The Time Machine

I.

Introduction

The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him)

was expounding a recondite matter to us. His 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

about 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 full 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 in 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 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 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 this 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.