"Flight to the Ford" (III)

Four days without reading, just getting a summary of what happens between October 7th and today, the 11th. This is what the narrator tells us:

"Four days passed, without the ground or the scene changing much, except that behind them Weathertop slowly sank, and before them the distant mountains loomed a little nearer. Yet since that far cry they had seen and heard no sign that the enemy had marked their flight or followed them. They dreaded the dark hours, and kept watch in pairs by night, expecting at any time to see black shapes stalking in the grey night, dimly lit by the cloud-veiled moon; but they saw nothing, and heard no sound but the sigh of withered leaves and grass. Not once did they feel the sense of present evil that had assailed them before the attack in the dell. It seemed too much to hope that the Riders had already lost their trail again. Perhaps they were waiting to make some ambush in a narrow place?
"At the end of the fifth day ..." And this is where we are now. It's 22:34, I've just had an exhausting but tremendously fulfilling day, and I am joining the hobbits on their road while Matthias is preparing some dinner. It seems that, in these four days, the Enemy has given them some respite, but let us not forget, although the narrator does not dwell on that issue, that Frodo is mortally wounded; the Enemy is, in fact, somehow travelling within Frodo's body, in the shape of a splint of a cursed blade. Yet "At the end of the fifth day" we are still not given any details of how Frodo is doing, but we take it that not very well, indeed. All we know is that, "At the end of the fifth day the ground began once more to rise slowly out of the wide shallow valley into which they had descended. Strider now turned their course again north-eastwards, ...". It was too much to have Frodo wounded, I think it's fair that we can walk safey, albeit in fear. Do not despair, Strider is guiding us.

And for me.... it's dinner time! Late. I'm starving.