X. When Night Came
“Now, indeed, I seemed in a worse case than
before. Hitherto, except during my night’s anguish at the loss of the Time
Machine, I had felt a sustaining hope of ultimate escape, but that hope was
staggered by these new discoveries. Hitherto I had merely thought myself
impeded by the childish simplicity of the little people, and by some unknown
forces which I had only to understand to overcome; but there was an altogether
new element in the sickening quality of the Morlocks—a something inhuman and
malign. Instinctively I loathed them. Before, I had felt as a man might feel
who had fallen into a pit: my concern was with the pit and how to get out of
it. Now I felt like a beast in a trap, whose enemy would come upon him soon.
“The enemy I dreaded may surprise you. It was the
darkness of the new moon. Weena had put this into my head by some at first
incomprehensible remarks about the Dark Nights. It was not now such a very
difficult problem to guess what the coming Dark Nights might mean. The moon was
on the wane: each night there was a longer interval of darkness. And I now
understood to some slight degree at least the reason of the fear of the little
Upperworld people for the dark. I wondered vaguely what foul villainy it might
be that the Morlocks did under the new moon. I felt pretty sure now that my
second hypothesis was all wrong. The Upperworld people might once have been the
favoured aristocracy, and the Morlocks their mechanical servants: but that had
long since passed away. The two species that had resulted from the evolution of
man were sliding down towards, or had already arrived at, an altogether new
relationship. The Eloi, like the Carlovignan kings, had decayed to a mere
beautiful futility. They still possessed the earth on sufferance: since the
Morlocks, subterranean for innumerable generations, had come at last to find
the daylit surface intolerable. And the Morlocks made their garments, I inferred,
and maintained them in their habitual needs, perhaps through the survival of an
old habit of service. They did it as a standing horse paws with his foot, or as
a man enjoys killing animals in sport: because ancient and departed necessities
had impressed it on the organism. But, clearly, the old order was already in
part reversed. The Nemesis of the delicate ones was creeping on apace. Ages
ago, thousands of generations ago, man had thrust his brother man out of the
ease and the sunshine. And now that brother was coming back—changed! Already
the Eloi had begun to learn one old lesson anew. They were becoming
reacquainted with Fear. And suddenly there came into my head the memory of the
meat I had seen in the Underworld. It seemed odd how it floated into my mind:
not stirred up as it were by the current of my meditations, but coming in
almost like a question from outside. I tried to recall the form of it. I had a
vague sense of something familiar, but I could not tell what it was at the
time.
“Still, however helpless the little people in the
presence of their mysterious Fear, I was differently constituted. I came out of
this age of ours, this ripe prime of the human race, when Fear does not
paralyse and mystery has lost its terrors. I at least would defend myself.
Without further delay I determined to make myself arms and a fastness where I
might sleep. With that refuge as a base, I could face this strange world with
some of that confidence I had lost in realising to what creatures night by
night I lay exposed. I felt I could never sleep again until my bed was secure
from them. I shuddered with horror to think how they must already have examined
me.
“I wandered during the afternoon along the valley
of the Thames, but found nothing that commended itself to my mind as
inaccessible. All the buildings and trees seemed easily practicable to such
dexterous climbers as the Morlocks, to judge by their wells, must be. Then the
tall pinnacles of the Palace of Green Porcelain and the polished gleam of its
walls came back to my memory; and in the evening, taking Weena like a child
upon my shoulder, I went up the hills towards the south-west. The distance, I
had reckoned, was seven or eight miles, but it must have been nearer eighteen.
I had first seen the place on a moist afternoon when distances are deceptively
diminished. In addition, the heel of one of my shoes was loose, and a nail was
working through the sole—they were comfortable old shoes I wore about
indoors—so that I was lame. And it was already long past sunset when I came in
sight of the palace, silhouetted black against the pale yellow of the sky.
“Weena had been hugely delighted when I began to
carry her, but after a while she desired me to let her down, and ran along by
the side of me, occasionally darting off on either hand to pick flowers to
stick in my pockets. My pockets had always puzzled Weena, but at the last she
had concluded that they were an eccentric kind of vases for floral decoration.
At least she utilised them for that purpose. And that reminds me! In changing
my jacket I found…”
The Time Traveller paused, put his hand into his
pocket, and silently placed two withered flowers, not unlike very large white
mallows, upon the little table. Then he resumed his narrative.
“As the hush of evening crept over the world and
we proceeded over the hill crest towards Wimbledon, Weena grew tired and wanted
to return to the house of grey stone. But I pointed out the distant pinnacles
of the Palace of Green Porcelain to her, and contrived to make her understand that
we were seeking a refuge there from her Fear. You know that great pause that
comes upon things before the dusk? Even the breeze stops in the trees. To me
there is always an air of expectation about that evening stillness. The sky was
clear, remote, and empty save for a few horizontal bars far down in the sunset.
Well, that night the expectation took the colour of my fears. In that darkling
calm my senses seemed preternaturally sharpened. I fancied I could even feel
the hollowness of the ground beneath my feet: could, indeed, almost see through
it the Morlocks on their ant-hill going hither and thither and waiting for the
dark. In my excitement I fancied that they would receive my invasion of their
burrows as a declaration of war. And why had they taken my Time Machine?
“So we went on in the quiet, and the twilight
deepened into night. The clear blue of the distance faded, and one star after
another came out. The ground grew dim and the trees black. Weena’s fears and
her fatigue grew upon her. I took her in my arms and talked to her and caressed
her. Then, as the darkness grew deeper, she put her arms round my neck, and,
closing her eyes, tightly pressed her face against my shoulder. So we went down
a long slope into a valley, and there in the dimness I almost walked into a
little river. This I waded, and went up the opposite side of the valley, past a
number of sleeping houses, and by a statue—a Faun, or some such figure, minus
the head. Here too were acacias. So far I had seen nothing of the Morlocks, but
it was yet early in the night, and the darker hours before the old moon rose
were still to come.
“From the brow of the next hill I saw a thick wood
spreading wide and black before me. I hesitated at this. I could see no end to
it, either to the right or the left. Feeling tired—my feet, in particular, were
very sore—I carefully lowered Weena from my shoulder as I halted, and sat down
upon the turf. I could no longer see the Palace of Green Porcelain, and I was
in doubt of my direction. I looked into the thickness of the wood and thought
of what it might hide. Under that dense tangle of branches one would be out of
sight of the stars. Even were there no other lurking danger—a danger I did not
care to let my imagination loose upon—there would still be all the roots to
stumble over and the tree-boles to strike against. I was very tired, too, after
the excitements of the day; so I decided that I would not face it, but would
pass the night upon the open hill.
“Weena, I was glad to find, was fast asleep. I
carefully wrapped her in my jacket, and sat down beside her to wait for the
moonrise. The hillside was quiet and deserted, but from the black of the wood
there came now and then a stir of living things. Above me shone the stars, for
the night was very clear. I felt a certain sense of friendly comfort in their
twinkling. All the old constellations had gone from the sky, however: that slow
movement which is imperceptible in a hundred human lifetimes, had long since rearranged
them in unfamiliar groupings. But the Milky Way, it seemed to me, was still the
same tattered streamer of star-dust as of yore. Southward (as I judged it) was
a very bright red star that was new to me; it was even more splendid than our
own green Sirius. And amid all these scintillating points of light one bright
planet shone kindly and steadily like the face of an old friend.
“Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own
troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life. I thought of their unfathomable
distance, and the slow inevitable drift of their movements out of the unknown
past into the unknown future. I thought of the great precessional cycle that
the pole of the earth describes. Only forty times had that silent revolution
occurred during all the years that I had traversed. And during these few
revolutions all the activity, all the traditions, the complex organisations,
the nations, languages, literatures, aspirations, even the mere memory of Man
as I knew him, had been swept out of existence. Instead were these frail
creatures who had forgotten their high ancestry, and the white Things of which
I went in terror. Then I thought of the Great Fear that was between the two
species, and for the first time, with a sudden shiver, came the clear knowledge
of what the meat I had seen might be. Yet it was too horrible! I looked at
little Weena sleeping beside me, her face white and starlike under the stars,
and forthwith dismissed the thought.
“Through that long night I held my mind off the
Morlocks as well as I could, and whiled away the time by trying to fancy I
could find signs of the old constellations in the new confusion. The sky kept
very clear, except for a hazy cloud or so. No doubt I dozed at times. Then, as
my vigil wore on, came a faintness in the eastward sky, like the reflection of
some colourless fire, and the old moon rose, thin and peaked and white. And
close behind, and overtaking it, and overflowing it, the dawn came, pale at
first, and then growing pink and warm. No Morlocks had approached us. Indeed, I
had seen none upon the hill that night. And in the confidence of renewed day it
almost seemed to me that my fear had been unreasonable. I stood up and found my
foot with the loose heel swollen at the ankle and painful under the heel; so I
sat down again, took off my shoes, and flung them away.
“I awakened Weena, and we went down into the wood,
now green and pleasant instead of black and forbidding. We found some fruit
wherewith to break our fast. We soon met others of the dainty ones, laughing
and dancing in the sunlight as though there was no such thing in nature as the
night. And then I thought once more of the meat that I had seen. I felt assured
now of what it was, and from the bottom of my heart I pitied this last feeble
rill from the great flood of humanity. Clearly, at some time in the Long-Ago of
human decay the Morlocks’ food had run short. Possibly they had lived on rats
and such-like vermin. Even now man is far less discriminating and exclusive in
his food than he was—far less than any monkey. His prejudice against human
flesh is no deep-seated instinct. And so these inhuman sons of men——! I tried
to look at the thing in a scientific spirit. After all, they were less human
and more remote than our cannibal ancestors of three or four thousand years
ago. And the intelligence that would have made this state of things a torment
had gone. Why should I trouble myself? These Eloi were mere fatted cattle,
which the ant-like Morlocks preserved and preyed upon—probably saw to the breeding
of. And there was Weena dancing at my side!
“Then I tried to preserve myself from the horror
that was coming upon me, by regarding it as a rigorous punishment of human
selfishness. Man had been content to live in ease and delight upon the labours
of his fellow-man, had taken Necessity as his watchword and excuse, and in the
fullness of time Necessity had come home to him. I even tried a Carlyle-like
scorn of this wretched aristocracy in decay. But this attitude of mind was
impossible. However great their intellectual degradation, the Eloi had kept too
much of the human form not to claim my sympathy, and to make me perforce a
sharer in their degradation and their Fear.
“I had at that time very vague ideas as to the
course I should pursue. My first was to secure some safe place of refuge, and
to make myself such arms of metal or stone as I could contrive. That necessity
was immediate. In the next place, I hoped to procure some means of fire, so
that I should have the weapon of a torch at hand, for nothing, I knew, would be
more efficient against these Morlocks. Then I wanted to arrange some
contrivance to break open the doors of bronze under the White Sphinx. I had in
mind a battering ram. I had a persuasion that if I could enter those doors and
carry a blaze of light before me I should discover the Time Machine and escape.
I could not imagine the Morlocks were strong enough to move it far away. Weena
I had resolved to bring with me to our own time. And turning such schemes over
in my mind I pursued our way towards the building which my fancy had chosen as
our dwelling.
XI. The Palace of Green
Porcelain
“I found the Palace of Green Porcelain, when we
approached it about noon, deserted and falling into ruin. Only ragged vestiges
of glass remained in its windows, and great sheets of the green facing had
fallen away from the corroded metallic framework. It lay very high upon a turfy
down, and looking north-eastward before I entered it, I was surprised to see a
large estuary, or even creek, where I judged Wandsworth and Battersea must once
have been. I thought then—though I never followed up the thought—of what might
have happened, or might be happening, to the living things in the sea.
“The material of the Palace proved on examination
to be indeed porcelain, and along the face of it I saw an inscription in some
unknown character. I thought, rather foolishly, that Weena might help me to
interpret this, but I only learnt that the bare idea of writing had never
entered her head. She always seemed to me, I fancy, more human than she was,
perhaps because her affection was so human.
“Within the big valves of the door—which were open
and broken—we found, instead of the customary hall, a long gallery lit by many
side windows. At the first glance I was reminded of a museum. The tiled floor
was thick with dust, and a remarkable array of miscellaneous objects was
shrouded in the same grey covering. Then I perceived, standing strange and
gaunt in the centre of the hall, what was clearly the lower part of a huge
skeleton. I recognised by the oblique feet that it was some extinct creature
after the fashion of the Megatherium. The skull and the upper bones lay beside
it in the thick dust, and in one place, where rain-water had dropped through a
leak in the roof, the thing itself had been worn away. Further in the gallery
was the huge skeleton barrel of a Brontosaurus. My museum hypothesis was
confirmed. Going towards the side I found what appeared to be sloping shelves,
and clearing away the thick dust, I found the old familiar glass cases of our
own time. But they must have been air-tight to judge from the fair preservation
of some of their contents.
“Clearly we stood among the ruins of some
latter-day South Kensington! Here, apparently, was the Palæontological Section,
and a very splendid array of fossils it must have been, though the inevitable
process of decay that had been staved off for a time, and had, through the
extinction of bacteria and fungi, lost ninety-nine hundredths of its force, was
nevertheless, with extreme sureness if with extreme slowness at work again upon
all its treasures. Here and there I found traces of the little people in the
shape of rare fossils broken to pieces or threaded in strings upon reeds. And
the cases had in some instances been bodily removed—by the Morlocks, as I
judged. The place was very silent. The thick dust deadened our footsteps.
Weena, who had been rolling a sea urchin down the sloping glass of a case,
presently came, as I stared about me, and very quietly took my hand and stood
beside me.
“And at
first I was so much surprised by this ancient monument of an intellectual age
that I gave no thought to the possibilities it presented. Even my preoccupation
about the Time Machine receded a little from my mind.
“To judge from the size of the place, this Palace
of Green Porcelain had a great deal more in it than a Gallery of Palæontology;
possibly historical galleries; it might be, even a library! To me, at least in
my present circumstances, these would be vastly more interesting than this spectacle
of old-time geology in decay. Exploring, I found another short gallery running
transversely to the first. This appeared to be devoted to minerals, and the
sight of a block of sulphur set my mind running on gunpowder. But I could find
no saltpetre; indeed, no nitrates of any kind. Doubtless they had deliquesced
ages ago. Yet the sulphur hung in my mind, and set up a train of thinking. As
for the rest of the contents of that gallery, though on the whole they were the
best preserved of all I saw, I had little interest. I am no specialist in
mineralogy, and I went on down a very ruinous aisle running parallel to the
first hall I had entered. Apparently this section had been devoted to natural
history, but everything had long since passed out of recognition. A few
shrivelled and blackened vestiges of what had once been stuffed animals,
desiccated mummies in jars that had once held spirit, a brown dust of departed
plants: that was all! I was sorry for that, because I should have been glad to
trace the patient readjustments by which the conquest of animated nature had
been attained. Then we came to a gallery of simply colossal proportions, but
singularly ill-lit, the floor of it running downward at a slight angle from the
end at which I entered. At intervals white globes hung from the ceiling—many of
them cracked and smashed—which suggested that originally the place had been
artificially lit. Here I was more in my element, for rising on either side of
me were the huge bulks of big machines, all greatly corroded and many broken
down, but some still fairly complete. You know I have a certain weakness for
mechanism, and I was inclined to linger among these; the more so as for the
most part they had the interest of puzzles, and I could make only the vaguest
guesses at what they were for. I fancied that if I could solve their puzzles I
should find myself in possession of powers that might be of use against the
Morlocks.
“Suddenly Weena came very close to my side. So
suddenly that she startled me. Had it not been for her I do not think I should
have noticed that the floor of the gallery sloped at all. [Footnote: It may be,
of course, that the floor did not slope, but that the museum was built into the
side of a hill.—ED.] The end I had come in at was quite above ground, and was
lit by rare slit-like windows. As you went down the length, the ground came up
against these windows, until at last there was a pit like the ‘area‘ of a
London house before each, and only a narrow line of daylight at the top. I went
slowly along, puzzling about the machines, and had been too intent upon them to
notice the gradual diminution of the light, until Weena’s increasing
apprehensions drew my attention. Then I saw that the gallery ran down at last
into a thick darkness. I hesitated, and then, as I looked round me, I saw that
the dust was less abundant and its surface less even. Further away towards the
dimness, it appeared to be broken by a number of small narrow footprints. My
sense of the immediate presence of the Morlocks revived at that. I felt that I
was wasting my time in the academic examination of machinery. I called to mind
that it was already far advanced in the afternoon, and that I had still no
weapon, no refuge, and no means of making a fire. And then down in the remote
blackness of the gallery I heard a peculiar pattering, and the same odd noises
I had heard down the well.
“I took Weena’s hand. Then, struck with a sudden
idea, I left her and turned to a machine from which projected a lever not
unlike those in a signal-box. Clambering upon the stand, and grasping this
lever in my hands, I put all my weight upon it sideways. Suddenly Weena, deserted
in the central aisle, began to whimper. I had judged the strength of the lever
pretty correctly, for it snapped after a minute’s strain, and I rejoined her
with a mace in my hand more than sufficient, I judged, for any Morlock skull I
might encounter. And I longed very much to kill a Morlock or so. Very inhuman,
you may think, to want to go killing one’s own descendants! But it was
impossible, somehow, to feel any humanity in the things. Only my disinclination
to leave Weena, and a persuasion that if I began to slake my thirst for murder
my Time Machine might suffer, restrained me from going straight down the
gallery and killing the brutes I heard.
“Well, mace in one hand and Weena in the other, I
went out of that gallery and into another and still larger one, which at the
first glance reminded me of a military chapel hung with tattered flags. The
brown and charred rags that hung from the sides of it, I presently recognised
as the decaying vestiges of books. They had long since dropped to pieces, and
every semblance of print had left them. But here and there were warped boards
and cracked metallic clasps that told the tale well enough. Had I been a
literary man I might, perhaps, have moralised upon the futility of all
ambition. But as it was, the thing that struck me with keenest force was the
enormous waste of labour to which this sombre wilderness of rotting paper
testified. At the time I will confess that I thought chiefly of the
Philosophical Transactions and my own seventeen papers upon physical optics.
“Then, going up a broad staircase, we came to what
may once have been a gallery of technical chemistry. And here I had not a
little hope of useful discoveries. Except at one end where the roof had
collapsed, this gallery was well preserved. I went eagerly to every unbroken
case. And at last, in one of the really air-tight cases, I found a box of
matches. Very eagerly I tried them. They were perfectly good. They were not
even damp. I turned to Weena. ‘Dance,’ I cried to her in her own tongue. For now
I had a weapon indeed against the horrible creatures we feared. And so, in that
derelict museum, upon the thick soft carpeting of dust, to Weena’s huge
delight, I solemnly performed a kind of composite dance, whistling The Land of
the Leal as cheerfully as I could. In part it was a modest cancan, in part a
step dance, in part a skirt dance (so far as my tail-coat permitted), and in
part original. For I am naturally inventive, as you know.
“Now, I still think that for this box of matches
to have escaped the wear of time for immemorial years was a most strange, as
for me it was a most fortunate, thing. Yet, oddly enough, I found a far
unlikelier substance, and that was camphor. I found it in a sealed jar, that by
chance, I suppose, had been really hermetically sealed. I fancied at first that
it was paraffin wax, and smashed the glass accordingly. But the odour of
camphor was unmistakable. In the universal decay this volatile substance had
chanced to survive, perhaps through many thousands of centuries. It reminded me
of a sepia painting I had once seen done from the ink of a fossil Belemnite
that must have perished and become fossilised millions of years ago. I was
about to throw it away, but I remembered that it was inflammable and burnt with
a good bright flame—was, in fact, an excellent candle—and I put it in my
pocket. I found no explosives, however, nor any means of breaking down the
bronze doors. As yet my iron crowbar was the most helpful thing I had chanced
upon. Nevertheless I left that gallery greatly elated.
“I cannot tell you all the story of that long
afternoon. It would require a great effort of memory to recall my explorations
in at all the proper order. I remember a long gallery of rusting stands of
arms, and how I hesitated between my crowbar and a hatchet or a sword. I could
not carry both, however, and my bar of iron promised best against the bronze
gates. There were numbers of guns, pistols, and rifles. The most were masses of
rust, but many were of some new metal, and still fairly sound. But any
cartridges or powder there may once have been had rotted into dust. One corner
I saw was charred and shattered; perhaps, I thought, by an explosion among the
specimens. In another place was a vast array of idols—Polynesian, Mexican,
Grecian, Phœnician, every country on earth, I should think. And here, yielding
to an irresistible impulse, I wrote my name upon the nose of a steatite monster
from South America that particularly took my fancy.
“As the evening drew on, my interest waned. I went
through gallery after gallery, dusty, silent, often ruinous, the exhibits
sometimes mere heaps of rust and lignite, sometimes fresher. In one place I
suddenly found myself near the model of a tin mine, and then by the merest
accident I discovered, in an air-tight case, two dynamite cartridges! I shouted
‘Eureka!’ and smashed the case with joy. Then came a doubt. I hesitated. Then,
selecting a little side gallery, I made my essay. I never felt such a
disappointment as I did in waiting five, ten, fifteen minutes for an explosion
that never came. Of course the things were dummies, as I might have guessed
from their presence. I really believe that had they not been so, I should have
rushed off incontinently and blown Sphinx, bronze doors, and (as it proved) my
chances of finding the Time Machine, all together into non-existence.
“It was after that, I think, that we came to a
little open court within the palace. It was turfed, and had three fruit-trees.
So we rested and refreshed ourselves. Towards sunset I began to consider our
position. Night was creeping upon us, and my inaccessible hiding-place had
still to be found. But that troubled me very little now. I had in my possession
a thing that was, perhaps, the best of all defences against the Morlocks—I had
matches! I had the camphor in my pocket, too, if a blaze were needed. It seemed
to me that the best thing we could do would be to pass the night in the open,
protected by a fire. In the morning there was the getting of the Time Machine.
Towards that, as yet, I had only my iron mace. But now, with my growing
knowledge, I felt very differently towards those bronze doors. Up to this, I
had refrained from forcing them, largely because of the mystery on the other
side. They had never impressed me as being very strong, and I hoped to find my
bar of iron not altogether inadequate for the work.
XII. In the Darkness
“We emerged from the Palace while the sun was
still in part above the horizon. I was determined to reach the White Sphinx
early the next morning, and ere the dusk I purposed pushing through the woods
that had stopped me on the previous journey. My plan was to go as far as
possible that night, and then, building a fire, to sleep in the protection of
its glare. Accordingly, as we went along I gathered any sticks or dried grass I
saw, and presently had my arms full of such litter. Thus loaded, our progress
was slower than I had anticipated, and besides Weena was tired. And I, also,
began to suffer from sleepiness too; so that it was full night before we
reached the wood. Upon the shrubby hill of its edge Weena would have stopped,
fearing the darkness before us; but a singular sense of impending calamity,
that should indeed have served me as a warning, drove me onward. I had been
without sleep for a night and two days, and I was feverish and irritable. I
felt sleep coming upon me, and the Morlocks with it.
“While we hesitated, among the black bushes behind
us, and dim against their blackness, I saw three crouching figures. There was
scrub and long grass all about us, and I did not feel safe from their insidious
approach. The forest, I calculated, was rather less than a mile across. If we
could get through it to the bare hillside, there, as it seemed to me, was an
altogether safer resting-place; I thought that with my matches and my camphor I
could contrive to keep my path illuminated through the woods. Yet it was
evident that if I was to flourish matches with my hands I should have to
abandon my firewood; so, rather reluctantly, I put it down. And then it came
into my head that I would amaze our friends behind by lighting it. I was to
discover the atrocious folly of this proceeding, but it came to my mind as an
ingenious move for covering our retreat.
“I don’t know if you have ever thought what a rare
thing flame must be in the absence of man and in a temperate climate. The sun’s
heat is rarely strong enough to burn, even when it is focused by dewdrops, as
is sometimes the case in more tropical districts. Lightning may blast and
blacken, but it rarely gives rise to widespread fire. Decaying vegetation may
occasionally smoulder with the heat of its fermentation, but this rarely
results in flame. In this decadence, too, the art of fire-making had been
forgotten on the earth. The red tongues that went licking up my heap of wood were
an altogether new and strange thing to Weena.
“She wanted to run to it and play with it. I
believe she would have cast herself into it had I not restrained her. But I
caught her up, and in spite of her struggles, plunged boldly before me into the
wood. For a little way the glare of my fire lit the path. Looking back
presently, I could see, through the crowded stems, that from my heap of sticks
the blaze had spread to some bushes adjacent, and a curved line of fire was
creeping up the grass of the hill. I laughed at that, and turned again to the
dark trees before me. It was very black, and Weena clung to me convulsively,
but there was still, as my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, sufficient
light for me to avoid the stems. Overhead it was simply black, except where a
gap of remote blue sky shone down upon us here and there. I lit none of my
matches because I had no hand free. Upon my left arm I carried my little one,
in my right hand I had my iron bar.
“For some way I heard nothing but the crackling twigs
under my feet, the faint rustle of the breeze above, and my own breathing and
the throb of the blood-vessels in my ears. Then I seemed to know of a pattering
behind me. I pushed on grimly. The pattering grew more distinct, and then I
caught the same queer sound and voices I had heard in the Underworld. There
were evidently several of the Morlocks, and they were closing in upon me.
Indeed, in another minute I felt a tug at my coat, then something at my arm.
And Weena shivered violently, and became quite still.
“It was time for a match. But to get one I must
put her down. I did so, and, as I fumbled with my pocket, a struggle began in
the darkness about my knees, perfectly silent on her part and with the same
peculiar cooing sounds from the Morlocks. Soft little hands, too, were creeping
over my coat and back, touching even my neck. Then the match scratched and
fizzed. I held it flaring, and saw the white backs of the Morlocks in flight
amid the trees. I hastily took a lump of camphor from my pocket, and prepared
to light it as soon as the match should wane. Then I looked at Weena. She was
lying clutching my feet and quite motionless, with her face to the ground. With
a sudden fright I stooped to her. She seemed scarcely to breathe. I lit the
block of camphor and flung it to the ground, and as it split and flared up and
drove back the Morlocks and the shadows, I knelt down and lifted her. The wood
behind seemed full of the stir and murmur of a great company!
“She seemed to have fainted. I put her carefully
upon my shoulder and rose to push on, and then there came a horrible
realisation. In manœuvring with my matches and Weena, I had turned myself about
several times, and now I had not the faintest idea in what direction lay my
path. For all I knew, I might be facing back towards the Palace of Green
Porcelain. I found myself in a cold sweat. I had to think rapidly what to do. I
determined to build a fire and encamp where we were. I put Weena, still
motionless, down upon a turfy bole, and very hastily, as my first lump of
camphor waned, I began collecting sticks and leaves. Here and there out of the
darkness round me the Morlocks’ eyes shone like carbuncles.
“The camphor flickered and went out. I lit a
match, and as I did so, two white forms that had been approaching Weena dashed
hastily away. One was so blinded by the light that he came straight for me, and
I felt his bones grind under the blow of my fist. He gave a whoop of dismay,
staggered a little way, and fell down. I lit another piece of camphor, and went
on gathering my bonfire. Presently I noticed how dry was some of the foliage
above me, for since my arrival on the Time Machine, a matter of a week, no rain
had fallen. So, instead of casting about among the trees for fallen twigs, I
began leaping up and dragging down branches. Very soon I had a choking smoky
fire of green wood and dry sticks, and could economise my camphor. Then I
turned to where Weena lay beside my iron mace. I tried what I could to revive
her, but she lay like one dead. I could not even satisfy myself whether or not
she breathed.
“Now, the smoke of the fire beat over towards me,
and it must have made me heavy of a sudden. Moreover, the vapour of camphor was
in the air. My fire would not need replenishing for an hour or so. I felt very
weary after my exertion, and sat down. The wood, too, was full of a slumbrous
murmur that I did not understand. I seemed just to nod and open my eyes. But
all was dark, and the Morlocks had their hands upon me. Flinging off their
clinging fingers I hastily felt in my pocket for the match-box, and—it had
gone! Then they gripped and closed with me again. In a moment I knew what had
happened. I had slept, and my fire had gone out, and the bitterness of death came
over my soul. The forest seemed full of the smell of burning wood. I was caught
by the neck, by the hair, by the arms, and pulled down. It was indescribably
horrible in the darkness to feel all these soft creatures heaped upon me. I
felt as if I was in a monstrous spider’s web. I was overpowered, and went down.
I felt little teeth nipping at my neck. I rolled over, and as I did so my hand
came against my iron lever. It gave me strength. I struggled up, shaking the
human rats from me, and, holding the bar short, I thrust where I judged their
faces might be. I could feel the succulent giving of flesh and bone under my
blows, and for a moment I was free.
“The strange exultation that so often seems to
accompany hard fighting came upon me. I knew that both I and Weena were lost,
but I determined to make the Morlocks pay for their meat. I stood with my back
to a tree, swinging the iron bar before me. The whole wood was full of the stir
and cries of them. A minute passed. Their voices seemed to rise to a higher pitch
of excitement, and their movements grew faster. Yet none came within reach. I
stood glaring at the blackness. Then suddenly came hope. What if the Morlocks
were afraid? And close on the heels of that came a strange thing. The darkness
seemed to grow luminous. Very dimly I began to see the Morlocks about me—three
battered at my feet—and then I recognised, with incredulous surprise, that the
others were running, in an incessant stream, as it seemed, from behind me, and
away through the wood in front. And their backs seemed no longer white, but
reddish. As I stood agape, I saw a little red spark go drifting across a gap of
starlight between the branches, and vanish. And at that I understood the smell
of burning wood, the slumbrous murmur that was growing now into a gusty roar,
the red glow, and the Morlocks’ flight.
“Stepping out from behind my tree and looking
back, I saw, through the black pillars of the nearer trees, the flames of the
burning forest. It was my first fire coming after me. With that I looked for
Weena, but she was gone. The hissing and crackling behind me, the explosive
thud as each fresh tree burst into flame, left little time for reflection. My
iron bar still gripped, I followed in the Morlocks’ path. It was a close race.
Once the flames crept forward so swiftly on my right as I ran that I was
outflanked and had to strike off to the left. But at last I emerged upon a
small open space, and as I did so, a Morlock came blundering towards me, and
past me, and went on straight into the fire!
“And now I was to see the most weird and horrible
thing, I think, of all that I beheld in that future age. This whole space was
as bright as day with the reflection of the fire. In the centre was a hillock
or tumulus, surmounted by a scorched hawthorn. Beyond this was another arm of
the burning forest, with yellow tongues already writhing from it, completely
encircling the space with a fence of fire. Upon the hillside were some thirty
or forty Morlocks, dazzled by the light and heat, and blundering hither and
thither against each other in their bewilderment. At first I did not realise
their blindness, and struck furiously at them with my bar, in a frenzy of fear,
as they approached me, killing one and crippling several more. But when I had
watched the gestures of one of them groping under the hawthorn against the red
sky, and heard their moans, I was assured of their absolute helplessness and
misery in the glare, and I struck no more of them.
“Yet every now and then one would come straight
towards me, setting loose a quivering horror that made me quick to elude him.
At one time the flames died down somewhat, and I feared the foul creatures
would presently be able to see me. I was thinking of beginning the fight by
killing some of them before this should happen; but the fire burst out again
brightly, and I stayed my hand. I walked about the hill among them and avoided
them, looking for some trace of Weena. But Weena was gone.
“At last I sat down on the summit of the hillock,
and watched this strange incredible company of blind things groping to and fro,
and making uncanny noises to each other, as the glare of the fire beat on them.
The coiling uprush of smoke streamed across the sky, and through the rare
tatters of that red canopy, remote as though they belonged to another universe,
shone the little stars. Two or three Morlocks came blundering into me, and I
drove them off with blows of my fists, trembling as I did so.
“For the most part of that night I was persuaded
it was a nightmare. I bit myself and screamed in a passionate desire to awake.
I beat the ground with my hands, and got up and sat down again, and wandered
here and there, and again sat down. Then I would fall to rubbing my eyes and
calling upon God to let me awake. Thrice I saw Morlocks put their heads down in
a kind of agony and rush into the flames. But, at last, above the subsiding red
of the fire, above the streaming masses of black smoke and the whitening and
blackening tree stumps, and the diminishing numbers of these dim creatures,
came the white light of the day.
“I searched again for traces of Weena, but there
were none. It was plain that they had left her poor little body in the forest.
I cannot describe how it relieved me to think that it had escaped the awful
fate to which it seemed destined. As I thought of that, I was almost moved to
begin a massacre of the helpless abominations about me, but I contained myself.
The hillock, as I have said, was a kind of island in the forest. From its
summit I could now make out through a haze of smoke the Palace of Green
Porcelain, and from that I could get my bearings for the White Sphinx. And so,
leaving the remnant of these damned souls still going hither and thither and
moaning, as the day grew clearer, I tied some grass about my feet and limped on
across smoking ashes and among black stems that still pulsated internally with
fire, towards the hiding-place of the Time Machine. I walked slowly, for I was
almost exhausted, as well as lame, and I felt the intensest wretchedness for
the horrible death of little Weena. It seemed an overwhelming calamity. Now, in
this old familiar room, it is more like the sorrow of a dream than an actual
loss. But that morning it left me absolutely lonely again—terribly alone. I
began to think of this house of mine, of this fireside, of some of you, and
with such thoughts came a longing that was pain.
“But, as I walked over the smoking ashes under the
bright morning sky, I made a discovery. In my trouser pocket were still some
loose matches. The box must have leaked before it was lost.
