I just love my little guy!! LOL An inspired moment that must have been a truely terrifying one: it could have gone horribly wrong, and Grishnakh deciding to knife them right then and there. That he chose to try and run off with them secret like before trying to knife them was as much a roll of the dice as anything else that happened in LOTR. I think the thing that really intrigues me the most about Tolkien's writing is how he flips the expectations of a plot line. When I first read this, I was sure Merry and Pippin were goners.
And they easily could have been... Tolkien definately didn't have to write them into the rest of the story, and they take a turn here that seems it could have been an extra gift from an author who perhaps found he could not part with them either!
That and the mental picture he had before of Strider running behind.....do you think Pippin might be psychic?