"GL3" - читать интересную книгу автора (vol08)

all forces west of Anduin - and eventual surrender of all land up
to west of Misty Mountains (as far as Isen). As token Sauron's
messenger shows Sting (or some other object taken - the phial?)
taken when Frodo was prisoner - this would have to be
something Sam overlooked [written in margin: mithril coat].
But Gandalf utterly rejects the terms.
'Keep your captive until the battle is over, Sauron! For verily
if the day goes to me and we do not then find him unharmed, it
shall go very ill with you. Not you alone have power. To me
also a power is given of retribution, and to you it will seem very
terrible. But if the day is yours then you must do with us all that
remain alive as you will. So indeed you would do in any case,
whatever oath or treaty you might now make.'
Gandalf explains that Frodo is probably not captive - for at
any rate Sauron has not got the Ring. Otherwise he would not
seek to parley.
The story must return to Sam and Frodo at the moment when
Gandalf and Aragorn ride past Minas Morghul. ? And go
down to moment when Ring is destroyed.
Then just as Gandalf rejects parley there is a great spout of
flame, and the forces of Sauron fly. Aragorn and Gandalf and
their host pour into Gorgoroth.
Part of Battle could be seen by Frodo from [?his] tower while
a prisoner.

With the last part of this text compare the second part of the outline
'The Story Foreseen from Fangorn', VII.438.

This pencilled continuation was obviously written all at one time,
and it was written therefore after May 1944, when Faramir, whose
return to Minas Tirith is mentioned here, entered the story of The
Lord of the Rings: it is new work on the story after Book IV had been
completed. That the brief initial passage in ink ('Pippin looked out
from Gandalf's arms ...') should be separated from its pencilled
continuation by a long interval seems to me so unlikely as to be out of
the question. Far more probably my father abandoned it because he
had changed his mind about Gandalf's riding by day, and (as he often
did in such cases) then sketched out the changed conception very
rapidly (see the Note on Chronology at the end of this chapter).
This was followed by a further draft of the opening ('B'), a single
page roughly written in ink that went no further than the errand-riders
racing from Gondor to Edoras. I give this brief text in full, ignoring a
few subsequent changes in pencil.

Pippin looked out from the shelter of Gandalf's cloak. He
was awake now, though he had been sleeping, but he felt that he
was still in a swift-moving dream. Still the dark world seemed to
be rushing by, and a wind sang loudly in his ears. He could see
nothing but the wheeling stars, and away to the right vast
shadows against the sky, where the mountains of the south