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  • CHAPTER VII

  • 'Now, indeed, I seemed in a worse case than before.

  • Hitherto, except during my night's anguish at the loss of the Time Machine, I had felt

  • a sustaining hope of ultimate escape, but that hope was staggered by these new

  • discoveries.

  • Hitherto I had merely thought myself impeded by the childish simplicity of the

  • little people, and by some unknown forces which I had only to understand to overcome;

  • but there was an altogether new element in

  • the sickening quality of the Morlocks--a something inhuman and malign.

  • Instinctively I loathed them.

  • Before, I had felt as a man might feel who had fallen into a pit: my concern was with

  • the pit and how to get out of it. Now I felt like a beast in a trap, whose

  • enemy would come upon him soon.

  • 'The enemy I dreaded may surprise you. It was the darkness of the new moon.

  • Weena had put this into my head by some at first incomprehensible remarks about the

  • Dark Nights.

  • It was not now such a very difficult problem to guess what the coming Dark

  • Nights might mean. The moon was on the wane: each night there

  • was a longer interval of darkness.

  • And I now understood to some slight degree at least the reason of the fear of the

  • little Upper-world people for the dark.

  • I wondered vaguely what foul villainy it might be that the Morlocks did under the

  • new moon. I felt pretty sure now that my second

  • hypothesis was all wrong.

  • The Upper-world people might once have been the favoured aristocracy, and the Morlocks

  • their mechanical servants: but that had long since passed away.

  • The two species that had resulted from the evolution of man were sliding down towards,

  • or had already arrived at, an altogether new relationship.

  • The Eloi, like the Carolingian kings, had decayed to a mere beautiful futility.

  • They still possessed the earth on sufferance: since the Morlocks,

  • subterranean for innumerable generations, had come at last to find the daylit surface

  • intolerable.

  • And the Morlocks made their garments, I inferred, and maintained them in their

  • habitual needs, perhaps through the survival of an old habit of service.

  • They did it as a standing horse paws with his foot, or as a man enjoys killing

  • animals in sport: because ancient and departed necessities had impressed it on

  • the organism.

  • But, clearly, the old order was already in part reversed.

  • The Nemesis of the delicate ones was creeping on apace.

  • Ages ago, thousands of generations ago, man had thrust his brother man out of the ease

  • and the sunshine. And now that brother was coming back

  • changed!

  • Already the Eloi had begun to learn one old lesson anew.

  • They were becoming reacquainted with Fear.

  • And suddenly there came into my head the memory of the meat I had seen in the Under-

  • world.

  • It seemed odd how it floated into my mind: not stirred up as it were by the current of

  • my meditations, but coming in almost like a question from outside.

  • I tried to recall the form of it.

  • I had a vague sense of something familiar, but I could not tell what it was at the

  • time.

  • 'Still, however helpless the little people in the presence of their mysterious Fear, I

  • was differently constituted.

  • I came out of this age of ours, this ripe prime of the human race, when Fear does not

  • paralyse and mystery has lost its terrors. I at least would defend myself.

  • Without further delay I determined to make myself arms and a fastness where I might

  • sleep.

  • With that refuge as a base, I could face this strange world with some of that

  • confidence I had lost in realizing to what creatures night by night I lay exposed.

  • I felt I could never sleep again until my bed was secure from them.

  • I shuddered with horror to think how they must already have examined me.

  • 'I wandered during the afternoon along the valley of the Thames, but found nothing

  • that commended itself to my mind as inaccessible.

  • All the buildings and trees seemed easily practicable to such dexterous climbers as

  • the Morlocks, to judge by their wells, must be.

  • Then the tall pinnacles of the Palace of Green Porcelain and the polished gleam of

  • its walls came back to my memory; and in the evening, taking Weena like a child upon

  • my shoulder, I went up the hills towards the south-west.

  • The distance, I had reckoned, was seven or eight miles, but it must have been nearer

  • eighteen.

  • I had first seen the place on a moist afternoon when distances are deceptively

  • diminished.

  • In addition, the heel of one of my shoes was loose, and a nail was working through

  • the sole--they were comfortable old shoes I wore about indoors--so that I was lame.

  • And it was already long past sunset when I came in sight of the palace, silhouetted

  • black against the pale yellow of the sky.

  • 'Weena had been hugely delighted when I began to carry her, but after a while she

  • desired me to let her down, and ran along by the side of me, occasionally darting off

  • on either hand to pick flowers to stick in my pockets.

  • My pockets had always puzzled Weena, but at the last she had concluded that they were

  • an eccentric kind of vase for floral decoration.

  • At least she utilized them for that purpose.

  • And that reminds me! In changing my jacket I found...'

  • The Time Traveller paused, put his hand into his pocket, and silently placed two

  • withered flowers, not unlike very large white mallows, upon the little table.

  • Then he resumed his narrative.

  • 'As the hush of evening crept over the world and we proceeded over the hill crest

  • towards Wimbledon, Weena grew tired and wanted to return to the house of grey

  • stone.

  • But I pointed out the distant pinnacles of the Palace of Green Porcelain to her, and

  • contrived to make her understand that we were seeking a refuge there from her Fear.

  • You know that great pause that comes upon things before the dusk?

  • Even the breeze stops in the trees. To me there is always an air of expectation

  • about that evening stillness.

  • The sky was clear, remote, and empty save for a few horizontal bars far down in the

  • sunset. Well, that night the expectation took the

  • colour of my fears.

  • In that darkling calm my senses seemed preternaturally sharpened.

  • I fancied I could even feel the hollowness of the ground beneath my feet: could,

  • indeed, almost see through it the Morlocks on their ant-hill going hither and thither

  • and waiting for the dark.

  • In my excitement I fancied that they would receive my invasion of their burrows as a

  • declaration of war. And why had they taken my Time Machine?

  • 'So we went on in the quiet, and the twilight deepened into night.

  • The clear blue of the distance faded, and one star after another came out.

  • The ground grew dim and the trees black.

  • Weena's fears and her fatigue grew upon her.

  • I took her in my arms and talked to her and caressed her.

  • Then, as the darkness grew deeper, she put her arms round my neck, and, closing her

  • eyes, tightly pressed her face against my shoulder.

  • So we went down a long slope into a valley, and there in the dimness I almost walked

  • into a little river.

  • This I waded, and went up the opposite side of the valley, past a number of sleeping

  • houses, and by a statue--a Faun, or some such figure, minus the head.

  • Here too were acacias.

  • So far I had seen nothing of the Morlocks, but it was yet early in the night, and the

  • darker hours before the old moon rose were still to come.

  • 'From the brow of the next hill I saw a thick wood spreading wide and black before

  • me. I hesitated at this.

  • I could see no end to it, either to the right or the left.

  • Feeling tired--my feet, in particular, were very sore--I carefully lowered Weena from

  • my shoulder as I halted, and sat down upon the turf.

  • I could no longer see the Palace of Green Porcelain, and I was in doubt of my

  • direction. I looked into the thickness of the wood and

  • thought of what it might hide.

  • Under that dense tangle of branches one would be out of sight of the stars.

  • Even were there no other lurking danger--a danger I did not care to let my imagination

  • loose upon--there would still be all the roots to stumble over and the tree-boles to

  • strike against.

  • 'I was very tired, too, after the excitements of the day; so I decided that I

  • would not face it, but would pass the night upon the open hill.

  • 'Weena, I was glad to find, was fast asleep.

  • I carefully wrapped her in my jacket, and sat down beside her to wait for the

  • moonrise.

  • The hill-side was quiet and deserted, but from the black of the wood there came now

  • and then a stir of living things. Above me shone the stars, for the night was

  • very clear.

  • I felt a certain sense of friendly comfort in their twinkling.

  • All the old constellations had gone from the sky, however: that slow movement which

  • is imperceptible in a hundred human lifetimes, had long since rearranged them

  • in unfamiliar groupings.

  • But the Milky Way, it seemed to me, was still the same tattered streamer of star-

  • dust as of yore.

  • Southward (as I judged it) was a very bright red star that was new to me; it was

  • even more splendid than our own green Sirius.

  • And amid all these scintillating points of light one bright planet shone kindly and

  • steadily like the face of an old friend.

  • 'Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of

  • terrestrial life.

  • I thought of their unfathomable distance, and the slow inevitable drift of their

  • movements out of the unknown past into the unknown future.

  • I thought of the great precessional cycle that the pole of the earth describes.

  • Only forty times had that silent revolution occurred during all the years that I had

  • traversed.

  • And during these few revolutions all the activity, all the traditions, the complex

  • organizations, the nations, languages, literatures, aspirations, even the mere

  • memory of Man as I knew him, had been swept out of existence.

  • Instead were these frail creatures who had forgotten their high ancestry, and the

  • white Things of which I went in terror.

  • Then I thought of the Great Fear that was between the two species, and for the first

  • time, with a sudden shiver, came the clear knowledge of what the meat I had seen might

  • be.

  • Yet it was too horrible! I looked at little Weena sleeping beside

  • me, her face white and starlike under the stars, and forthwith dismissed the thought.

  • 'Through that long night I held my mind off the Morlocks as well as I could, and whiled

  • away the time by trying to fancy I could find signs of the old constellations in the

  • new confusion.

  • The sky kept very clear, except for a hazy cloud or so.

  • No doubt I dozed at times.

  • Then, as my vigil wore on, came a faintness in the eastward sky, like the reflection of

  • some colourless fire, and the old moon rose, thin and peaked and white.

  • And close behind, and overtaking it, and overflowing it, the dawn came, pale at

  • first, and then growing pink and warm. No Morlocks had approached us.

  • Indeed, I had seen none upon the hill that night.

  • And in the confidence of renewed day it almost seemed to me that my fear had been

  • unreasonable.

  • I stood up and found my foot with the loose heel swollen at the ankle and painful under

  • the heel; so I sat down again, took off my shoes, and flung them away.

  • 'I awakened Weena, and we went down into the wood, now green and pleasant instead of

  • black and forbidding. We found some fruit wherewith to break our

  • fast.

  • We soon met others of the dainty ones, laughing and dancing in the sunlight as

  • though there was no such thing in nature as the night.

  • And then I thought once more of the meat that I had seen.

  • I felt assured now of what it was, and from the bottom of my heart I pitied this last

  • feeble rill from the great flood of humanity.

  • Clearly, at some time in the Long-Ago of human decay the Morlocks' food had run

  • short. Possibly they had lived on rats and such-

  • like vermin.

  • Even now man is far less discriminating and exclusive in his food than he was--far less

  • than any monkey. His prejudice against human flesh is no

  • deep-seated instinct.

  • And so these inhuman sons of men----! I tried to look at the thing in a

  • scientific spirit.

  • After all, they were less human and more remote than our cannibal ancestors of three

  • or four thousand years ago. And the intelligence that would have made

  • this state of things a torment had gone.

  • Why should I trouble myself? These Eloi were mere fatted cattle, which

  • the ant-like Morlocks preserved and preyed upon--probably saw to the breeding of.

  • And there was Weena dancing at my side!

  • 'Then I tried to preserve myself from the horror that was coming upon me, by

  • regarding it as a rigorous punishment of human selfishness.

  • Man had been content to live in ease and delight upon the labours of his fellow-man,

  • had taken Necessity as his watchword and excuse, and in the fullness of time

  • Necessity had come home to him.

  • I even tried a Carlyle-like scorn of this wretched aristocracy in decay.

  • But this attitude of mind was impossible.

  • However great their intellectual degradation, the Eloi had kept too much of

  • the human form not to claim my sympathy, and to make me perforce a sharer in their

  • degradation and their Fear.

  • 'I had at that time very vague ideas as to the course I should pursue.

  • My first was to secure some safe place of refuge, and to make myself such arms of

  • metal or stone as I could contrive.

  • That necessity was immediate.

  • In the next place, I hoped to procure some means of fire, so that I should have the

  • weapon of a torch at hand, for nothing, I knew, would be more efficient against these

  • Morlocks.

  • Then I wanted to arrange some contrivance to break open the doors of bronze under the

  • White Sphinx. I had in mind a battering ram.

  • I had a persuasion that if I could enter those doors and carry a blaze of light

  • before me I should discover the Time Machine and escape.

  • I could not imagine the Morlocks were strong enough to move it far away.

  • Weena I had resolved to bring with me to our own time.

  • And turning such schemes over in my mind I pursued our way towards the building which

  • my fancy had chosen as our dwelling.

  • >

  • CHAPTER VIII

  • 'I found the Palace of Green Porcelain, when we approached it about noon, deserted

  • and falling into ruin.

  • Only ragged vestiges of glass remained in its windows, and great sheets of the green

  • facing had fallen away from the corroded metallic framework.

  • It lay very high upon a turfy down, and looking north-eastward before I entered it,

  • I was surprised to see a large estuary, or even creek, where I judged Wandsworth and

  • Battersea must once have been.

  • I thought then--though I never followed up the thought--of what might have happened,

  • or might be happening, to the living things in the sea.

  • 'The material of the Palace proved on examination to be indeed porcelain, and

  • along the face of it I saw an inscription in some unknown character.

  • I thought, rather foolishly, that Weena might help me to interpret this, but I only

  • learned that the bare idea of writing had never entered her head.

  • She always seemed to me, I fancy, more human than she was, perhaps because her

  • affection was so human.

  • 'Within the big valves of the door--which were open and broken--we found, instead of

  • the customary hall, a long gallery lit by many side windows.

  • At the first glance I was reminded of a museum.

  • The tiled floor was thick with dust, and a remarkable array of miscellaneous objects

  • was shrouded in the same grey covering.

  • Then I perceived, standing strange and gaunt in the centre of the hall, what was

  • clearly the lower part of a huge skeleton.

  • I recognized by the oblique feet that it was some extinct creature after the fashion

  • of the Megatherium.

  • The skull and the upper bones lay beside it in the thick dust, and in one place, where

  • rain-water had dropped through a leak in the roof, the thing itself had been worn

  • away.

  • Further in the gallery was the huge skeleton barrel of a Brontosaurus.

  • My museum hypothesis was confirmed.

  • Going towards the side I found what appeared to be sloping shelves, and

  • clearing away the thick dust, I found the old familiar glass cases of our own time.

  • But they must have been air-tight to judge from the fair preservation of some of their

  • contents. 'Clearly we stood among the ruins of some

  • latter-day South Kensington!

  • Here, apparently, was the Palaeontological Section, and a very splendid array of

  • fossils it must have been, though the inevitable process of decay that had been

  • staved off for a time, and had, through the

  • extinction of bacteria and fungi, lost ninety-nine hundredths of its force, was

  • nevertheless, with extreme sureness if with extreme slowness at work again upon all its

  • treasures.

  • Here and there I found traces of the little people in the shape of rare fossils broken

  • to pieces or threaded in strings upon reeds.

  • And the cases had in some instances been bodily removed--by the Morlocks as I

  • judged. The place was very silent.

  • The thick dust deadened our footsteps.

  • Weena, who had been rolling a sea urchin down the sloping glass of a case, presently

  • came, as I stared about me, and very quietly took my hand and stood beside me.

  • 'And at first I was so much surprised by this ancient monument of an intellectual

  • age, that I gave no thought to the possibilities it presented.

  • Even my preoccupation about the Time Machine receded a little from my mind.

  • 'To judge from the size of the place, this Palace of Green Porcelain had a great deal

  • more in it than a Gallery of Palaeontology; possibly historical galleries; it might be,

  • even a library!

  • To me, at least in my present circumstances, these would be vastly more

  • interesting than this spectacle of oldtime geology in decay.

  • Exploring, I found another short gallery running transversely to the first.

  • This appeared to be devoted to minerals, and the sight of a block of sulphur set my

  • mind running on gunpowder.

  • But I could find no saltpeter; indeed, no nitrates of any kind.

  • Doubtless they had deliquesced ages ago. Yet the sulphur hung in my mind, and set up

  • a train of thinking.

  • As for the rest of the contents of that gallery, though on the whole they were the

  • best preserved of all I saw, I had little interest.

  • I am no specialist in mineralogy, and I went on down a very ruinous aisle running

  • parallel to the first hall I had entered.

  • Apparently this section had been devoted to natural history, but everything had long

  • since passed out of recognition.

  • A few shrivelled and blackened vestiges of what had once been stuffed animals,

  • desiccated mummies in jars that had once held spirit, a brown dust of departed

  • plants: that was all!

  • I was sorry for that, because I should have been glad to trace the patent readjustments

  • by which the conquest of animated nature had been attained.

  • Then we came to a gallery of simply colossal proportions, but singularly ill-

  • lit, the floor of it running downward at a slight angle from the end at which I

  • entered.

  • At intervals white globes hung from the ceiling--many of them cracked and smashed--

  • which suggested that originally the place had been artificially lit.

  • Here I was more in my element, for rising on either side of me were the huge bulks of

  • big machines, all greatly corroded and many broken down, but some still fairly

  • complete.

  • You know I have a certain weakness for mechanism, and I was inclined to linger

  • among these; the more so as for the most part they had the interest of puzzles, and

  • I could make only the vaguest guesses at what they were for.

  • I fancied that if I could solve their puzzles I should find myself in possession

  • of powers that might be of use against the Morlocks.

  • 'Suddenly Weena came very close to my side.

  • So suddenly that she startled me. Had it not been for her I do not think I

  • should have noticed that the floor of the gallery sloped at all.

  • [Footnote: It may be, of course, that the floor did not slope, but that the museum

  • was built into the side of a hill.--ED.] The end I had come in at was quite above

  • ground, and was lit by rare slit-like windows.

  • As you went down the length, the ground came up against these windows, until at

  • last there was a pit like the "area" of a London house before each, and only a narrow

  • line of daylight at the top.

  • I went slowly along, puzzling about the machines, and had been too intent upon them

  • to notice the gradual diminution of the light, until Weena's increasing

  • apprehensions drew my attention.

  • Then I saw that the gallery ran down at last into a thick darkness.

  • I hesitated, and then, as I looked round me, I saw that the dust was less abundant

  • and its surface less even.

  • Further away towards the dimness, it appeared to be broken by a number of small

  • narrow footprints. My sense of the immediate presence of the

  • Morlocks revived at that.

  • I felt that I was wasting my time in the academic examination of machinery.

  • I called to mind that it was already far advanced in the afternoon, and that I had

  • still no weapon, no refuge, and no means of making a fire.

  • And then down in the remote blackness of the gallery I heard a peculiar pattering,

  • and the same odd noises I had heard down the well.

  • 'I took Weena's hand.

  • Then, struck with a sudden idea, I left her and turned to a machine from which

  • projected a lever not unlike those in a signal-box.

  • Clambering upon the stand, and grasping this lever in my hands, I put all my weight

  • upon it sideways. Suddenly Weena, deserted in the central

  • aisle, began to whimper.

  • I had judged the strength of the lever pretty correctly, for it snapped after a

  • minute's strain, and I rejoined her with a mace in my hand more than sufficient, I

  • judged, for any Morlock skull I might encounter.

  • And I longed very much to kill a Morlock or so.

  • Very inhuman, you may think, to want to go killing one's own descendants!

  • But it was impossible, somehow, to feel any humanity in the things.

  • Only my disinclination to leave Weena, and a persuasion that if I began to slake my

  • thirst for murder my Time Machine might suffer, restrained me from going straight

  • down the gallery and killing the brutes I heard.

  • 'Well, mace in one hand and Weena in the other, I went out of that gallery and into

  • another and still larger one, which at the first glance reminded me of a military

  • chapel hung with tattered flags.

  • The brown and charred rags that hung from the sides of it, I presently recognized as

  • the decaying vestiges of books. They had long since dropped to pieces, and

  • every semblance of print had left them.

  • But here and there were warped boards and cracked metallic clasps that told the tale

  • well enough.

  • Had I been a literary man I might, perhaps, have moralized upon the futility of all

  • ambition.

  • But as it was, the thing that struck me with keenest force was the enormous waste

  • of labour to which this sombre wilderness of rotting paper testified.

  • At the time I will confess that I thought chiefly of the Philosophical Transactions

  • and my own seventeen papers upon physical optics.

  • 'Then, going up a broad staircase, we came to what may once have been a gallery of

  • technical chemistry. And here I had not a little hope of useful

  • discoveries.

  • Except at one end where the roof had collapsed, this gallery was well preserved.

  • I went eagerly to every unbroken case. And at last, in one of the really air-tight

  • cases, I found a box of matches.

  • Very eagerly I tried them. They were perfectly good.

  • They were not even damp. I turned to Weena.

  • "Dance," I cried to her in her own tongue.

  • For now I had a weapon indeed against the horrible creatures we feared.

  • And so, in that derelict museum, upon the thick soft carpeting of dust, to Weena's

  • huge delight, I solemnly performed a kind of composite dance, whistling The Land of

  • the Leal as cheerfully as I could.

  • In part it was a modest cancan, in part a step dance, in part a skirt-dance (so far

  • as my tail-coat permitted), and in part original.

  • For I am naturally inventive, as you know.

  • 'Now, I still think that for this box of matches to have escaped the wear of time

  • for immemorial years was a most strange, as for me it was a most fortunate thing.

  • Yet, oddly enough, I found a far unlikelier substance, and that was camphor.

  • I found it in a sealed jar, that by chance, I suppose, had been really hermetically

  • sealed.

  • I fancied at first that it was paraffin wax, and smashed the glass accordingly.

  • But the odour of camphor was unmistakable.

  • In the universal decay this volatile substance had chanced to survive, perhaps

  • through many thousands of centuries.

  • It reminded me of a sepia painting I had once seen done from the ink of a fossil

  • Belemnite that must have perished and become fossilized millions of years ago.

  • I was about to throw it away, but I remembered that it was inflammable and

  • burned with a good bright flame--was, in fact, an excellent candle--and I put it in

  • my pocket.

  • I found no explosives, however, nor any means of breaking down the bronze doors.

  • As yet my iron crowbar was the most helpful thing I had chanced upon.

  • Nevertheless I left that gallery greatly elated.

  • 'I cannot tell you all the story of that long afternoon.

  • It would require a great effort of memory to recall my explorations in at all the

  • proper order.

  • I remember a long gallery of rusting stands of arms, and how I hesitated between my

  • crowbar and a hatchet or a sword.

  • I could not carry both, however, and my bar of iron promised best against the bronze

  • gates. There were numbers of guns, pistols, and

  • rifles.

  • The most were masses of rust, but many were of some new metal, and still fairly sound.

  • But any cartridges or powder there may once have been had rotted into dust.

  • One corner I saw was charred and shattered; perhaps, I thought, by an explosion among

  • the specimens.

  • In another place was a vast array of idols- -Polynesian, Mexican, Grecian, Phoenician,

  • every country on earth I should think.

  • And here, yielding to an irresistible impulse, I wrote my name upon the nose of a

  • steatite monster from South America that particularly took my fancy.

  • 'As the evening drew on, my interest waned.

  • I went through gallery after gallery, dusty, silent, often ruinous, the exhibits

  • sometimes mere heaps of rust and lignite, sometimes fresher.

  • In one place I suddenly found myself near the model of a tin-mine, and then by the

  • merest accident I discovered, in an air- tight case, two dynamite cartridges!

  • I shouted "Eureka!" and smashed the case with joy.

  • Then came a doubt. I hesitated.

  • Then, selecting a little side gallery, I made my essay.

  • I never felt such a disappointment as I did in waiting five, ten, fifteen minutes for

  • an explosion that never came.

  • Of course the things were dummies, as I might have guessed from their presence.

  • I really believe that had they not been so, I should have rushed off incontinently and

  • blown Sphinx, bronze doors, and (as it proved) my chances of finding the Time

  • Machine, all together into non-existence.

  • 'It was after that, I think, that we came to a little open court within the palace.

  • It was turfed, and had three fruit-trees. So we rested and refreshed ourselves.

  • Towards sunset I began to consider our position.

  • Night was creeping upon us, and my inaccessible hiding-place had still to be

  • found.

  • But that troubled me very little now. I had in my possession a thing that was,

  • perhaps, the best of all defences against the Morlocks--I had matches!

  • I had the camphor in my pocket, too, if a blaze were needed.

  • It seemed to me that the best thing we could do would be to pass the night in the

  • open, protected by a fire.

  • In the morning there was the getting of the Time Machine.

  • Towards that, as yet, I had only my iron mace.

  • But now, with my growing knowledge, I felt very differently towards those bronze

  • doors.

  • Up to this, I had refrained from forcing them, largely because of the mystery on the

  • other side.

  • They had never impressed me as being very strong, and I hoped to find my bar of iron

  • not altogether inadequate for the work.

  • >

  • CHAPTER IX

  • 'We emerged from the palace while the sun was still in part above the horizon.

  • I was determined to reach the White Sphinx early the next morning, and ere the dusk I

  • purposed pushing through the woods that had stopped me on the previous journey.

  • My plan was to go as far as possible that night, and then, building a fire, to sleep

  • in the protection of its glare.

  • Accordingly, as we went along I gathered any sticks or dried grass I saw, and

  • presently had my arms full of such litter.

  • Thus loaded, our progress was slower than I had anticipated, and besides Weena was

  • tired.

  • And I began to suffer from sleepiness too; so that it was full night before we reached

  • the wood.

  • Upon the shrubby hill of its edge Weena would have stopped, fearing the darkness

  • before us; but a singular sense of impending calamity, that should indeed have

  • served me as a warning, drove me onward.

  • I had been without sleep for a night and two days, and I was feverish and irritable.

  • I felt sleep coming upon me, and the Morlocks with it.

  • 'While we hesitated, among the black bushes behind us, and dim against their blackness,

  • I saw three crouching figures.

  • There was scrub and long grass all about us, and I did not feel safe from their

  • insidious approach. The forest, I calculated, was rather less

  • than a mile across.

  • If we could get through it to the bare hill-side, there, as it seemed to me, was

  • an altogether safer resting-place; I thought that with my matches and my camphor

  • I could contrive to keep my path illuminated through the woods.

  • Yet it was evident that if I was to flourish matches with my hands I should

  • have to abandon my firewood; so, rather reluctantly, I put it down.

  • And then it came into my head that I would amaze our friends behind by lighting it.

  • I was to discover the atrocious folly of this proceeding, but it came to my mind as

  • an ingenious move for covering our retreat.

  • 'I don't know if you have ever thought what a rare thing flame must be in the absence

  • of man and in a temperate climate.

  • The sun's heat is rarely strong enough to burn, even when it is focused by dewdrops,

  • as is sometimes the case in more tropical districts.

  • Lightning may blast and blacken, but it rarely gives rise to widespread fire.

  • Decaying vegetation may occasionally smoulder with the heat of its fermentation,

  • but this rarely results in flame.

  • In this decadence, too, the art of fire- making had been forgotten on the earth.

  • The red tongues that went licking up my heap of wood were an altogether new and

  • strange thing to Weena.

  • 'She wanted to run to it and play with it. I believe she would have cast herself into

  • it had I not restrained her.

  • But I caught her up, and in spite of her struggles, plunged boldly before me into

  • the wood. For a little way the glare of my fire lit

  • the path.

  • Looking back presently, I could see, through the crowded stems, that from my

  • heap of sticks the blaze had spread to some bushes adjacent, and a curved line of fire

  • was creeping up the grass of the hill.

  • I laughed at that, and turned again to the dark trees before me.

  • It was very black, and Weena clung to me convulsively, but there was still, as my

  • eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, sufficient light for me to avoid the stems.

  • Overhead it was simply black, except where a gap of remote blue sky shone down upon us

  • here and there. I struck none of my matches because I had

  • no hand free.

  • Upon my left arm I carried my little one, in my right hand I had my iron bar.

  • 'For some way I heard nothing but the crackling twigs under my feet, the faint

  • rustle of the breeze above, and my own breathing and the throb of the blood-

  • vessels in my ears.

  • Then I seemed to know of a pattering about me.

  • I pushed on grimly.

  • The pattering grew more distinct, and then I caught the same queer sound and voices I

  • had heard in the Under-world. There were evidently several of the

  • Morlocks, and they were closing in upon me.

  • Indeed, in another minute I felt a tug at my coat, then something at my arm.

  • And Weena shivered violently, and became quite still.

  • 'It was time for a match.

  • But to get one I must put her down.

  • I did so, and, as I fumbled with my pocket, a struggle began in the darkness about my

  • knees, perfectly silent on her part and with the same peculiar cooing sounds from

  • the Morlocks.

  • Soft little hands, too, were creeping over my coat and back, touching even my neck.

  • Then the match scratched and fizzed. I held it flaring, and saw the white backs

  • of the Morlocks in flight amid the trees.

  • I hastily took a lump of camphor from my pocket, and prepared to light it as soon as

  • the match should wane. Then I looked at Weena.

  • She was lying clutching my feet and quite motionless, with her face to the ground.

  • With a sudden fright I stooped to her. She seemed scarcely to breathe.

  • I lit the block of camphor and flung it to the ground, and as it split and flared up

  • and drove back the Morlocks and the shadows, I knelt down and lifted her.

  • The wood behind seemed full of the stir and murmur of a great company!

  • 'She seemed to have fainted.

  • I put her carefully upon my shoulder and rose to push on, and then there came a

  • horrible realization.

  • In manoeuvring with my matches and Weena, I had turned myself about several times, and

  • now I had not the faintest idea in what direction lay my path.

  • For all I knew, I might be facing back towards the Palace of Green Porcelain.

  • I found myself in a cold sweat. I had to think rapidly what to do.

  • I determined to build a fire and encamp where we were.

  • I put Weena, still motionless, down upon a turfy bole, and very hastily, as my first

  • lump of camphor waned, I began collecting sticks and leaves.

  • Here and there out of the darkness round me the Morlocks' eyes shone like carbuncles.

  • 'The camphor flickered and went out.

  • I lit a match, and as I did so, two white forms that had been approaching Weena

  • dashed hastily away.

  • One was so blinded by the light that he came straight for me, and I felt his bones

  • grind under the blow of my fist. He gave a whoop of dismay, staggered a

  • little way, and fell down.

  • I lit another piece of camphor, and went on gathering my bonfire.

  • Presently I noticed how dry was some of the foliage above me, for since my arrival on

  • the Time Machine, a matter of a week, no rain had fallen.

  • So, instead of casting about among the trees for fallen twigs, I began leaping up

  • and dragging down branches.

  • Very soon I had a choking smoky fire of green wood and dry sticks, and could

  • economize my camphor. Then I turned to where Weena lay beside my

  • iron mace.

  • I tried what I could to revive her, but she lay like one dead.

  • I could not even satisfy myself whether or not she breathed.

  • 'Now, the smoke of the fire beat over towards me, and it must have made me heavy

  • of a sudden. Moreover, the vapour of camphor was in the

  • air.

  • My fire would not need replenishing for an hour or so.

  • I felt very weary after my exertion, and sat down.

  • The wood, too, was full of a slumbrous murmur that I did not understand.

  • I seemed just to nod and open my eyes. But all was dark, and the Morlocks had

  • their hands upon me.

  • Flinging off their clinging fingers I hastily felt in my pocket for the match-

  • box, and--it had gone! Then they gripped and closed with me again.

  • In a moment I knew what had happened.

  • I had slept, and my fire had gone out, and the bitterness of death came over my soul.

  • The forest seemed full of the smell of burning wood.

  • I was caught by the neck, by the hair, by the arms, and pulled down.

  • It was indescribably horrible in the darkness to feel all these soft creatures

  • heaped upon me.

  • I felt as if I was in a monstrous spider's web.

  • I was overpowered, and went down. I felt little teeth nipping at my neck.

  • I rolled over, and as I did so my hand came against my iron lever.

  • It gave me strength.

  • I struggled up, shaking the human rats from me, and, holding the bar short, I thrust

  • where I judged their faces might be.

  • I could feel the succulent giving of flesh and bone under my blows, and for a moment I

  • was free. 'The strange exultation that so often seems

  • to accompany hard fighting came upon me.

  • I knew that both I and Weena were lost, but I determined to make the Morlocks pay for

  • their meat. I stood with my back to a tree, swinging

  • the iron bar before me.

  • The whole wood was full of the stir and cries of them.

  • A minute passed.

  • Their voices seemed to rise to a higher pitch of excitement, and their movements

  • grew faster. Yet none came within reach.

  • I stood glaring at the blackness.

  • Then suddenly came hope. What if the Morlocks were afraid?

  • And close on the heels of that came a strange thing.

  • The darkness seemed to grow luminous.

  • Very dimly I began to see the Morlocks about me--three battered at my feet--and

  • then I recognized, with incredulous surprise, that the others were running, in

  • an incessant stream, as it seemed, from

  • behind me, and away through the wood in front.

  • And their backs seemed no longer white, but reddish.

  • As I stood agape, I saw a little red spark go drifting across a gap of starlight

  • between the branches, and vanish.

  • And at that I understood the smell of burning wood, the slumbrous murmur that was

  • growing now into a gusty roar, the red glow, and the Morlocks' flight.

  • 'Stepping out from behind my tree and looking back, I saw, through the black

  • pillars of the nearer trees, the flames of the burning forest.

  • It was my first fire coming after me.

  • With that I looked for Weena, but she was gone.

  • The hissing and crackling behind me, the explosive thud as each fresh tree burst

  • into flame, left little time for reflection.

  • My iron bar still gripped, I followed in the Morlocks' path.

  • It was a close race.

  • Once the flames crept forward so swiftly on my right as I ran that I was outflanked and

  • had to strike off to the left.

  • But at last I emerged upon a small open space, and as I did so, a Morlock came

  • blundering towards me, and past me, and went on straight into the fire!

  • 'And now I was to see the most weird and horrible thing, I think, of all that I

  • beheld in that future age. This whole space was as bright as day with

  • the reflection of the fire.

  • In the centre was a hillock or tumulus, surmounted by a scorched hawthorn.

  • Beyond this was another arm of the burning forest, with yellow tongues already

  • writhing from it, completely encircling the space with a fence of fire.

  • Upon the hill-side were some thirty or forty Morlocks, dazzled by the light and

  • heat, and blundering hither and thither against each other in their bewilderment.

  • At first I did not realize their blindness, and struck furiously at them with my bar,

  • in a frenzy of fear, as they approached me, killing one and crippling several more.

  • But when I had watched the gestures of one of them groping under the hawthorn against

  • the red sky, and heard their moans, I was assured of their absolute helplessness and

  • misery in the glare, and I struck no more of them.

  • 'Yet every now and then one would come straight towards me, setting loose a

  • quivering horror that made me quick to elude him.

  • At one time the flames died down somewhat, and I feared the foul creatures would

  • presently be able to see me.

  • I was thinking of beginning the fight by killing some of them before this should

  • happen; but the fire burst out again brightly, and I stayed my hand.

  • I walked about the hill among them and avoided them, looking for some trace of

  • Weena. But Weena was gone.

  • 'At last I sat down on the summit of the hillock, and watched this strange

  • incredible company of blind things groping to and fro, and making uncanny noises to

  • each other, as the glare of the fire beat on them.

  • The coiling uprush of smoke streamed across the sky, and through the rare tatters of

  • that red canopy, remote as though they belonged to another universe, shone the

  • little stars.

  • Two or three Morlocks came blundering into me, and I drove them off with blows of my

  • fists, trembling as I did so. 'For the most part of that night I was

  • persuaded it was a nightmare.

  • I bit myself and screamed in a passionate desire to awake.

  • I beat the ground with my hands, and got up and sat down again, and wandered here and

  • there, and again sat down.

  • Then I would fall to rubbing my eyes and calling upon God to let me awake.

  • Thrice I saw Morlocks put their heads down in a kind of agony and rush into the

  • flames.

  • But, at last, above the subsiding red of the fire, above the streaming masses of

  • black smoke and the whitening and blackening tree stumps, and the diminishing

  • numbers of these dim creatures, came the white light of the day.

  • 'I searched again for traces of Weena, but there were none.

  • It was plain that they had left her poor little body in the forest.

  • I cannot describe how it relieved me to think that it had escaped the awful fate to

  • which it seemed destined.

  • As I thought of that, I was almost moved to begin a massacre of the helpless

  • abominations about me, but I contained myself.

  • The hillock, as I have said, was a kind of island in the forest.

  • From its summit I could now make out through a haze of smoke the Palace of Green

  • Porcelain, and from that I could get my bearings for the White Sphinx.

  • And so, leaving the remnant of these damned souls still going hither and thither and

  • moaning, as the day grew clearer, I tied some grass about my feet and limped on

  • across smoking ashes and among black stems,

  • that still pulsated internally with fire, towards the hiding-place of the Time

  • Machine.

  • I walked slowly, for I was almost exhausted, as well as lame, and I felt the

  • intensest wretchedness for the horrible death of little Weena.

  • It seemed an overwhelming calamity.

  • Now, in this old familiar room, it is more like the sorrow of a dream than an actual

  • loss. But that morning it left me absolutely

  • lonely again--terribly alone.

  • I began to think of this house of mine, of this fireside, of some of you, and with

  • such thoughts came a longing that was pain.

  • 'But as I walked over the smoking ashes under the bright morning sky, I made a

  • discovery. In my trouser pocket were still some loose

  • matches.

  • The box must have leaked before it was lost.

  • >

  • CHAPTER X

  • 'About eight or nine in the morning I came to the same seat of yellow metal from which

  • I had viewed the world upon the evening of my arrival.

  • I thought of my hasty conclusions upon that evening and could not refrain from laughing

  • bitterly at my confidence.

  • Here was the same beautiful scene, the same abundant foliage, the same splendid palaces

  • and magnificent ruins, the same silver river running between its fertile banks.

  • The gay robes of the beautiful people moved hither and thither among the trees.

  • Some were bathing in exactly the place where I had saved Weena, and that suddenly

  • gave me a keen stab of pain.

  • And like blots upon the landscape rose the cupolas above the ways to the Under-world.

  • I understood now what all the beauty of the Over-world people covered.

  • Very pleasant was their day, as pleasant as the day of the cattle in the field.

  • Like the cattle, they knew of no enemies and provided against no needs.

  • And their end was the same.

  • 'I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been.

  • It had committed suicide.

  • It had set itself steadfastly towards comfort and ease, a balanced society with

  • security and permanency as its watchword, it had attained its hopes--to come to this

  • at last.

  • Once, life and property must have reached almost absolute safety.

  • The rich had been assured of his wealth and comfort, the toiler assured of his life and

  • work.

  • No doubt in that perfect world there had been no unemployed problem, no social

  • question left unsolved. And a great quiet had followed.

  • 'It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the

  • compensation for change, danger, and trouble.

  • An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism.

  • Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless.

  • There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change.

  • Only those animals partake of intelligence that have to meet a huge variety of needs

  • and dangers.

  • 'So, as I see it, the Upper-world man had drifted towards his feeble prettiness, and

  • the Under-world to mere mechanical industry.

  • But that perfect state had lacked one thing even for mechanical perfection--absolute

  • permanency.

  • Apparently as time went on, the feeding of the Under-world, however it was effected,

  • had become disjointed.

  • Mother Necessity, who had been staved off for a few thousand years, came back again,

  • and she began below.

  • The Under-world being in contact with machinery, which, however perfect, still

  • needs some little thought outside habit, had probably retained perforce rather more

  • initiative, if less of every other human character, than the Upper.

  • And when other meat failed them, they turned to what old habit had hitherto

  • forbidden.

  • So I say I saw it in my last view of the world of Eight Hundred and Two Thousand

  • Seven Hundred and One. It may be as wrong an explanation as mortal

  • wit could invent.

  • It is how the thing shaped itself to me, and as that I give it to you.

  • 'After the fatigues, excitements, and terrors of the past days, and in spite of

  • my grief, this seat and the tranquil view and the warm sunlight were very pleasant.

  • I was very tired and sleepy, and soon my theorizing passed into dozing.

  • Catching myself at that, I took my own hint, and spreading myself out upon the

  • turf I had a long and refreshing sleep.

  • 'I awoke a little before sunsetting. I now felt safe against being caught

  • napping by the Morlocks, and, stretching myself, I came on down the hill towards the

  • White Sphinx.

  • I had my crowbar in one hand, and the other hand played with the matches in my pocket.

  • 'And now came a most unexpected thing. As I approached the pedestal of the sphinx

  • I found the bronze valves were open.

  • They had slid down into grooves. 'At that I stopped short before them,

  • hesitating to enter.

  • 'Within was a small apartment, and on a raised place in the corner of this was the

  • Time Machine. I had the small levers in my pocket.

  • So here, after all my elaborate preparations for the siege of the White

  • Sphinx, was a meek surrender. I threw my iron bar away, almost sorry not

  • to use it.

  • 'A sudden thought came into my head as I stooped towards the portal.

  • For once, at least, I grasped the mental operations of the Morlocks.

  • Suppressing a strong inclination to laugh, I stepped through the bronze frame and up

  • to the Time Machine. I was surprised to find it had been

  • carefully oiled and cleaned.

  • I have suspected since that the Morlocks had even partially taken it to pieces while

  • trying in their dim way to grasp its purpose.

  • 'Now as I stood and examined it, finding a pleasure in the mere touch of the

  • contrivance, the thing I had expected happened.

  • The bronze panels suddenly slid up and struck the frame with a clang.

  • I was in the dark--trapped. So the Morlocks thought.

  • At that I chuckled gleefully.

  • 'I could already hear their murmuring laughter as they came towards me.

  • Very calmly I tried to strike the match. I had only to fix on the levers and depart

  • then like a ghost.

  • But I had overlooked one little thing. The matches were of that abominable kind

  • that light only on the box. 'You may imagine how all my calm vanished.

  • The little brutes were close upon me.

  • One touched me. I made a sweeping blow in the dark at them

  • with the levers, and began to scramble into the saddle of the machine.

  • Then came one hand upon me and then another.

  • Then I had simply to fight against their persistent fingers for my levers, and at

  • the same time feel for the studs over which these fitted.

  • One, indeed, they almost got away from me.

  • As it slipped from my hand, I had to butt in the dark with my head--I could hear the

  • Morlock's skull ring--to recover it. It was a nearer thing than the fight in the

  • forest, I think, this last scramble.

  • 'But at last the lever was fitted and pulled over.

  • The clinging hands slipped from me. The darkness presently fell from my eyes.

  • I found myself in the same grey light and tumult I have already described.

  • >

  • CHAPTER XI

  • 'I have already told you of the sickness and confusion that comes with time

  • travelling.

  • And this time I was not seated properly in the saddle, but sideways and in an unstable

  • fashion.

  • For an indefinite time I clung to the machine as it swayed and vibrated, quite

  • unheeding how I went, and when I brought myself to look at the dials again I was

  • amazed to find where I had arrived.

  • One dial records days, and another thousands of days, another millions of

  • days, and another thousands of millions.

  • Now, instead of reversing the levers, I had pulled them over so as to go forward with

  • them, and when I came to look at these indicators I found that the thousands hand

  • was sweeping round as fast as the seconds hand of a watch--into futurity.

  • 'As I drove on, a peculiar change crept over the appearance of things.

  • The palpitating greyness grew darker; then- -though I was still travelling with

  • prodigious velocity--the blinking succession of day and night, which was

  • usually indicative of a slower pace, returned, and grew more and more marked.

  • This puzzled me very much at first.

  • The alternations of night and day grew slower and slower, and so did the passage

  • of the sun across the sky, until they seemed to stretch through centuries.

  • At last a steady twilight brooded over the earth, a twilight only broken now and then

  • when a comet glared across the darkling sky.

  • The band of light that had indicated the sun had long since disappeared; for the sun

  • had ceased to set--it simply rose and fell in the west, and grew ever broader and more

  • red.

  • All trace of the moon had vanished. The circling of the stars, growing slower

  • and slower, had given place to creeping points of light.

  • At last, some time before I stopped, the sun, red and very large, halted motionless

  • upon the horizon, a vast dome glowing with a dull heat, and now and then suffering a

  • momentary extinction.

  • At one time it had for a little while glowed more brilliantly again, but it

  • speedily reverted to its sullen red heat.

  • I perceived by this slowing down of its rising and setting that the work of the

  • tidal drag was done.

  • The earth had come to rest with one face to the sun, even as in our own time the moon

  • faces the earth.

  • Very cautiously, for I remembered my former headlong fall, I began to reverse my

  • motion.

  • Slower and slower went the circling hands until the thousands one seemed motionless

  • and the daily one was no longer a mere mist upon its scale.

  • Still slower, until the dim outlines of a desolate beach grew visible.

  • 'I stopped very gently and sat upon the Time Machine, looking round.

  • The sky was no longer blue.

  • North-eastward it was inky black, and out of the blackness shone brightly and

  • steadily the pale white stars.

  • Overhead it was a deep Indian red and starless, and south-eastward it grew

  • brighter to a glowing scarlet where, cut by the horizon, lay the huge hull of the sun,

  • red and motionless.

  • The rocks about me were of a harsh reddish colour, and all the trace of life that I

  • could see at first was the intensely green vegetation that covered every projecting

  • point on their south-eastern face.

  • It was the same rich green that one sees on forest moss or on the lichen in caves:

  • plants which like these grow in a perpetual twilight.

  • 'The machine was standing on a sloping beach.

  • The sea stretched away to the south-west, to rise into a sharp bright horizon against

  • the wan sky.

  • There were no breakers and no waves, for not a breath of wind was stirring.

  • Only a slight oily swell rose and fell like a gentle breathing, and showed that the

  • eternal sea was still moving and living.

  • And along the margin where the water sometimes broke was a thick incrustation of

  • salt--pink under the lurid sky.

  • There was a sense of oppression in my head, and I noticed that I was breathing very

  • fast.

  • The sensation reminded me of my only experience of mountaineering, and from that

  • I judged the air to be more rarefied than it is now.

  • 'Far away up the desolate slope I heard a harsh scream, and saw a thing like a huge

  • white butterfly go slanting and fluttering up into the sky and, circling, disappear

  • over some low hillocks beyond.

  • The sound of its voice was so dismal that I shivered and seated myself more firmly upon

  • the machine.

  • Looking round me again, I saw that, quite near, what I had taken to be a reddish mass

  • of rock was moving slowly towards me. Then I saw the thing was really a monstrous

  • crab-like creature.

  • Can you imagine a crab as large as yonder table, with its many legs moving slowly and

  • uncertainly, its big claws swaying, its long antennae, like carters' whips, waving

  • and feeling, and its stalked eyes gleaming

  • at you on either side of its metallic front?

  • Its back was corrugated and ornamented with ungainly bosses, and a greenish

  • incrustation blotched it here and there.

  • I could see the many palps of its complicated mouth flickering and feeling as

  • it moved.

  • 'As I stared at this sinister apparition crawling towards me, I felt a tickling on

  • my cheek as though a fly had lighted there.

  • I tried to brush it away with my hand, but in a moment it returned, and almost

  • immediately came another by my ear. I struck at this, and caught something

  • threadlike.

  • It was drawn swiftly out of my hand. With a frightful qualm, I turned, and I saw

  • that I had grasped the antenna of another monster crab that stood just behind me.

  • Its evil eyes were wriggling on their stalks, its mouth was all alive with

  • appetite, and its vast ungainly claws, smeared with an algal slime, were

  • descending upon me.

  • In a moment my hand was on the lever, and I had placed a month between myself and these

  • monsters.

  • But I was still on the same beach, and I saw them distinctly now as soon as I

  • stopped.

  • Dozens of them seemed to be crawling here and there, in the sombre light, among the

  • foliated sheets of intense green. 'I cannot convey the sense of abominable

  • desolation that hung over the world.

  • The red eastern sky, the northward blackness, the salt Dead Sea, the stony

  • beach crawling with these foul, slow- stirring monsters, the uniform poisonous-

  • looking green of the lichenous plants, the

  • thin air that hurts one's lungs: all contributed to an appalling effect.

  • I moved on a hundred years, and there was the same red sun--a little larger, a little

  • duller--the same dying sea, the same chill air, and the same crowd of earthy crustacea

  • creeping in and out among the green weed and the red rocks.

  • And in the westward sky, I saw a curved pale line like a vast new moon.

  • 'So I travelled, stopping ever and again, in great strides of a thousand years or

  • more, drawn on by the mystery of the earth's fate, watching with a strange

  • fascination the sun grow larger and duller

  • in the westward sky, and the life of the old earth ebb away.

  • At last, more than thirty million years hence, the huge red-hot dome of the sun had

  • come to obscure nearly a tenth part of the darkling heavens.

  • Then I stopped once more, for the crawling multitude of crabs had disappeared, and the

  • red beach, save for its livid green liverworts and lichens, seemed lifeless.

  • And now it was flecked with white.

  • A bitter cold assailed me. Rare white flakes ever and again came

  • eddying down.

  • To the north-eastward, the glare of snow lay under the starlight of the sable sky

  • and I could see an undulating crest of hillocks pinkish white.

  • There were fringes of ice along the sea margin, with drifting masses further out;

  • but the main expanse of that salt ocean, all bloody under the eternal sunset, was

  • still unfrozen.

  • 'I looked about me to see if any traces of animal life remained.

  • A certain indefinable apprehension still kept me in the saddle of the machine.

  • But I saw nothing moving, in earth or sky or sea.

  • The green slime on the rocks alone testified that life was not extinct.

  • A shallow sandbank had appeared in the sea and the water had receded from the beach.

  • I fancied I saw some black object flopping about upon this bank, but it became

  • motionless as I looked at it, and I judged that my eye had been deceived, and that the

  • black object was merely a rock.

  • The stars in the sky were intensely bright and seemed to me to twinkle very little.

  • 'Suddenly I noticed that the circular westward outline of the sun had changed;

  • that a concavity, a bay, had appeared in the curve.

  • I saw this grow larger.

  • For a minute perhaps I stared aghast at this blackness that was creeping over the

  • day, and then I realized that an eclipse was beginning.

  • Either the moon or the planet Mercury was passing across the sun's disk.

  • Naturally, at first I took it to be the moon, but there is much to incline me to

  • believe that what I really saw was the transit of an inner planet passing very

  • near to the earth.

  • 'The darkness grew apace; a cold wind began to blow in freshening gusts from the east,

  • and the showering white flakes in the air increased in number.

  • From the edge of the sea came a ripple and whisper.

  • Beyond these lifeless sounds the world was silent.

  • Silent?

  • It would be hard to convey the stillness of it.

  • All the sounds of man, the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of

  • insects, the stir that makes the background of our lives--all that was over.

  • As the darkness thickened, the eddying flakes grew more abundant, dancing before

  • my eyes; and the cold of the air more intense.

  • At last, one by one, swiftly, one after the other, the white peaks of the distant hills

  • vanished into blackness. The breeze rose to a moaning wind.

  • I saw the black central shadow of the eclipse sweeping towards me.

  • In another moment the pale stars alone were visible.

  • All else was rayless obscurity.

  • The sky was absolutely black. 'A horror of this great darkness came on

  • me. The cold, that smote to my marrow, and the

  • pain I felt in breathing, overcame me.

  • I shivered, and a deadly nausea seized me. Then like a red-hot bow in the sky appeared

  • the edge of the sun. I got off the machine to recover myself.

  • I felt giddy and incapable of facing the return journey.

  • As I stood sick and confused I saw again the moving thing upon the shoal--there was

  • no mistake now that it was a moving thing-- against the red water of the sea.

  • It was a round thing, the size of a football perhaps, or, it may be, bigger,

  • and tentacles trailed down from it; it seemed black against the weltering blood-

  • red water, and it was hopping fitfully about.

  • Then I felt I was fainting.

  • But a terrible dread of lying helpless in that remote and awful twilight sustained me

  • while I clambered upon the saddle.

  • >

  • CHAPTER XII

  • 'So I came back. For a long time I must have been insensible

  • upon the machine.

  • The blinking succession of the days and nights was resumed, the sun got golden

  • again, the sky blue. I breathed with greater freedom.

  • The fluctuating contours of the land ebbed and flowed.

  • The hands spun backward upon the dials. At last I saw again the dim shadows of

  • houses, the evidences of decadent humanity.

  • These, too, changed and passed, and others came.

  • Presently, when the million dial was at zero, I slackened speed.

  • I began to recognize our own petty and familiar architecture, the thousands hand

  • ran back to the starting-point, the night and day flapped slower and slower.

  • Then the old walls of the laboratory came round me.

  • Very gently, now, I slowed the mechanism down.

  • 'I saw one little thing that seemed odd to me.

  • I think I have told you that when I set out, before my velocity became very high,

  • Mrs. Watchett had walked across the room, travelling, as it seemed to me, like a

  • rocket.

  • As I returned, I passed again across that minute when she traversed the laboratory.

  • But now her every motion appeared to be the exact inversion of her previous ones.

  • The door at the lower end opened, and she glided quietly up the laboratory, back

  • foremost, and disappeared behind the door by which she had previously entered.

  • Just before that I seemed to see Hillyer for a moment; but he passed like a flash.

  • 'Then I stopped the machine, and saw about me again the old familiar laboratory, my

  • tools, my appliances just as I had left them.

  • I got off the thing very shakily, and sat down upon my bench.

  • For several minutes I trembled violently. Then I became calmer.

  • Around me was my old workshop again, exactly as it had been.

  • I might have slept there, and the whole thing have been a dream.

  • 'And yet, not exactly!

  • The thing had started from the south-east corner of the laboratory.

  • It had come to rest again in the north- west, against the wall where you saw it.

  • That gives you the exact distance from my little lawn to the pedestal of the White

  • Sphinx, into which the Morlocks had carried my machine.

  • 'For a time my brain went stagnant.

  • Presently I got up and came through the passage here, limping, because my heel was

  • still painful, and feeling sorely begrimed. I saw the Pall Mall Gazette on the table by

  • the door.

  • I found the date was indeed to-day, and looking at the timepiece, saw the hour was

  • almost eight o'clock. I heard your voices and the clatter of

  • plates.

  • I hesitated--I felt so sick and weak. Then I sniffed good wholesome meat, and

  • opened the door on you. You know the rest.

  • I washed, and dined, and now I am telling you the story.

  • 'I know,' he said, after a pause, 'that all this will be absolutely incredible to you.

  • To me the one incredible thing is that I am here to-night in this old familiar room

  • looking into your friendly faces and telling you these strange adventures.'

  • He looked at the Medical Man.

  • 'No. I cannot expect you to believe it. Take it as a lie--or a prophecy.

  • Say I dreamed it in the workshop.

  • Consider I have been speculating upon the destinies of our race until I have hatched

  • this fiction. Treat my assertion of its truth as a mere

  • stroke of art to enhance its interest.

  • And taking it as a story, what do you think of it?'

  • He took up his pipe, and began, in his old accustomed manner, to tap with it nervously

  • upon the bars of the grate.

  • There was a momentary stillness. Then chairs began to creak and shoes to

  • scrape upon the carpet. I took my eyes off the Time Traveller's

  • face, and looked round at his audience.

  • They were in the dark, and little spots of colour swam before them.

  • The Medical Man seemed absorbed in the contemplation of our host.

  • The Editor was looking hard at the end of his cigar--the sixth.

  • The Journalist fumbled for his watch. The others, as far as I remember, were

  • motionless.

  • The Editor stood up with a sigh. 'What a pity it is you're not a writer of

  • stories!' he said, putting his hand on the Time Traveller's shoulder.

  • 'You don't believe it?'

  • 'Well----' 'I thought not.'

  • The Time Traveller turned to us. 'Where are the matches?' he said.

  • He lit one and spoke over his pipe, puffing.

  • 'To tell you the truth...I hardly believe it myself....

  • And yet...'

  • His eye fell with a mute inquiry upon the withered white flowers upon the little

  • table.

  • Then he turned over the hand holding his pipe, and I saw he was looking at some

  • half-healed scars on his knuckles. The Medical Man rose, came to the lamp, and

  • examined the flowers.

  • 'The gynaeceum's odd,' he said. The Psychologist leant forward to see,

  • holding out his hand for a specimen. 'I'm hanged if it isn't a quarter to one,'

  • said the Journalist.

  • 'How shall we get home?' 'Plenty of cabs at the station,' said the

  • Psychologist.

  • 'It's a curious thing,' said the Medical Man; 'but I certainly don't know the

  • natural order of these flowers. May I have them?'

  • The Time Traveller hesitated.

  • Then suddenly: 'Certainly not.' 'Where did you really get them?' said the

  • Medical Man. The Time Traveller put his hand to his

  • head.

  • He spoke like one who was trying to keep hold of an idea that eluded him.

  • 'They were put into my pocket by Weena, when I travelled into Time.'

  • He stared round the room.

  • 'I'm damned if it isn't all going. This room and you and the atmosphere of

  • every day is too much for my memory. Did I ever make a Time Machine, or a model

  • of a Time Machine?

  • Or is it all only a dream? They say life is a dream, a precious poor

  • dream at times--but I can't stand another that won't fit.

  • It's madness.

  • And where did the dream come from? ...

  • I must look at that machine. If there is one!'

  • He caught up the lamp swiftly, and carried it, flaring red, through the door into the

  • corridor. We followed him.

  • There in the flickering light of the lamp was the machine sure enough, squat, ugly,

  • and askew; a thing of brass, ebony, ivory, and translucent glimmering quartz.

  • Solid to the touch--for I put out my hand and felt the rail of it--and with brown

  • spots and smears upon the ivory, and bits of grass and moss upon the lower parts, and

  • one rail bent awry.

  • The Time Traveller put the lamp down on the bench, and ran his hand along the damaged

  • rail. 'It's all right now,' he said.

  • 'The story I told you was true.

  • I'm sorry to have brought you out here in the cold.'

  • He took up the lamp, and, in an absolute silence, we returned to the smoking-room.

  • He came into the hall with us and helped the Editor on with his coat.

  • The Medical Man looked into his face and, with a certain hesitation, told him he was

  • suffering from overwork, at which he laughed hugely.

  • I remember him standing in the open doorway, bawling good night.

  • I shared a cab with the Editor. He thought the tale a 'gaudy lie.'

  • For my own part I was unable to come to a conclusion.

  • The story was so fantastic and incredible, the telling so credible and sober.

  • I lay awake most of the night thinking about it.

  • I determined to go next day and see the Time Traveller again.

  • I was told he was in the laboratory, and being on easy terms in the house, I went up

  • to him. The laboratory, however, was empty.

  • I stared for a minute at the Time Machine and put out my hand and touched the lever.

  • At that the squat substantial-looking mass swayed like a bough shaken by the wind.

  • Its instability startled me extremely, and I had a queer reminiscence of the childish

  • days when I used to be forbidden to meddle. I came back through the corridor.

  • The Time Traveller met me in the smoking- room.

  • He was coming from the house. He had a small camera under one arm and a

  • knapsack under the other.

  • He laughed when he saw me, and gave me an elbow to shake.

  • 'I'm frightfully busy,' said he, 'with that thing in there.'

  • 'But is it not some hoax?'

  • I said. 'Do you really travel through time?'

  • 'Really and truly I do.' And he looked frankly into my eyes.

  • He hesitated.

  • His eye wandered about the room. 'I only want half an hour,' he said.

  • 'I know why you came, and it's awfully good of you.

  • There's some magazines here.

  • If you'll stop to lunch I'll prove you this time travelling up to the hilt, specimen

  • and all. If you'll forgive my leaving you now?'

  • I consented, hardly comprehending then the full import of his words, and he nodded and

  • went on down the corridor.

  • I heard the door of the laboratory slam, seated myself in a chair, and took up a

  • daily paper. What was he going to do before lunch-time?

  • Then suddenly I was reminded by an advertisement that I had promised to meet

  • Richardson, the publisher, at two. I looked at my watch, and saw that I could

  • barely save that engagement.

  • I got up and went down the passage to tell the Time Traveller.

  • As I took hold of the handle of the door I heard an exclamation, oddly truncated at

  • the end, and a click and a thud.

  • A gust of air whirled round me as I opened the door, and from within came the sound of

  • broken glass falling on the floor. The Time Traveller was not there.

  • I seemed to see a ghostly, indistinct figure sitting in a whirling mass of black

  • and brass for a moment--a figure so transparent that the bench behind with its

  • sheets of drawings was absolutely distinct;

  • but this phantasm vanished as I rubbed my eyes.

  • The Time Machine had gone. Save for a subsiding stir of dust, the

  • further end of the laboratory was empty.

  • A pane of the skylight had, apparently, just been blown in.

  • I felt an unreasonable amazement.

  • I knew that something strange had happened, and for the moment could not distinguish

  • what the strange thing might be.

  • As I stood staring, the door into the garden opened, and the man-servant

  • appeared. We looked at each other.

  • Then ideas began to come.

  • 'Has Mr. ---- gone out that way?' said I. 'No, sir.

  • No one has come out this way. I was expecting to find him here.'

  • At that I understood.

  • At the risk of disappointing Richardson I stayed on, waiting for the Time Traveller;

  • waiting for the second, perhaps still stranger story, and the specimens and

  • photographs he would bring with him.

  • But I am beginning now to fear that I must wait a lifetime.

  • The Time Traveller vanished three years ago.

  • And, as everybody knows now, he has never returned.

  • EPILOGUE One cannot choose but wonder.

  • Will he ever return?

  • It may be that he swept back into the past, and fell among the blood-drinking, hairy

  • savages of the Age of Unpolished Stone; into the abysses of the Cretaceous Sea; or

  • among the grotesque saurians, the huge reptilian brutes of the Jurassic times.

  • He may even now--if I may use the phrase-- be wandering on some plesiosaurus-haunted

  • Oolitic coral reef, or beside the lonely saline lakes of the Triassic Age.

  • Or did he go forward, into one of the nearer ages, in which men are still men,

  • but with the riddles of our own time answered and its wearisome problems solved?

  • Into the manhood of the race: for I, for my own part, cannot think that these latter

  • days of weak experiment, fragmentary theory, and mutual discord are indeed man's

  • culminating time!

  • I say, for my own part.

  • He, I know--for the question had been discussed among us long before the Time

  • Machine was made--thought but cheerlessly of the Advancement of Mankind, and saw in

  • the growing pile of civilization only a

  • foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the

  • end. If that is so, it remains for us to live as

  • though it were not so.

  • But to me the future is still black and blank--is a vast ignorance, lit at a few

  • casual places by the memory of his story.

  • And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers--shrivelled now, and

  • brown and flat and brittle--to witness that even when mind and strength had gone,

  • gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man.

  • >

CHAPTER VII

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第2部--《時間機器》有聲讀物,H.G.威爾斯著 (第07-12章) (Part 2 - The Time Machine Audiobook by H. G. Wells (Chs 07-12))

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    richardwang 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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