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

IX

‘We emerged from the palace while the sun was still in part above

the horizon. I was determined to reach the White Sphinx early the

next morning, and ere the dusk I purposed pushing through the woods

that had stopped me on the previous journey. My plan was to go as

far as possible that night, and then, building a fire, to sleep

in the protection of its glare. Accordingly, as we went along I

gathered any sticks or dried grass I saw, and presently had my arms

full of such litter. Thus loaded, our progress was slower than I had

anticipated, and besides Weena was tired. And I began to suffer from

sleepiness too; so that it was full night before we reached the

wood. Upon the shrubby hill of its edge Weena would have stopped,

fearing the darkness before us; but a singular sense of impending

calamity, that should indeed have served me as a warning, drove me

onward. I had been without sleep for a night and two days, and I was

feverish and irritable. I felt sleep coming upon me, and the

Morlocks with it.

‘While we hesitated, among the black bushes behind us, and dim

against their blackness, I saw three crouching figures. There was

scrub and long grass all about us, and I did not feel safe from

their insidious approach. The forest, I calculated, was rather

less than a mile across. If we could get through it to the bare

hill-side, there, as it seemed to me, was an altogether safer

resting-place; I thought that with my matches and my camphor I could

contrive to keep my path illuminated through the woods. Yet it was

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

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

And then it came into my head that I would amaze our friends behind

by lighting it. I was to discover the atrocious folly of this

proceeding, but it came to my mind as an ingenious move for covering

our retreat.

‘I don’t know if you have ever thought what a rare thing flame must

be in the absence of man and in a temperate climate. The sun’s

heat is rarely strong enough to burn, even when it is focused by

dewdrops, as is sometimes the case in more tropical districts.

Lightning may blast and blacken, but it rarely gives rise to

widespread fire. Decaying vegetation may occasionally smoulder with

the heat of its fermentation, but this rarely results in flame. In

this decadence, too, the art of fire-making had been forgotten on

the earth. The red tongues that went licking up my heap of wood were

an altogether new and strange thing to Weena.

‘She wanted to run to it and play with it. I believe she would have

cast herself into it had I not restrained her. But I caught her up,

and in spite of her struggles, plunged boldly before me into the

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

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

heap of sticks the blaze had spread to some bushes adjacent, and a

curved line of fire was creeping up the grass of the hill. I laughed

at that, and turned again to the dark trees before me. It was very

black, and Weena clung to me convulsively, but there was still, as

my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, sufficient light for me to

avoid the stems. Overhead it was simply black, except where a gap of

remote blue sky shone down upon us here and there. I struck none of

my matches because I had no hand free. Upon my left arm I carried my

little one, in my right hand I had my iron bar.

‘For some way I heard nothing but the crackling twigs under my feet,

the faint rustle of the breeze above, and my own breathing and the

throb of the blood-vessels in my ears. Then I seemed to know of a

pattering about me. I pushed on grimly. The pattering grew more

distinct, and then I caught the same queer sound and voices I had

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

Morlocks, and they were closing in upon me. Indeed, in another

minute I felt a tug at my coat, then something at my arm. And Weena

shivered violently, and became quite still.

‘It was time for a match. But to get one I must put her down. I did

so, and, as I fumbled with my pocket, a struggle began in the

darkness about my knees, perfectly silent on her part and with the

same peculiar cooing sounds from the Morlocks. Soft little hands,

too, were creeping over my coat and back, touching even my neck.

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

white backs of the Morlocks in flight amid the trees. I hastily took

a lump of camphor from my pocket, and prepared to light it as soon

as the match should wane. Then I looked at Weena. She was lying

clutching my feet and quite motionless, with her face to the ground.

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

breathe. I lit the block of camphor and flung it to the ground,

and as it split and flared up and drove back the Morlocks and the

shadows, I knelt down and lifted her. The wood behind seemed full of

the stir and murmur of a great company!

‘She seemed to have fainted. I put her carefully upon my shoulder

and rose to push on, and then there came a horrible realization. In

manoeuvring with my matches and Weena, I had turned myself about

several times, and now I had not the faintest idea in what direction

lay my path. For all I knew, I might be facing back towards the

Palace of Green Porcelain. I found myself in a cold sweat. I had to

think rapidly what to do. I determined to build a fire and encamp

where we were. I put Weena, still motionless, down upon a turfy

bole, and very hastily, as my first lump of camphor waned, I began

collecting sticks and leaves. Here and there out of the darkness

round me the Morlocks’ eyes shone like carbuncles.

‘The camphor flickered and went out. I lit a match, and as I did so,

two white forms that had been approaching Weena dashed hastily away.

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

felt his bones grind under the blow of my fist. He gave a whoop of

dismay, staggered a little way, and fell down. I lit another piece

of camphor, and went on gathering my bonfire. Presently I noticed

how dry was some of the foliage above me, for since my arrival

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

instead of casting about among the trees for fallen twigs, I began

leaping up and dragging down branches. Very soon I had a choking

smoky fire of green wood and dry sticks, and could economize my

camphor. Then I turned to where Weena lay beside my iron mace. I

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

not even satisfy myself whether or not she breathed.

‘Now, the smoke of the fire beat over towards me, and it must have

made me heavy of a sudden. Moreover, the vapour of camphor was in

the air. My fire would not need replenishing for an hour or so. I

felt very weary after my exertion, and sat down. The wood, too, was

full of a slumbrous murmur that I did not understand. I seemed just

to nod and open my eyes. But all was dark, and the Morlocks had

their hands upon me. Flinging off their clinging fingers I hastily

felt in my pocket for the match-box, and–it had gone! Then they

gripped and closed with me again. In a moment I knew what had

happened. I had slept, and my fire had gone out, and the bitterness

of death came over my soul. The forest seemed full of the smell of

burning wood. I was caught by the neck, by the hair, by the arms,

and pulled down. It was indescribably horrible in the darkness to

feel all these soft creatures heaped upon me. I felt as if I was in

a monstrous spider’s web. I was overpowered, and went down. I felt

little teeth nipping at my neck. I rolled over, and as I did so my

hand came against my iron lever. It gave me strength. I struggled

up, shaking the human rats from me, and, holding the bar short,

I thrust where I judged their faces might be. I could feel the

succulent giving of flesh and bone under my blows, and for a moment

I was free.

‘The strange exultation that so often seems to accompany hard

fighting came upon me. I knew that both I and Weena were lost, but I

determined to make the Morlocks pay for their meat. I stood with my

back to a tree, swinging the iron bar before me. The whole wood was

full of the stir and cries of them. A minute passed. Their voices

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

grew faster. Yet none came within reach. I stood glaring at the

blackness. Then suddenly came hope. What if the Morlocks were

afraid? And close on the heels of that came a strange thing. The

darkness seemed to grow luminous. Very dimly I began to see the

Morlocks about me–three battered at my feet–and then I recognized,

with incredulous surprise, that the others were running, in an

incessant stream, as it seemed, from behind me, and away through the

wood in front. And their backs seemed no longer white, but reddish.

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

of starlight between the branches, and vanish. And at that I

understood the smell of burning wood, the slumbrous murmur that was

growing now into a gusty roar, the red glow, and the Morlocks’

flight.

‘Stepping out from behind my tree and looking back, I saw, through

the black pillars of the nearer trees, the flames of the burning

forest. It was my first fire coming after me. With that I looked for

Weena, but she was gone. The hissing and crackling behind me, the

explosive thud as each fresh tree burst into flame, left little

time for reflection. My iron bar still gripped, I followed in the

Morlocks’ path. It was a close race. Once the flames crept forward

so swiftly on my right as I ran that I was outflanked and had to

strike off to the left. But at last I emerged upon a small open

space, and as I did so, a Morlock came blundering towards me, and

past me, and went on straight into the fire!

‘And now I was to see the most weird and horrible thing, I think, of

all that I beheld in that future age. This whole space was as bright

as day with the reflection of the fire. In the centre was a hillock

or tumulus, surmounted by a scorched hawthorn. Beyond this was

another arm of the burning forest, with yellow tongues already

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

fire. Upon the hill-side were some thirty or forty Morlocks, dazzled

by the light and heat, and blundering hither and thither against

each other in their bewilderment. At first I did not realize their

blindness, and struck furiously at them with my bar, in a frenzy of

fear, as they approached me, killing one and crippling several more.

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

hawthorn against the red sky, and heard their moans, I was assured

of their absolute helplessness and misery in the glare, and I struck

no more of them.

‘Yet every now and then one would come straight towards me, setting

loose a quivering horror that made me quick to elude him. At one

time the flames died down somewhat, and I feared the foul creatures

would presently be able to see me. I was thinking of beginning the

fight by killing some of them before this should happen; but the

fire burst out again brightly, and I stayed my hand. I walked about

the hill among them and avoided them, looking for some trace of

Weena. But Weena was gone.

‘At last I sat down on the summit of the hillock, and watched this

strange incredible company of blind things groping to and fro, and

making uncanny noises to each other, as the glare of the fire beat

on them. The coiling uprush of smoke streamed across the sky, and

through the rare tatters of that red canopy, remote as though they

belonged to another universe, shone the little stars. Two or three

Morlocks came blundering into me, and I drove them off with blows

of my fists, trembling as I did so.

‘For the most part of that night I was persuaded it was a nightmare.

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

the ground with my hands, and got up and sat down again, and

wandered here and there, and again sat down. Then I would fall to

rubbing my eyes and calling upon God to let me awake. Thrice I saw

Morlocks put their heads down in a kind of agony and rush into the

flames. But, at last, above the subsiding red of the fire, above the

streaming masses of black smoke and the whitening and blackening

tree stumps, and the diminishing numbers of these dim creatures,

came the white light of the day.

‘I searched again for traces of Weena, but there were none. It was

plain that they had left her poor little body in the forest. I

cannot describe how it relieved me to think that it had escaped the

awful fate to which it seemed destined. As I thought of that, I was

almost moved to begin a massacre of the helpless abominations about

me, but I contained myself. The hillock, as I have said, was a kind

of island in the forest. From its summit I could now make out

through a haze of smoke the Palace of Green Porcelain, and from that

I could get my bearings for the White Sphinx. And so, leaving the

remnant of these damned souls still going hither and thither and

moaning, as the day grew clearer, I tied some grass about my feet

and limped on across smoking ashes and among black stems, that still

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

Machine. I walked slowly, for I was almost exhausted, as well as

lame, and I felt the intensest wretchedness for the horrible death

of little Weena. It seemed an overwhelming calamity. Now, in this

old familiar room, it is more like the sorrow of a dream than an

actual loss. But that morning it left me absolutely lonely

again–terribly alone. I began to think of this house of mine, of

this fireside, of some of you, and with such thoughts came a longing

that was pain.

‘But as I walked over the smoking ashes under the bright morning

sky, I made a discovery. In my trouser pocket were still some loose

matches. The box must have leaked before it was lost.

X

‘About eight or nine in the morning I came to the same seat of

yellow metal from which I had viewed the world upon the evening of

my arrival. I thought of my hasty conclusions upon that evening and

could not refrain from laughing bitterly at my confidence. Here

was the same beautiful scene, the same abundant foliage, the same

splendid palaces and magnificent ruins, the same silver river

running between its fertile banks. The gay robes of the beautiful

people moved hither and thither among the trees. Some were bathing

in exactly the place where I had saved Weena, and that suddenly gave

me a keen stab of pain. And like blots upon the landscape rose the

cupolas above the ways to the Under-world. I understood now what all

the beauty of the Over-world people covered. Very pleasant was their

day, as pleasant as the day of the cattle in the field. Like the

cattle, they knew of no enemies and provided against no needs. And

their end was the same.

‘I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had

been. It had committed suicide. It had set itself steadfastly

towards comfort and ease, a balanced society with security and

permanency as its watchword, it had attained its hopes–to come

to this at last. Once, life and property must have reached almost

absolute safety. The rich had been assured of his wealth and

comfort, the toiler assured of his life and work. No doubt in that

perfect world there had been no unemployed problem, no social

question left unsolved. And a great quiet had followed.

‘It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility

is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal

perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism.

Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are

useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no

need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have

to meet a huge variety of needs and dangers.

‘So, as I see it, the Upper-world man had drifted towards his

feeble prettiness, and the Under-world to mere mechanical industry.

But that perfect state had lacked one thing even for mechanical

perfection–absolute permanency. Apparently as time went on, the

feeding of the Under-world, however it was effected, had become

disjointed. Mother Necessity, who had been staved off for a

few thousand years, came back again, and she began below. The

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

still needs some little thought outside habit, had probably retained

perforce rather more initiative, if less of every other human

character, than the Upper. And when other meat failed them, they

turned to what old habit had hitherto forbidden. So I say I saw it

in my last view of the world of Eight Hundred and Two Thousand Seven

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

could invent. It is how the thing shaped itself to me, and as that I

give it to you.

‘After the fatigues, excitements, and terrors of the past days, and

in spite of my grief, this seat and the tranquil view and the warm

sunlight were very pleasant. I was very tired and sleepy, and soon

my theorizing passed into dozing. Catching myself at that, I took my

own hint, and spreading myself out upon the turf I had a long and

refreshing sleep.

‘I awoke a little before sunsetting. I now felt safe against being

caught napping by the Morlocks, and, stretching myself, I came on

down the hill towards the White Sphinx. I had my crowbar in one

hand, and the other hand played with the matches in my pocket.

‘And now came a most unexpected thing. As I approached the pedestal

of the sphinx I found the bronze valves were open. They had slid

down into grooves.

‘At that I stopped short before them, hesitating to enter.

‘Within was a small apartment, and on a raised place in the corner

of this was the Time Machine. I had the small levers in my pocket.

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

White Sphinx, was a meek surrender. I threw my iron bar away, almost

sorry not to use it.

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

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

Suppressing a strong inclination to laugh, I stepped through the

bronze frame and up to the Time Machine. I was surprised to find it

had been carefully oiled and cleaned. I have suspected since that

the Morlocks had even partially taken it to pieces while trying in

their dim way to grasp its purpose.

‘Now as I stood and examined it, finding a pleasure in the mere

touch of the contrivance, the thing I had expected happened. The

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

I was in the dark–trapped. So the Morlocks thought. At that I

chuckled gleefully.

‘I could already hear their murmuring laughter as they came towards

1. Very calmly I tried to strike the match. I had only to fix on

the levers and depart then like a ghost. But I had overlooked one

little thing. The matches were of that abominable kind that light

only on the box.

‘You may imagine how all my calm vanished. The little brutes were

close upon me. One touched me. I made a sweeping blow in the dark at

them with the levers, and began to scramble into the saddle of the

machine. Then came one hand upon me and then another. Then I had

simply to fight against their persistent fingers for my levers, and

at the same time feel for the studs over which these fitted. One,

indeed, they almost got away from me. As it slipped from my hand,

I had to butt in the dark with my head–I could hear the Morlock’s

skull ring–to recover it. It was a nearer thing than the fight in

the forest, I think, this last scramble.

‘But at last the lever was fitted and pulled over. The clinging

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

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

described.

XI

‘I have already told you of the sickness and confusion that comes

with time travelling. And this time I was not seated properly in the

saddle, but sideways and in an unstable fashion. For an indefinite

time I clung to the machine as it swayed and vibrated, quite

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

again I was amazed to find where I had arrived. One dial records

days, and another thousands of days, another millions of days, and

another thousands of millions. Now, instead of reversing the levers,

I had pulled them over so as to go forward with them, and when I

came to look at these indicators I found that the thousands hand was

sweeping round as fast as the seconds hand of a watch–into

futurity.

‘As I drove on, a peculiar change crept over the appearance of

things. The palpitating greyness grew darker; then–though I was

still travelling with prodigious velocity–the blinking succession

of day and night, which was usually indicative of a slower pace,

returned, and grew more and more marked. This puzzled me very much

at first. The alternations of night and day grew slower and slower,

and so did the passage of the sun across the sky, until they seemed

to stretch through centuries. At last a steady twilight brooded over

the earth, a twilight only broken now and then when a comet glared

across the darkling sky. The band of light that had indicated the

sun had long since disappeared; for the sun had ceased to set–it

simply rose and fell in the west, and grew ever broader and more

red. All trace of the moon had vanished. The circling of the stars,

growing slower and slower, had given place to creeping points of

light. At last, some time before I stopped, the sun, red and very

large, halted motionless upon the horizon, a vast dome glowing with

a dull heat, and now and then suffering a momentary extinction. At

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

but it speedily reverted to its sullen red heat. I perceived by this

slowing down of its rising and setting that the work of the tidal

drag was done. The earth had come to rest with one face to the sun,

even as in our own time the moon faces the earth. Very cautiously,

for I remembered my former headlong fall, I began to reverse

my motion. Slower and slower went the circling hands until the

thousands one seemed motionless and the daily one was no longer a

mere mist upon its scale. Still slower, until the dim outlines of a

desolate beach grew visible.

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

The sky was no longer blue. North-eastward it was inky black,

and out of the blackness shone brightly and steadily the pale

white stars. Overhead it was a deep Indian red and starless, and

south-eastward it grew brighter to a glowing scarlet where, cut by

the horizon, lay the huge hull of the sun, red and motionless. The

rocks about me were of a harsh reddish colour, and all the trace of

life that I could see at first was the intensely green vegetation

that covered every projecting point on their south-eastern face. It

was the same rich green that one sees on forest moss or on the

lichen in caves: plants which like these grow in a perpetual

twilight.

‘The machine was standing on a sloping beach. The sea stretched away

to the south-west, to rise into a sharp bright horizon against the

wan sky. There were no breakers and no waves, for not a breath of

wind was stirring. Only a slight oily swell rose and fell like a

gentle breathing, and showed that the eternal sea was still moving

and living. And along the margin where the water sometimes broke was

a thick incrustation of salt–pink under the lurid sky. There was a

sense of oppression in my head, and I noticed that I was breathing

very fast. The sensation reminded me of my only experience of

mountaineering, and from that I judged the air to be more rarefied

than it is now.

‘Far away up the desolate slope I heard a harsh scream, and saw a

thing like a huge white butterfly go slanting and fluttering up into

the sky and, circling, disappear over some low hillocks beyond. The

sound of its voice was so dismal that I shivered and seated myself

more firmly upon the machine. Looking round me again, I saw that,

quite near, what I had taken to be a reddish mass of rock was moving

slowly towards me. Then I saw the thing was really a monstrous

crab-like creature. Can you imagine a crab as large as yonder table,

with its many legs moving slowly and uncertainly, its big claws

swaying, its long antennae, like carters’ whips, waving and feeling,

and its stalked eyes gleaming at you on either side of its metallic

front? Its back was corrugated and ornamented with ungainly bosses,

and a greenish incrustation blotched it here and there. I could see

the many palps of its complicated mouth flickering and feeling as it

moved.

‘As I stared at this sinister apparition crawling towards me, I felt

a tickling on my cheek as though a fly had lighted there. I tried to

brush it away with my hand, but in a moment it returned, and almost

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

something threadlike. It was drawn swiftly out of my hand. With a

frightful qualm, I turned, and I saw that I had grasped the antenna

of another monster crab that stood just behind me. Its evil eyes

were wriggling on their stalks, its mouth was all alive with

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

were descending upon me. In a moment my hand was on the lever, and

I had placed a month between myself and these monsters. But I was

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

stopped. Dozens of them seemed to be crawling here and there, in the

sombre light, among the foliated sheets of intense green.

‘I cannot convey the sense of abominable desolation that hung over

the world. The red eastern sky, the northward blackness, the salt

Dead Sea, the stony beach crawling with these foul, slow-stirring

monsters, the uniform poisonous-looking green of the lichenous

plants, the thin air that hurts one’s lungs: all contributed to an

appalling effect. I moved on a hundred years, and there was the same

red sun–a little larger, a little duller–the same dying sea, the

same chill air, and the same crowd of earthy crustacea creeping in

and out among the green weed and the red rocks. And in the westward

sky, I saw a curved pale line like a vast new moon.

‘So I travelled, stopping ever and again, in great strides of a

thousand years or more, drawn on by the mystery of the earth’s fate,

watching with a strange fascination the sun grow larger and duller

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

last, more than thirty million years hence, the huge red-hot dome of

the sun had come to obscure nearly a tenth part of the darkling

heavens. Then I stopped once more, for the crawling multitude of

crabs had disappeared, and the red beach, save for its livid green

liverworts and lichens, seemed lifeless. And now it was flecked with

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

came eddying down. To the north-eastward, the glare of snow lay

under the starlight of the sable sky and I could see an undulating

crest of hillocks pinkish white. There were fringes of ice along the

sea margin, with drifting masses further out; but the main expanse

of that salt ocean, all bloody under the eternal sunset, was still

unfrozen.

‘I looked about me to see if any traces of animal life remained. A

certain indefinable apprehension still kept me in the saddle of the

machine. But I saw nothing moving, in earth or sky or sea. The green

slime on the rocks alone testified that life was not extinct. A

shallow sandbank had appeared in the sea and the water had receded

from the beach. I fancied I saw some black object flopping about

upon this bank, but it became motionless as I looked at it, and I

judged that my eye had been deceived, and that the black object was

merely a rock. The stars in the sky were intensely bright and seemed

to me to twinkle very little.

‘Suddenly I noticed that the circular westward outline of the sun

had changed; that a concavity, a bay, had appeared in the curve. I

saw this grow larger. For a minute perhaps I stared aghast at this

blackness that was creeping over the day, and then I realized that

an eclipse was beginning. Either the moon or the planet Mercury was

passing across the sun’s disk. Naturally, at first I took it to be

the moon, but there is much to incline me to believe that what I

really saw was the transit of an inner planet passing very near to

the earth.

‘The darkness grew apace; a cold wind began to blow in freshening

gusts from the east, and the showering white flakes in the air

increased in number. From the edge of the sea came a ripple and

whisper. Beyond these lifeless sounds the world was silent. Silent?

It would be hard to convey the stillness of it. All the sounds of

man, the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects,

the stir that makes the background of our lives–all that was over.

As the darkness thickened, the eddying flakes grew more abundant,

dancing before my eyes; and the cold of the air more intense. At

last, one by one, swiftly, one after the other, the white peaks of

the distant hills vanished into blackness. The breeze rose to a

moaning wind. I saw the black central shadow of the eclipse sweeping

towards me. In another moment the pale stars alone were visible. All

else was rayless obscurity. The sky was absolutely black.

‘A horror of this great darkness came on me. The cold, that smote

to my marrow, and the pain I felt in breathing, overcame me. I

shivered, and a deadly nausea seized me. Then like a red-hot bow

in the sky appeared the edge of the sun. I got off the machine to

recover myself. I felt giddy and incapable of facing the return

journey. As I stood sick and confused I saw again the moving thing

upon the shoal–there was no mistake now that it was a moving

thing–against the red water of the sea. It was a round thing, the

size of a football perhaps, or, it may be, bigger, and tentacles

trailed down from it; it seemed black against the weltering

blood-red water, and it was hopping fitfully about. Then I felt I

was fainting. But a terrible dread of lying helpless in that remote

and awful twilight sustained me while I clambered upon the saddle.

XII

‘So I came back. For a long time I must have been insensible upon

the machine. The blinking succession of the days and nights was

resumed, the sun got golden again, the sky blue. I breathed with

greater freedom. The fluctuating contours of the land ebbed and

flowed. The hands spun backward upon the dials. At last I saw again

the dim shadows of houses, the evidences of decadent humanity.

These, too, changed and passed, and others came. Presently, when the

million dial was at zero, I slackened speed. I began to recognize

our own petty and familiar architecture, the thousands hand ran back

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

Then the old walls of the laboratory came round me. Very gently,

now, I slowed the mechanism down.

‘I saw one little thing that seemed odd to me. I think I have told

you that when I set out, before my velocity became very high, Mrs.

Watchett had walked across the room, travelling, as it seemed to me,

like a rocket. As I returned, I passed again across that minute when

she traversed the laboratory. But now her every motion appeared to

be the exact inversion of her previous ones. The door at the lower

end opened, and she glided quietly up the laboratory, back foremost,

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

Just before that I seemed to see Hillyer for a moment; but he passed

like a flash.

‘Then I stopped the machine, and saw about me again the old familiar

laboratory, my tools, my appliances just as I had left them. I got

off the thing very shakily, and sat down upon my bench. For several

minutes I trembled violently. Then I became calmer. Around me was

my old workshop again, exactly as it had been. I might have slept

there, and the whole thing have been a dream.

‘And yet, not exactly! The thing had started from the south-east

corner of the laboratory. It had come to rest again in the

north-west, against the wall where you saw it. That gives you the

exact distance from my little lawn to the pedestal of the White

Sphinx, into which the Morlocks had carried my machine.

‘For a time my brain went stagnant. Presently I got up and came

through the passage here, limping, because my heel was still

painful, and feeling sorely begrimed. I saw the _Pall Mall Gazette_

on the table by the door. I found the date was indeed to-day, and

looking at the timepiece, saw the hour was almost eight o’clock. I

heard your voices and the clatter of plates. I hesitated–I felt so

sick and weak. Then I sniffed good wholesome meat, and opened the

door on you. You know the rest. I washed, and dined, and now I am

telling you the story.

‘I know,’ he said, after a pause, ‘that all this will be absolutely

incredible to you. To me the one incredible thing is that I am here

to-night in this old familiar room looking into your friendly faces

and telling you these strange adventures.’

He looked at the Medical Man. ‘No. I cannot expect you to believe

1. Take it as a lie–or a prophecy. Say I dreamed it in the

workshop. Consider I have been speculating upon the destinies of our

race until I have hatched this fiction. Treat my assertion of its

truth as a mere stroke of art to enhance its interest. And taking

it as a story, what do you think of it?’

He took up his pipe, and began, in his old accustomed manner, to tap

with it nervously upon the bars of the grate. There was a momentary

stillness. Then chairs began to creak and shoes to scrape upon the

carpet. I took my eyes off the Time Traveller’s face, and looked

round at his audience. They were in the dark, and little spots of

colour swam before them. The Medical Man seemed absorbed in the

contemplation of our host. The Editor was looking hard at the end

of his cigar–the sixth. The Journalist fumbled for his watch. The

others, as far as I remember, were motionless.

The Editor stood up with a sigh. ‘What a pity it is you’re not

a writer of stories!’ he said, putting his hand on the Time

Traveller’s shoulder.

‘You don’t believe it?’

‘Well—-‘

‘I thought not.’

The Time Traveller turned to us. ‘Where are the matches?’ he said.

He lit one and spoke over his pipe, puffing. ‘To tell you the truth

… I hardly believe it myself…. And yet…’

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

upon the little table. Then he turned over the hand holding his

pipe, and I saw he was looking at some half-healed scars on his

knuckles.

The Medical Man rose, came to the lamp, and examined the flowers.

‘The gynaeceum’s odd,’ he said. The Psychologist leant forward to

see, holding out his hand for a specimen.

‘I’m hanged if it isn’t a quarter to one,’ said the Journalist.

‘How shall we get home?’

‘Plenty of cabs at the station,’ said the Psychologist.

‘It’s a curious thing,’ said the Medical Man; ‘but I certainly don’t

know the natural order of these flowers. May I have them?’

The Time Traveller hesitated. Then suddenly: ‘Certainly not.’

‘Where did you really get them?’ said the Medical Man.

The Time Traveller put his hand to his head. He spoke like one who

was trying to keep hold of an idea that eluded him. ‘They were put

into my pocket by Weena, when I travelled into Time.’ He stared

round the room. ‘I’m damned if it isn’t all going. This room and you

and the atmosphere of every day is too much for my memory. Did I

ever make a Time Machine, or a model of a Time Machine? Or is it all

only a dream? They say life is a dream, a precious poor dream at

times–but I can’t stand another that won’t fit. It’s madness. And

where did the dream come from? … I must look at that machine. If

there is one!’

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

the door into the corridor. We followed him. There in the flickering

light of the lamp was the machine sure enough, squat, ugly, and

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

quartz. Solid to the touch–for I put out my hand and felt the rail

of it–and with brown spots and smears upon the ivory, and bits of

grass and moss upon the lower parts, and one rail bent awry.

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

along the damaged rail. ‘It’s all right now,’ he said. ‘The story I

told you was true. I’m sorry to have brought you out here in the

cold.’ He took up the lamp, and, in an absolute silence, we

returned to the smoking-room.

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

coat. The Medical Man looked into his face and, with a certain

hesitation, told him he was suffering from overwork, at which he

laughed hugely. I remember him standing in the open doorway, bawling

good night.

I shared a cab with the Editor. He thought the tale a ‘gaudy lie.’

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

so fantastic and incredible, the telling so credible and sober. I

lay awake most of the night thinking about it. I determined to go

next day and see the Time Traveller again. I was told he was in the

laboratory, and being on easy terms in the house, I went up to him.

The laboratory, however, was empty. I stared for a minute at the

Time Machine and put out my hand and touched the lever. At that the

squat substantial-looking mass swayed like a bough shaken by the

wind. Its instability startled me extremely, and I had a queer

reminiscence of the childish days when I used to be forbidden to

meddle. I came back through the corridor. The Time Traveller met me

in the smoking-room. He was coming from the house. He had a small

camera under one arm and a knapsack under the other. He laughed when

he saw me, and gave me an elbow to shake. ‘I’m frightfully busy,’

said he, ‘with that thing in there.’

‘But is it not some hoax?’ I said. ‘Do you really travel through

time?’

‘Really and truly I do.’ And he looked frankly into my eyes. He

hesitated. His eye wandered about the room. ‘I only want half an

hour,’ he said. ‘I know why you came, and it’s awfully good of you.

There’s some magazines here. If you’ll stop to lunch I’ll prove you

this time travelling up to the hilt, specimen and all. If you’ll

forgive my leaving you now?’

I consented, hardly comprehending then the full import of his words,

and he nodded and went on down the corridor. I heard the door of

the laboratory slam, seated myself in a chair, and took up a daily

paper. What was he going to do before lunch-time? Then suddenly

I was reminded by an advertisement that I had promised to meet

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

that I could barely save that engagement. I got up and went down the

passage to tell the Time Traveller.

As I took hold of the handle of the door I heard an exclamation,

oddly truncated at the end, and a click and a thud. A gust of air

whirled round me as I opened the door, and from within came the

sound of broken glass falling on the floor. The Time Traveller was

not there. I seemed to see a ghostly, indistinct figure sitting in

a whirling mass of black and brass for a moment–a figure so

transparent that the bench behind with its sheets of drawings was

absolutely distinct; but this phantasm vanished as I rubbed my eyes.

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

further end of the laboratory was empty. A pane of the skylight had,

apparently, just been blown in.

I felt an unreasonable amazement. I knew that something strange had

happened, and for the moment could not distinguish what the strange

thing might be. As I stood staring, the door into the garden opened,

and the man-servant appeared.

We looked at each other. Then ideas began to come. ‘Has Mr. —-

gone out that way?’ said I.

‘No, sir. No one has come out this way. I was expecting to find him

here.’

At that I understood. At the risk of disappointing Richardson I

stayed on, waiting for the Time Traveller; waiting for the second,

perhaps still stranger story, and the specimens and photographs he

would bring with him. But I am beginning now to fear that I must

wait a lifetime. The Time Traveller vanished three years ago. And,

as everybody knows now, he has never returned.

EPILOGUE

One cannot choose but wonder. Will he ever return? It may be that he

swept back into the past, and fell among the blood-drinking, hairy

savages of the Age of Unpolished Stone; into the abysses of the

Cretaceous Sea; or among the grotesque saurians, the huge reptilian

brutes of the Jurassic times. He may even now–if I may use the

phrase–be wandering on some plesiosaurus-haunted Oolitic coral

reef, or beside the lonely saline lakes of the Triassic Age. Or did

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

men, but with the riddles of our own time answered and its wearisome

problems solved? Into the manhood of the race: for I, for my own

part, cannot think that these latter days of weak experiment,

fragmentary theory, and mutual discord are indeed man’s culminating

time! I say, for my own part. He, I know–for the question had been

discussed among us long before the Time Machine was made–thought

but cheerlessly of the Advancement of Mankind, and saw in the

growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping that must

inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end. If that

is so, it remains for us to live as though it were not so. But to me

the future is still black and blank–is a vast ignorance, lit at a

few casual places by the memory of his story. And I have by me, for

my comfort, two strange white flowers–shrivelled now, and brown and

flat and brittle–to witness that even when mind and strength had

gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart

of man.