The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells read online

VI

‘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

underground mysteries. 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

further and further 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 facade 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 agonized 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 disk, 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 disk 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 Under-world 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 roused 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 Over-world 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 by,

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

burned 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 economize them, and I

had wasted almost half the box in astonishing the Upper-worlders, 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 realization 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 burned 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.

VII

‘Now, indeed, I seemed in a worse case than before. Hitherto,

except during my night’s anguish at the loss of the Time Machine,

I had felt a sustaining hope of ultimate escape, but that hope was

staggered by these new discoveries. Hitherto I had merely thought

myself impeded by the childish simplicity of the little people, and

by some unknown forces which I had only to understand to overcome;

but there was an altogether new element in the sickening quality of

the Morlocks–a something inhuman and malign. Instinctively I

loathed them. Before, I had felt as a man might feel who had fallen

into a pit: my concern was with the pit and how to get out of it.

Now I felt like a beast in a trap, whose enemy would come upon him

soon.

‘The enemy I dreaded may surprise you. It was the darkness of the

new moon. Weena had put this into my head by some at first

incomprehensible remarks about the Dark Nights. It was not now

such a very difficult problem to guess what the coming Dark Nights

might mean. The moon was on the wane: each night there was a longer

interval of darkness. And I now understood to some slight degree at

least the reason of the fear of the little Upper-world people for

the dark. I wondered vaguely what foul villainy it might be that

the Morlocks did under the new moon. I felt pretty sure now that

my second hypothesis was all wrong. The Upper-world people might

once have been the favoured aristocracy, and the Morlocks their

mechanical servants: but that had long since passed away. The two

species that had resulted from the evolution of man were sliding

down towards, or had already arrived at, an altogether new

relationship. The Eloi, like the Carolingian kings, had decayed

to a mere beautiful futility. They still possessed the earth on

sufferance: since the Morlocks, subterranean for innumerable

generations, had come at last to find the daylit surface

intolerable. And the Morlocks made their garments, I inferred, and

maintained them in their habitual needs, perhaps through the

survival of an old habit of service. They did it as a standing horse

paws with his foot, or as a man enjoys killing animals in sport:

because ancient and departed necessities had impressed it on the

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

The Nemesis of the delicate ones was creeping on apace. Ages ago,

thousands of generations ago, man had thrust his brother man out of

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

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

They were becoming reacquainted with Fear. And suddenly there came

into my head the memory of the meat I had seen in the Under-world.

It seemed odd how it floated into my mind: not stirred up as it

were by the current of my meditations, but coming in almost like a

question from outside. I tried to recall the form of it. I had a

vague sense of something familiar, but I could not tell what it was

at the time.

‘Still, however helpless the little people in the presence of their

mysterious Fear, I was differently constituted. I came out of this

age of ours, this ripe prime of the human race, when Fear does not

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

myself. Without further delay I determined to make myself arms and a

fastness where I might sleep. With that refuge as a base, I could

face this strange world with some of that confidence I had lost in

realizing to what creatures night by night I lay exposed. I felt

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

shuddered with horror to think how they must already have examined

me.

‘I wandered during the afternoon along the valley of the Thames, but

found nothing that commended itself to my mind as inaccessible. All

the buildings and trees seemed easily practicable to such dexterous

climbers as the Morlocks, to judge by their wells, must be. Then the

tall pinnacles of the Palace of Green Porcelain and the polished

gleam of its walls came back to my memory; and in the evening,

taking Weena like a child upon my shoulder, I went up the hills

towards the south-west. The distance, I had reckoned, was seven or

eight miles, but it must have been nearer eighteen. I had first seen

the place on a moist afternoon when distances are deceptively

diminished. In addition, the heel of one of my shoes was loose, and

a nail was working through the sole–they were comfortable old shoes

I wore about indoors–so that I was lame. And it was already long

past sunset when I came in sight of the palace, silhouetted black

against the pale yellow of the sky.

‘Weena had been hugely delighted when I began to carry her, but

after a while she desired me to let her down, and ran along by the

side of me, occasionally darting off on either hand to pick flowers

to stick in my pockets. My pockets had always puzzled Weena, but at

the last she had concluded that they were an eccentric kind of vase

for floral decoration. At least she utilized them for that purpose.

And that reminds me! In changing my jacket I found…’

The Time Traveller paused, put his hand into his pocket, and

silently placed two withered flowers, not unlike very large white

mallows, upon the little table. Then he resumed his narrative.

‘As the hush of evening crept over the world and we proceeded over

the hill crest towards Wimbledon, Weena grew tired and wanted to

return to the house of grey stone. But I pointed out the distant

pinnacles of the Palace of Green Porcelain to her, and contrived to

make her understand that we were seeking a refuge there from her

Fear. You know that great pause that comes upon things before the

dusk? Even the breeze stops in the trees. To me there is always an

air of expectation about that evening stillness. The sky was clear,

remote, and empty save for a few horizontal bars far down in the

sunset. Well, that night the expectation took the colour of my

fears. In that darkling calm my senses seemed preternaturally

sharpened. I fancied I could even feel the hollowness of the ground

beneath my feet: could, indeed, almost see through it the Morlocks

on their ant-hill going hither and thither and waiting for the dark.

In my excitement I fancied that they would receive my invasion of

their burrows as a declaration of war. And why had they taken my

Time Machine?

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

The clear blue of the distance faded, and one star after another

came out. The ground grew dim and the trees black. Weena’s fears and

her fatigue grew upon her. I took her in my arms and talked to her

and caressed her. Then, as the darkness grew deeper, she put her

arms round my neck, and, closing her eyes, tightly pressed her face

against my shoulder. So we went down a long slope into a valley, and

there in the dimness I almost walked into a little river. This I

waded, and went up the opposite side of the valley, past a number

of sleeping houses, and by a statue–a Faun, or some such figure,

_minus_ the head. Here too were acacias. So far I had seen nothing of

the Morlocks, but it was yet early in the night, and the darker hours

before the old moon rose were still to come.

‘From the brow of the next hill I saw a thick wood spreading wide

and black before me. I hesitated at this. I could see no end to

it, either to the right or the left. Feeling tired–my feet, in

particular, were very sore–I carefully lowered Weena from my

shoulder as I halted, and sat down upon the turf. I could no

longer see the Palace of Green Porcelain, and I was in doubt of my

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

what it might hide. Under that dense tangle of branches one would

be out of sight of the stars. Even were there no other lurking

danger–a danger I did not care to let my imagination loose

upon–there would still be all the roots to stumble over and the

tree-boles to strike against.

‘I was very tired, too, after the excitements of the day; so I

decided that I would not face it, but would pass the night upon the

open hill.

‘Weena, I was glad to find, was fast asleep. I carefully wrapped her

in my jacket, and sat down beside her to wait for the moonrise. The

hill-side was quiet and deserted, but from the black of the wood

there came now and then a stir of living things. Above me shone the

stars, for the night was very clear. I felt a certain sense of

friendly comfort in their twinkling. All the old constellations

had gone from the sky, however: that slow movement which is

imperceptible in a hundred human lifetimes, had long since

rearranged them in unfamiliar groupings. But the Milky Way, it

seemed to me, was still the same tattered streamer of star-dust as

of yore. Southward (as I judged it) was a very bright red star that

was new to me; it was even more splendid than our own green Sirius.

And amid all these scintillating points of light one bright planet

shone kindly and steadily like the face of an old friend.

‘Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all

the gravities of terrestrial life. I thought of their unfathomable

distance, and the slow inevitable drift of their movements out of

the unknown past into the unknown future. I thought of the great

precessional cycle that the pole of the earth describes. Only forty

times had that silent revolution occurred during all the years that

I had traversed. And during these few revolutions all the activity,

all the traditions, the complex organizations, the nations,

languages, literatures, aspirations, even the mere memory of Man as

I knew him, had been swept out of existence. Instead were these

frail creatures who had forgotten their high ancestry, and the white

Things of which I went in terror. Then I thought of the Great Fear

that was between the two species, and for the first time, with a

sudden shiver, came the clear knowledge of what the meat I had seen

might be. Yet it was too horrible! I looked at little Weena sleeping

beside me, her face white and starlike under the stars, and

forthwith dismissed the thought.

‘Through that long night I held my mind off the Morlocks as well as

I could, and whiled away the time by trying to fancy I could find

signs of the old constellations in the new confusion. The sky kept

very clear, except for a hazy cloud or so. No doubt I dozed at

times. Then, as my vigil wore on, came a faintness in the eastward

sky, like the reflection of some colourless fire, and the old moon

rose, thin and peaked and white. And close behind, and overtaking

it, and overflowing it, the dawn came, pale at first, and then

growing pink and warm. No Morlocks had approached us. Indeed, I had

seen none upon the hill that night. And in the confidence of renewed

day it almost seemed to me that my fear had been unreasonable. I

stood up and found my foot with the loose heel swollen at the ankle

and painful under the heel; so I sat down again, took off my shoes,

and flung them away.

‘I awakened Weena, and we went down into the wood, now green and

pleasant instead of black and forbidding. We found some fruit

wherewith to break our fast. We soon met others of the dainty ones,

laughing and dancing in the sunlight as though there was no such

thing in nature as the night. And then I thought once more of the

meat that I had seen. I felt assured now of what it was, and from

the bottom of my heart I pitied this last feeble rill from the great

flood of humanity. Clearly, at some time in the Long-Ago of human

decay the Morlocks’ food had run short. Possibly they had lived on

rats and such-like vermin. Even now man is far less discriminating

and exclusive in his food than he was–far less than any monkey. His

prejudice against human flesh is no deep-seated instinct. And so

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

scientific spirit. After all, they were less human and more remote

than our cannibal ancestors of three or four thousand years ago.

And the intelligence that would have made this state of things a

torment had gone. Why should I trouble myself? These Eloi were mere

fatted cattle, which the ant-like Morlocks preserved and preyed

upon–probably saw to the breeding of. And there was Weena dancing

at my side!

‘Then I tried to preserve myself from the horror that was coming

upon me, by regarding it as a rigorous punishment of human

selfishness. Man had been content to live in ease and delight upon

the labours of his fellow-man, had taken Necessity as his watchword

and excuse, and in the fullness of time Necessity had come home to

him. I even tried a Carlyle-like scorn of this wretched aristocracy

in decay. But this attitude of mind was impossible. However great

their intellectual degradation, the Eloi had kept too much of the

human form not to claim my sympathy, and to make me perforce a

sharer in their degradation and their Fear.

‘I had at that time very vague ideas as to the course I should

pursue. My first was to secure some safe place of refuge, and to

make myself such arms of metal or stone as I could contrive. That

necessity was immediate. In the next place, I hoped to procure some

means of fire, so that I should have the weapon of a torch at hand,

for nothing, I knew, would be more efficient against these Morlocks.

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

bronze under the White Sphinx. I had in mind a battering ram. I had

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

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

could not imagine the Morlocks were strong enough to move it far

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

turning such schemes over in my mind I pursued our way towards the

building which my fancy had chosen as our dwelling.

VIII

‘I found the Palace of Green Porcelain, when we approached it about

noon, deserted and falling into ruin. Only ragged vestiges of glass

remained in its windows, and great sheets of the green facing had

fallen away from the corroded metallic framework. It lay very high

upon a turfy down, and looking north-eastward before I entered it, I

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

Wandsworth and Battersea must once have been. I thought then–though

I never followed up the thought–of what might have happened, or

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

‘The material of the Palace proved on examination to be indeed

porcelain, and along the face of it I saw an inscription in some

unknown character. I thought, rather foolishly, that Weena might

help me to interpret this, but I only learned that the bare idea of

writing had never entered her head. She always seemed to me, I

fancy, more human than she was, perhaps because her affection was so

human.

‘Within the big valves of the door–which were open and broken–we

found, instead of the customary hall, a long gallery lit by many

side windows. At the first glance I was reminded of a museum.

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

miscellaneous objects was shrouded in the same grey covering. Then

I perceived, standing strange and gaunt in the centre of the hall,

what was clearly the lower part of a huge skeleton. I recognized

by the oblique feet that it was some extinct creature after the

fashion of the Megatherium. The skull and the upper bones lay

beside it in the thick dust, and in one place, where rain-water had

dropped through a leak in the roof, the thing itself had been worn

away. Further in the gallery was the huge skeleton barrel of a

Brontosaurus. My museum hypothesis was confirmed. Going towards the

side I found what appeared to be sloping shelves, and clearing away

the thick dust, I found the old familiar glass cases of our own

time. But they must have been air-tight to judge from the fair

preservation of some of their contents.

‘Clearly we stood among the ruins of some latter-day South

Kensington! Here, apparently, was the Palaeontological Section,

and a very splendid array of fossils it must have been, though the

inevitable process of decay that had been staved off for a time, and

had, through the extinction of bacteria and fungi, lost ninety-nine

hundredths of its force, was nevertheless, with extreme sureness if

with extreme slowness at work again upon all its treasures. Here and

there I found traces of the little people in the shape of rare

fossils broken to pieces or threaded in strings upon reeds. And the

cases had in some instances been bodily removed–by the Morlocks as

I judged. The place was very silent. The thick dust deadened our

footsteps. Weena, who had been rolling a sea urchin down the sloping

glass of a case, presently came, as I stared about me, and very

quietly took my hand and stood beside me.

‘And at first I was so much surprised by this ancient monument of an

intellectual age, that I gave no thought to the possibilities it

presented. Even my preoccupation about the Time Machine receded a

little from my mind.

‘To judge from the size of the place, this Palace of Green Porcelain

had a great deal more in it than a Gallery of Palaeontology;

possibly historical galleries; it might be, even a library! To me,

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

interesting than this spectacle of oldtime geology in decay.

Exploring, I found another short gallery running transversely to the

first. This appeared to be devoted to minerals, and the sight of a

block of sulphur set my mind running on gunpowder. But I could find

no saltpeter; indeed, no nitrates of any kind. Doubtless they had

deliquesced ages ago. Yet the sulphur hung in my mind, and set up a

train of thinking. As for the rest of the contents of that gallery,

though on the whole they were the best preserved of all I saw, I had

little interest. I am no specialist in mineralogy, and I went on

down a very ruinous aisle running parallel to the first hall I had

entered. Apparently this section had been devoted to natural

history, but everything had long since passed out of recognition. A

few shrivelled and blackened vestiges of what had once been stuffed

animals, desiccated mummies in jars that had once held spirit, a

brown dust of departed plants: that was all! I was sorry for that,

because I should have been glad to trace the patent readjustments by

which the conquest of animated nature had been attained. Then we

came to a gallery of simply colossal proportions, but singularly

ill-lit, the floor of it running downward at a slight angle from the

end at which I entered. At intervals white globes hung from the

ceiling–many of them cracked and smashed–which suggested that

originally the place had been artificially lit. Here I was more in

my element, for rising on either side of me were the huge bulks of

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

still fairly complete. You know I have a certain weakness for

mechanism, and I was inclined to linger among these; the more so as

for the most part they had the interest of puzzles, and I could make

only the vaguest guesses at what they were for. I fancied that if

I could solve their puzzles I should find myself in possession of

powers that might be of use against the Morlocks.

‘Suddenly Weena came very close to my side. So suddenly that she

startled me. Had it not been for her I do not think I should have

noticed that the floor of the gallery sloped at all. [Footnote: It

may be, of course, that the floor did not slope, but that the museum

was built into the side of a hill.–ED.] The end I had come in at

was quite above ground, and was lit by rare slit-like windows. As

you went down the length, the ground came up against these windows,

until at last there was a pit like the “area” of a London house

before each, and only a narrow line of daylight at the top. I went

slowly along, puzzling about the machines, and had been too intent

upon them to notice the gradual diminution of the light, until

Weena’s increasing apprehensions drew my attention. Then I saw that

the gallery ran down at last into a thick darkness. I hesitated, and

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

and its surface less even. Further away towards the dimness, it

appeared to be broken by a number of small narrow footprints. My

sense of the immediate presence of the Morlocks revived at that.

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

machinery. I called to mind that it was already far advanced in the

afternoon, and that I had still no weapon, no refuge, and no means

of making a fire. And then down in the remote blackness of the

gallery I heard a peculiar pattering, and the same odd noises I had

heard down the well.

‘I took Weena’s hand. Then, struck with a sudden idea, I left her

and turned to a machine from which projected a lever not unlike

those in a signal-box. Clambering upon the stand, and grasping this

lever in my hands, I put all my weight upon it sideways. Suddenly

Weena, deserted in the central aisle, began to whimper. I had judged

the strength of the lever pretty correctly, for it snapped after a

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

sufficient, I judged, for any Morlock skull I might encounter. And I

longed very much to kill a Morlock or so. Very inhuman, you may

think, to want to go killing one’s own descendants! But it was

impossible, somehow, to feel any humanity in the things. Only my

disinclination to leave Weena, and a persuasion that if I began to

slake my thirst for murder my Time Machine might suffer, restrained

me from going straight down the gallery and killing the brutes I

heard.

‘Well, mace in one hand and Weena in the other, I went out of that

gallery and into another and still larger one, which at the first

glance reminded me of a military chapel hung with tattered flags.

The brown and charred rags that hung from the sides of it, I

presently recognized as the decaying vestiges of books. They had

long since dropped to pieces, and every semblance of print had left

them. But here and there were warped boards and cracked metallic

clasps that told the tale well enough. Had I been a literary man I

might, perhaps, have moralized upon the futility of all ambition.

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

enormous waste of labour to which this sombre wilderness of rotting

paper testified. At the time I will confess that I thought chiefly

of the _Philosophical Transactions_ and my own seventeen papers upon

physical optics.

‘Then, going up a broad staircase, we came to what may once have

been a gallery of technical chemistry. And here I had not a little

hope of useful discoveries. Except at one end where the roof had

collapsed, this gallery was well preserved. I went eagerly to every

unbroken case. And at last, in one of the really air-tight cases,

I found a box of matches. Very eagerly I tried them. They were

perfectly good. They were not even damp. I turned to Weena. “Dance,”

I cried to her in her own tongue. For now I had a weapon indeed

against the horrible creatures we feared. And so, in that derelict

museum, upon the thick soft carpeting of dust, to Weena’s huge

delight, I solemnly performed a kind of composite dance, whistling

_The Land of the Leal_ as cheerfully as I could. In part it was a

modest _cancan_, in part a step dance, in part a skirt-dance (so far

as my tail-coat permitted), and in part original. For I am naturally

inventive, as you know.

‘Now, I still think that for this box of matches to have escaped

the wear of time for immemorial years was a most strange, as for

me it was a most fortunate thing. Yet, oddly enough, I found a far

unlikelier substance, and that was camphor. I found it in a sealed

jar, that by chance, I suppose, had been really hermetically sealed.

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

accordingly. But the odour of camphor was unmistakable. In the

universal decay this volatile substance had chanced to survive,

perhaps through many thousands of centuries. It reminded me of a

sepia painting I had once seen done from the ink of a fossil

Belemnite that must have perished and become fossilized millions

of years ago. I was about to throw it away, but I remembered that

it was inflammable and burned with a good bright flame–was, in

fact, an excellent candle–and I put it in my pocket. I found no

explosives, however, nor any means of breaking down the bronze

doors. As yet my iron crowbar was the most helpful thing I had

chanced upon. Nevertheless I left that gallery greatly elated.

‘I cannot tell you all the story of that long afternoon. It would

require a great effort of memory to recall my explorations in at all

the proper order. I remember a long gallery of rusting stands of

arms, and how I hesitated between my crowbar and a hatchet or a

sword. I could not carry both, however, and my bar of iron promised

best against the bronze gates. There were numbers of guns, pistols,

and rifles. The most were masses of rust, but many were of some

new metal, and still fairly sound. But any cartridges or powder

there may once have been had rotted into dust. One corner I saw was

charred and shattered; perhaps, I thought, by an explosion among the

specimens. In another place was a vast array of idols–Polynesian,

Mexican, Grecian, Phoenician, every country on earth I should think.

And here, yielding to an irresistible impulse, I wrote my name upon

the nose of a steatite monster from South America that particularly

took my fancy.

‘As the evening drew on, my interest waned. I went through gallery

after gallery, dusty, silent, often ruinous, the exhibits sometimes

mere heaps of rust and lignite, sometimes fresher. In one place I

suddenly found myself near the model of a tin-mine, and then by the

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

cartridges! I shouted “Eureka!” and smashed the case with joy. Then

came a doubt. I hesitated. Then, selecting a little side gallery,

I made my essay. I never felt such a disappointment as I did in

waiting five, ten, fifteen minutes for an explosion that never came.

Of course the things were dummies, as I might have guessed from

their presence. I really believe that had they not been so, I should

have rushed off incontinently and blown Sphinx, bronze doors, and

(as it proved) my chances of finding the Time Machine, all together

into non-existence.

‘It was after that, I think, that we came to a little open court

within the palace. It was turfed, and had three fruit-trees. So we

rested and refreshed ourselves. Towards sunset I began to consider

our position. Night was creeping upon us, and my inaccessible

hiding-place had still to be found. But that troubled me very little

now. I had in my possession a thing that was, perhaps, the best of

all defences against the Morlocks–I had matches! I had the camphor

in my pocket, too, if a blaze were needed. It seemed to me that

the best thing we could do would be to pass the night in the open,

protected by a fire. In the morning there was the getting of the

Time Machine. Towards that, as yet, I had only my iron mace. But

now, with my growing knowledge, I felt very differently towards

those bronze doors. Up to this, I had refrained from forcing them,

largely because of the mystery on the other side. They had never

impressed me as being very strong, and I hoped to find my bar of

iron not altogether inadequate for the work.