noon
_ I may still catch Balin before he has gone too far ! If I do n't -- _ He dared not think of that . He began to walk very swiftly through the night streets , toward the distant , towering Gates of Death . It was past noon . He had climbed high toward the saddle of the pass . Kushat lay small below him , and he could see now the pattern of the gorges , cut ages deep in the living rock , that carried the spring torrents of the watershed around the mighty ledge on which the city was built . The pass itself was channeled , but only by its own snows and melting ice .