I think for me, the most fascinating part about reading this chapter again (besides G55's point of Bilbo going from wishing Gollum's miserable death, to the epiphany of pitying him - and thus having a rather important impact to the LOTR story) was the "creatures" in the lake that Bilbo feared:
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"So it is a pool or a lake, and not an underground river" he thought. Still he did not dare to wade out into the darkness. He could not swim; and he thought, too, of nasty slimy things with big bulging blind eyes, wriggling in the water. There are strange things living in the pools and lakes in the hearts of Mountains:...Even in the tunnels and caves the goblins have made for themselves there are other things living unbeknown to them that have sneaked in from outside to lie up in the dark. Some of these caves, too, goo back in their beginnings to ages before the goblins, who only widened them and joined them up with passages, and the original owners are still there in odd corners, slithering and nosing about.~Riddles in the Dark
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What was neat about this, is not only the injection of vague creepy creatures slithering about in mountains, long before goblins ever came there, but the striking connection to Gandalf's "nameless things" he describes in TTT:
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"We fought far under the living earth, where time is not counted...They were not made by Durin's folk, Gimli son of Gloin. Far, far below the deepest delvings of the Dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things. Even Sauron knows them not. They are older than he."~The White Rider
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It was just a fascinating moment reading the chapter, "ahh nameless things!" It made me wonder whether this was another "fortunate accident" where Tolkien was unconsciously drawing from The Hobbit, while he was writing Gandalf's reference to nameless things gnawing at the world.