Shelob's Lair
It may indeed have been daytime now, as Gollum said, but the hobbits could see little difference, unless, perhaps, the heavy sky above was less utterly black, more like a great roof of smoke; while instead of the darkness of deep night, which lingered still in cracks and holes, a grey blurring shadow shrouded the stony world about them. They passed on, Gollum in front and the hobbits now side by side, up the long ravine between the piers and columns of torn and weathered rock, standing like huge unshapen statues on either hand. There was no sound. Some way ahead, a mile or so, perhaps, was a great grey wall, a last huge upthrusting mass of mountain-stone. Darker it loomed, and steadily it rose as they approached, until it towered up high above them, shutting out the view of all that lay beyond. Deep shadow lay before its feet. Sam sniffed the air.
'Ugh! That smell!' he said. 'It's getting stronger and stronger.'
Presently they were under the shadow, and there in the midst of it they saw the opening of a cave. 'This is the way in,' said Gollum softly. 'This is the entrance to the tunnel.' He did not speak its name: Torech Ungol, Shelob's Lair. Out of it came a stench, not the sickly odour of decay in the meads of Morgul, but a foul reek, as if filth unnameable were piled and hoarded in the dark within.
'Is this the only way, Smeagol?' said Frodo.
'Yes, yes,' he answered. 'Yes, we must go this way now.'
'D'you mean to say you've been through this hole?' said Sam. 'Phew! But perhaps you don't mind bad smells.'
Gollum's eyes glinted. 'He doesn't know what we minds, does he precious? No, he doesn't. But Smeagol can bear things. Yes. He's been through. O yes, right through. It's the only way.'
'And what makes the smell, I wonder,' said Sam. 'It's like
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