His rêverie was interrupted by faint knocks that seemed to arise from out of the depths: tom-tap, tap-tom, tom-bom, ding-dang-dong… But no, they came, not from the depths, but from the wall against which he lay. It seemed to the young hobbite as if Érou were finally moved to pity at the edge of the abysm into which he had been on the point of falling, without a rope wherewith to save himself.
"That was the sound of a hammer, or I have never heard one," he thought. "But who could have a hammer in a place like this? I must discover who it is, et c'est un fait, ça. Perhaps we can contrive a plan of escape; if not, we can at least converse, compare notes on cuisine, whatever..."
Resolving to risk everything to find his companion in prison, he dissevered the handle of a pan that he had lovingly kept by him all the years of his imprisonment, and could hardly bear to damage, but for this one hope that filled his soul. He began to delve in the direction of the tom-tapping – cautiously, for fear of alarming the other, but steadily. At last, weary and feeling finally defeated, he sat on a heap of rubble and held his head in his hands. And then, suddenly, new strength rose in him, and his voice rang out, and words of his own came unbidden to fit the simple tune:
