Escape from Underland and return to Narnia is the turning point that carries Jill, Eustace, Puddleglum, and Prince Rilian from a landscape closing in around them into the moonlit world that has been waiting for them. The escape is no effortless passage back to safety: rising water overtakes the underground hills, the guiding lamps go out, a false-looking opening nearly takes Jill from her companions, and the party must follow a worked tunnel into the dark. Their emergence, however, makes private survival public history. Narnian revelers dig the travelers out, and the sight of Rilian transforms a rescue into the joyous recovery of a prince his people had thought lost.

The road through a flooding Underland

After the travelers leave the region of Bism, their way leads down toward water and then up along a road marked by lamps. The lights appear on the far side of a valley, but at its bottom moving water shines in their path. Rilian calls for haste. The tide is running up the valley like a mill-race; it is still only a foot or two deep, yet it swishes around the horses’ legs as they cross. Had they reached it later, the crossing would have been far more dangerous, and the horses might not have managed it.

Beyond the water, the route climbs. Looking back, the travelers see the flood spreading until Underland’s hills have become islands, with lamps left only on those patches of higher ground. Lights vanish in the distance one by one, while water reaches even the lower stretch of road behind them. They have reason to hurry, but the horses cannot continue without rest. During their halt, Jill wonders whether Father Time and the strange sleeping animals have been flooded out. The question gives the changing landscape a reach beyond the party’s immediate escape: even the places and creatures they passed below may be caught in the inundation.

The road itself changes character as they continue. Underland’s roof draws close overhead, its rugged walls close in on either side, and signs of recent digging—picks, shovels, and barrows—show that the passage has been worked. The signs are heartening if the road truly leads out, but the narrowing tunnel also makes retreat increasingly difficult. At last the ceiling is so low that Puddleglum and Rilian strike their heads against it. The travelers dismount and lead their horses, picking their way across the uneven ground.

Darkness and the uncertain opening

Jill is the first to notice that the lamps are failing. One ahead goes out, then the one behind, and the party is left in absolute darkness. Rilian answers that sudden loss of light with a declaration of allegiance: “Whether we live or die Aslan will be our good lord.” Puddleglum answers in his own dry fashion, finding a grim joke even in their predicament. The exchange does not make the tunnel safer, but it shows the companions continuing by loyalty and fellowship when the visible road has disappeared.

Puddleglum and Eustace feel their way in front with their arms outstretched, while Jill and Rilian follow with the horses. After a long period in the dark, Eustace sees what might be a patch of light. Puddleglum soon finds a dead end, but the obstruction is earth rather than rock. Rilian recognizes a kind of opening, and Jill identifies the light as cold and blue rather than daylight. What looks like a way to the surface is not yet a clear promise of escape: Jill has to climb through first, and the others cannot see what lies beyond the hole.

As Jill reaches the opening, her companions hear a scuffle and Puddleglum’s alarmed call for help. Someone is pulling at her legs; the light is blocked for a moment, and then Jill is gone. Her cries are muffled, and the others cannot hear what she says. The interruption sharply reverses the apparent progress toward freedom: the first traveler through the opening vanishes, leaving the others underground with no explanation or way to reach her immediately.

Jill’s experience reveals the cause of the confusion. After so long in darkness, she initially cannot make sense of what she sees. She is looking down from a hole in a steep bank, about fourteen feet above the ground, into a pale, cold scene filled with movement and noise. When she stands on Puddleglum’s shoulders, she can see and hear clearly enough to understand that the apparent jumble is a dance. The blue light is moonlight; the white ground is snow; and the dark shapes behind the dancers are trees. The party has not merely reached open air but emerged in the heart of Narnia.

A moonlit Narnian welcome

The sounds Jill had heard resolve into the rhythm of feet and music played on four fiddles, three flutes, and a drum. The dancers are Fauns and Dryads, whose complicated figures make the gathering appear at first to be moving at random. Jill recognizes the scene as the Great Snow Dance, and its music feels to her both sweet and slightly eerie. The contrast is pointed: the moonlit dance is full of good magic, unlike the Witch’s thrumming, which had been full of bad magic. The travelers have come out of a world shaped by enchantment and danger into a public celebration whose wonder is freely shared.

A ring of Dwarfs circles the dancers, throwing snowballs through the figures in time with the music. Their aim and timing are so precise that the dancers avoid being hit as long as they occupy the right places at the right moments. One snowball from a Dwarf on the far side flies straight into Jill’s mouth just as she tries to announce that the travelers are safe. She is not disheartened by the blow; she simply cannot speak while her mouth is full of snow. Once she can talk, excitement makes her forget that her companions are still below. Instead of calling down to them, she cries to the dancers for help, explaining that they are buried in the hill.

The Narnians had not noticed the small hole in the hillside. At first they look in the wrong directions, but when they spot Jill, they run to her; a dozen or more hands reach up, and she takes hold of them and slides headfirst down the bank. Her first concern is not to remain among the welcoming crowd but to get the others out. She tells them that three companions and the horses are still underground, and identifies one of the trapped travelers as Prince Rilian. The announcement turns the gathering’s attention from the surprise of a voice from the hill to the task of bringing the whole party into the open.

Digging out and recognizing the prince

The crowd that comes to Jill includes more than the dancers. Squirrels pour out of the trees, Owls and Hedgehogs arrive, and Bears, Badgers, and a Panther join them. The Dwarfs clear snow and sod from a broad strip of hillside, then use pickaxes and spades to open the earth. Moles, woken from sleep and initially displeased, join the digging once they understand what is happening. Fauns cart earth away in barrows, while the Squirrels leap and dance in their excitement. Bears and Owls offer advice and invite the children to warm themselves in the cave and have supper, but Jill and Eustace cannot bear to leave before their friends are freed.

The cold air and warmth of the welcome make Underland seem almost dreamlike by contrast. Jill and Eustace clasp both hands and draw deep breaths of the free midnight air; Eustace receives a warm cloak, and both children are given hot drinks. Around them, the work continues until the diggers open a great black chasm in the hillside. Narnian digging is presented as a pleasure rather than a burden: Dwarfs and Talking Moles like the work, and the party is freed before the newly arrived Moles have even finished waking up. The contrast between the labor below and the energetic communal digging above makes escape a collective effort, not simply the final act of the four travelers.

Puddleglum emerges first, his long, leggy figure and steeple-hat appearing from the blackness; he leads two great horses. The greetings that follow show that he, too, has been missed. The crowd recognizes him as old Puddleglum from the Eastern Marshes, recalls that search parties have been sent out, and mentions notices put up by Lord Trumpkin and a reward. The talk stops instantly when Rilian appears behind him. The rescue has reunited a missing Marsh-wiggle with his country, but the prince’s return carries still greater consequence.

Rilian is pale from long imprisonment in the Deep Lands, dressed in black, dusty, disheveled, and weary. Yet the Narnians recognize him at once. Some remember him from before his enchantment; older witnesses also see in him a likeness to his father, King Caspian. The account insists that recognition rests on more than memory or resemblance: something in Rilian’s face and bearing marks him as a true king of Narnia, ruling by the will of Aslan and associated with the throne at Cair Paravel once held by Peter the High King. At the sight of him, every head is bared and every knee bent. Silence gives way to cheers, dancing, handshakes, kisses, and embraces, turning the travelers’ emergence into a homecoming and the recovery of Narnia’s lost prince into a shared public joy.