He was in the dark tunnel, floating in icy water, all alone-for you
cannot count friends that are all packed up in barrels.
     Very soon a grey patch came up in the darkness ahead. He heard the
creak of the water-gate being hauled up, and he found that he was in
the midst of a bobbing and bumping mass of casks and tubs all pressing
together to pass under the arch and get out into the open stream. He
had as much as he could do to prevent himself from being hustled and
battered to bits; but at last the jostling crowd began to break up and
swing off, one by one, under the stone arch and away. Then he saw that
it would have been no good even if he had managed to get astride his
barrel, for there was no room to spare, not even for a hobbit, between
its top and the suddenly stooping roof where the gate was.
     
     Bilbo wondered what the dwarves were feeling and whether a lot of
water was getting into their tubs. Some of those that bobbed along
     “I do hope I put the lids on tight enough!” he thought, but before
long he was worrying too much about himself to remember the dwarves.
He managed to keep his head above the water, but he was shivering with
the cold, and he wondered if he would die of it before the luck
turned, and how much longer he would be able to hang on, and whether