blind eyes, wriggling in the water. There are strange things living in
the pools and lakes in the hearts of mountains: fish whose fathers
swam in, goodness only knows how many years ago, and never swam out
again, while their eyes grew bigger and bigger and bigger from trying
to see in the blackness; also there are other things more slimy than
fish. Even in the tunnels and caves the goblins have made for
themselves there are other things living unbeknown to them that have
sneaked in from outside to lie up in the dark. Some of these caves,
too, go back in their beginnings to ages before the goblins, who only
widened them and joined them up with passages, and the original owners
are still there in odd comers, slinking and nosing about.
     Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum, a small slimy
creature. I don’t know where he came from, nor who or what he was. He
was Gollum - as dark as darkness, except for two big round pale eyes
in his thin face. He had a little boat, and he rowed about quite
quietly on the lake; for lake it was, wide and deep and deadly cold.
He paddled it with large feet dangling over the side, but never a
ripple did he make. Not he. He was looking out of his pale lamp-like
eyes for blind fish, which he grabbed with his long fingers as quick
as thinking. He liked meat too. Goblin he thought good, when he could