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This Book Reader was distributed solely for the reading of classic books which are out of copyright. Program extends to address 3fffh. No responsibilty can be accepted for any breach of copyright nor for any other matter involved with material above this address. This material will have been added by a user of this program and not the author of this program. Please address any enquiries concerning breach of copyright or any other concerns, to that third party. Pxcxc@xc.xc0>@ The Time Machine HG Wells CHAPTER 1 The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us. Hisgrey eyes shone and twinkled, and his usually pale face was flushed and animated. The fire burned 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 ratherthan submitted to be sat upon, and therewas that luxurious after-dinner atmosphere when thought roams gracefullyfree of the trammels of precision. And he put it to us in this way--marking thepoints with a lean forefinger--as we satand lazily admired his earnestness over this new paradox (as we thought it:) andhis 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 amathematical 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, cana cube have a real existence.' `There Iobject,' 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 musthave 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 thethree 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 whotalk 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 thewrong side of that idea. You have all heard what they have to say about this Fourth Dimension?' `_I_ have not,' saidthe 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?--andhave even tried to construct a Four-Dimension geometry. Professor SimonNewcomb 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 thee 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 workupon 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. Yesterdayit 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 recognized? But certainly it traced sucha line, and that line, therefore, we must conclude was along the Time-Dimension.' `But,' said the Medical Man, staring hard at a coal in the fire, `if Time is really only a fourth dimension of Space, why is it, and why has it always been, regarded as something different? And why cannot we move in Time as we move about in the other dimensions of Space?' The Time Traveller smiled. `Are you 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. Weare always getting away from the presentmovement. 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 civilized man is better off than the savage in this respect. He can go up against gravitation in a balloon, and why shouldhe 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 convinceme.' `Possibly not,' said the Time Traveller. `But now you begin to see theobject of my investigations into the geometry of Four Dimensions. Long ago I had a vague inkling of a machine--' `Totravel through Time!' exclaimed the VeryYoung 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?' saidthe Medical Man. `Our ancestors had no great tolerance for anachronisms.' `Onemight get one's Greek from the very lipsof 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 tellus about a conjurer he had seen at Burslem; but before he had finished his preface the Time Traveller came back, and Filby's anecdote collapsed. 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 beexplicit, for this that follows--unless his explanation is to be accepted--is anabsolutely unaccountable thing. He took one of the small octagonal tables that were scattered about the room, and set it in front of the fire, with two legs on the hearthrug. On this table he placed the mechanism. Then he drew up a chair, and sat down. The only other object on the table was a small shaded lamp, the bright light of which fell upon the model. There were also perhaps a dozen candles about, two in brass candlesticks upon the mantel and severalin 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.' Hepointed 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 Psychologistseemed about to speak to me, but changedhis 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, andthe 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 lampthe table was bare. Everyone was silentfor a minute. Then Filby said he was damned. The Psychologist recovered fromhis 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 tobaccojar on the mantel, and with his back to us began to fill his pipe. We stared ateach other. `Look here,' said the Medical Man, `are you in earnest about this? Do you seriously believe that thatmachine 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,' I said, `If it travelled into thepast 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 jSASAP 4j /jA4j4TjA4j /8j .C j /XjP8 xcxc ((a (7H5reassured us. `That's a simple point of psychology. I should have thought of it.It's plain enough, and helps the paradoxdelightfully. 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 theair. If it is travelling through time fifty times or a hundred times faster than we are, if it gets through a minutewhile 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. `Itsounds plausible enough to-night,' said the Medical Man; 'but wait until to-morrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning.' `Would you like to see the Time Machine itself?' asked the TimeTraveller. 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 ofthe 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 rockcrystal. 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 perfectlyserious? 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? Iwas never more serious in my life.' None of us quite knew how to take it. Icaught Filby's eye over the shoulder of the Medical Man, and he winked at me solemnly. CHAPTER 2 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 somesubtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush, behind his lucid frankness. Had Filby shown the model and explained the matter in the Time Traveller's words, weshould have shown HIM far less scepticism. For we should have perceivedhis motives; a pork butcher could understand Filby. But the Time Travellerhad more than a touch of whim among his elements, and we distrusted him. Things that would have made the frame of a lessclever 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 thattrusting their reputations for judgment with him was like furnishing a nursery with egg-shell 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 ofour minds: its plausibility, that is, its practical incredibleness, the curious possibilities of anachronism andof utter confusion it suggested. For my own part, I was particularly preoccupiedwith the trick of the model. That I remember discussing with the Medical Man, whom I met on Friday at the Linnaean. He said he had seen a similar thing at Tubingen, and laid considerablestress on the blowing out of the candle.But how the trick was done he could not explain. The next Thursday I went againto 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 ofpaper 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'sunavoidably detained. He asks me in thisnote to lead off with dinner at seven ifhe'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 besidesthe 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 mouthall 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; hishair 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, asby 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 ofhis 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 allright.' 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. AgainI 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, mymind 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 beendoing the Amateur Cadger? I don't follow.' I met the eye of the Psychologist, and read my own interpretation in his face. I thought ofthe Time Traveller limping painfully upstairs. I don't think any one else hadnoticed 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 wasresumed. 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 newguests were frankly incredulous. The Editor raised objections. `What WAS thistime 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 anyprice, and joined the Editor in the easywork of heaping ridicule on the whole thing. They were both the new kind of journalist--very joyous, irreverent young men. `Our Special Correspondent inthe Day after To-morrow reports,' the Journalist was saying--or rather shouting--when the Time Traveller came back. He was dressed in ordinary eveningclothes, 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 itwith his fingernail; at which the SilentMan, 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, andI 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, anddisplayed 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 apologize,' 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 to-night. 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, ifyou 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 thesame. I was in my laboratory at four o'clock, and since then . . . I've livedeight days . . . such days as no human being ever lived before! I'm nearly wornout, 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, andthe rest of us echoed `Agreed.' And withthat 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 withonly too much keenness the inadequacy ofpen 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'swhite, sincere face in the bright circleof the little lamp, nor hear the intonation of his voice. You cannot knowhow his expression followed the turns ofhis 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. CHAPTER 3 `I told some of you last Thursday of theprinciples 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 onFriday, 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 to-day that the first of allTime 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 nearlyhalf-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 aminute 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, andin another moment came to-morrow. The laboratory grew faint and hazy, then fainter and ever fainter. To-morrow night came black, then day again, night again, day again, faster and faster jSASAP 4j /jA4j4TjA4j /8j @̫jLjܸAA Pxc xc @9((xc72still. An eddying murmur filled my ears,and a strange, dumb confusedness descended on my mind. `I am afraid I cannot convey the peculiar sensations oftime 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 awayfrom me, and I saw the sun hopping swiftly across the sky, leaping it everyminute, 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 toofast 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 tofull, 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 color 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 hill-side 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 sawhuge buildings rise up faint and fair, and pass like dreams. The whole surface of the earth seemed changed--melting andflowing under my eyes. The little hands upon the dials that registered my speed raced round faster and faster. PresentlyI noted that the sun belt swayed up and down, from solstice to solstice, in a minute or less, and that consequently mypace 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 hystericalexhilaration. I remarked indeed a clumsyswaying of the machine, for which I was unable to account. But my mind was too confused to attend to it, so with a kindof 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 civilization, 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 hill-side, and remain there, without anywintry 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 peculiarrisk 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 afar-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 makingthe machine; but then I had cheerfully accepted it as an unavoidable risk-- oneof the risks a man has got to take! Now the risk was inevitable, I no longer sawit 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 nerve. 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 clapof 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 hail-stones. The rebounding, dancing hail hung in a cloud over the machine, and drove along the ground likesmoke. 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; therewas 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, orhalf 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 thepromise of the Sun. `I looked up again at the crouching white shape, and the full temerity of my voyage came suddenlyupon 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 hill-side dimly creeping in upon me through the lessening storm. I was seized with a panic fear. I turnedfrantically 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 whirledinto nothingness. The great buildings about me stood out clear and distinct, shining with the wet of the thunderstorm, and picked out in white bythe unmelted hailstones piled along their courses. I felt naked in a strangeworld. I felt as perhaps a bird may feelin the clear air, knowing the hawk wingsabove and will swoop. My fear grew to frenzy. I took a breathing space, set myteeth, and again grappled fiercely, wrist and knee, with the machine. It gave under my desperate onset and turnedover. 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 thisrecovery 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 Iheard 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. CHAPTER 4 `In another moment we were standing faceto face, I and this fragile thing out offuturity. 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 itagain. 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 nine-pins. 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 unscrewedthe little levers that would set it in motion, and put these in my pocket. ThenI turned again to see what I could do inthe 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 thinlips, and the little chins ran to a point. The eyes were large and mild; and--this may seem egotism on my part--Ifancied 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 howto 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 showedhim 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 theTime Machine in vain. `I nodded, pointed to the sun, and gave them such avivid 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 flingingthem upon me until I was almost smothered with blossom. You who have never seen the like can scarcely imaginewhat 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 vastgrey edifice of fretted stone. As I wentwith 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 wasnaturally most occupied with the growingcrowd of little people, and with the bigopen portals that yawned before me shadowy and mysterious. My general impression of the world I saw over theirheads was a tangled waste of beautiful bushes and flowers, a long neglected andyet 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 Phoenician 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 withflowers, and surrounded by an eddying mass of bright, soft-colored 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 jSASAP 4j /jA4j4TjA4j /8j @̫jLjܸAAPxcxc@xc.xc0>@brown. The roof was in shadow, and the windows, partially glazed with coloured glass and partially unglazed, admitted atempered light. The floor was made up ofhuge blocks of some very hard white metal, not plates nor slabs--blocks, andit was so much worn, as I judged by the going to and fro of past generations, asto 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 recognized as a kind of hypertrophied raspberry andorange, 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 thecorner 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 by, 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 timeI 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, andby 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 resoluteattempt to learn the speech of these newmen 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 seriesof 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 presentlya 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 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 demonstrativepronouns, and even the verb "to eat." But it was slow work, and the little people soon tired and wanted to get awayfrom 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 nevermet people more indolent or more easily fatigued. `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 amile and a half away, from which I couldget 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 ofprecipitous 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 ofstinging. 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 realized 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 hadnot 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 childbearingbecomes an evil rather than a blessing to the State; where violence comes but rarely and off-spring are secure, there is less necessity--indeed there is no necessity--for an efficient family, and the specialization 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 mustremind you, was my speculation at the time. Later, I was to appreciate how farit 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 ofthe oddness of wells still existing, andthen 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 senseof freedom and adventure I pushed on up to the crest. `There I found a seat of some yellow metal that I did not recognize, 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 thehorizon and the west was flaming gold, touched with some horizontal bars of purple and crimson. Below was the valleyof 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 orsilvery figure in the waste garden of the earth, here and there came the sharpvertical 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 thatevening, my interpretation was somethingin this way. (Afterwards I found I had got only a half-truth--or only a glimpseof 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 realize an oddconsequence 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 premiumon feebleness. The work of ameliorating the conditions of life--the true civilizing process that makes life more and more secure--had gone steadily on toa climax. One triumph of a united humanity over Nature had followed another. Things that are now mere dreamshad become projects deliberately put in hand and carried forward. And the harvest was what I saw! `After all, thesanitation and the agriculture of to-dayare 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 asthey 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 largerflower, 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 andslow in our clumsy hands. Some day all this will be better organized, and stillbetter. That is the drift of the currentin 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 carefullywe shall readjust the balance of animal and vegetable me 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 leaped.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 beenstamped 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: conditionsunder which the active, strong, and subtle survive and the weaker go to the wall; conditions that put a premium uponthe 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 inthe 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 thingsnow, and things that make us uncomfortable, savage survivals, discords in a refined and pleasant life.`I thought of the physical slightness ofthe people, their lack of intelligence, and those big abundant ruins, and it strengthened my belief in a perfect conquest of Nature. For after the battlecomes Quiet. Humanity had been strong, energetic, and intelligent, and had usedall its abundant vitality to alter the conditions under which it lived. And nowcame 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 inour own time certain tendencies and desires, once necessary to survival, area constant source of failure. Physical courage and the love of battle, for instance, are no great help--may even behindrances--to a civilized man. And in astate 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 theyare, 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 downinto perfect harmony with the conditionsunder 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 jSASAP 4j /jA4j4TjA4j /8j @̫jLjܸAAPxc`xc"xcP2 Tdecay. `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 increaseof population had succeeded too well, and their numbers had rather diminished than kept stationary. That would accountfor the abandoned ruins. Very simple wasmy explanation, and plausible enough--asmost wrong theories are! CHAPTER 5 `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 ofthe 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, ofbeing 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 notime 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 Iam not a young man. I cursed aloud, as Iran, 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 Ireached the lawn my worst fears were realized. Not a trace of the thing was to be seen. I felt faint and cold when Ifaced 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, throughwhose 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 any one 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, almostbreaking my shin. I lit a match and wenton 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 intomy 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 allI 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 moon-lit ruins and touching strange creatures in the black shadows; at last, of lying on the groundnear the sphinx and weeping with absolute wretchedness. 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 meon 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. "Supposethe worst?" I said. "Suppose the machinealtogether lost--perhaps destroyed? It behooves me to be calm and patient, to learn the way of the people, to get a clear idea of the method of my loss, andthe means of getting materials and tools; so that in the end, perhaps, I may make another." That would be my onlyhope, 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 orcunning. And with that I scrambled to myfeet 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 simplystolid, some thought it was a jest and laughed at me. I had the hardest task inthe 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 stilleager to take advantage of my perplexity. The turf gave better counsel. I found a groove ripped in it, about midway between the pedestal of thesphinx 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 throughthe 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 triedto 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 mefeel 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 withmy fist at the bronze panels. I thought I heard something stir inside--to be explicit, I thought I heard a sound likea 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 ofthem 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 waitinactive 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 yourwrecking their bronze panels, and if they don't, you will get it back as soonas 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 andthe 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 theavoidance. 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 inthe language, and in addition I pushed my explorations here and there. Either Imissed 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. Theirsentences were usually simple and of twowords, 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 afew miles round the point of my arrival.`So far as I could see, all the world displayed the same exuberant richness asthe 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. Hereand 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 avery great depth. One lay by the path upthe hill, which I had followed during myfirst 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 shafteddarkness, 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; andI 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 sucha 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 systemof 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 learned 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 isa vast amount of detail about building, jSASAP 4j /jA4j4TjA4j /8j @̫jLjܸAAPxcxc@xc.xc0>@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 arealtogether inaccessible to a real traveller amid such realities as I foundhere. Conceive the tale of London which a negro, fresh from Central Africa, would take back to his tribe! What wouldhe 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 ofwhat he knew, how much could he make hisuntravelled 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 organization, I fear I can convey very little of the difference to your mind. `In the matterof sepulchre, 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 putto myself, and my curiosity was at firstentirely defeated upon the point. The thing puzzled me, and I was led to make a further remark, which puzzled me stillmore: that aged and infirm among this people there were none. `I must confessthat my satisfaction with my first theories of an automatic civilization 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 needrenewal, 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 inplaying gently, in bathing in the river,in making love in a half-playful fashion, in eating fruit and sleeping. Icould not see how things were kept going. `Then, again, about the Time Machine: something, I knew not what, hadtaken it into the hollow pedestal of theWhite 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 amoderate 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 realized 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 rightbefore 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 inthe 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 abig 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. Wepassed 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 tellyou! `She was exactly like a child. Shewanted 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 atlast, 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 partingwere 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 affectionthat 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 almostthe 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 learned 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 blackthings. 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 herodd 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 theflagstones 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 asombre grey, the sky colourless and cheerless. And up the hill I thought I could see ghosts. There 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 movedhastily. I did not see what became of them. It seemed that they vanished amongthe 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 lightof 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. Theywere mere creatures of the half light. "They must have been ghosts," I said; "Iwonder 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 themout 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. Yetall the same, they were soon destined totake 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 thatthe 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 bethat some inner planet had suffered thisfate. Whatever the reason, the fact remains that the sun was very much hotter than we know it. `Well, one veryhot 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 ofstone. By contrast with the brilliancy outside, it seemed at first impenetrablydark to me. I entered it groping, for the change from light to blackness made spots of colour swim before me. SuddenlyI halted spellbound. A pair of eyes, luminous by reflection against the daylight without, was watching me out ofthe darkness. `The old instinctive dread of wild beasts came upon me. I clenched my hands and steadfastly lookedinto 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 oncethe 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 anotherpile 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 havetold 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 mesteadfastly as it retreated. It made me shudder. It was so like a human spider! It was clambering down the wall, and nowI saw for the first time a number of metal foot and hand rests forming a kindof ladder down the shaft. Then the lightburned my fingers and fell out of my hand, going out as it dropped, and when I had lit another the little monster haddisappeared. `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 theflickering 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 organization? How was it related to the indolent serenity of the beautiful Upper-worlders? And what was hidden downthere, at the foot of that shaft? I sat upon the edge of the well telling myselfthat, 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! AsI hesitated, two of the beautiful Upper-world people came running in theiramorous sport across the daylight in theshadow. 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 wasconsidered bad form to remark these apertures; for when I pointed to this one, and tried to frame a question aboutit in their tongue, they were still morevisibly 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 aclue 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 thefirst place, there was the bleached lookcommon in most animals that live largelyin the dark--the white fish of the Kentucky caves, for instance. Then, jSASAP 4j /jA4j4TjA4j /8j @̫jLjܸAAPxc 8!xc"(xc#x73those large eyes, with that capacity forreflecting light, are common features ofnocturnal things-- witness the owl and the cat. And last of all, that evident confusion in the sunshine, that hasty yet fumbling awkward flight towards darkshadow, 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 shaftsand wells along the hill slopes--everywhere, in fact except alongthe 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 clearas daylight to me that the gradual widening of the present merely temporaryand social difference between the Capitalist and the Labourer, was the keyto the whole position. No doubt it will seem grotesque enough to you--and wildlyincredible!--and yet even now there are existing circumstances to point that way. There is a tendency to utilize underground space for the less ornamental purposes of civilization; 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 hadgradually 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 suchartificial 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 samewidening 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 linesof 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 ifthey 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 Upper-world people were to theirs. As itseemed to me, the refined beauty and theetiolated 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 systemof to-day. 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 civilization that was at last attained must have long since passed itszenith, and was now far fallen into decay. The too-perfect security of the Upper-worlders 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 theUnder-grounders I did not yet suspect; but from what I had seen of the Morlocks--that, by the by, 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 afraidof the dark? I proceeded, as I have said, to question Weena about this Under-world, but here again I was disappointed. At first she would not understand my questions, and presently she refused to answer them. She shiveredas though the topic was unendurable. Andwhen I pressed her, perhaps a little harshly, she burst into tears. They werethe 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 the human inheritance from Weena's eyes. And very soon she was smiling and clapping her hands, while I solemnly burned a match. CHAPTER 6 `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. Theywere 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 tothe 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 oppressedwith perplexity and doubt. Once or twiceI had a feeling of intense fear for which I could perceive no definite reason. I remember creeping noiselessly into the great hall where the little people were sleeping in the moonlight--that night Weena was among them--and feeling reassured by their presence. It occurred to me even then, that in the course of a few days the moon must pass through its last quarter,and the nights grow dark, when the appearances of these unpleasant creatures from below, these whitened Lemurs, this new vermin that had replaced the old, might be more abundant. And on both these days I had the restless feeling of one who shirks an inevitable duty. I felt assured that the Time Machine was only to be recovered by boldly penetrating these underground mysteries. Yet I could not face the mystery. If only I had had a companion it would have been different. But I was so horribly alone, and even toclamber down into the darkness of the well appalled me. I don't know if you will understand my feeling, but I never felt quite safe at my back. `It was this restlessness, this insecurity, perhaps, that drove me further and further afield in my exploring expeditions. Going to the south-westwardtowards the rising country that is now called Combe Wood, I observed far off, in the direction of nineteenth-century Banstead, a vast green structure, different in character from any I had hitherto seen. It was larger than the largest of the palaces or ruins I knew, and the facade had an Oriental look: theface of it having the lustre, as well asthe 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 along 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 enableme to shirk, by another day, an experience I dreaded. I resolved I wouldmake the descent without further waste of time, and started out in the early morning towards a well near the ruins ofgranite and aluminium. `Little Weena ran with me. She danced beside me to thewell, but when she saw me lean over the mouth and look downward, she seemed strangely disconcerted. "Good-bye, Little Weena," I said, kissing her; and then putting her down, I began to feel over the parapet for the climbing hooks.Rather hastily, I may as well confess, for I feared my courage might leak away!At first she watched me in amazement. Then she gave a most piteous cry, and running to me, she began to pull at me with her little hands. I think her opposition nerved me rather to proceed. I shook her off, perhaps a little roughly, and in another moment I was in the throat of the well. I saw her agonized face over the parapet, and smiled to reassure her. Then I had to look down at the unstable hooks to whichI clung. `I had to clamber down a shaftof 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 andlighter than myself, I was speedily cramped and fatigued by the descent. Andnot simply fatigued! One of the bars bent suddenly under my weight, and almost swung me off into the blackness beneath. For a moment I hung by one hand, and after that experience I did not dare to rest again. Though my arms and back were presently acutely painful,I went on clambering down the sheer descent with as quick a motion as possible. Glancing upward, I saw the aperture, a small blue disk, in which a star was visible, while little Weena's head showed as a round black projection.The thudding sound of a machine below grew louder and more oppressive. Everything save that little disk above was profoundly dark, and when I looked up again Weena had disappeared. `I was in an agony of discomfort. I had some thought of trying to go up the shaft again, and leave the Under-world alone. But even while I turned this over in my mind I continued to descend. At last, with intense relief, I saw dimly coming up, a foot to the right of me, a slenderloophole 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 airwas 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 seemto have any fear of me apart from the light. But, so soon as I struck a match in order to see them, they fled incontinently, vanishing into dark gutters and tunnels, from which their eyes glared at me in the strangest fashion. `I tried to call to them, but the language they had was apparently different from that of the Over-world people; so that I was needs left to my own unaided efforts, and the thought of flight before exploration was even then in my mind. But I said to myself, "You are in for it now," and, feeling my way along the tunnel, I found the noise of machinery grow louder. Presently the walls fell away from me, and I came to alarge 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 blackshadows, in which dim spectral Morlocks sheltered from the glare. The place, by the by, was very stuffy and oppressive, and the faint halitus of freshly shed blood was in the air. Some way down the central vista was a little table of white metal, laid with what seemed a meal. The Morlocks at any rate were carnivorous! Even at the time, I remember wondering what large animal could have survived to furnish the red joint I saw. It was all very indistinct:the heavy smell, the big unmeaning shapes, the obscene figures lurking in the shadows, and only waiting for the darkness to come at me again! Then the match burned down, and stung my fingers,and fell, a wriggling red spot in the blackness. `I have thought since how particularly ill-equipped I was for suchan experience. When I had started with the Time Machine, I had started with theabsurd 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 glimpseof 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, andfour safety-matches that still remained to me. `I was afraid to push my way in among all this machinery in the dark, and it was only with my last glimpse of light I discovered that my store of matches had run low. It had never occurred to me until that moment that there was any need to economize them, and I had wasted almost half the box in astonishing the Upper-worlders, to whom fire was a novelty. Now, as I say, I hadfour 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 indescribablyunpleasant. The sudden realization of myignorance 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 jSASAP 4j /jA4j4TjA4j /8j @̫jLjܸAA$P @%P xc&xc'@)xc(8+me again. They clutched at me more boldly, whispering odd sounds to each other. I shivered violently, and shoutedagain rather discordantly. This time they were not so seriously alarmed, and they made a queer laughing noise as theycame back at me. I will confess I was horribly frightened. I determined to strike another match and escape under the protection of its glare. I did so, and eking out the flicker with a scrap of paper from my pocket, I made good my retreat to the narrow tunnel. But I had scarce entered this when my light was blown out and in the blackness I could hear the Morlocks rustling like wind among leaves, and pattering like the rain, as they hurried after me. `In a moment I was clutched by several hands, and there was no mistaking that they were trying to haul me back. I struck another light, and waved it in their dazzled faces. You can scarce imagine how nauseatingly inhuman they looked--those pale, chinless faces and great, lidless, pinkish-grey eyes!--as they stared in their blindness and bewilderment. But I did not stay to look, I promise you: I retreated again, and when my second match had ended, I struck my third. It had almost burned through when I reached the opening into the shaft. I lay down on the edge, for the throb of the great pump below made me giddy. Then I felt sideways for the projecting hooks, and, as I did so, my feet were grasped from behind, and I wasviolently tugged backward. I lit my lastmatch . . . 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 clamberingup the shaft, while they stayed peering and blinking up at me: all but one little wretch who followed me for some way, and wellnigh secured my boot as a trophy. `That climb seemed interminableto me. With the last twenty or thirty feet of it a deadly nausea came upon me.I had the greatest difficulty in keepingmy 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 theEloi. Then, for a time, I was insensible. CHAPTER 7 `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 ofultimate 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 toovercome; 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 thecoming Dark Nights might mean. The moon was on the wane: each night there was a longer interval of darkness. And I now understood to some slight degree at least the reason of the fear of the little Upper-world people for the dark. I wondered vaguely what foul villainy itmight be that the Morlocks did under thenew moon. I felt pretty sure now that mysecond hypothesis was all wrong. The Upper-world people might once have been the favoured aristocracy, and the Morlocks their mechanical servants: but that had long since passed away. The twospecies that had resulted from the evolution of man were sliding down towards, or had already arrived at, an altogether new relationship. The Eloi, like the Carolingian kings, had decayed to a mere beautiful futility. They stillpossessed the earth on sufferance: sincethe Morlocks, subterranean for innumerable generations, had come at last to find the daylit surface intolerable. And the Morlocks made theirgarments, 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 horsepaws 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! Alreadythe Eloi had begun to learn one old lesson anew. They were becoming reacquainted with Fear. And suddenly there came into my head the memory of the meat I had seen in the Under-world. It seemed odd how it floated into my mind: not stirred up as it were by the current of my meditations, but coming inalmost like a question from outside. I tried to recall the form of it. I had a vague sense of something familiar, but Icould not tell what it was at the time. `Still, however helpless the little people in the presence of their mysterious Fear, I was differently constituted. I came out of this age of ours, this ripe prime of the human race,when Fear does not paralyse and mystery has lost its terrors. I at least would defend myself. Without further delay I determined to make myself arms and a fastness where I might sleep. With that refuge as a base, I could face this strange world with some of that confidence I had lost in realizing to what creatures night by night I lay exposed. I felt I could never sleep again until my bed was secure from them.I shuddered with horror to think how they must already have examined me. `I wandered during the afternoon along the valley of the Thames, but found nothing that commended itself to my mind as inaccessible. All the buildings and trees seemed easily practicable to such dexterous climbers as the Morlocks, to judge by their wells, must be. Then the tall pinnacles of the Palace of Green Porcelain and the polished gleam of its walls came back to my memory; and in theevening, taking Weena like a child upon my shoulder, I went up the hills towardsthe south-west. The distance, I had reckoned, was seven or eight miles, but it must have been nearer eighteen. I hadfirst seen the place on a moist afternoon when distances are deceptivelydiminished. In addition, the heel of oneof 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 atthe last she had concluded that they were an eccentric kind of vase for floral decoration. At least she utilizedthem 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 twowithered 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 andwe proceeded over the hill crest towardsWimbledon, 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 fromher Fear. You know that great pause thatcomes 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 expectationtook 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 inmy 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 bya 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. `Fromthe 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 mighthide. 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 decidedthat I would not face it, but would passthe night upon the open hill. `Weena, Iwas glad to find, was fast asleep. I carefully wrapped her in my jacket, and sat down beside her to wait for the moonrise. The hill-side was quiet and deserted, but from the black of the woodthere came now and then a stir of livingthings. 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 thesescintillating points of light one brightplanet shone kindly and steadily like the face of an old friend. `Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life. I thought of their unfathomable distance, and the slow inevitable drift of their movements out of the unknown past into the unknown future. I thought of the great precessional cycle that the pole of the earth describes. Only forty times had that silent revolution occurred during all the years that I had traversed. And during these few revolutions all the activity, all the traditions, the complex organizations, the nations, languages, literatures, aspirations, even the mere memory of Man as I knew him, had been swept out of existence. Instead were these frail creatures who had forgotten their high ancestry, and the white Things of which I went in terror. Then I thought of the Great Fearthat was between the two species, and for the first time, with a sudden shiver, came the clear knowledge of whatthe meat I had seen might be. Yet it wastoo 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 couldfind signs of the old constellations in the new confusion. The sky kept very clear, except for a hazy cloud or so. Nodoubt 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, Ihad 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; soI sat down again, took off my shoes, andflung them away. `I awakened Weena, andwe 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 metothers 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 assurednow 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 ofhuman 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 inhis food than he was--far less than any monkey. His prejudice against human flesh is no deep-seated instinct. And sothese 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 wascoming 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 Eloihad 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 jSASAP 4j /jA4j4TjA4j /8j @̫jLjܸAA)Pp*xc+8xc,"xc-(2 @.(