Notes

Bilbo wanders the palace, lonely and scared, but manages to find out where all the dwarves are being kept—and discovers Thorin, whose presence the Elvenking had not mentioned. Thorin is cheered by the visit and has him tell the others to continue their silence while Bilbo looks for a way out.

Bilbo eventually learns of another way out of the caves, a stream that passes under part of the palace, on which empty barrels are floated back to Lake-town as part of the Wood-elves’ trade. Then the king’s butler and the chief of the guards fall asleep over wine, so that Bilbo is able to steal the guard’s keys. He frees the dwarves and brings them to the cellar. The dwarves reluctantly climb into the barrels and get packed and sealed in by Bilbo. More elves come in to move the barrels; they wake the butler and tell him some of the barrels are too heavy, but the butler is grumpy and doesn’t listen.

Bilbo, having forgotten to make a plan to get himself out, manages to grab the last barrel being thrown down through the trap-doors. He gets thoroughly wet before he is able to climb more or less on top of a barrel. In the night, the barrels come to ground on a bank of the river, where other elves gather them and rope them into a raft to continue to Lake-town. Bilbo has a cold but manages to steal some food and wine and evade pursuit. The next morning he climbs back on to the barrel-raft, which is sent downstream without further inspection: “They had escaped the dungeons of the king and were through the wood, but whether alive or dead still remains to be seen.”