nothing: they could see eyes. They slept all closely huddled together,
and took it in turns to watch; and when it was Bilbo’s turn he would
see gleams in the darkness round them, and sometimes pairs of yellow
or red or green eyes would stare at him from a little distance, and
then slowly fade and disappear and slowly shine out again in another
place. And sometimes they would gleam down from the branches just
above him; and that was most terrifying. But the eyes that he liked
the least were horrible pale bulbous sort of eyes. “Insect eyes” he
thought, “not animal eyes, only they are much too big.” Although it
was not yet very cold, they tried lighting watch-fires at night, but
they soon gave that up. It seemed to bring hundreds and hundreds of
eyes all round them, though the creatures, whatever they were, were
careful never to let their bodies show in the little flicker of the
flames. Worse still it brought thousands of dark-grey and black moths,
some nearly as big as your hand, flapping and whirring round their
ears. They could not stand that, nor the huge bats, black as a
top-hat, either; so they gave up fires
     All this went on for what seemed to the hobbit ages upon ages; and he
was always hungry, for they were extremely careful with their
provisions. Even so, as days followed days, and still the forest