar,' said the tracker, 'not a trace further along. Nor o' this smell, but we're not [?easy]. Somebody that has no business here has been about. Different smell, but a bad smell: we've lost that too, it went up into the mountains.'

'A lot of use you little snufflers are,' grunted a bigger orc. 'I reckon eyes are better than your snotty noses. Have you seen anything?'

'What's to look for?' grunted the tracker.

Amid much further orcish dissension in confused drafting the final story emerges, with two orcs only, a soldier and a small tracker: my father had some trouble in deciding which offensive remark belonged to which speaker.

Drafting for the passage in which Sam described to Frodo all that had happened (RK p. 204) runs thus:

When he had finished Frodo said nothing for some time, but took Sam's hand and pressed it. At length he stirred. 'So this is what comes of eavesdropping, Sam,' he said. 'But I wonder if you'll ever get back. Perhaps it would have been safer to have been turned into a toad as Gandalf threatened. Do you remember that day, Sam,' he said, 'and clipping the edges under the window?'

'I do, Mr. Frodo. And I bet things are in [a] nasty mess there now with [?that] Lobelia and her Cosimo,(1) begging your pardon. There'll be trouble if ever we get back.'

'I shouldn't worry about that if I were you,' said Frodo.

'We've got to go on again now. East, East, Sam, not West. I wonder how long it will be before we are caught and all this slinking and toiling will be over?'

It is curious that Sam, speaking darkly of the state of affairs in the Shire, should ascribe it to Lobelia and Cosimo Sackville-Baggins. In the original sketch of the Mirror of Lothlorien, when it was King Galdaran's Mirror, and when it was Frodo who saw the visions of the Shire, he was to see 'Cosimo Sackville-Baggins very rich, buying up land'; but there is no mention of Cosimo in the first narrative of the scene (VII.249, 253).

Frodo's entrusting of Sting and the Phial of Galadriel to Sam entered in the first manuscript (B) in this form:

'You must keep the Lady's gift for me, Sam,' he said, 'I've nowhere to store it now, except in my hand, and I need both in the dark. And you must keep Sting too, since I have lost your sword. I have got an orc-blade, but I do not think it is my part to strike any blows again.'

It was at this time, as it appears, that my father came to a new perception of the lands in the north-western extremity of Mordor, and saw that the vale behind the Morannon was closed also at the southward end by great spurs that thrust out from Ephel Duath and Ered Lithui. As first written in B, Frodo told Sam this concerning his knowledge of Mordor (cf. RK p. 204):

'No very clear notion, Sam,' said Frodo. 'In Rivendell before I set out I saw old maps made before the Dark Lord came back here, and I remember them vaguely. I had a little secret plan with names and distances: it was given to me by Elrond, but that has gone with all my other things. I think it was ten leagues or even a dozen from the Bridge to the Narrows, a point where the western and northern ranges send out spurs and make a sort of gate to the deep valley that lies behind the Morannon. The Mountain stands out alone on the plain, but nearer the northern range. Nearly fifty miles I think from the Narrows, more, of course, if we have to keep to the edge of the hills on the other side.'

In a revised version of this Frodo says: 'I guess, not counting our wasted climb, we've done say [twenty miles >] six or seven leagues north from the Bridge since we started.' The final version in this manuscript gives seven leagues as the distance they have traversed, 'ten leagues or so' from the Bridge to the meeting of the mountain-spurs, and still fifty miles from there to Mount Doom. In RK these distances are twelve leagues, not seven; twenty leagues, not ten; and sixty miles, not fifty: see further the Note on Geography at the end of this chapter.

When Frodo and Sam at last set eyes on the north-western confines of Mordor as seen from the south (RK p. 205) the names Durthang and Carach Angren 'the Iron Jaws' appear in the original draft, but the valley behind Carach Angren is named the Narch.(2) The draft text is here partly illegible, but enough can be read to show that the landscape was perfectly clear to my father's eyes as soon as he reached this point in the narrative. In the B text the name Isenmouthe appears, though the valley behind is still called the deep dark valley of Narch.'(3) A notable feature in the original draft of the story is that there is no mention of Gollum (see RK p. 206). While Frodo slept Sam went off by himself and found water, as in RK, but then 'the rest of that grey day passed without incident. Frodo slept for [?hours]. Sam did not wake him, but trusting once more to "luck" slept for a long while beside him.' Gollum enters in the B text in these words: At that moment he thought he caught a glimpse of a black form or shadow flitting among the stones above, near to Frodo's hiding. He was almost back to his master before he was sure.

There was Gollum indeed! If his will could have given him strength for a great bound Sam would have sprung straight on his enemy's back; but at that moment Gollum became aware of him and looked back. Sam had a quick glimpse of two pale eyes now filled with a mad malevolent light, and then Gollum, jumping from rock to rock with great agility, fled away onto the ridge and vanished over its crest.

The end of the chapter, the story of Frodo and Sam being forced to join the orc+and coming down from Durthang and their escape from it in the confusion at the road-meeting near the Isenmouthe, was achieved in all but minor details unhesitatingly.

NOTES.

1. For Cosimo Sackville-Baggins, later Lotho, see VI.283, VII.32.

2. It was while working on the latter part of 'The Land of Shadow'

that my father first mapped this new conception of the north-western extremity of Mordor, on a slip of paper that bears on the reverse drafting for the story of the forced march of Frodo and Sam in the troop of orcs moving from Durthang to the Isenmouthe. On this little sketch-map the closed vale between the Morannon and the Isenmouthe is named The Narch, subsequently overwritten Udun. In my description of the Second Map in VIII.438 I noted that the vale was first marked Gorgoroth, but that this was struck out, 'and in its place was pencilled here the name March Udun.' It is in fact clear that Narch alone was first written, and that Udun was intended as a replacement.

3. This was changed later to 'the deep dale of Kirith Gorgor', and then to 'the deep dale of Udun' (see note 2).

4. A few such details from the earliest form of the conclusion of the chapter may be mentioned. The orc 'slave-drivers' are called 'two of the large fierce uruks, the fighting-orcs', and this seems to be the first time that the word was used (though the name Uruk-hai had appeared long since, VII.409, VIII.22, see also p. 436); and it is said that 'one of the slave-drivers with night-sighted eyes spied the two figures by the roadside.' Where in RK this orc says 'All your folk should have been inside Udun before yesterday evening' he says here 'inside the Narch-line'; and following his words 'Don't you know we're at war?' he adds: 'If the elvish folk get the best of it, they won't treat you so kindly.'

Note on the Geography.

In the first draft of the chapter, when Frodo and Sam climbed to the crest of the Morgai and looking out eastwards saw Mount Doom, it was 'still 30 miles away, perhaps, due East from where the hobbits stood.' In the B text, in the following manuscript, and in the final typescript for the printer, the distance became 'seven leagues or more', and was only altered to 'forty miles at least' (RK p. 200) at a late stage.

It is impossible to relate '30 miles', still less 'seven leagues', to any of the maps. On the Second Map the distance due East from the Morgai to Mount Doom (in its second, more westerly, position, see VIII.438) is just under 50 miles, while on the Third Map (the last general small-scale map that my father made) it became 80 miles. On the large-scale map of Rohan, Gondor and Mordor the distance is somewhat under 60 miles, as Mount Doom was first placed; but when it was moved further to the west it became about 43 miles (under 40 in my redrawing of the map published in The Return of the King), with which the text of RK agrees.

The distance from the Morgai bridge below Kirith Ungol to the Isenmouthe was roughly estimated from memory by Frodo (p. 33) as

'ten leagues or even a dozen' (30 - 36 miles); and 'ten leagues at least'

remained into the final typescript before being changed to the figure in RK (p. 204), 'twenty leagues at least'. The Second Map does not allow of precise measurement of the distance from the Morgai bridge to the Isenmouthe, since the conception of the closing of the vale behind the Morannon by spurs of Ephel Duath and Ered Lithui had not arisen when it was made, but it could be minimally calculated as between 30

and 40 miles; on the large-scale map it becomes 56 miles or just under 19 leagues, agreeing with the twenty leagues of RK.

Frodo's estimation of the distance from the Isenmouthe to Mount Doom as about fifty miles likewise remained through all the texts until replaced at the very end by sixty. This distance is roughly 50 miles on the Second Map, about 80 on the Third Map, and 62 on the large-scale map as Mount Doom was first placed; when it was moved further west the distance from the Isenmouthe became 50 miles. The change of 50 to 60 at the end of the textual history of RK is thus, strangely, the reverse of the development of the map.

In the original draft Sam and Frodo joined the road to the Isenmouthe 'after it had already run down some 4 miles from the orc-hold of Durthang and turned away somewhat northward so that the long descent behind was hidden from them [?hurrying] on the stony road. They had been going an hour and had covered perhaps some 3 miles without meeting any enemy when they heard what they had all along dreaded ...' In B 'they came at last to the road where, after descending swiftly from Durthang, it became more level and ran under the ridge towards the Isenmouthe, a distance of perhaps ten miles.' As in A, they had only been on the road for an hour when they were overtaken by the orcs, and it is added in B at this point 'it was maybe six miles yet before the road would leave its high shelf and go down into the plain.' In the following manuscript and in the final typescript for the printer the hobbits still reached the road 'at the point where it swung east towards the Isenmouthe ten miles away', and it was still after only an hour on the road that they halted, and were shortly afterwards overtaken. On the typescript my father emended

'ten miles' to 'twenty miles', and 'an hour' to 'three hours', but the final reading of RK was 'after doing some twelve miles, they halted.'

On the large-scale map the track of Frodo and Sam up the valley below the Morgai is marked, and the point where their track joined the road from Durthang is 20 miles from the Isenmouthe; the change in the text was thus very probably made to accommodate it to the map. The change whereby the hobbits had gone for three hours or twelve miles along the road before being overtaken clearly followed from the increased distance to the Isenmouthe, in order to reduce the time that Frodo and Sam had to submit to the punishing pace set by the orcs before they escaped.

Note on the Chronology.

Dates are written in the margins of the original texts of this chapter. At this stage the chronology of the journey from Kirith Ungol can be set out thus:

March 14 Dawn: Frodo and Sam climb down into the valley below the Morgai. Wind changes and the darkness begins to be driven back.

Night of March 14 - 15: They sleep below the crest of the Morgai; Sam sees a star.

March 15 They reach the top of the Morgai and see Mount Doom; descend and continue up the valley; overhear the two orcs quarrelling.

Night of March 15 - 16: They continue up the valley northward.

March 16 They spend the day in hiding in the valley.

Night of March 16 - 1 7: They continue up the valley.

March 17 In hiding. They see Durthang and the road descending from it. Gollum reappears.

Night of March 17 - 1 8: They take the road from Durthang and are forced to join the orc-company.

This chronology accords with the date March 14 of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields (see VIII.428 - 9); in both the drafting A and the first manuscript B of the chapter 'It was the morning of the fourteenth of March ... Theoden lay dying on the Pelennor Fields.' Here in RK

(p. 196) it was the morning of March 15; and all the dates as given above are in the final story one day later.