They had come to the very midst of the Dead Marshes, and it was dark. These they made not so much for rest as to help Gollum for now even he had to go forward with great care, and he was sometimes at a loss for a while. Sometimes he would hold up his hand and halt them, while he went forward a little, crouching, testing the ground with fingers or toes, or merely listening with one ear pressed to the earth. His head on its long neck was ever turning this way and that, while he sniffed and muttered. Gollum certainly had that cunning, and needed all of it. Among these a cunning eye and foot could thread a wandering path. The hobbits soon found that what had looked like one vast fen was really an endless network of pools, and soft mires, and winding half-strangled water-courses. The Two Towers, LoTR Book 4, Ch 2, The Passage of the Marshes They went slowly in single file: Gollum, Sam, Frodo. Follow Sméagol very carefully, and you may go a long way, quite a long way, before He catches you, yes perhaps.' Follow Sméagol! He can take you through the marshes, through the mists, nice thick mists. More difficult, not so quick but better, if we don't want Him to see. 'Not if hobbits want to reach the dark mountains and go to see Him very quick.'. 'Must we cross these evil-smelling fens?'
'How do we shape our course now, Sméagol?' asked Frodo.
They did not know, and could not guess in that misty light, that they were in fact only just within the northern borders of the marshes, the main expanse of which lay south of them. The Lord of the Rings, Appendix B, The Tale of Years: The Third Age The hobbits were now wholly in the hands of Gollum. Frodo begins the passage of the Dead Marshes at dawn.
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