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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
-using this eBook.
-
-Title: The Time Machine
-
-Author: H. G. Wells
-
-Release Date: July, 1992 [eBook #35]
-[Most recently updated: October 22, 2020]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-
-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TIME MACHINE ***
-
-
-
-
-The Time Machine
-
-An Invention
-
-by H. G. Wells
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
- I Introduction
- II The Machine
- III The Time Traveller Returns
- IV Time Travelling
- V In the Golden Age
- VI The Sunset of Mankind
- VII A Sudden Shock
- VIII Explanation
- IX The Morlocks
- X When Night Came
- XI The Palace of Green Porcelain
- XII In the Darkness
- XIII The Trap of the White Sphinx
- XIV The Further Vision
- XV The Time Traveller’s Return
- XVI After the Story
- Epilogue
-
-
-
-
- I.
- Introduction
-
-
-The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was
-expounding a recondite matter to us. His pale grey eyes shone and
-twinkled, and his usually pale face was flushed and animated. The fire
-burnt brightly, and the soft radiance of the incandescent lights in the
-lilies of silver caught the bubbles that flashed and passed in our
-glasses. Our chairs, being his patents, embraced and caressed us rather
-than submitted to be sat upon, and there was that luxurious
-after-dinner atmosphere, when thought runs gracefully free of the
-trammels of precision. And he put it to us in this way—marking the
-points with a lean forefinger—as we sat and lazily admired his
-earnestness over this new paradox (as we thought it) and his fecundity.
-
-“You must follow me carefully. I shall have to controvert one or two
-ideas that are almost universally accepted. The geometry, for instance,
-they taught you at school is founded on a misconception.”
-
-“Is not that rather a large thing to expect us to begin upon?” said
-Filby, an argumentative person with red hair.
-
-“I do not mean to ask you to accept anything without reasonable ground
-for it. You will soon admit as much as I need from you. You know of
-course that a mathematical line, a line of thickness _nil_, has no real
-existence. They taught you that? Neither has a mathematical plane.
-These things are mere abstractions.”
-
-“That is all right,” said the Psychologist.
-
-“Nor, having only length, breadth, and thickness, can a cube have a
-real existence.”
-
-“There I object,” said Filby. “Of course a solid body may exist. All
-real things—”
-
-“So most people think. But wait a moment. Can an _instantaneous_ cube
-exist?”
-
-“Don’t follow you,” said Filby.
-
-“Can a cube that does not last for any time at all, have a real
-existence?”
-
-Filby became pensive. “Clearly,” the Time Traveller proceeded, “any
-real body must have extension in _four_ directions: it must have
-Length, Breadth, Thickness, and—Duration. But through a natural
-infirmity of the flesh, which I will explain to you in a moment, we
-incline to overlook this fact. There are really four dimensions, three
-which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time. There is,
-however, a tendency to draw an unreal distinction between the former
-three dimensions and the latter, because it happens that our
-consciousness moves intermittently in one direction along the latter
-from the beginning to the end of our lives.”
-
-“That,” said a very young man, making spasmodic efforts to relight his
-cigar over the lamp; “that . . . very clear indeed.”
-
-“Now, it is very remarkable that this is so extensively overlooked,”
-continued the Time Traveller, with a slight accession of cheerfulness.
-“Really this is what is meant by the Fourth Dimension, though some
-people who talk about the Fourth Dimension do not know they mean it. It
-is only another way of looking at Time. _There is no difference between
-Time and any of the three dimensions of Space except that our
-consciousness moves along it_. But some foolish people have got hold of
-the wrong side of that idea. You have all heard what they have to say
-about this Fourth Dimension?”
-
-“_I_ have not,” said the Provincial Mayor.
-
-“It is simply this. That Space, as our mathematicians have it, is
-spoken of as having three dimensions, which one may call Length,
-Breadth, and Thickness, and is always definable by reference to three
-planes, each at right angles to the others. But some philosophical
-people have been asking why _three_ dimensions particularly—why not
-another direction at right angles to the other three?—and have even
-tried to construct a Four-Dimensional geometry. Professor Simon Newcomb
-was expounding this to the New York Mathematical Society only a month
-or so ago. You know how on a flat surface, which has only two
-dimensions, we can represent a figure of a three-dimensional solid, and
-similarly they think that by models of three dimensions they could
-represent one of four—if they could master the perspective of the
-thing. See?”
-
-“I think so,” murmured the Provincial Mayor; and, knitting his brows,
-he lapsed into an introspective state, his lips moving as one who
-repeats mystic words. “Yes, I think I see it now,” he said after some
-time, brightening in a quite transitory manner.
-
-“Well, I do not mind telling you I have been at work upon this geometry
-of Four Dimensions for some time. Some of my results are curious. For
-instance, here is a portrait of a man at eight years old, another at
-fifteen, another at seventeen, another at twenty-three, and so on. All
-these are evidently sections, as it were, Three-Dimensional
-representations of his Four-Dimensioned being, which is a fixed and
-unalterable thing.
-
-“Scientific people,” proceeded the Time Traveller, after the pause
-required for the proper assimilation of this, “know very well that Time
-is only a kind of Space. Here is a popular scientific diagram, a
-weather record. This line I trace with my finger shows the movement of
-the barometer. Yesterday it was so high, yesterday night it fell, then
-this morning it rose again, and so gently upward to here. Surely the
-mercury did not trace this line in any of the dimensions of Space
-generally recognised? But certainly it traced such a line, and that
-line, therefore, we must conclude, was along the Time-Dimension.”
-
-“But,” said the Medical Man, staring hard at a coal in the fire, “if
-Time is really only a fourth dimension of Space, why is it, and why has
-it always been, regarded as something different? And why cannot we move
-in Time as we move about in the other dimensions of Space?”
-
-The Time Traveller smiled. “Are you so sure we can move freely in
-Space? Right and left we can go, backward and forward freely enough,
-and men always have done so. I admit we move freely in two dimensions.
-But how about up and down? Gravitation limits us there.”
-
-“Not exactly,” said the Medical Man. “There are balloons.”
-
-“But before the balloons, save for spasmodic jumping and the
-inequalities of the surface, man had no freedom of vertical movement.”
-
-“Still they could move a little up and down,” said the Medical Man.
-
-“Easier, far easier down than up.”
-
-“And you cannot move at all in Time, you cannot get away from the
-present moment.”
-
-“My dear sir, that is just where you are wrong. That is just where the
-whole world has gone wrong. We are always getting away from the present
-moment. Our mental existences, which are immaterial and have no
-dimensions, are passing along the Time-Dimension with a uniform
-velocity from the cradle to the grave. Just as we should travel _down_
-if we began our existence fifty miles above the earth’s surface.”
-
-“But the great difficulty is this,” interrupted the Psychologist. ’You
-_can_ move about in all directions of Space, but you cannot move about
-in Time.”
-
-“That is the germ of my great discovery. But you are wrong to say that
-we cannot move about in Time. For instance, if I am recalling an
-incident very vividly I go back to the instant of its occurrence: I
-become absent-minded, as you say. I jump back for a moment. Of course
-we have no means of staying back for any length of Time, any more than
-a savage or an animal has of staying six feet above the ground. But a
-civilised man is better off than the savage in this respect. He can go
-up against gravitation in a balloon, and why should he not hope that
-ultimately he may be able to stop or accelerate his drift along the
-Time-Dimension, or even turn about and travel the other way?”
-
-“Oh, _this_,” began Filby, “is all—”
-
-“Why not?” said the Time Traveller.
-
-“It’s against reason,” said Filby.
-
-“What reason?” said the Time Traveller.
-
-“You can show black is white by argument,” said Filby, “but you will
-never convince me.”
-
-“Possibly not,” said the Time Traveller. “But now you begin to see the
-object of my investigations into the geometry of Four Dimensions. Long
-ago I had a vague inkling of a machine—”
-
-“To travel through Time!” exclaimed the Very Young Man.
-
-“That shall travel indifferently in any direction of Space and Time, as
-the driver determines.”
-
-Filby contented himself with laughter.
-
-“But I have experimental verification,” said the Time Traveller.
-
-“It would be remarkably convenient for the historian,” the Psychologist
-suggested. “One might travel back and verify the accepted account of
-the Battle of Hastings, for instance!”
-
-“Don’t you think you would attract attention?” said the Medical Man.
-“Our ancestors had no great tolerance for anachronisms.”
-
-“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato,” the
-Very Young Man thought.
-
-“In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The
-German scholars have improved Greek so much.”
-
-“Then there is the future,” said the Very Young Man. “Just think! One
-might invest all one’s money, leave it to accumulate at interest, and
-hurry on ahead!”
-
-“To discover a society,” said I, “erected on a strictly communistic
-basis.”
-
-“Of all the wild extravagant theories!” began the Psychologist.
-
-“Yes, so it seemed to me, and so I never talked of it until—”
-
-“Experimental verification!” cried I. “You are going to verify _that_?”
-
-“The experiment!” cried Filby, who was getting brain-weary.
-
-“Let’s see your experiment anyhow,” said the Psychologist, “though it’s
-all humbug, you know.”
-
-The Time Traveller smiled round at us. Then, still smiling faintly, and
-with his hands deep in his trousers pockets, he walked slowly out of
-the room, and we heard his slippers shuffling down the long passage to
-his laboratory.
-
-The Psychologist looked at us. “I wonder what he’s got?”
-
-“Some sleight-of-hand trick or other,” said the Medical Man, and Filby
-tried to tell us about a conjuror he had seen at Burslem, but before he
-had finished his preface the Time Traveller came back, and Filby’s
-anecdote collapsed.
-
-
-
-
- II.
- The Machine
-
-
-The thing the Time Traveller held in his hand was a glittering metallic
-framework, scarcely larger than a small clock, and very delicately
-made. There was ivory in it, and some transparent crystalline
-substance. And now I must be explicit, for this that follows—unless his
-explanation is to be accepted—is an absolutely unaccountable thing. He
-took one of the small octagonal tables that were scattered about the
-room, and set it in front of the fire, with two legs on the hearthrug.
-On this table he placed the mechanism. Then he drew up a chair, and sat
-down. The only other object on the table was a small shaded lamp, the
-bright light of which fell upon the model. There were also perhaps a
-dozen candles about, two in brass candlesticks upon the mantel and
-several in sconces, so that the room was brilliantly illuminated. I sat
-in a low arm-chair nearest the fire, and I drew this forward so as to
-be almost between the Time Traveller and the fireplace. Filby sat
-behind him, looking over his shoulder. The Medical Man and the
-Provincial Mayor watched him in profile from the right, the
-Psychologist from the left. The Very Young Man stood behind the
-Psychologist. We were all on the alert. It appears incredible to me
-that any kind of trick, however subtly conceived and however adroitly
-done, could have been played upon us under these conditions.
-
-The Time Traveller looked at us, and then at the mechanism. “Well?”
-said the Psychologist.
-
-“This little affair,” said the Time Traveller, resting his elbows upon
-the table and pressing his hands together above the apparatus, “is only
-a model. It is my plan for a machine to travel through time. You will
-notice that it looks singularly askew, and that there is an odd
-twinkling appearance about this bar, as though it was in some way
-unreal.” He pointed to the part with his finger. “Also, here is one
-little white lever, and here is another.”
-
-The Medical Man got up out of his chair and peered into the thing.
-“It’s beautifully made,” he said.
-
-“It took two years to make,” retorted the Time Traveller. Then, when we
-had all imitated the action of the Medical Man, he said: “Now I want
-you clearly to understand that this lever, being pressed over, sends
-the machine gliding into the future, and this other reverses the
-motion. This saddle represents the seat of a time traveller. Presently
-I am going to press the lever, and off the machine will go. It will
-vanish, pass into future Time, and disappear. Have a good look at the
-thing. Look at the table too, and satisfy yourselves there is no
-trickery. I don’t want to waste this model, and then be told I’m a
-quack.”
-
-There was a minute’s pause perhaps. The Psychologist seemed about to
-speak to me, but changed his mind. Then the Time Traveller put forth
-his finger towards the lever. “No,” he said suddenly. “Lend me your
-hand.” And turning to the Psychologist, he took that individual’s hand
-in his own and told him to put out his forefinger. So that it was the
-Psychologist himself who sent forth the model Time Machine on its
-interminable voyage. We all saw the lever turn. I am absolutely certain
-there was no trickery. There was a breath of wind, and the lamp flame
-jumped. One of the candles on the mantel was blown out, and the little
-machine suddenly swung round, became indistinct, was seen as a ghost
-for a second perhaps, as an eddy of faintly glittering brass and ivory;
-and it was gone—vanished! Save for the lamp the table was bare.
-
-Everyone was silent for a minute. Then Filby said he was damned.
-
-The Psychologist recovered from his stupor, and suddenly looked under
-the table. At that the Time Traveller laughed cheerfully. “Well?” he
-said, with a reminiscence of the Psychologist. Then, getting up, he
-went to the tobacco jar on the mantel, and with his back to us began to
-fill his pipe.
-
-We stared at each other. “Look here,” said the Medical Man, “are you in
-earnest about this? Do you seriously believe that that machine has
-travelled into time?”
-
-“Certainly,” said the Time Traveller, stooping to light a spill at the
-fire. Then he turned, lighting his pipe, to look at the Psychologist’s
-face. (The Psychologist, to show that he was not unhinged, helped
-himself to a cigar and tried to light it uncut.) “What is more, I have
-a big machine nearly finished in there”—he indicated the
-laboratory—“and when that is put together I mean to have a journey on
-my own account.”
-
-“You mean to say that that machine has travelled into the future?” said
-Filby.
-
-“Into the future or the past—I don’t, for certain, know which.”
-
-After an interval the Psychologist had an inspiration. “It must have
-gone into the past if it has gone anywhere,” he said.
-
-“Why?” said the Time Traveller.
-
-“Because I presume that it has not moved in space, and if it travelled
-into the future it would still be here all this time, since it must
-have travelled through this time.”
-
-“But,” said I, “If it travelled into the past it would have been
-visible when we came first into this room; and last Thursday when we
-were here; and the Thursday before that; and so forth!”
-
-“Serious objections,” remarked the Provincial Mayor, with an air of
-impartiality, turning towards the Time Traveller.
-
-“Not a bit,” said the Time Traveller, and, to the Psychologist: “You
-think. _You_ can explain that. It’s presentation below the threshold,
-you know, diluted presentation.”
-
-“Of course,” said the Psychologist, and reassured us. “That’s a simple
-point of psychology. I should have thought of it. It’s plain enough,
-and helps the paradox delightfully. We cannot see it, nor can we
-appreciate this machine, any more than we can the spoke of a wheel
-spinning, or a bullet flying through the air. If it is travelling
-through time fifty times or a hundred times faster than we are, if it
-gets through a minute while we get through a second, the impression it
-creates will of course be only one-fiftieth or one-hundredth of what it
-would make if it were not travelling in time. That’s plain enough.” He
-passed his hand through the space in which the machine had been. “You
-see?” he said, laughing.
-
-We sat and stared at the vacant table for a minute or so. Then the Time
-Traveller asked us what we thought of it all.
-
-“It sounds plausible enough tonight,” said the Medical Man; “but wait
-until tomorrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning.”
-
-“Would you like to see the Time Machine itself?” asked the Time
-Traveller. And therewith, taking the lamp in his hand, he led the way
-down the long, draughty corridor to his laboratory. I remember vividly
-the flickering light, his queer, broad head in silhouette, the dance of
-the shadows, how we all followed him, puzzled but incredulous, and how
-there in the laboratory we beheld a larger edition of the little
-mechanism which we had seen vanish from before our eyes. Parts were of
-nickel, parts of ivory, parts had certainly been filed or sawn out of
-rock crystal. The thing was generally complete, but the twisted
-crystalline bars lay unfinished upon the bench beside some sheets of
-drawings, and I took one up for a better look at it. Quartz it seemed
-to be.
-
-“Look here,” said the Medical Man, “are you perfectly serious? Or is
-this a trick—like that ghost you showed us last Christmas?”
-
-“Upon that machine,” said the Time Traveller, holding the lamp aloft,
-“I intend to explore time. Is that plain? I was never more serious in
-my life.”
-
-None of us quite knew how to take it.
-
-I caught Filby’s eye over the shoulder of the Medical Man, and he
-winked at me solemnly.
-
-
-
-
- III.
- The Time Traveller Returns
-
-
-I think that at that time none of us quite believed in the Time
-Machine. The fact is, the Time Traveller was one of those men who are
-too clever to be believed: you never felt that you saw all round him;
-you always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush,
-behind his lucid frankness. Had Filby shown the model and explained the
-matter in the Time Traveller’s words, we should have shown _him_ far
-less scepticism. For we should have perceived his motives: a
-pork-butcher could understand Filby. But the Time Traveller had more
-than a touch of whim among his elements, and we distrusted him. Things
-that would have made the fame of a less clever man seemed tricks in his
-hands. It is a mistake to do things too easily. The serious people who
-took him seriously never felt quite sure of his deportment; they were
-somehow aware that trusting their reputations for judgment with him was
-like furnishing a nursery with eggshell china. So I don’t think any of
-us said very much about time travelling in the interval between that
-Thursday and the next, though its odd potentialities ran, no doubt, in
-most of our minds: its plausibility, that is, its practical
-incredibleness, the curious possibilities of anachronism and of utter
-confusion it suggested. For my own part, I was particularly preoccupied
-with the trick of the model. That I remember discussing with the
-Medical Man, whom I met on Friday at the Linnæan. He said he had seen a
-similar thing at Tübingen, and laid considerable stress on the
-blowing-out of the candle. But how the trick was done he could not
-explain.
-
-The next Thursday I went again to Richmond—I suppose I was one of the
-Time Traveller’s most constant guests—and, arriving late, found four or
-five men already assembled in his drawing-room. The Medical Man was
-standing before the fire with a sheet of paper in one hand and his
-watch in the other. I looked round for the Time Traveller, and—“It’s
-half-past seven now,” said the Medical Man. “I suppose we’d better have
-dinner?”
-
-“Where’s——?” said I, naming our host.
-
-“You’ve just come? It’s rather odd. He’s unavoidably detained. He asks
-me in this note to lead off with dinner at seven if he’s not back. Says
-he’ll explain when he comes.”
-
-“It seems a pity to let the dinner spoil,” said the Editor of a
-well-known daily paper; and thereupon the Doctor rang the bell.
-
-The Psychologist was the only person besides the Doctor and myself who
-had attended the previous dinner. The other men were Blank, the Editor
-aforementioned, a certain journalist, and another—a quiet, shy man with
-a beard—whom I didn’t know, and who, as far as my observation went,
-never opened his mouth all the evening. There was some speculation at
-the dinner-table about the Time Traveller’s absence, and I suggested
-time travelling, in a half-jocular spirit. The Editor wanted that
-explained to him, and the Psychologist volunteered a wooden account of
-the “ingenious paradox and trick” we had witnessed that day week. He
-was in the midst of his exposition when the door from the corridor
-opened slowly and without noise. I was facing the door, and saw it
-first. “Hallo!” I said. “At last!” And the door opened wider, and the
-Time Traveller stood before us. I gave a cry of surprise. “Good
-heavens! man, what’s the matter?” cried the Medical Man, who saw him
-next. And the whole tableful turned towards the door.
-
-He was in an amazing plight. His coat was dusty and dirty, and smeared
-with green down the sleeves; his hair disordered, and as it seemed to
-me greyer—either with dust and dirt or because its colour had actually
-faded. His face was ghastly pale; his chin had a brown cut on it—a cut
-half-healed; his expression was haggard and drawn, as by intense
-suffering. For a moment he hesitated in the doorway, as if he had been
-dazzled by the light. Then he came into the room. He walked with just
-such a limp as I have seen in footsore tramps. We stared at him in
-silence, expecting him to speak.
-
-He said not a word, but came painfully to the table, and made a motion
-towards the wine. The Editor filled a glass of champagne, and pushed it
-towards him. He drained it, and it seemed to do him good: for he looked
-round the table, and the ghost of his old smile flickered across his
-face. “What on earth have you been up to, man?” said the Doctor. The
-Time Traveller did not seem to hear. “Don’t let me disturb you,” he
-said, with a certain faltering articulation. “I’m all right.” He
-stopped, held out his glass for more, and took it off at a draught.
-“That’s good,” he said. His eyes grew brighter, and a faint colour came
-into his cheeks. His glance flickered over our faces with a certain
-dull approval, and then went round the warm and comfortable room. Then
-he spoke again, still as it were feeling his way among his words. “I’m
-going to wash and dress, and then I’ll come down and explain things....
-Save me some of that mutton. I’m starving for a bit of meat.”
-
-He looked across at the Editor, who was a rare visitor, and hoped he
-was all right. The Editor began a question. “Tell you presently,” said
-the Time Traveller. “I’m—funny! Be all right in a minute.”
-
-He put down his glass, and walked towards the staircase door. Again I
-remarked his lameness and the soft padding sound of his footfall, and
-standing up in my place, I saw his feet as he went out. He had nothing
-on them but a pair of tattered, blood-stained socks. Then the door
-closed upon him. I had half a mind to follow, till I remembered how he
-detested any fuss about himself. For a minute, perhaps, my mind was
-wool-gathering. Then, “Remarkable Behaviour of an Eminent Scientist,” I
-heard the Editor say, thinking (after his wont) in headlines. And this
-brought my attention back to the bright dinner-table.
-
-“What’s the game?” said the Journalist. “Has he been doing the Amateur
-Cadger? I don’t follow.” I met the eye of the Psychologist, and read my
-own interpretation in his face. I thought of the Time Traveller limping
-painfully upstairs. I don’t think anyone else had noticed his lameness.
-
-The first to recover completely from this surprise was the Medical Man,
-who rang the bell—the Time Traveller hated to have servants waiting at
-dinner—for a hot plate. At that the Editor turned to his knife and fork
-with a grunt, and the Silent Man followed suit. The dinner was resumed.
-Conversation was exclamatory for a little while with gaps of
-wonderment; and then the Editor got fervent in his curiosity. “Does our
-friend eke out his modest income with a crossing? or has he his
-Nebuchadnezzar phases?” he inquired. “I feel assured it’s this business
-of the Time Machine,” I said, and took up the Psychologist’s account of
-our previous meeting. The new guests were frankly incredulous. The
-Editor raised objections. “What _was_ this time travelling? A man
-couldn’t cover himself with dust by rolling in a paradox, could he?”
-And then, as the idea came home to him, he resorted to caricature.
-Hadn’t they any clothes-brushes in the Future? The Journalist too,
-would not believe at any price, and joined the Editor in the easy work
-of heaping ridicule on the whole thing. They were both the new kind of
-journalist—very joyous, irreverent young men. “Our Special
-Correspondent in the Day after Tomorrow reports,” the Journalist was
-saying—or rather shouting—when the Time Traveller came back. He was
-dressed in ordinary evening clothes, and nothing save his haggard look
-remained of the change that had startled me.
-
-“I say,” said the Editor hilariously, “these chaps here say you have
-been travelling into the middle of next week! Tell us all about little
-Rosebery, will you? What will you take for the lot?”
-
-The Time Traveller came to the place reserved for him without a word.
-He smiled quietly, in his old way. “Where’s my mutton?” he said. “What
-a treat it is to stick a fork into meat again!”
-
-“Story!” cried the Editor.
-
-“Story be damned!” said the Time Traveller. “I want something to eat. I
-won’t say a word until I get some peptone into my arteries. Thanks. And
-the salt.”
-
-“One word,” said I. “Have you been time travelling?”
-
-“Yes,” said the Time Traveller, with his mouth full, nodding his head.
-
-“I’d give a shilling a line for a verbatim note,” said the Editor. The
-Time Traveller pushed his glass towards the Silent Man and rang it with
-his fingernail; at which the Silent Man, who had been staring at his
-face, started convulsively, and poured him wine. The rest of the dinner
-was uncomfortable. For my own part, sudden questions kept on rising to
-my lips, and I dare say it was the same with the others. The Journalist
-tried to relieve the tension by telling anecdotes of Hettie Potter. The
-Time Traveller devoted his attention to his dinner, and displayed the
-appetite of a tramp. The Medical Man smoked a cigarette, and watched
-the Time Traveller through his eyelashes. The Silent Man seemed even
-more clumsy than usual, and drank champagne with regularity and
-determination out of sheer nervousness. At last the Time Traveller
-pushed his plate away, and looked round us. “I suppose I must
-apologise,” he said. “I was simply starving. I’ve had a most amazing
-time.” He reached out his hand for a cigar, and cut the end. “But come
-into the smoking-room. It’s too long a story to tell over greasy
-plates.” And ringing the bell in passing, he led the way into the
-adjoining room.
-
-“You have told Blank, and Dash, and Chose about the machine?” he said
-to me, leaning back in his easy-chair and naming the three new guests.
-
-“But the thing’s a mere paradox,” said the Editor.
-
-“I can’t argue tonight. I don’t mind telling you the story, but I can’t
-argue. I will,” he went on, “tell you the story of what has happened to
-me, if you like, but you must refrain from interruptions. I want to
-tell it. Badly. Most of it will sound like lying. So be it! It’s
-true—every word of it, all the same. I was in my laboratory at four
-o’clock, and since then … I’ve lived eight days … such days as no human
-being ever lived before! I’m nearly worn out, but I shan’t sleep till
-I’ve told this thing over to you. Then I shall go to bed. But no
-interruptions! Is it agreed?”
-
-“Agreed,” said the Editor, and the rest of us echoed “Agreed.” And with
-that the Time Traveller began his story as I have set it forth. He sat
-back in his chair at first, and spoke like a weary man. Afterwards he
-got more animated. In writing it down I feel with only too much
-keenness the inadequacy of pen and ink—and, above all, my own
-inadequacy—to express its quality. You read, I will suppose,
-attentively enough; but you cannot see the speaker’s white, sincere
-face in the bright circle of the little lamp, nor hear the intonation
-of his voice. You cannot know how his expression followed the turns of
-his story! Most of us hearers were in shadow, for the candles in the
-smoking-room had not been lighted, and only the face of the Journalist
-and the legs of the Silent Man from the knees downward were
-illuminated. At first we glanced now and again at each other. After a
-time we ceased to do that, and looked only at the Time Traveller’s
-face.
-
-
-
-
- IV.
- Time Travelling
-
-
-“I told some of you last Thursday of the principles of the Time
-Machine, and showed you the actual thing itself, incomplete in the
-workshop. There it is now, a little travel-worn, truly; and one of the
-ivory bars is cracked, and a brass rail bent; but the rest of it’s
-sound enough. I expected to finish it on Friday; but on Friday, when
-the putting together was nearly done, I found that one of the nickel
-bars was exactly one inch too short, and this I had to get remade; so
-that the thing was not complete until this morning. It was at ten
-o’clock today that the first of all Time Machines began its career. I
-gave it a last tap, tried all the screws again, put one more drop of
-oil on the quartz rod, and sat myself in the saddle. I suppose a
-suicide who holds a pistol to his skull feels much the same wonder at
-what will come next as I felt then. I took the starting lever in one
-hand and the stopping one in the other, pressed the first, and almost
-immediately the second. I seemed to reel; I felt a nightmare sensation
-of falling; and, looking round, I saw the laboratory exactly as before.
-Had anything happened? For a moment I suspected that my intellect had
-tricked me. Then I noted the clock. A moment before, as it seemed, it
-had stood at a minute or so past ten; now it was nearly half-past
-three!
-
-“I drew a breath, set my teeth, gripped the starting lever with both
-hands, and went off with a thud. The laboratory got hazy and went dark.
-Mrs. Watchett came in and walked, apparently without seeing me, towards
-the garden door. I suppose it took her a minute or so to traverse the
-place, but to me she seemed to shoot across the room like a rocket. I
-pressed the lever over to its extreme position. The night came like the
-turning out of a lamp, and in another moment came tomorrow. The
-laboratory grew faint and hazy, then fainter and ever fainter. Tomorrow
-night came black, then day again, night again, day again, faster and
-faster still. An eddying murmur filled my ears, and a strange, dumb
-confusedness descended on my mind.
-
-“I am afraid I cannot convey the peculiar sensations of time
-travelling. They are excessively unpleasant. There is a feeling exactly
-like that one has upon a switchback—of a helpless headlong motion! I
-felt the same horrible anticipation, too, of an imminent smash. As I
-put on pace, night followed day like the flapping of a black wing. The
-dim suggestion of the laboratory seemed presently to fall away from me,
-and I saw the sun hopping swiftly across the sky, leaping it every
-minute, and every minute marking a day. I supposed the laboratory had
-been destroyed and I had come into the open air. I had a dim impression
-of scaffolding, but I was already going too fast to be conscious of any
-moving things. The slowest snail that ever crawled dashed by too fast
-for me. The twinkling succession of darkness and light was excessively
-painful to the eye. Then, in the intermittent darknesses, I saw the
-moon spinning swiftly through her quarters from new to full, and had a
-faint glimpse of the circling stars. Presently, as I went on, still
-gaining velocity, the palpitation of night and day merged into one
-continuous greyness; the sky took on a wonderful deepness of blue, a
-splendid luminous colour like that of early twilight; the jerking sun
-became a streak of fire, a brilliant arch, in space; the moon a fainter
-fluctuating band; and I could see nothing of the stars, save now and
-then a brighter circle flickering in the blue.
-
-“The landscape was misty and vague. I was still on the hillside upon
-which this house now stands, and the shoulder rose above me grey and
-dim. I saw trees growing and changing like puffs of vapour, now brown,
-now green; they grew, spread, shivered, and passed away. I saw huge
-buildings rise up faint and fair, and pass like dreams. The whole
-surface of the earth seemed changed—melting and flowing under my eyes.
-The little hands upon the dials that registered my speed raced round
-faster and faster. Presently I noted that the sun belt swayed up and
-down, from solstice to solstice, in a minute or less, and that
-consequently my pace was over a year a minute; and minute by minute the
-white snow flashed across the world, and vanished, and was followed by
-the bright, brief green of spring.
-
-“The unpleasant sensations of the start were less poignant now. They
-merged at last into a kind of hysterical exhilaration. I remarked,
-indeed, a clumsy swaying of the machine, for which I was unable to
-account. But my mind was too confused to attend to it, so with a kind
-of madness growing upon me, I flung myself into futurity. At first I
-scarce thought of stopping, scarce thought of anything but these new
-sensations. But presently a fresh series of impressions grew up in my
-mind—a certain curiosity and therewith a certain dread—until at last
-they took complete possession of me. What strange developments of
-humanity, what wonderful advances upon our rudimentary civilisation, I
-thought, might not appear when I came to look nearly into the dim
-elusive world that raced and fluctuated before my eyes! I saw great and
-splendid architecture rising about me, more massive than any buildings
-of our own time, and yet, as it seemed, built of glimmer and mist. I
-saw a richer green flow up the hillside, and remain there, without any
-wintry intermission. Even through the veil of my confusion the earth
-seemed very fair. And so my mind came round to the business of
-stopping.
-
-“The peculiar risk lay in the possibility of my finding some substance
-in the space which I, or the machine, occupied. So long as I travelled
-at a high velocity through time, this scarcely mattered: I was, so to
-speak, attenuated—was slipping like a vapour through the interstices of
-intervening substances! But to come to a stop involved the jamming of
-myself, molecule by molecule, into whatever lay in my way; meant
-bringing my atoms into such intimate contact with those of the obstacle
-that a profound chemical reaction—possibly a far-reaching
-explosion—would result, and blow myself and my apparatus out of all
-possible dimensions—into the Unknown. This possibility had occurred to
-me again and again while I was making the machine; but then I had
-cheerfully accepted it as an unavoidable risk—one of the risks a man
-has got to take! Now the risk was inevitable, I no longer saw it in the
-same cheerful light. The fact is that, insensibly, the absolute
-strangeness of everything, the sickly jarring and swaying of the
-machine, above all, the feeling of prolonged falling, had absolutely
-upset my nerves. I told myself that I could never stop, and with a gust
-of petulance I resolved to stop forthwith. Like an impatient fool, I
-lugged over the lever, and incontinently the thing went reeling over,
-and I was flung headlong through the air.
-
-“There was the sound of a clap of thunder in my ears. I may have been
-stunned for a moment. A pitiless hail was hissing round me, and I was
-sitting on soft turf in front of the overset machine. Everything still
-seemed grey, but presently I remarked that the confusion in my ears was
-gone. I looked round me. I was on what seemed to be a little lawn in a
-garden, surrounded by rhododendron bushes, and I noticed that their
-mauve and purple blossoms were dropping in a shower under the beating
-of the hailstones. The rebounding, dancing hail hung in a little cloud
-over the machine, and drove along the ground like smoke. In a moment I
-was wet to the skin. ‘Fine hospitality,’ said I, ‘to a man who has
-travelled innumerable years to see you.’
-
-“Presently I thought what a fool I was to get wet. I stood up and
-looked round me. A colossal figure, carved apparently in some white
-stone, loomed indistinctly beyond the rhododendrons through the hazy
-downpour. But all else of the world was invisible.
-
-“My sensations would be hard to describe. As the columns of hail grew
-thinner, I saw the white figure more distinctly. It was very large, for
-a silver birch-tree touched its shoulder. It was of white marble, in
-shape something like a winged sphinx, but the wings, instead of being
-carried vertically at the sides, were spread so that it seemed to
-hover. The pedestal, it appeared to me, was of bronze, and was thick
-with verdigris. It chanced that the face was towards me; the sightless
-eyes seemed to watch me; there was the faint shadow of a smile on the
-lips. It was greatly weather-worn, and that imparted an unpleasant
-suggestion of disease. I stood looking at it for a little space—half a
-minute, perhaps, or half an hour. It seemed to advance and to recede as
-the hail drove before it denser or thinner. At last I tore my eyes from
-it for a moment, and saw that the hail curtain had worn threadbare, and
-that the sky was lightening with the promise of the sun.
-
-“I looked up again at the crouching white shape, and the full temerity
-of my voyage came suddenly upon me. What might appear when that hazy
-curtain was altogether withdrawn? What might not have happened to men?
-What if cruelty had grown into a common passion? What if in this
-interval the race had lost its manliness, and had developed into
-something inhuman, unsympathetic, and overwhelmingly powerful? I might
-seem some old-world savage animal, only the more dreadful and
-disgusting for our common likeness—a foul creature to be incontinently
-slain.
-
-“Already I saw other vast shapes—huge buildings with intricate parapets
-and tall columns, with a wooded hillside dimly creeping in upon me
-through the lessening storm. I was seized with a panic fear. I turned
-frantically to the Time Machine, and strove hard to readjust it. As I
-did so the shafts of the sun smote through the thunderstorm. The grey
-downpour was swept aside and vanished like the trailing garments of a
-ghost. Above me, in the intense blue of the summer sky, some faint
-brown shreds of cloud whirled into nothingness. The great buildings
-about me stood out clear and distinct, shining with the wet of the
-thunderstorm, and picked out in white by the unmelted hailstones piled
-along their courses. I felt naked in a strange world. I felt as perhaps
-a bird may feel in the clear air, knowing the hawk wings above and will
-swoop. My fear grew to frenzy. I took a breathing space, set my teeth,
-and again grappled fiercely, wrist and knee, with the machine. It gave
-under my desperate onset and turned over. It struck my chin violently.
-One hand on the saddle, the other on the lever, I stood panting heavily
-in attitude to mount again.
-
-“But with this recovery of a prompt retreat my courage recovered. I
-looked more curiously and less fearfully at this world of the remote
-future. In a circular opening, high up in the wall of the nearer house,
-I saw a group of figures clad in rich soft robes. They had seen me, and
-their faces were directed towards me.
-
-“Then I heard voices approaching me. Coming through the bushes by the
-White Sphinx were the heads and shoulders of men running. One of these
-emerged in a pathway leading straight to the little lawn upon which I
-stood with my machine. He was a slight creature—perhaps four feet
-high—clad in a purple tunic, girdled at the waist with a leather belt.
-Sandals or buskins—I could not clearly distinguish which—were on his
-feet; his legs were bare to the knees, and his head was bare. Noticing
-that, I noticed for the first time how warm the air was.
-
-“He struck me as being a very beautiful and graceful creature, but
-indescribably frail. His flushed face reminded me of the more beautiful
-kind of consumptive—that hectic beauty of which we used to hear so
-much. At the sight of him I suddenly regained confidence. I took my
-hands from the machine.
-
-
-
-
- V.
- In the Golden Age
-
-
-“In another moment we were standing face to face, I and this fragile
-thing out of futurity. He came straight up to me and laughed into my
-eyes. The absence from his bearing of any sign of fear struck me at
-once. Then he turned to the two others who were following him and spoke
-to them in a strange and very sweet and liquid tongue.
-
-“There were others coming, and presently a little group of perhaps
-eight or ten of these exquisite creatures were about me. One of them
-addressed me. It came into my head, oddly enough, that my voice was too
-harsh and deep for them. So I shook my head, and, pointing to my ears,
-shook it again. He came a step forward, hesitated, and then touched my
-hand. Then I felt other soft little tentacles upon my back and
-shoulders. They wanted to make sure I was real. There was nothing in
-this at all alarming. Indeed, there was something in these pretty
-little people that inspired confidence—a graceful gentleness, a certain
-childlike ease. And besides, they looked so frail that I could fancy
-myself flinging the whole dozen of them about like ninepins. But I made
-a sudden motion to warn them when I saw their little pink hands feeling
-at the Time Machine. Happily then, when it was not too late, I thought
-of a danger I had hitherto forgotten, and reaching over the bars of the
-machine I unscrewed the little levers that would set it in motion, and
-put these in my pocket. Then I turned again to see what I could do in
-the way of communication.
-
-“And then, looking more nearly into their features, I saw some further
-peculiarities in their Dresden china type of prettiness. Their hair,
-which was uniformly curly, came to a sharp end at the neck and cheek;
-there was not the faintest suggestion of it on the face, and their ears
-were singularly minute. The mouths were small, with bright red, rather
-thin lips, and the little chins ran to a point. The eyes were large and
-mild; and—this may seem egotism on my part—I fancied even that there
-was a certain lack of the interest I might have expected in them.
-
-“As they made no effort to communicate with me, but simply stood round
-me smiling and speaking in soft cooing notes to each other, I began the
-conversation. I pointed to the Time Machine and to myself. Then,
-hesitating for a moment how to express Time, I pointed to the sun. At
-once a quaintly pretty little figure in chequered purple and white
-followed my gesture, and then astonished me by imitating the sound of
-thunder.
-
-“For a moment I was staggered, though the import of his gesture was
-plain enough. The question had come into my mind abruptly: were these
-creatures fools? You may hardly understand how it took me. You see, I
-had always anticipated that the people of the year Eight Hundred and
-Two Thousand odd would be incredibly in front of us in knowledge, art,
-everything. Then one of them suddenly asked me a question that showed
-him to be on the intellectual level of one of our five-year-old
-children—asked me, in fact, if I had come from the sun in a
-thunderstorm! It let loose the judgment I had suspended upon their
-clothes, their frail light limbs, and fragile features. A flow of
-disappointment rushed across my mind. For a moment I felt that I had
-built the Time Machine in vain.
-
-“I nodded, pointed to the sun, and gave them such a vivid rendering of
-a thunderclap as startled them. They all withdrew a pace or so and
-bowed. Then came one laughing towards me, carrying a chain of beautiful
-flowers altogether new to me, and put it about my neck. The idea was
-received with melodious applause; and presently they were all running
-to and fro for flowers, and laughingly flinging them upon me until I
-was almost smothered with blossom. You who have never seen the like can
-scarcely imagine what delicate and wonderful flowers countless years of
-culture had created. Then someone suggested that their plaything should
-be exhibited in the nearest building, and so I was led past the sphinx
-of white marble, which had seemed to watch me all the while with a
-smile at my astonishment, towards a vast grey edifice of fretted stone.
-As I went with them the memory of my confident anticipations of a
-profoundly grave and intellectual posterity came, with irresistible
-merriment, to my mind.
-
-“The building had a huge entry, and was altogether of colossal
-dimensions. I was naturally most occupied with the growing crowd of
-little people, and with the big open portals that yawned before me
-shadowy and mysterious. My general impression of the world I saw over
-their heads was a tangled waste of beautiful bushes and flowers, a long
-neglected and yet weedless garden. I saw a number of tall spikes of
-strange white flowers, measuring a foot perhaps across the spread of
-the waxen petals. They grew scattered, as if wild, among the variegated
-shrubs, but, as I say, I did not examine them closely at this time. The
-Time Machine was left deserted on the turf among the rhododendrons.
-
-“The arch of the doorway was richly carved, but naturally I did not
-observe the carving very narrowly, though I fancied I saw suggestions
-of old Phœnician decorations as I passed through, and it struck me that
-they were very badly broken and weather-worn. Several more brightly
-clad people met me in the doorway, and so we entered, I, dressed in
-dingy nineteenth-century garments, looking grotesque enough, garlanded
-with flowers, and surrounded by an eddying mass of bright,
-soft-coloured robes and shining white limbs, in a melodious whirl of
-laughter and laughing speech.
-
-“The big doorway opened into a proportionately great hall hung with
-brown. The roof was in shadow, and the windows, partially glazed with
-coloured glass and partially unglazed, admitted a tempered light. The
-floor was made up of huge blocks of some very hard white metal, not
-plates nor slabs—blocks, and it was so much worn, as I judged by the
-going to and fro of past generations, as to be deeply channelled along
-the more frequented ways. Transverse to the length were innumerable
-tables made of slabs of polished stone, raised, perhaps, a foot from
-the floor, and upon these were heaps of fruits. Some I recognised as a
-kind of hypertrophied raspberry and orange, but for the most part they
-were strange.
-
-“Between the tables was scattered a great number of cushions. Upon
-these my conductors seated themselves, signing for me to do likewise.
-With a pretty absence of ceremony they began to eat the fruit with
-their hands, flinging peel and stalks, and so forth, into the round
-openings in the sides of the tables. I was not loath to follow their
-example, for I felt thirsty and hungry. As I did so I surveyed the hall
-at my leisure.
-
-“And perhaps the thing that struck me most was its dilapidated look.
-The stained-glass windows, which displayed only a geometrical pattern,
-were broken in many places, and the curtains that hung across the lower
-end were thick with dust. And it caught my eye that the corner of the
-marble table near me was fractured. Nevertheless, the general effect
-was extremely rich and picturesque. There were, perhaps, a couple of
-hundred people dining in the hall, and most of them, seated as near to
-me as they could come, were watching me with interest, their little
-eyes shining over the fruit they were eating. All were clad in the same
-soft, and yet strong, silky material.
-
-“Fruit, by the bye, was all their diet. These people of the remote
-future were strict vegetarians, and while I was with them, in spite of
-some carnal cravings, I had to be frugivorous also. Indeed, I found
-afterwards that horses, cattle, sheep, dogs, had followed the
-Ichthyosaurus into extinction. But the fruits were very delightful;
-one, in particular, that seemed to be in season all the time I was
-there—a floury thing in a three-sided husk—was especially good, and I
-made it my staple. At first I was puzzled by all these strange fruits,
-and by the strange flowers I saw, but later I began to perceive their
-import.
-
-“However, I am telling you of my fruit dinner in the distant future
-now. So soon as my appetite was a little checked, I determined to make
-a resolute attempt to learn the speech of these new men of mine.
-Clearly that was the next thing to do. The fruits seemed a convenient
-thing to begin upon, and holding one of these up I began a series of
-interrogative sounds and gestures. I had some considerable difficulty
-in conveying my meaning. At first my efforts met with a stare of
-surprise or inextinguishable laughter, but presently a fair-haired
-little creature seemed to grasp my intention and repeated a name. They
-had to chatter and explain the business at great length to each other,
-and my first attempts to make the exquisite little sounds of their
-language caused an immense amount of genuine, if uncivil, amusement.
-However, I felt like a schoolmaster amidst children, and persisted, and
-presently I had a score of noun substantives at least at my command;
-and then I got to demonstrative pronouns, and even the verb ‘to eat.’
-But it was slow work, and the little people soon tired and wanted to
-get away from my interrogations, so I determined, rather of necessity,
-to let them give their lessons in little doses when they felt inclined.
-And very little doses I found they were before long, for I never met
-people more indolent or more easily fatigued.
-
-
-
-
- VI.
- The Sunset of Mankind
-
-
-“A queer thing I soon discovered about my little hosts, and that was
-their lack of interest. They would come to me with eager cries of
-astonishment, like children, but, like children they would soon stop
-examining me, and wander away after some other toy. The dinner and my
-conversational beginnings ended, I noted for the first time that almost
-all those who had surrounded me at first were gone. It is odd, too, how
-speedily I came to disregard these little people. I went out through
-the portal into the sunlit world again as soon as my hunger was
-satisfied. I was continually meeting more of these men of the future,
-who would follow me a little distance, chatter and laugh about me, and,
-having smiled and gesticulated in a friendly way, leave me again to my
-own devices.
-
-“The calm of evening was upon the world as I emerged from the great
-hall, and the scene was lit by the warm glow of the setting sun. At
-first things were very confusing. Everything was so entirely different
-from the world I had known—even the flowers. The big building I had
-left was situated on the slope of a broad river valley, but the Thames
-had shifted, perhaps, a mile from its present position. I resolved to
-mount to the summit of a crest, perhaps a mile and a half away, from
-which I could get a wider view of this our planet in the year Eight
-Hundred and Two Thousand Seven Hundred and One, A.D. For that, I should
-explain, was the date the little dials of my machine recorded.
-
-“As I walked I was watching for every impression that could possibly
-help to explain the condition of ruinous splendour in which I found the
-world—for ruinous it was. A little way up the hill, for instance, was a
-great heap of granite, bound together by masses of aluminium, a vast
-labyrinth of precipitous walls and crumpled heaps, amidst which were
-thick heaps of very beautiful pagoda-like plants—nettles possibly—but
-wonderfully tinted with brown about the leaves, and incapable of
-stinging. It was evidently the derelict remains of some vast structure,
-to what end built I could not determine. It was here that I was
-destined, at a later date, to have a very strange experience—the first
-intimation of a still stranger discovery—but of that I will speak in
-its proper place.
-
-“Looking round, with a sudden thought, from a terrace on which I rested
-for a while, I realised that there were no small houses to be seen.
-Apparently the single house, and possibly even the household, had
-vanished. Here and there among the greenery were palace-like buildings,
-but the house and the cottage, which form such characteristic features
-of our own English landscape, had disappeared.
-
-“‘Communism,’ said I to myself.
-
-“And on the heels of that came another thought. I looked at the
-half-dozen little figures that were following me. Then, in a flash, I
-perceived that all had the same form of costume, the same soft hairless
-visage, and the same girlish rotundity of limb. It may seem strange,
-perhaps, that I had not noticed this before. But everything was so
-strange. Now, I saw the fact plainly enough. In costume, and in all the
-differences of texture and bearing that now mark off the sexes from
-each other, these people of the future were alike. And the children
-seemed to my eyes to be but the miniatures of their parents. I judged
-then that the children of that time were extremely precocious,
-physically at least, and I found afterwards abundant verification of my
-opinion.
-
-“Seeing the ease and security in which these people were living, I felt
-that this close resemblance of the sexes was after all what one would
-expect; for the strength of a man and the softness of a woman, the
-institution of the family, and the differentiation of occupations are
-mere militant necessities of an age of physical force. Where population
-is balanced and abundant, much childbearing becomes an evil rather than
-a blessing to the State; where violence comes but rarely and offspring
-are secure, there is less necessity—indeed there is no necessity—for an
-efficient family, and the specialisation of the sexes with reference to
-their children’s needs disappears. We see some beginnings of this even
-in our own time, and in this future age it was complete. This, I must
-remind you, was my speculation at the time. Later, I was to appreciate
-how far it fell short of the reality.
-
-“While I was musing upon these things, my attention was attracted by a
-pretty little structure, like a well under a cupola. I thought in a
-transitory way of the oddness of wells still existing, and then resumed
-the thread of my speculations. There were no large buildings towards
-the top of the hill, and as my walking powers were evidently
-miraculous, I was presently left alone for the first time. With a
-strange sense of freedom and adventure I pushed on up to the crest.
-
-“There I found a seat of some yellow metal that I did not recognise,
-corroded in places with a kind of pinkish rust and half smothered in
-soft moss, the arm-rests cast and filed into the resemblance of
-griffins’ heads. I sat down on it, and I surveyed the broad view of our
-old world under the sunset of that long day. It was as sweet and fair a
-view as I have ever seen. The sun had already gone below the horizon
-and the west was flaming gold, touched with some horizontal bars of
-purple and crimson. Below was the valley of the Thames, in which the
-river lay like a band of burnished steel. I have already spoken of the
-great palaces dotted about among the variegated greenery, some in ruins
-and some still occupied. Here and there rose a white or silvery figure
-in the waste garden of the earth, here and there came the sharp
-vertical line of some cupola or obelisk. There were no hedges, no signs
-of proprietary rights, no evidences of agriculture; the whole earth had
-become a garden.
-
-“So watching, I began to put my interpretation upon the things I had
-seen, and as it shaped itself to me that evening, my interpretation was
-something in this way. (Afterwards I found I had got only a half
-truth—or only a glimpse of one facet of the truth.)
-
-“It seemed to me that I had happened upon humanity upon the wane. The
-ruddy sunset set me thinking of the sunset of mankind. For the first
-time I began to realise an odd consequence of the social effort in
-which we are at present engaged. And yet, come to think, it is a
-logical consequence enough. Strength is the outcome of need; security
-sets a premium on feebleness. The work of ameliorating the conditions
-of life—the true civilising process that makes life more and more
-secure—had gone steadily on to a climax. One triumph of a united
-humanity over Nature had followed another. Things that are now mere
-dreams had become projects deliberately put in hand and carried
-forward. And the harvest was what I saw!
-
-“After all, the sanitation and the agriculture of today are still in
-the rudimentary stage. The science of our time has attacked but a
-little department of the field of human disease, but, even so, it
-spreads its operations very steadily and persistently. Our agriculture
-and horticulture destroy a weed just here and there and cultivate
-perhaps a score or so of wholesome plants, leaving the greater number
-to fight out a balance as they can. We improve our favourite plants and
-animals—and how few they are—gradually by selective breeding; now a new
-and better peach, now a seedless grape, now a sweeter and larger
-flower, now a more convenient breed of cattle. We improve them
-gradually, because our ideals are vague and tentative, and our
-knowledge is very limited; because Nature, too, is shy and slow in our
-clumsy hands. Some day all this will be better organised, and still
-better. That is the drift of the current in spite of the eddies. The
-whole world will be intelligent, educated, and co-operating; things
-will move faster and faster towards the subjugation of Nature. In the
-end, wisely and carefully we shall readjust the balance of animal and
-vegetable life to suit our human needs.
-
-“This adjustment, I say, must have been done, and done well; done
-indeed for all Time, in the space of Time across which my machine had
-leapt. The air was free from gnats, the earth from weeds or fungi;
-everywhere were fruits and sweet and delightful flowers; brilliant
-butterflies flew hither and thither. The ideal of preventive medicine
-was attained. Diseases had been stamped out. I saw no evidence of any
-contagious diseases during all my stay. And I shall have to tell you
-later that even the processes of putrefaction and decay had been
-profoundly affected by these changes.
-
-“Social triumphs, too, had been effected. I saw mankind housed in
-splendid shelters, gloriously clothed, and as yet I had found them
-engaged in no toil. There were no signs of struggle, neither social nor
-economical struggle. The shop, the advertisement, traffic, all that
-commerce which constitutes the body of our world, was gone. It was
-natural on that golden evening that I should jump at the idea of a
-social paradise. The difficulty of increasing population had been met,
-I guessed, and population had ceased to increase.
-
-“But with this change in condition comes inevitably adaptations to the
-change. What, unless biological science is a mass of errors, is the
-cause of human intelligence and vigour? Hardship and freedom:
-conditions under which the active, strong, and subtle survive and the
-weaker go to the wall; conditions that put a premium upon the loyal
-alliance of capable men, upon self-restraint, patience, and decision.
-And the institution of the family, and the emotions that arise therein,
-the fierce jealousy, the tenderness for offspring, parental
-self-devotion, all found their justification and support in the
-imminent dangers of the young. _Now_, where are these imminent dangers?
-There is a sentiment arising, and it will grow, against connubial
-jealousy, against fierce maternity, against passion of all sorts;
-unnecessary things now, and things that make us uncomfortable, savage
-survivals, discords in a refined and pleasant life.
-
-“I thought of the physical slightness of the people, their lack of
-intelligence, and those big abundant ruins, and it strengthened my
-belief in a perfect conquest of Nature. For after the battle comes
-Quiet. Humanity had been strong, energetic, and intelligent, and had
-used all its abundant vitality to alter the conditions under which it
-lived. And now came the reaction of the altered conditions.
-
-“Under the new conditions of perfect comfort and security, that
-restless energy, that with us is strength, would become weakness. Even
-in our own time certain tendencies and desires, once necessary to
-survival, are a constant source of failure. Physical courage and the
-love of battle, for instance, are no great help—may even be
-hindrances—to a civilised man. And in a state of physical balance and
-security, power, intellectual as well as physical, would be out of
-place. For countless years I judged there had been no danger of war or
-solitary violence, no danger from wild beasts, no wasting disease to
-require strength of constitution, no need of toil. For such a life,
-what we should call the weak are as well equipped as the strong, are
-indeed no longer weak. Better equipped indeed they are, for the strong
-would be fretted by an energy for which there was no outlet. No doubt
-the exquisite beauty of the buildings I saw was the outcome of the last
-surgings of the now purposeless energy of mankind before it settled
-down into perfect harmony with the conditions under which it lived—the
-flourish of that triumph which began the last great peace. This has
-ever been the fate of energy in security; it takes to art and to
-eroticism, and then come languor and decay.
-
-“Even this artistic impetus would at last die away—had almost died in
-the Time I saw. To adorn themselves with flowers, to dance, to sing in
-the sunlight: so much was left of the artistic spirit, and no more.
-Even that would fade in the end into a contented inactivity. We are
-kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity, and it seemed to me
-that here was that hateful grindstone broken at last!
-
-“As I stood there in the gathering dark I thought that in this simple
-explanation I had mastered the problem of the world—mastered the whole
-secret of these delicious people. Possibly the checks they had devised
-for the increase of population had succeeded too well, and their
-numbers had rather diminished than kept stationary. That would account
-for the abandoned ruins. Very simple was my explanation, and plausible
-enough—as most wrong theories are!
-
-
-
-
- VII.
- A Sudden Shock
-
-
-“As I stood there musing over this too perfect triumph of man, the full
-moon, yellow and gibbous, came up out of an overflow of silver light in
-the north-east. The bright little figures ceased to move about below, a
-noiseless owl flitted by, and I shivered with the chill of the night. I
-determined to descend and find where I could sleep.
-
-“I looked for the building I knew. Then my eye travelled along to the
-figure of the White Sphinx upon the pedestal of bronze, growing
-distinct as the light of the rising moon grew brighter. I could see the
-silver birch against it. There was the tangle of rhododendron bushes,
-black in the pale light, and there was the little lawn. I looked at the
-lawn again. A queer doubt chilled my complacency. ‘No,’ said I stoutly
-to myself, ‘that was not the lawn.’
-
-“But it _was_ the lawn. For the white leprous face of the sphinx was
-towards it. Can you imagine what I felt as this conviction came home to
-me? But you cannot. The Time Machine was gone!
-
-“At once, like a lash across the face, came the possibility of losing
-my own age, of being left helpless in this strange new world. The bare
-thought of it was an actual physical sensation. I could feel it grip me
-at the throat and stop my breathing. In another moment I was in a
-passion of fear and running with great leaping strides down the slope.
-Once I fell headlong and cut my face; I lost no time in stanching the
-blood, but jumped up and ran on, with a warm trickle down my cheek and
-chin. All the time I ran I was saying to myself: ‘They have moved it a
-little, pushed it under the bushes out of the way.’ Nevertheless, I ran
-with all my might. All the time, with the certainty that sometimes
-comes with excessive dread, I knew that such assurance was folly, knew
-instinctively that the machine was removed out of my reach. My breath
-came with pain. I suppose I covered the whole distance from the hill
-crest to the little lawn, two miles perhaps, in ten minutes. And I am
-not a young man. I cursed aloud, as I ran, at my confident folly in
-leaving the machine, wasting good breath thereby. I cried aloud, and
-none answered. Not a creature seemed to be stirring in that moonlit
-world.
-
-“When I reached the lawn my worst fears were realised. Not a trace of
-the thing was to be seen. I felt faint and cold when I faced the empty
-space among the black tangle of bushes. I ran round it furiously, as if
-the thing might be hidden in a corner, and then stopped abruptly, with
-my hands clutching my hair. Above me towered the sphinx, upon the
-bronze pedestal, white, shining, leprous, in the light of the rising
-moon. It seemed to smile in mockery of my dismay.
-
-“I might have consoled myself by imagining the little people had put
-the mechanism in some shelter for me, had I not felt assured of their
-physical and intellectual inadequacy. That is what dismayed me: the
-sense of some hitherto unsuspected power, through whose intervention my
-invention had vanished. Yet, for one thing I felt assured: unless some
-other age had produced its exact duplicate, the machine could not have
-moved in time. The attachment of the levers—I will show you the method
-later—prevented anyone from tampering with it in that way when they
-were removed. It had moved, and was hid, only in space. But then, where
-could it be?
-
-“I think I must have had a kind of frenzy. I remember running violently
-in and out among the moonlit bushes all round the sphinx, and startling
-some white animal that, in the dim light, I took for a small deer. I
-remember, too, late that night, beating the bushes with my clenched
-fist until my knuckles were gashed and bleeding from the broken twigs.
-Then, sobbing and raving in my anguish of mind, I went down to the
-great building of stone. The big hall was dark, silent, and deserted. I
-slipped on the uneven floor, and fell over one of the malachite tables,
-almost breaking my shin. I lit a match and went on past the dusty
-curtains, of which I have told you.
-
-“There I found a second great hall covered with cushions, upon which,
-perhaps, a score or so of the little people were sleeping. I have no
-doubt they found my second appearance strange enough, coming suddenly
-out of the quiet darkness with inarticulate noises and the splutter and
-flare of a match. For they had forgotten about matches. ‘Where is my
-Time Machine?’ I began, bawling like an angry child, laying hands upon
-them and shaking them up together. It must have been very queer to
-them. Some laughed, most of them looked sorely frightened. When I saw
-them standing round me, it came into my head that I was doing as
-foolish a thing as it was possible for me to do under the
-circumstances, in trying to revive the sensation of fear. For,
-reasoning from their daylight behaviour, I thought that fear must be
-forgotten.
-
-“Abruptly, I dashed down the match, and knocking one of the people over
-in my course, went blundering across the big dining-hall again, out
-under the moonlight. I heard cries of terror and their little feet
-running and stumbling this way and that. I do not remember all I did as
-the moon crept up the sky. I suppose it was the unexpected nature of my
-loss that maddened me. I felt hopelessly cut off from my own kind—a
-strange animal in an unknown world. I must have raved to and fro,
-screaming and crying upon God and Fate. I have a memory of horrible
-fatigue, as the long night of despair wore away; of looking in this
-impossible place and that; of groping among moonlit ruins and touching
-strange creatures in the black shadows; at last, of lying on the ground
-near the sphinx and weeping with absolute wretchedness, even anger at
-the folly of leaving the machine having leaked away with my strength. I
-had nothing left but misery. Then I slept, and when I woke again it was
-full day, and a couple of sparrows were hopping round me on the turf
-within reach of my arm.
-
-“I sat up in the freshness of the morning, trying to remember how I had
-got there, and why I had such a profound sense of desertion and
-despair. Then things came clear in my mind. With the plain, reasonable
-daylight, I could look my circumstances fairly in the face. I saw the
-wild folly of my frenzy overnight, and I could reason with myself.
-‘Suppose the worst?’ I said. ‘Suppose the machine altogether
-lost—perhaps destroyed? It behoves me to be calm and patient, to learn
-the way of the people, to get a clear idea of the method of my loss,
-and the means of getting materials and tools; so that in the end,
-perhaps, I may make another.’ That would be my only hope, a poor hope,
-perhaps, but better than despair. And, after all, it was a beautiful
-and curious world.
-
-“But probably the machine had only been taken away. Still, I must be
-calm and patient, find its hiding-place, and recover it by force or
-cunning. And with that I scrambled to my feet and looked about me,
-wondering where I could bathe. I felt weary, stiff, and travel-soiled.
-The freshness of the morning made me desire an equal freshness. I had
-exhausted my emotion. Indeed, as I went about my business, I found
-myself wondering at my intense excitement overnight. I made a careful
-examination of the ground about the little lawn. I wasted some time in
-futile questionings, conveyed, as well as I was able, to such of the
-little people as came by. They all failed to understand my gestures;
-some were simply stolid, some thought it was a jest and laughed at me.
-I had the hardest task in the world to keep my hands off their pretty
-laughing faces. It was a foolish impulse, but the devil begotten of
-fear and blind anger was ill curbed and still eager to take advantage
-of my perplexity. The turf gave better counsel. I found a groove ripped
-in it, about midway between the pedestal of the sphinx and the marks of
-my feet where, on arrival, I had struggled with the overturned machine.
-There were other signs of removal about, with queer narrow footprints
-like those I could imagine made by a sloth. This directed my closer
-attention to the pedestal. It was, as I think I have said, of bronze.
-It was not a mere block, but highly decorated with deep framed panels
-on either side. I went and rapped at these. The pedestal was hollow.
-Examining the panels with care I found them discontinuous with the
-frames. There were no handles or keyholes, but possibly the panels, if
-they were doors, as I supposed, opened from within. One thing was clear
-enough to my mind. It took no very great mental effort to infer that my
-Time Machine was inside that pedestal. But how it got there was a
-different problem.
-
-“I saw the heads of two orange-clad people coming through the bushes
-and under some blossom-covered apple-trees towards me. I turned smiling
-to them, and beckoned them to me. They came, and then, pointing to the
-bronze pedestal, I tried to intimate my wish to open it. But at my
-first gesture towards this they behaved very oddly. I don’t know how to
-convey their expression to you. Suppose you were to use a grossly
-improper gesture to a delicate-minded woman—it is how she would look.
-They went off as if they had received the last possible insult. I tried
-a sweet-looking little chap in white next, with exactly the same
-result. Somehow, his manner made me feel ashamed of myself. But, as you
-know, I wanted the Time Machine, and I tried him once more. As he
-turned off, like the others, my temper got the better of me. In three
-strides I was after him, had him by the loose part of his robe round
-the neck, and began dragging him towards the sphinx. Then I saw the
-horror and repugnance of his face, and all of a sudden I let him go.
-
-“But I was not beaten yet. I banged with my fist at the bronze panels.
-I thought I heard something stir inside—to be explicit, I thought I
-heard a sound like a chuckle—but I must have been mistaken. Then I got
-a big pebble from the river, and came and hammered till I had flattened
-a coil in the decorations, and the verdigris came off in powdery
-flakes. The delicate little people must have heard me hammering in
-gusty outbreaks a mile away on either hand, but nothing came of it. I
-saw a crowd of them upon the slopes, looking furtively at me. At last,
-hot and tired, I sat down to watch the place. But I was too restless to
-watch long; I am too Occidental for a long vigil. I could work at a
-problem for years, but to wait inactive for twenty-four hours—that is
-another matter.
-
-“I got up after a time, and began walking aimlessly through the bushes
-towards the hill again. ‘Patience,’ said I to myself. ‘If you want your
-machine again you must leave that sphinx alone. If they mean to take
-your machine away, it’s little good your wrecking their bronze panels,
-and if they don’t, you will get it back as soon as you can ask for it.
-To sit among all those unknown things before a puzzle like that is
-hopeless. That way lies monomania. Face this world. Learn its ways,
-watch it, be careful of too hasty guesses at its meaning. In the end
-you will find clues to it all.’ Then suddenly the humour of the
-situation came into my mind: the thought of the years I had spent in
-study and toil to get into the future age, and now my passion of
-anxiety to get out of it. I had made myself the most complicated and
-the most hopeless trap that ever a man devised. Although it was at my
-own expense, I could not help myself. I laughed aloud.
-
-“Going through the big palace, it seemed to me that the little people
-avoided me. It may have been my fancy, or it may have had something to
-do with my hammering at the gates of bronze. Yet I felt tolerably sure
-of the avoidance. I was careful, however, to show no concern and to
-abstain from any pursuit of them, and in the course of a day or two
-things got back to the old footing. I made what progress I could in the
-language, and in addition I pushed my explorations here and there.
-Either I missed some subtle point or their language was excessively
-simple—almost exclusively composed of concrete substantives and verbs.
-There seemed to be few, if any, abstract terms, or little use of
-figurative language. Their sentences were usually simple and of two
-words, and I failed to convey or understand any but the simplest
-propositions. I determined to put the thought of my Time Machine and
-the mystery of the bronze doors under the sphinx, as much as possible
-in a corner of memory, until my growing knowledge would lead me back to
-them in a natural way. Yet a certain feeling, you may understand,
-tethered me in a circle of a few miles round the point of my arrival.
-
-
-
-
- VIII.
- Explanation
-
-
-“So far as I could see, all the world displayed the same exuberant
-richness as the Thames valley. From every hill I climbed I saw the same
-abundance of splendid buildings, endlessly varied in material and
-style, the same clustering thickets of evergreens, the same
-blossom-laden trees and tree ferns. Here and there water shone like
-silver, and beyond, the land rose into blue undulating hills, and so
-faded into the serenity of the sky. A peculiar feature, which presently
-attracted my attention, was the presence of certain circular wells,
-several, as it seemed to me, of a very great depth. One lay by the path
-up the hill which I had followed during my first walk. Like the others,
-it was rimmed with bronze, curiously wrought, and protected by a little
-cupola from the rain. Sitting by the side of these wells, and peering
-down into the shafted darkness, I could see no gleam of water, nor
-could I start any reflection with a lighted match. But in all of them I
-heard a certain sound: a thud—thud—thud, like the beating of some big
-engine; and I discovered, from the flaring of my matches, that a steady
-current of air set down the shafts. Further, I threw a scrap of paper
-into the throat of one, and, instead of fluttering slowly down, it was
-at once sucked swiftly out of sight.
-
-“After a time, too, I came to connect these wells with tall towers
-standing here and there upon the slopes; for above them there was often
-just such a flicker in the air as one sees on a hot day above a
-sun-scorched beach. Putting things together, I reached a strong
-suggestion of an extensive system of subterranean ventilation, whose
-true import it was difficult to imagine. I was at first inclined to
-associate it with the sanitary apparatus of these people. It was an
-obvious conclusion, but it was absolutely wrong.
-
-“And here I must admit that I learnt very little of drains and bells
-and modes of conveyance, and the like conveniences, during my time in
-this real future. In some of these visions of Utopias and coming times
-which I have read, there is a vast amount of detail about building, and
-social arrangements, and so forth. But while such details are easy
-enough to obtain when the whole world is contained in one’s
-imagination, they are altogether inaccessible to a real traveller amid
-such realities as I found here. Conceive the tale of London which a
-negro, fresh from Central Africa, would take back to his tribe! What
-would he know of railway companies, of social movements, of telephone
-and telegraph wires, of the Parcels Delivery Company, and postal orders
-and the like? Yet we, at least, should be willing enough to explain
-these things to him! And even of what he knew, how much could he make
-his untravelled friend either apprehend or believe? Then, think how
-narrow the gap between a negro and a white man of our own times, and
-how wide the interval between myself and these of the Golden Age! I was
-sensible of much which was unseen, and which contributed to my comfort;
-but save for a general impression of automatic organisation, I fear I
-can convey very little of the difference to your mind.
-
-“In the matter of sepulture, for instance, I could see no signs of
-crematoria nor anything suggestive of tombs. But it occurred to me
-that, possibly, there might be cemeteries (or crematoria) somewhere
-beyond the range of my explorings. This, again, was a question I
-deliberately put to myself, and my curiosity was at first entirely
-defeated upon the point. The thing puzzled me, and I was led to make a
-further remark, which puzzled me still more: that aged and infirm among
-this people there were none.
-
-“I must confess that my satisfaction with my first theories of an
-automatic civilisation and a decadent humanity did not long endure. Yet
-I could think of no other. Let me put my difficulties. The several big
-palaces I had explored were mere living places, great dining-halls and
-sleeping apartments. I could find no machinery, no appliances of any
-kind. Yet these people were clothed in pleasant fabrics that must at
-times need renewal, and their sandals, though undecorated, were fairly
-complex specimens of metalwork. Somehow such things must be made. And
-the little people displayed no vestige of a creative tendency. There
-were no shops, no workshops, no sign of importations among them. They
-spent all their time in playing gently, in bathing in the river, in
-making love in a half-playful fashion, in eating fruit and sleeping. I
-could not see how things were kept going.
-
-“Then, again, about the Time Machine: something, I knew not what, had
-taken it into the hollow pedestal of the White Sphinx. _Why?_ For the
-life of me I could not imagine. Those waterless wells, too, those
-flickering pillars. I felt I lacked a clue. I felt—how shall I put it?
-Suppose you found an inscription, with sentences here and there in
-excellent plain English, and interpolated therewith, others made up of
-words, of letters even, absolutely unknown to you? Well, on the third
-day of my visit, that was how the world of Eight Hundred and Two
-Thousand Seven Hundred and One presented itself to me!
-
-“That day, too, I made a friend—of a sort. It happened that, as I was
-watching some of the little people bathing in a shallow, one of them
-was seized with cramp and began drifting downstream. The main current
-ran rather swiftly, but not too strongly for even a moderate swimmer.
-It will give you an idea, therefore, of the strange deficiency in these
-creatures, when I tell you that none made the slightest attempt to
-rescue the weakly crying little thing which was drowning before their
-eyes. When I realised this, I hurriedly slipped off my clothes, and,
-wading in at a point lower down, I caught the poor mite and drew her
-safe to land. A little rubbing of the limbs soon brought her round, and
-I had the satisfaction of seeing she was all right before I left her. I
-had got to such a low estimate of her kind that I did not expect any
-gratitude from her. In that, however, I was wrong.
-
-“This happened in the morning. In the afternoon I met my little woman,
-as I believe it was, as I was returning towards my centre from an
-exploration, and she received me with cries of delight and presented me
-with a big garland of flowers—evidently made for me and me alone. The
-thing took my imagination. Very possibly I had been feeling desolate.
-At any rate I did my best to display my appreciation of the gift. We
-were soon seated together in a little stone arbour, engaged in
-conversation, chiefly of smiles. The creature’s friendliness affected
-me exactly as a child’s might have done. We passed each other flowers,
-and she kissed my hands. I did the same to hers. Then I tried talk, and
-found that her name was Weena, which, though I don’t know what it
-meant, somehow seemed appropriate enough. That was the beginning of a
-queer friendship which lasted a week, and ended—as I will tell you!
-
-“She was exactly like a child. She wanted to be with me always. She
-tried to follow me everywhere, and on my next journey out and about it
-went to my heart to tire her down, and leave her at last, exhausted and
-calling after me rather plaintively. But the problems of the world had
-to be mastered. I had not, I said to myself, come into the future to
-carry on a miniature flirtation. Yet her distress when I left her was
-very great, her expostulations at the parting were sometimes frantic,
-and I think, altogether, I had as much trouble as comfort from her
-devotion. Nevertheless she was, somehow, a very great comfort. I
-thought it was mere childish affection that made her cling to me. Until
-it was too late, I did not clearly know what I had inflicted upon her
-when I left her. Nor until it was too late did I clearly understand
-what she was to me. For, by merely seeming fond of me, and showing in
-her weak, futile way that she cared for me, the little doll of a
-creature presently gave my return to the neighbourhood of the White
-Sphinx almost the feeling of coming home; and I would watch for her
-tiny figure of white and gold so soon as I came over the hill.
-
-“It was from her, too, that I learnt that fear had not yet left the
-world. She was fearless enough in the daylight, and she had the oddest
-confidence in me; for once, in a foolish moment, I made threatening
-grimaces at her, and she simply laughed at them. But she dreaded the
-dark, dreaded shadows, dreaded black things. Darkness to her was the
-one thing dreadful. It was a singularly passionate emotion, and it set
-me thinking and observing. I discovered then, among other things, that
-these little people gathered into the great houses after dark, and
-slept in droves. To enter upon them without a light was to put them
-into a tumult of apprehension. I never found one out of doors, or one
-sleeping alone within doors, after dark. Yet I was still such a
-blockhead that I missed the lesson of that fear, and in spite of
-Weena’s distress, I insisted upon sleeping away from these slumbering
-multitudes.
-
-“It troubled her greatly, but in the end her odd affection for me
-triumphed, and for five of the nights of our acquaintance, including
-the last night of all, she slept with her head pillowed on my arm. But
-my story slips away from me as I speak of her. It must have been the
-night before her rescue that I was awakened about dawn. I had been
-restless, dreaming most disagreeably that I was drowned, and that sea
-anemones were feeling over my face with their soft palps. I woke with a
-start, and with an odd fancy that some greyish animal had just rushed
-out of the chamber. I tried to get to sleep again, but I felt restless
-and uncomfortable. It was that dim grey hour when things are just
-creeping out of darkness, when everything is colourless and clear cut,
-and yet unreal. I got up, and went down into the great hall, and so out
-upon the flagstones in front of the palace. I thought I would make a
-virtue of necessity, and see the sunrise.
-
-“The moon was setting, and the dying moonlight and the first pallor of
-dawn were mingled in a ghastly half-light. The bushes were inky black,
-the ground a sombre grey, the sky colourless and cheerless. And up the
-hill I thought I could see ghosts. Three several times, as I scanned
-the slope, I saw white figures. Twice I fancied I saw a solitary white,
-ape-like creature running rather quickly up the hill, and once near the
-ruins I saw a leash of them carrying some dark body. They moved
-hastily. I did not see what became of them. It seemed that they
-vanished among the bushes. The dawn was still indistinct, you must
-understand. I was feeling that chill, uncertain, early-morning feeling
-you may have known. I doubted my eyes.
-
-“As the eastern sky grew brighter, and the light of the day came on and
-its vivid colouring returned upon the world once more, I scanned the
-view keenly. But I saw no vestige of my white figures. They were mere
-creatures of the half-light. ‘They must have been ghosts,’ I said; ‘I
-wonder whence they dated.’ For a queer notion of Grant Allen’s came
-into my head, and amused me. If each generation die and leave ghosts,
-he argued, the world at last will get overcrowded with them. On that
-theory they would have grown innumerable some Eight Hundred Thousand
-Years hence, and it was no great wonder to see four at once. But the
-jest was unsatisfying, and I was thinking of these figures all the
-morning, until Weena’s rescue drove them out of my head. I associated
-them in some indefinite way with the white animal I had startled in my
-first passionate search for the Time Machine. But Weena was a pleasant
-substitute. Yet all the same, they were soon destined to take far
-deadlier possession of my mind.
-
-“I think I have said how much hotter than our own was the weather of
-this Golden Age. I cannot account for it. It may be that the sun was
-hotter, or the earth nearer the sun. It is usual to assume that the sun
-will go on cooling steadily in the future. But people, unfamiliar with
-such speculations as those of the younger Darwin, forget that the
-planets must ultimately fall back one by one into the parent body. As
-these catastrophes occur, the sun will blaze with renewed energy; and
-it may be that some inner planet had suffered this fate. Whatever the
-reason, the fact remains that the sun was very much hotter than we know
-it.
-
-“Well, one very hot morning—my fourth, I think—as I was seeking shelter
-from the heat and glare in a colossal ruin near the great house where I
-slept and fed, there happened this strange thing. Clambering among
-these heaps of masonry, I found a narrow gallery, whose end and side
-windows were blocked by fallen masses of stone. By contrast with the
-brilliancy outside, it seemed at first impenetrably dark to me. I
-entered it groping, for the change from light to blackness made spots
-of colour swim before me. Suddenly I halted spellbound. A pair of eyes,
-luminous by reflection against the daylight without, was watching me
-out of the darkness.
-
-“The old instinctive dread of wild beasts came upon me. I clenched my
-hands and steadfastly looked into the glaring eyeballs. I was afraid to
-turn. Then the thought of the absolute security in which humanity
-appeared to be living came to my mind. And then I remembered that
-strange terror of the dark. Overcoming my fear to some extent, I
-advanced a step and spoke. I will admit that my voice was harsh and
-ill-controlled. I put out my hand and touched something soft. At once
-the eyes darted sideways, and something white ran past me. I turned
-with my heart in my mouth, and saw a queer little ape-like figure, its
-head held down in a peculiar manner, running across the sunlit space
-behind me. It blundered against a block of granite, staggered aside,
-and in a moment was hidden in a black shadow beneath another pile of
-ruined masonry.
-
-“My impression of it is, of course, imperfect; but I know it was a dull
-white, and had strange large greyish-red eyes; also that there was
-flaxen hair on its head and down its back. But, as I say, it went too
-fast for me to see distinctly. I cannot even say whether it ran on all
-fours, or only with its forearms held very low. After an instant’s
-pause I followed it into the second heap of ruins. I could not find it
-at first; but, after a time in the profound obscurity, I came upon one
-of those round well-like openings of which I have told you, half closed
-by a fallen pillar. A sudden thought came to me. Could this Thing have
-vanished down the shaft? I lit a match, and, looking down, I saw a
-small, white, moving creature, with large bright eyes which regarded me
-steadfastly as it retreated. It made me shudder. It was so like a human
-spider! It was clambering down the wall, and now I saw for the first
-time a number of metal foot and hand rests forming a kind of ladder
-down the shaft. Then the light burned my fingers and fell out of my
-hand, going out as it dropped, and when I had lit another the little
-monster had disappeared.
-
-“I do not know how long I sat peering down that well. It was not for
-some time that I could succeed in persuading myself that the thing I
-had seen was human. But, gradually, the truth dawned on me: that Man
-had not remained one species, but had differentiated into two distinct
-animals: that my graceful children of the Upper World were not the sole
-descendants of our generation, but that this bleached, obscene,
-nocturnal Thing, which had flashed before me, was also heir to all the
-ages.
-
-“I thought of the flickering pillars and of my theory of an underground
-ventilation. I began to suspect their true import. And what, I
-wondered, was this Lemur doing in my scheme of a perfectly balanced
-organisation? How was it related to the indolent serenity of the
-beautiful Overworlders? And what was hidden down there, at the foot of
-that shaft? I sat upon the edge of the well telling myself that, at any
-rate, there was nothing to fear, and that there I must descend for the
-solution of my difficulties. And withal I was absolutely afraid to go!
-As I hesitated, two of the beautiful upperworld people came running in
-their amorous sport across the daylight in the shadow. The male pursued
-the female, flinging flowers at her as he ran.
-
-“They seemed distressed to find me, my arm against the overturned
-pillar, peering down the well. Apparently it was considered bad form to
-remark these apertures; for when I pointed to this one, and tried to
-frame a question about it in their tongue, they were still more visibly
-distressed and turned away. But they were interested by my matches, and
-I struck some to amuse them. I tried them again about the well, and
-again I failed. So presently I left them, meaning to go back to Weena,
-and see what I could get from her. But my mind was already in
-revolution; my guesses and impressions were slipping and sliding to a
-new adjustment. I had now a clue to the import of these wells, to the
-ventilating towers, to the mystery of the ghosts; to say nothing of a
-hint at the meaning of the bronze gates and the fate of the Time
-Machine! And very vaguely there came a suggestion towards the solution
-of the economic problem that had puzzled me.
-
-“Here was the new view. Plainly, this second species of Man was
-subterranean. There were three circumstances in particular which made
-me think that its rare emergence above ground was the outcome of a
-long-continued underground habit. In the first place, there was the
-bleached look common in most animals that live largely in the dark—the
-white fish of the Kentucky caves, for instance. Then, those large eyes,
-with that capacity for reflecting light, are common features of
-nocturnal things—witness the owl and the cat. And last of all, that
-evident confusion in the sunshine, that hasty yet fumbling awkward
-flight towards dark shadow, and that peculiar carriage of the head
-while in the light—all reinforced the theory of an extreme
-sensitiveness of the retina.
-
-“Beneath my feet, then, the earth must be tunnelled enormously, and
-these tunnellings were the habitat of the New Race. The presence of
-ventilating shafts and wells along the hill slopes—everywhere, in fact,
-except along the river valley—showed how universal were its
-ramifications. What so natural, then, as to assume that it was in this
-artificial Underworld that such work as was necessary to the comfort of
-the daylight race was done? The notion was so plausible that I at once
-accepted it, and went on to assume the _how_ of this splitting of the
-human species. I dare say you will anticipate the shape of my theory;
-though, for myself, I very soon felt that it fell far short of the
-truth.
-
-“At first, proceeding from the problems of our own age, it seemed clear
-as daylight to me that the gradual widening of the present merely
-temporary and social difference between the Capitalist and the Labourer
-was the key to the whole position. No doubt it will seem grotesque
-enough to you—and wildly incredible!—and yet even now there are
-existing circumstances to point that way. There is a tendency to
-utilise underground space for the less ornamental purposes of
-civilisation; there is the Metropolitan Railway in London, for
-instance, there are new electric railways, there are subways, there are
-underground workrooms and restaurants, and they increase and multiply.
-Evidently, I thought, this tendency had increased till Industry had
-gradually lost its birthright in the sky. I mean that it had gone
-deeper and deeper into larger and ever larger underground factories,
-spending a still-increasing amount of its time therein, till, in the
-end—! Even now, does not an East-end worker live in such artificial
-conditions as practically to be cut off from the natural surface of the
-earth?
-
-“Again, the exclusive tendency of richer people—due, no doubt, to the
-increasing refinement of their education, and the widening gulf between
-them and the rude violence of the poor—is already leading to the
-closing, in their interest, of considerable portions of the surface of
-the land. About London, for instance, perhaps half the prettier country
-is shut in against intrusion. And this same widening gulf—which is due
-to the length and expense of the higher educational process and the
-increased facilities for and temptations towards refined habits on the
-part of the rich—will make that exchange between class and class, that
-promotion by intermarriage which at present retards the splitting of
-our species along lines of social stratification, less and less
-frequent. So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves,
-pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the
-Have-nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of
-their labour. Once they were there, they would no doubt have to pay
-rent, and not a little of it, for the ventilation of their caverns; and
-if they refused, they would starve or be suffocated for arrears. Such
-of them as were so constituted as to be miserable and rebellious would
-die; and, in the end, the balance being permanent, the survivors would
-become as well adapted to the conditions of underground life, and as
-happy in their way, as the Overworld people were to theirs. As it
-seemed to me, the refined beauty and the etiolated pallor followed
-naturally enough.
-
-“The great triumph of Humanity I had dreamed of took a different shape
-in my mind. It had been no such triumph of moral education and general
-co-operation as I had imagined. Instead, I saw a real aristocracy,
-armed with a perfected science and working to a logical conclusion the
-industrial system of today. Its triumph had not been simply a triumph
-over Nature, but a triumph over Nature and the fellow-man. This, I must
-warn you, was my theory at the time. I had no convenient cicerone in
-the pattern of the Utopian books. My explanation may be absolutely
-wrong. I still think it is the most plausible one. But even on this
-supposition the balanced civilisation that was at last attained must
-have long since passed its zenith, and was now far fallen into decay.
-The too-perfect security of the Overworlders had led them to a slow
-movement of degeneration, to a general dwindling in size, strength, and
-intelligence. That I could see clearly enough already. What had
-happened to the Undergrounders I did not yet suspect; but, from what I
-had seen of the Morlocks—that, by the bye, was the name by which these
-creatures were called—I could imagine that the modification of the
-human type was even far more profound than among the ‘Eloi,’ the
-beautiful race that I already knew.
-
-“Then came troublesome doubts. Why had the Morlocks taken my Time
-Machine? For I felt sure it was they who had taken it. Why, too, if the
-Eloi were masters, could they not restore the machine to me? And why
-were they so terribly afraid of the dark? I proceeded, as I have said,
-to question Weena about this Underworld, but here again I was
-disappointed. At first she would not understand my questions, and
-presently she refused to answer them. She shivered as though the topic
-was unendurable. And when I pressed her, perhaps a little harshly, she
-burst into tears. They were the only tears, except my own, I ever saw
-in that Golden Age. When I saw them I ceased abruptly to trouble about
-the Morlocks, and was only concerned in banishing these signs of her
-human inheritance from Weena’s eyes. And very soon she was smiling and
-clapping her hands, while I solemnly burnt a match.
-
-
-
-
- IX.
- The Morlocks
-
-
-“It may seem odd to you, but it was two days before I could follow up
-the new-found clue in what was manifestly the proper way. I felt a
-peculiar shrinking from those pallid bodies. They were just the
-half-bleached colour of the worms and things one sees preserved in
-spirit in a zoological museum. And they were filthily cold to the
-touch. Probably my shrinking was largely due to the sympathetic
-influence of the Eloi, whose disgust of the Morlocks I now began to
-appreciate.
-
-“The next night I did not sleep well. Probably my health was a little
-disordered. I was oppressed with perplexity and doubt. Once or twice I
-had a feeling of intense fear for which I could perceive no definite
-reason. I remember creeping noiselessly into the great hall where the
-little people were sleeping in the moonlight—that night Weena was among
-them—and feeling reassured by their presence. It occurred to me even
-then, that in the course of a few days the moon must pass through its
-last quarter, and the nights grow dark, when the appearances of these
-unpleasant creatures from below, these whitened Lemurs, this new vermin
-that had replaced the old, might be more abundant. And on both these
-days I had the restless feeling of one who shirks an inevitable duty. I
-felt assured that the Time Machine was only to be recovered by boldly
-penetrating these mysteries of underground. Yet I could not face the
-mystery. If only I had had a companion it would have been different.
-But I was so horribly alone, and even to clamber down into the darkness
-of the well appalled me. I don’t know if you will understand my
-feeling, but I never felt quite safe at my back.
-
-“It was this restlessness, this insecurity, perhaps, that drove me
-farther and farther afield in my exploring expeditions. Going to the
-south-westward towards the rising country that is now called Combe
-Wood, I observed far-off, in the direction of nineteenth-century
-Banstead, a vast green structure, different in character from any I had
-hitherto seen. It was larger than the largest of the palaces or ruins I
-knew, and the façade had an Oriental look: the face of it having the
-lustre, as well as the pale-green tint, a kind of bluish-green, of a
-certain type of Chinese porcelain. This difference in aspect suggested
-a difference in use, and I was minded to push on and explore. But the
-day was growing late, and I had come upon the sight of the place after
-a long and tiring circuit; so I resolved to hold over the adventure for
-the following day, and I returned to the welcome and the caresses of
-little Weena. But next morning I perceived clearly enough that my
-curiosity regarding the Palace of Green Porcelain was a piece of
-self-deception, to enable me to shirk, by another day, an experience I
-dreaded. I resolved I would make the descent without further waste of
-time, and started out in the early morning towards a well near the
-ruins of granite and aluminium.
-
-“Little Weena ran with me. She danced beside me to the well, but when
-she saw me lean over the mouth and look downward, she seemed strangely
-disconcerted. ‘Good-bye, little Weena,’ I said, kissing her; and then
-putting her down, I began to feel over the parapet for the climbing
-hooks. Rather hastily, I may as well confess, for I feared my courage
-might leak away! At first she watched me in amazement. Then she gave a
-most piteous cry, and running to me, she began to pull at me with her
-little hands. I think her opposition nerved me rather to proceed. I
-shook her off, perhaps a little roughly, and in another moment I was in
-the throat of the well. I saw her agonised face over the parapet, and
-smiled to reassure her. Then I had to look down at the unstable hooks
-to which I clung.
-
-“I had to clamber down a shaft of perhaps two hundred yards. The
-descent was effected by means of metallic bars projecting from the
-sides of the well, and these being adapted to the needs of a creature
-much smaller and lighter than myself, I was speedily cramped and
-fatigued by the descent. And not simply fatigued! One of the bars bent
-suddenly under my weight, and almost swung me off into the blackness
-beneath. For a moment I hung by one hand, and after that experience I
-did not dare to rest again. Though my arms and back were presently
-acutely painful, I went on clambering down the sheer descent with as
-quick a motion as possible. Glancing upward, I saw the aperture, a
-small blue disc, in which a star was visible, while little Weena’s head
-showed as a round black projection. The thudding sound of a machine
-below grew louder and more oppressive. Everything save that little disc
-above was profoundly dark, and when I looked up again Weena had
-disappeared.
-
-“I was in an agony of discomfort. I had some thought of trying to go up
-the shaft again, and leave the Underworld alone. But even while I
-turned this over in my mind I continued to descend. At last, with
-intense relief, I saw dimly coming up, a foot to the right of me, a
-slender loophole in the wall. Swinging myself in, I found it was the
-aperture of a narrow horizontal tunnel in which I could lie down and
-rest. It was not too soon. My arms ached, my back was cramped, and I
-was trembling with the prolonged terror of a fall. Besides this, the
-unbroken darkness had had a distressing effect upon my eyes. The air
-was full of the throb and hum of machinery pumping air down the shaft.
-
-“I do not know how long I lay. I was arroused by a soft hand touching
-my face. Starting up in the darkness I snatched at my matches and,
-hastily striking one, I saw three stooping white creatures similar to
-the one I had seen above ground in the ruin, hastily retreating before
-the light. Living, as they did, in what appeared to me impenetrable
-darkness, their eyes were abnormally large and sensitive, just as are
-the pupils of the abysmal fishes, and they reflected the light in the
-same way. I have no doubt they could see me in that rayless obscurity,
-and they did not seem to have any fear of me apart from the light. But,
-so soon as I struck a match in order to see them, they fled
-incontinently, vanishing into dark gutters and tunnels, from which
-their eyes glared at me in the strangest fashion.
-
-“I tried to call to them, but the language they had was apparently
-different from that of the Overworld people; so that I was needs left
-to my own unaided efforts, and the thought of flight before exploration
-was even then in my mind. But I said to myself, ‘You are in for it
-now,’ and, feeling my way along the tunnel, I found the noise of
-machinery grow louder. Presently the walls fell away from me, and I
-came to a large open space, and striking another match, saw that I had
-entered a vast arched cavern, which stretched into utter darkness
-beyond the range of my light. The view I had of it was as much as one
-could see in the burning of a match.
-
-“Necessarily my memory is vague. Great shapes like big machines rose
-out of the dimness, and cast grotesque black shadows, in which dim
-spectral Morlocks sheltered from the glare. The place, by the bye, was
-very stuffy and oppressive, and the faint halitus of freshly-shed blood
-was in the air. Some way down the central vista was a little table of
-white metal, laid with what seemed a meal. The Morlocks at any rate
-were carnivorous! Even at the time, I remember wondering what large
-animal could have survived to furnish the red joint I saw. It was all
-very indistinct: the heavy smell, the big unmeaning shapes, the obscene
-figures lurking in the shadows, and only waiting for the darkness to
-come at me again! Then the match burnt down, and stung my fingers, and
-fell, a wriggling red spot in the blackness.
-
-“I have thought since how particularly ill-equipped I was for such an
-experience. When I had started with the Time Machine, I had started
-with the absurd assumption that the men of the Future would certainly
-be infinitely ahead of ourselves in all their appliances. I had come
-without arms, without medicine, without anything to smoke—at times I
-missed tobacco frightfully!—even without enough matches. If only I had
-thought of a Kodak! I could have flashed that glimpse of the Underworld
-in a second, and examined it at leisure. But, as it was, I stood there
-with only the weapons and the powers that Nature had endowed me
-with—hands, feet, and teeth; these, and four safety-matches that still
-remained to me.
-
-“I was afraid to push my way in among all this machinery in the dark,
-and it was only with my last glimpse of light I discovered that my
-store of matches had run low. It had never occurred to me until that
-moment that there was any need to economise them, and I had wasted
-almost half the box in astonishing the Overworlders, to whom fire was a
-novelty. Now, as I say, I had four left, and while I stood in the dark,
-a hand touched mine, lank fingers came feeling over my face, and I was
-sensible of a peculiar unpleasant odour. I fancied I heard the
-breathing of a crowd of those dreadful little beings about me. I felt
-the box of matches in my hand being gently disengaged, and other hands
-behind me plucking at my clothing. The sense of these unseen creatures
-examining me was indescribably unpleasant. The sudden realisation of my
-ignorance of their ways of thinking and doing came home to me very
-vividly in the darkness. I shouted at them as loudly as I could. They
-started away, and then I could feel them approaching me again. They
-clutched at me more boldly, whispering odd sounds to each other. I
-shivered violently, and shouted again—rather discordantly. This time
-they were not so seriously alarmed, and they made a queer laughing
-noise as they came back at me. I will confess I was horribly
-frightened. I determined to strike another match and escape under the
-protection of its glare. I did so, and eking out the flicker with a
-scrap of paper from my pocket, I made good my retreat to the narrow
-tunnel. But I had scarce entered this when my light was blown out and
-in the blackness I could hear the Morlocks rustling like wind among
-leaves, and pattering like the rain, as they hurried after me.
-
-“In a moment I was clutched by several hands, and there was no
-mistaking that they were trying to haul me back. I struck another
-light, and waved it in their dazzled faces. You can scarce imagine how
-nauseatingly inhuman they looked—those pale, chinless faces and great,
-lidless, pinkish-grey eyes!—as they stared in their blindness and
-bewilderment. But I did not stay to look, I promise you: I retreated
-again, and when my second match had ended, I struck my third. It had
-almost burnt through when I reached the opening into the shaft. I lay
-down on the edge, for the throb of the great pump below made me giddy.
-Then I felt sideways for the projecting hooks, and, as I did so, my
-feet were grasped from behind, and I was violently tugged backward. I
-lit my last match … and it incontinently went out. But I had my hand on
-the climbing bars now, and, kicking violently, I disengaged myself from
-the clutches of the Morlocks, and was speedily clambering up the shaft,
-while they stayed peering and blinking up at me: all but one little
-wretch who followed me for some way, and well-nigh secured my boot as a
-trophy.
-
-“That climb seemed interminable to me. With the last twenty or thirty
-feet of it a deadly nausea came upon me. I had the greatest difficulty
-in keeping my hold. The last few yards was a frightful struggle against
-this faintness. Several times my head swam, and I felt all the
-sensations of falling. At last, however, I got over the well-mouth
-somehow, and staggered out of the ruin into the blinding sunlight. I
-fell upon my face. Even the soil smelt sweet and clean. Then I remember
-Weena kissing my hands and ears, and the voices of others among the
-Eloi. Then, for a time, I was insensible.
-
-
-
-
- X.
- When Night Came
-
-
-“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 Upperworld 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 Upperworld
-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 Carlovignan 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 Underworld. 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 realising 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 vases for floral
-decoration. At least she utilised 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
-hillside 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 organisations, 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.
-
-
-
-
- XI.
- The Palace of Green Porcelain
-
-
-“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 learnt 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 recognised 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 Palæontological 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 Palæontology; 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 old-time 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 saltpetre; 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 patient
-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
-recognised 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
-moralised 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 fossilised millions of years ago. I was about to throw it
-away, but I remembered that it was inflammable and burnt 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, Phœnician, 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.
-
-
-
-
- XII.
- In the Darkness
-
-
-“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, also, 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 hillside, 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 lit 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 behind 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 Underworld. 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 realisation. In
-manœuvring 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 economise 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 recognised, 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 hillside
-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 realise 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.
-
-
-
-
- XIII.
- The Trap of the White Sphinx
-
-
-“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
-Underworld. I understood now what all the beauty of the Overworld
-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 Upperworld man had drifted towards his feeble
-prettiness, and the Underworld 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 an Underworld, 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 Underworld 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
-theorising 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 fixed 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.
-
-
-
-
- XIV.
- The Further Vision
-
-
-“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 antennæ, 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
-farther 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 realised 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.
-
-
-
-
- XV.
- The Time Traveller’s Return
-
-
-“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 recognise our own pretty 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 today, 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.
-
-
-
-
- XVI.
- After the Story
-
-
-“I know,” he said, after a pause, “that all this will be absolutely
-incredible to you, but to me the one incredible thing is that I am here
-tonight 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
-gynæceum’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, specimens 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 seas 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 civilisation
-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.
-
-
-
-
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