He ran back to the lower storey and tried the door. It would not move. He ran up again, and sweat began to trickle down his face. He felt that even minutes were precious, but one by one they escaped; and he could do nothing. He cared no longer for Shagrat or Snaga or any other orc that was ever spawned. He longed only for his master, for one sight of his face or one touch of his hand.
At last, weary and feeling finally defeated, he sat on a step below the level of the passage-floor and bowed his head into his hands. It was quiet, horribly quiet. The torch, that was already burning low when he arrived, sputtered and went out; and he felt the darkness cover him like a tide. And then softly, to his own surprise, there at the vain end of his long journey and his grief, moved by what thought in his heart he could not tell, Sam began to sing.

His voice sounded thin and quavering in the cold dark tower: the voice of a forlorn and weary hobbit that no listening orc could possibly mistake for the clear song of an Elven-lord. He murmured old childish tunes out of the Shire, and snatches of Mr. Bilbo’s rhymes that came into his mind like fleeting glimpses of the country of his home. And then suddenly new strength rose in him, and his voice rang out, while words of his own came unbidden to fit the simple tune.

In western lands beneath the Sun

the flowers may rise in Spring...

Going from:
‘King’s man! King’s man!’ his heart cried within him. ‘You must stay by him. As a father you shall be to me, you said.’ But his will made no answer, and his body shook. He dared not open his eyes or look up.

To:
Pity filled his heart and great wonder, and suddenly the slow-kindled courage of his race awoke. He clenched his hand. She should not die, so fair, so desperate! At least she should not die alone, unaided.

The characters are often bewildered and they're bewildered in two senses. They're bewildered because they're lost in wilder land, they don't know where they are. Sometimes of course, they discuss where they are. Mary and Pippin are particularly lost because they're too idle ever to look at a map. But even Aragorn has a good idea where everything is, he is often lost in the sense of not being sure what to do. So they're bewildered in being lost in wilder land, but they're also bewildered in they don't know what to do. Aragorn in particular feels this strongly I think at the start of book two, because he has to make a string of decisions. Okay, Mary and Pippin have been carried off. Frodo and Sam have gone off in the other direction. Who's he gonna follow? Mary and Pippin, they've been taken by Orcs...
A lot of it is an effect of the complex separations which take place. Like I say, first movie road movie. Second movie, second book characters are going off in all directions. Frodo and Sam, Mary and Pippin, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli. Gandalf comes in, they swap over then Pippin goes off with Gandalf. Mary goes off with the riders or goes off with Éowyn. The characters are zipping backwards and forwards all the time. Gandalf sort of criss-crossing...

And why does he [Tolkien in his books] have this complex net of criss-crossings and bewilderments and speculations? Well I'd say the answer to that, is fairly clear. What he's saying is, and I can sum it up in four words, which is the old motto of the British Red Coat. Which is, "Look to your front." You don't look to the sides, don't look to see what your mates are doing. You don't need to know that, cause if you're looking to see what they're doing. They'll be looking to see what you're doing. And you will have frightened each other in no time. Certainly don't look behind you, look to your front. Or another way that it's put and this time it's Gandalf's words. Gandalf talking to Frodo early on in the book and repeated twice actually by Jackson.

He says, "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us". All we have to do is decide what we're going to do. Do not think about other people. Once you start making your decisions on the basis of what you think other peoples decisions will be, you are speculating. And when you start speculating, you will inevitably get it wrong. You will actually frighten yourself, and drive yourself to wrong conclusions. Like Denethor and indeed like Sauron. Well, I think actually in the book all that's quite clear. It's a statement about the way events are in the real world. It's telling you what is the right procedure in the real world. But in the movies, it's quite different... .

‘I am glad that you are here with me,’ said Frodo. ‘Here at the end of all things, Sam.’

‘Yes, I am with you, Master,’ said Sam, laying Frodo’s wounded hand gently to his breast. ‘And you’re with me. And the journey’s finished. But after coming all that way I don’t want to give up yet. It’s not like me, somehow, if you understand.’

‘Maybe not, Sam,’ said Frodo; ‘but it’s like things are in the world. Hopes fail. An end comes. We have only a little time to wait now. We are lost in ruin and downfall, and there is no escape.’

‘Well, Master, we could at least go further from this dangerous place here, from this Crack of Doom, if that’s its name. Now couldn’t we? Come, Mr. Frodo, let’s go down the path at any rate!’

‘Very well, Sam. If you wish to go, I’ll come,’ said Frodo;...Frodo and Sam could go no further. Their last strength of mind and body was swiftly ebbing. They had reached a low ashen hill piled at the Mountain’s foot; but from it there was no more escape.

But even while he spoke so, to keep fear away until the very last, his eyes still strayed north, north into the eye of the wind, to where the sky far off was clear, as the cold blast, rising to a gale, drove back the darkness and the ruin of the clouds.
...
two small dark figures, forlorn, hand in hand upon a little hill, while the world shook under them, and gasped, and rivers of fire drew near. And even as he espied them and came swooping down, he saw them fall, worn out, or choked with fumes and heat, or stricken down by despair at last, hiding their eyes from death.

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For Merry, I'm not entirely sure whether he was in despair/without hope, or whether he wasn't really thinking in those terms at all and everything was simply immediate, and full of choices, without really much room for him to know if he was feeling despair or not.

Good insight, Ethel. While he was in conflict, he didn't have the luxury to weigh all his options or engage in much introspection:

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I'm trying to think my way through Merry's feelings and actions, but he did no such thing: he was a blur of instincts and principles and fear and inspired courage, all very immediate as you point out, and he just acted on a very hasty plan and on whatever emotions took hold of him. I do think that overall, Merry was determined to do what was right, even if he was in a situation for over his head.

(I bet you were there at the same time as my brother–he did the electronics works on F-15C's at a base so far out in the Saudi desert that the one Scud missile that came anywhere near fell helplessly into the sand, I think a couple of miles away.)

More than one Hollywood drill instructor has said something like "We're training you and training you so when things go crazy, you'll know what to do instead of panic and freeze and die," so I guess they get that right.

TORN member Brethil, who used to be active here, worked/works as an emergency room nurse and commented something similar, that a very messy human body could come in the door, and that was when training in life-saving techniques took over instead of gasping in horror, etc. She even said she didn't think about it until afterwards that she'd saved someone's life, she was just doing what was needed and what she'd learned to do with repeat experience.

It sorta seems like emergency situations are less about fear vs. courage and more about fear vs. training, with training filling the void that fear otherwise thrives in.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Like a dream the vision shifted and went back, and he saw the trees again. But this time they were not so close, and he could see what was going on: they were not waving in the wind, they were falling, crashing to the ground.
'Hi!' cried Sam in an outraged voice. 'There’s that Ted Sandyman a-cutting down trees as he shouldn’t. They didn’t ought to be felled: it’s that avenue beyond the Mill that shades the road to Bywater. I wish I could get at Ted, and I’d fell him!'
But now Sam noticed that the Old Mill had vanished, and a large red-brick building was being put up where it had stood. Lots of folk were busily at work. There was a tall red chimney nearby. Black smoke seemed to cloud the surface of the Mirror.

'There’s some devilry at work in the Shire,' he said. ‘Elrond knew what he was about when he wanted to send Mr. Merry back.' Then suddenly Sam gave a cry and sprang away. 'I can’t stay here,' he said wildly. 'I must go home. They’ve dug up Bagshot Row, and there’s the poor old Gaffer going down the Hill with his bits of things on a barrow. I must go home!'
'You cannot go home alone,' said the Lady. 'You did not wish to go home without your master before you looked in the Mirror, and yet you knew that evil things might well be happening in the Shire. Remember that the Mirror shows many things, and not all have yet come to pass. Some never come to be, unless those that behold the visions turn aside from their path to prevent them.'

Presently he came back, and bending looked at Frodo’s face, pale beneath him in the dusk. And suddenly he saw that he was in the picture that was revealed to him in the mirror of Galadriel in Lórien: Frodo with a pale face lying fast asleep under a great dark cliff. Or fast asleep he had thought then. ‘He’s dead!’ he said. ‘Not asleep, dead!’ And as he said it, as if the words had set the venom to its work again, it seemed to him that the hue of the face grew livid green.
And then black despair came down on him, and Sam bowed to the ground, and drew his grey hood over his head, and night came into his heart, and he knew no more.

Steady the Buffs! Kipling quotes this phrase in three different stories – this one, “Poor Dear Mama” (The Story of the Gadsbys), and “The Last Term” (Stalky & Co.)

The source of this quotation was discussed on the Kipling Mailbase in 2001 and 2002, the following being based on the comments by Roger Ayers, Michael Jefferson, and Tim Connell:

The Buffs were a notable regiment of the British Army, the Third Foot, descended from a regiment raised for Dutch service in 1572, and the London Trainbands, all of which had buff coloured facings to their uniforms. The 3rd Foot had become popularly known as ‘The Buffs’ by 1702, and this became part of their official name by 1751.

The phrase originated in the Peninsular War, and is attributed to the Colonel of the Buffs. During an engagement, the Buffs, as senior Regiment were positioned on the right flank in an advance against the French. The enthusiatic Buffs moved rapidly and got well ahead of the general line of advance, whereupon the Colonel is reputed to have shouted:

‘Steady the Buffs, give the Slashers a chance!’

The ‘Slashers’ was a nickname accorded to the 28th Foot (2nd Battalion, the Gloucestershire Regiment), the Regiment to the left of the Buffs in the advance line, a name that they are said to have earned when cutting their way out of trouble at the Battle of White Plains in 1777. They share the battle honours Albuhera, Vittoria, Pyrenees and others in the Peninsula with the Buffs, the Berkshires and the Northamptonshires so they were often in action together

Readers' note to 'His Brother's Keeper, The Kipling Society website