Sauron Defeated (3 page)

and very probably accompanied the outline 'The Story Foreseen from Forannest' (see VIII.397). This preliminary version of 'The march of Aragorn and defeat of the Haradrim', which contains remarkable features, is given at the end of this chapter (p. 14).

In this outline IV Gorbag is expressly the 'Master of the Tower', whereas in the fair copy manuscript of 'The Choices of Master Samwise' he is the Orc from Minas Morghul, as in RK. It is notable however that at his first appearance in this text he is the Orc from Minas Morghul, changed immediately to Shagrat - which is however marked with a query. This query suggests to me that after so much changing back and forth of the names of these beauties (see VIII.225, note 46) my father could not remember what decision he had come to, and did not at this time check it with the manuscript of the end of Book IV (cf. the case of 'Thror' and 'Thrain', VII.159 - 60). The same uncertainty is seen in outline III above (see note 6).

(IV) Frodo is captured night of 10-11. Mar.12 Frodo in prison.

(Sauron is distracted by news of the Ents and defeat of his forces in Eastemnet by Ents and Elves of Lorien.)

No message is sent for some time to Dark Tower - partly because of general.......(10) Frodo is stripped, and the Mithril coat is found.

[Gorbag >] Shagrat (?) covets this, and tries to stop Gorbag sending message: at first pleading need of searching for confederate.

But quarrel breaks out, and Shagrat and Gorbag fight and their men take sides. Sam at last finds way in - by a front gate overlooking Mordor - and a steep descent down into a long narrow dale or trough beyond which is a lower ridge.(11) In end Gorbag (Master of the Tower) wins, because he has more men, and Shagrat and all his folk are slain. Gorbag then sends tidings to Baraddur together with the Mithril coat - but overlooks Lorien cloak.(12) Gorbag has only very few men left, and has to send two (since one won't go alone for fear of the missing spy) to Baraddur. Sam slips in and slays one of Gorbag's remaining two at the gate, another on stair, and so wins his way in to the Upper Chamber. There he finds Gorbag. Sam takes off his Ring and fights him and slays him. He then enters Frodo's chamber. Frodo lying bound and naked; he has recovered his wits owing to a draught given him by orcs to counter poison - but he has talked in his delirium and revealed his name and his country, though not his errand.(13) Frodo is filled with fear, for at first he thinks it is an orc that enters. Then hatred for the bearer of the Ring seizes him like a madness, and he reproaches Sam for a traitor and thief. Sam in grief; but he speaks kindly, and the fit passes and Frodo weeps.

This is night of 13th. Sam and Frodo escape from Tower on 14th.

It might be a good thing to increase the reckoning of time that Frodo, Sam and Gollum took to climb Kirith Ungol by a day, so that Frodo is not taken until night of 11-12. Quarrel between Orcs on 12th and sending of message that night or morning of 13th when Gorbag is victorious. Sam gets in on 13th. Otherwise Sam will have to spend all 11, 12 and part of 13 trying to get into Tower.

Make Sam get in before fight and get mixed up with it. And so let Sam hear message sent to Baraddur?

The last outline (V), while written independently of IV, evidently belongs closely with it, and has the same story of the Tower of Kirith Ungol - Gorbag is the captain of the garrison, and Sam slays him. This text, giving the first detailed account of the journey of Frodo and Sam to Mount Doom, is identical in appearance to 'The Story Foreseen from Forannest' and was clearly a companion to it.

At the head of the page are written these notes on distances, which were struck through:

Minas Tirith to Osgiliath (W. end) 24 - 5 miles. Width of city

[written above: ruin] 4 miles. East end of Osgiliath to Minas Morghul about 60 miles (52 to Cross Roads?). Minas Morghul to top of Kirith Ungol (and pass below Tower) 15 miles on flat. Kirith Ungol to crest of next (lower) ridge beyond Trough is about 15

miles.

The opening paragraph of the main text is enclosed in square brackets in the original. All the changes shown were made subsequently in pencil, including the reduction of most of the dates by a day.

(V) [Gorbag sends swift runner to Baraddur on morn(ing) of 13th.

He does not reach plain and make contact with any horseman until end [> morn(ing)] of 14th? A rider reaches Baraddur on 15th [> night of 14], and at same time by Nazgul news of the defeat before Gondor and the coming of Aragorn is brought to him [Sauron).(14) He sends the Nazgul to Kirith Ungol to learn more. The Nazgul discovers Tower full of dead and the prisoner flown.]

Sam rescues Frodo and slays Gorbag on 14th [> 13]. Frodo and Sam escape: when clear of the Tower, they disguise themselves in orc-guise. In this way they reach the bottom of the Trough at night on 14th [> 13]. They are surprised that there seems no guard and no one about; but they avoid the road. (A steep stair-path leads down from Tower to join the main road from Minas Morghul over Kirith Ungol pass to the Plain of Mordor and so to Baraddur.) The darkness is that of night.(15)

On 15th [> 14) March they climb the inner ridge - about 1000

feet at most, sheer on W. side, falling in jumbled slopes on E. side.

They look out on the Plain of Mordor, but can see little owing to dark [added: but the clouds are blown away]. Though by the wizardry of Sauron the air is clear of smokes (so that his troops can move) it hangs like a great pall in the upper air. It seems largely to issue from Orodruin - or so they guess, where far away (50 miles) under the pall there is a great glow, and a gush of flame. Baraddur (further and S. of the Mountain) is mantled in impenetrable shadow. Still, Frodo and Sam can see that all plain is full of troops.

Hosts of fires dot the land as far as they can see. They cannot hope to cross. Frodo decides to try and find a point where the open land is narrower, in or nearer to Kirith Gorgor. They descend into Trough again and work north. They begin to count their food anxiously.

They are very short of water. Frodo weak after poison - though the orcs gave him something to cure it, and lembas seems specially good as antidote., he cannot go fast.(16) They manage 10 miles along Trough.

On 16th [> 15] they continue to crawl along Trough, until they are some 25 - 30 miles north of Kirith Ungol.

On 17th [> 16] they climb ridge again, and lie hid. They hardly dare move again even in the gloom, since they can see below them great hosts of warriors marching into the defile out of Mordor.

Frodo guesses they are going to war and wonders what is happening to Gandalf etc. [Added: No, most of troops are now coming back in.]

On 19th [> 18] being desperate they go down and hide in the rocks at the edge of the defile. At last Sauron's troop-movements cease. There is an ominous silence. Sauron is waiting for Gandalf to come into trap. Night of 19 - 20 [> 18 - 19] Frodo and Sam try to cross the defile into Ered-Lithui. (About this time let Sam have suspicion that Gollum is still about, but say nothing to Frodo?) After various adventures they get to Eredlithui at a point about 55

miles NW of Orodruin. 20 (part), 21, 22, 23 they are working along slopes of Eredlithui.(17)

On 24th their food and water is all spent - and Frodo has little strength left. Sam feels a blindness coming on and wonders if it is due to water of Mordor.

24th. Frodo with a last effort - too desperate for fear - reaches foot of Orodruin and on 25 begins the ascent. There is a constant rumble underground like a war of thunder. It is night. Frodo looks round fearing the ascent - a great compulsion of reluctance is on him. He feels the weight of the Eye. And behold the mantle of shadow over Baraddur is drawn aside: and like a window looking into an inner fire he sees the Eye. He falls in a faint - but the regard of the Eye is really towards Kirith Gorgor and the coming battle, and it sweeps past Orodruin.

Frodo recovers and begins ascent of Mt.Doom. He finds a winding path that leads up to some unknown destination; but it is cut across by wide fissures. The whole mountain is shaking. Sam half-blind is lagging behind. He trips and falls - but calls to Frodo to go on: and then suddenly Gollum has him from behind and chokes his cries. Frodo goes on alone not knowing that Sam is not behind, and is in danger. Gollum would have killed Sam but is suddenly filled with fear lest Frodo destroy Ring. Sam is half throttled, but he struggles on as soon as Gollum releases him.

Here the text ends, and at the end my father wrote in pencil: 'Carry on now with old sketch.' Possibly he was referring to outline II (p. 6), although there seems reason to think (p. 7) that that outline belongs to much the same time as the present text.

*

The chronology of writing.

I take it as certain that my father took up The Lord of the Rings again, after the long halt at the end of 1944, in the latter part of 1946: this was when he returned to the abandoned openings of the chapters

'Minas Tirith' and 'The Muster of Rohan'. For the subsequent chronology of writing there is little evidence beyond the rather obscure statements in his letters. On 30 September 1946 (Letters no.106, to Stanley Unwin) he said that he 'picked it up again last week' and wrote a further chapter, but there is really no knowing what this was; and on 7 December 1946 (Letters no.107, to Stanley Unwin) he wrote: 'I still hope shortly to finish my "magnum opus": the Lord of the Rings: and let you see it, before long, or before January. I am on the last chapters.'

In an unpublished letter to Stanley Unwin of 5 May 1947 he wrote:

'It [Farmer Giles] is hardly a worthy successor to "The Hobbit", but on the real sequel life hardly allows me any time to work'; and in another of 28 May 'I have not had a chance to do any writing.' On 31

July 1947 (Letters no.109) he was saying: 'The thing is to finish the thing as devised and then let it be judged'; and a further eight months on (7 April 1948, Letters no.114, to Hugh Brogan) he wrote: 'Only the difficulty of writing the last chapters, and the shortage of paper have so far prevented its printing. I hope at least to finish it this year

...' Then, on 31 October 1948 (Letters no.117, again to Hugh Brogan), he said, 'I managed to go into "retreat" in the summer, and am happy to announce that I succeeded at last in bringing the "Lord of the Rings" to a successful conclusion.'

The only other evidence that I know of is found in two pages on which my father made a list of candidates for an academic post with notes on their previous experience. Against several of the names he noted both date of birth and present age, from which it is clear that the year was 1948. On the reverse of one of these pages is drafting for the passage in 'The Land of Shadow' in which Frodo and Sam see the darkness of Mordor being driven back (RK p. 196); the second part is overwritten with drafting for the discussion of food and water in 'The Tower of Kirith Ungol' (RK p. 190), while the reverse of it carries very rough sketching of the discovery of Frodo by Sam in the Tower.

Thus in December 1946 he was 'on the last chapters' of The Lord of the Rings, and hoped to finish it 'before January'; but in 1948 he was drafting the opening chapters of Book VI. The explanation must be, I think, that by the end of 1946 he had completed or largely completed Book V, and so (in relation to the whole work) he could feel that he was now 'on the last chapters'; and greatly underestimating (as he had so often done before) how much needed to be told before he reached the end, he thought that he could finish it within the month. But 1947

was largely unproductive, as the letters imply; and Book VI was not written until 1948.

NOTES.

1. The few words and sentences that I can make out are sufficient to show that the story in the underlying text was substantially the same. The ink overwriting ends before the pencilled text does, and the last sentence of the latter can be read: 'Thorndor sweeps down and carries off Sam and Frodo. They rejoin the host on Battle Plain.' The naming of the rescuing eagle Thorndor (earlier form of Thorondor) is very surprising, but is perhaps to be explained as an unconscious reminiscence (when writing at great speed) of the rescue of Beren and Luthien in The Silmarillion.

2. Cf. the fate of the Nazgul in RK (p. 224): And into the heart of the storm ... the Nazgul came, shooting like flaming bolts, as caught in the fiery ruin of hill and sky they crackled, withered, and went out.'

3. The dates are still in February. For the change in the month see VIII.324 - 5; and with the chronology of this text cf. that given in VIII.226.

4. Cf. the outline 'The Story Foreseen from Fangorn' (VII.438):

'Then return to Frodo. Make him look out onto impenetrable night. Then use phial which has escaped ... By its light he sees the forces of deliverance approach and the dark host go out to meet them. On this I remarked (VII.440, note 15), The light of the Phial of Galadriel must be conceived here to be of huge power, a veritable star in the darkness.'

5. Sauron himself has gone out to war: despite the apparent plain significance of the words, it is impossible that my father should have meant that Sauron was no longer present in the Dark Tower.