pleasant instead of black and forbidding. We found some fruit wherewith
to break our fast. We soon met others of the dainty ones, laughing and
dancing in the sunlight as though there was no such thing in nature as
the night. And then I thought once more of the meat that I had seen. I
felt assured now of what it was, and from the bottom of my heart I
pitied this last feeble rill from the great flood of humanity. Clearly,
at some time in the Long-Ago of human decay the Morlocks’ food had run
short. Possibly they had lived on rats and such-like vermin. Even now
man is far less discriminating and exclusive in his food than he
was—far less than any monkey. His prejudice against human flesh is no
deep-seated instinct. And so these inhuman sons of men——! I tried to
look at the thing in a scientific spirit. After all, they were less
human and more remote than our cannibal ancestors of three or four
thousand years ago. And the intelligence that would have made this
state of things a torment had gone. Why should I trouble myself? These
Eloi were mere fatted cattle, which the ant-like Morlocks preserved and
preyed upon—probably saw to the breeding of. And there was Weena
dancing at my side!
“Then I tried to preserve myself from the horror that was coming upon
me, by regarding it as a rigorous punishment of human selfishness. Man
had been content to live in ease and delight upon the labours of his
fellow-man, had taken Necessity as his watchword and excuse, and in the
fullness of time Necessity had come home to him. I even tried a
Carlyle-like scorn of this wretched aristocracy in decay. But this
attitude of mind was impossible. However great their intellectual
degradation, the Eloi had kept too much of the human form not to claim
my sympathy, and to make me perforce a sharer in their degradation and
their Fear.
“I had at that time very vague ideas as to the course I should pursue.
My first was to secure some safe place of refuge, and to make myself
such arms of metal or stone as I could contrive. That necessity was
immediate. In the next place, I hoped to procure some means of fire, so
that I should have the weapon of a torch at hand, for nothing, I knew,
would be more efficient against these Morlocks. Then I wanted to
arrange some contrivance to break open the doors of bronze under the
White Sphinx. I had in mind a battering ram. I had a persuasion that if
I could enter those doors and carry a blaze of light before me I should
discover the Time Machine and escape. I could not imagine the Morlocks
were strong enough to move it far away. Weena I had resolved to bring
with me to our own time. And turning such schemes over in my mind I
pursued our way towards the building which my fancy had chosen as our
dwelling.
XI.
The Palace of Green Porcelain
“I found the Palace of Green Porcelain, when we approached it about
noon, deserted and falling into ruin. Only ragged vestiges of glass
remained in its windows, and great sheets of the green facing had
fallen away from the corroded metallic framework. It lay very high upon
a turfy down, and looking north-eastward before I entered it, I was
surprised to see a large estuary, or even creek, where I judged
Wandsworth and Battersea must once have been. I thought then—though I
never followed up the thought—of what might have happened, or might be
happening, to the living things in the sea.
“The material of the Palace proved on examination to be indeed
porcelain, and along the face of it I saw an inscription in some
unknown character. I thought, rather foolishly, that Weena might help
me to interpret this, but I only learnt that the bare idea of writing
had never entered her head. She always seemed to me, I fancy, more
human than she was, perhaps because her affection was so human.
“Within the big valves of the door—which were open and broken—we found,
instead of the customary hall, a long gallery lit by many side windows.
At the first glance I was reminded of a museum. The tiled floor was
thick with dust, and a remarkable array of miscellaneous objects was
shrouded in the same grey covering. Then I perceived, standing strange
and gaunt in the centre of the hall, what was clearly the lower part of
a huge skeleton. I recognised by the oblique feet that it was some
extinct creature after the fashion of the Megatherium. The skull and
the upper bones lay beside it in the thick dust, and in one place,
where rain-water had dropped through a leak in the roof, the thing
itself had been worn away. Further in the gallery was the huge skeleton
barrel of a Brontosaurus. My museum hypothesis was confirmed. Going
towards the side I found what appeared to be sloping shelves, and
clearing away the thick dust, I found the old familiar glass cases of
our own time. But they must have been air-tight to judge from the fair
preservation of some of their contents.
“Clearly we stood among the ruins of some latter-day South Kensington!
Here, apparently, was the Palæontological Section, and a very splendid
array of fossils it must have been, though the inevitable process of
decay that had been staved off for a time, and had, through the
extinction of bacteria and fungi, lost ninety-nine hundredths of its
force, was nevertheless, with extreme sureness if with extreme slowness
at work again upon all its treasures. Here and there I found traces of
the little people in the shape of rare fossils broken to pieces or
threaded in strings upon reeds. And the cases had in some instances
been bodily removed—by the Morlocks, as I judged. The place was very
silent. The thick dust deadened our footsteps. Weena, who had been
rolling a sea urchin down the sloping glass of a case, presently came,
as I stared about me, and very quietly took my hand and stood beside
me.
“And at first I was so much surprised by this ancient monument of an
intellectual age that I gave no thought to the possibilities it
presented. Even my preoccupation about the Time Machine receded a
little from my mind.
“To judge from the size of the place, this Palace of Green Porcelain
had a great deal more in it than a Gallery of Palæontology; possibly
historical galleries; it might be, even a library! To me, at least in
my present circumstances, these would be vastly more interesting than
this spectacle of old-time geology in decay. Exploring, I found another
short gallery running transversely to the first. This appeared to be
devoted to minerals, and the sight of a block of sulphur set my mind
running on gunpowder. But I could find no saltpetre; indeed, no
nitrates of any kind. Doubtless they had deliquesced ages ago. Yet the
sulphur hung in my mind, and set up a train of thinking. As for the
rest of the contents of that gallery, though on the whole they were the
best preserved of all I saw, I had little interest. I am no specialist
in mineralogy, and I went on down a very ruinous aisle running parallel
to the first hall I had entered. Apparently this section had been
devoted to natural history, but everything had long since passed out of
recognition. A few shrivelled and blackened vestiges of what had once
been stuffed animals, desiccated mummies in jars that had once held
spirit, a brown dust of departed plants: that was all! I was sorry for
that, because I should have been glad to trace the patient
readjustments by which the conquest of animated nature had been
attained. Then we came to a gallery of simply colossal proportions, but
singularly ill-lit, the floor of it running downward at a slight angle
from the end at which I entered. At intervals white globes hung from
the ceiling—many of them cracked and smashed—which suggested that
originally the place had been artificially lit. Here I was more in my
element, for rising on either side of me were the huge bulks of big
machines, all greatly corroded and many broken down, but some still
fairly complete. You know I have a certain weakness for mechanism, and
I was inclined to linger among these; the more so as for the most part
they had the interest of puzzles, and I could make only the vaguest
guesses at what they were for. I fancied that if I could solve their
puzzles I should find myself in possession of powers that might be of
use against the Morlocks.
“Suddenly Weena came very close to my side. So suddenly that she
startled me. Had it not been for her I do not think I should have
noticed that the floor of the gallery sloped at all. [Footnote: It may
be, of course, that the floor did not slope, but that the museum was
built into the side of a hill.—ED.] The end I had come in at was quite
above ground, and was lit by rare slit-like windows. As you went down
the length, the ground came up against these windows, until at last
there was a pit like the ‘area‘ of a London house before each, and only
a narrow line of daylight at the top. I went slowly along, puzzling
about the machines, and had been too intent upon them to notice the
gradual diminution of the light, until Weena’s increasing apprehensions
drew my attention. Then I saw that the gallery ran down at last into a
thick darkness. I hesitated, and then, as I looked round me, I saw that
the dust was less abundant and its surface less even. Further away
towards the dimness, it appeared to be broken by a number of small
narrow footprints. My sense of the immediate presence of the Morlocks
revived at that. I felt that I was wasting my time in this academic
examination of machinery. I called to mind that it was already far
advanced in the afternoon, and that I had still no weapon, no refuge,
and no means of making a fire. And then down in the remote blackness of
the gallery I heard a peculiar pattering, and the same odd noises I had
heard down the well.
“I took Weena’s hand. Then, struck with a sudden idea, I left her and
turned to a machine from which projected a lever not unlike those in a
signal-box. Clambering upon the stand, and grasping this lever in my
hands, I put all my weight upon it sideways. Suddenly Weena, deserted
in the central aisle, began to whimper. I had judged the strength of
the lever pretty correctly, for it snapped after a minute’s strain, and
I rejoined her with a mace in my hand more than sufficient, I judged,
for any Morlock skull I might encounter. And I longed very much to kill
a Morlock or so. Very inhuman, you may think, to want to go killing
one’s own descendants! But it was impossible, somehow, to feel any
humanity in the things. Only my disinclination to leave Weena, and a
persuasion that if I began to slake my thirst for murder my Time
Machine might suffer, restrained me from going straight down the
gallery and killing the brutes I heard.
“Well, mace in one hand and Weena in the other, I went out of that
gallery and into another and still larger one, which at the first
glance reminded me of a military chapel hung with tattered flags. The
brown and charred rags that hung from the sides of it, I presently
recognised as the decaying vestiges of books. They had long since
dropped to pieces, and every semblance of print had left them. But here
and there were warped boards and cracked metallic clasps that told the
tale well enough. Had I been a literary man I might, perhaps, have
moralised upon the futility of all ambition. But as it was, the thing
that struck me with keenest force was the enormous waste of labour to
which this sombre wilderness of rotting paper testified. At the time I
will confess that I thought chiefly of the _Philosophical Transactions_
and my own seventeen papers upon physical optics.
“Then, going up a broad staircase, we came to what may once have been a
gallery of technical chemistry. And here I had not a little hope of
useful discoveries. Except at one end where the roof had collapsed,
this gallery was well preserved. I went eagerly to every unbroken case.
And at last, in one of the really air-tight cases, I found a box of
matches. Very eagerly I tried them. They were perfectly good. They were
not even damp. I turned to Weena. ‘Dance,’ I cried to her in her own
tongue. For now I had a weapon indeed against the horrible creatures we
feared. And so, in that derelict museum, upon the thick soft carpeting
of dust, to Weena’s huge delight, I solemnly performed a kind of
composite dance, whistling _The Land of the Leal_ as cheerfully as I
could. In part it was a modest _cancan_, in part a step dance, in part
a skirt dance (so far as my tail-coat permitted), and in part original.
For I am naturally inventive, as you know.
“Now, I still think that for this box of matches to have escaped the
wear of time for immemorial years was a most strange, as for me it was
a most fortunate, thing. Yet, oddly enough, I found a far unlikelier
substance, and that was camphor. I found it in a sealed jar, that by
chance, I suppose, had been really hermetically sealed. I fancied at
first that it was paraffin wax, and smashed the glass accordingly. But
the odour of camphor was unmistakable. In the universal decay this
volatile substance had chanced to survive, perhaps through many
thousands of centuries. It reminded me of a sepia painting I had once
seen done from the ink of a fossil Belemnite that must have perished
and become fossilised millions of years ago. I was about to throw it
away, but I remembered that it was inflammable and burnt with a good
bright flame—was, in fact, an excellent candle—and I put it in my
pocket. I found no explosives, however, nor any means of breaking down
the bronze doors. As yet my iron crowbar was the most helpful thing I
had chanced upon. Nevertheless I left that gallery greatly elated.
“I cannot tell you all the story of that long afternoon. It would
require a great effort of memory to recall my explorations in at all
the proper order. I remember a long gallery of rusting stands of arms,
and how I hesitated between my crowbar and a hatchet or a sword. I
could not carry both, however, and my bar of iron promised best against
the bronze gates. There were numbers of guns, pistols, and rifles. The
most were masses of rust, but many were of some new metal, and still
fairly sound. But any cartridges or powder there may once have been had
rotted into dust. One corner I saw was charred and shattered; perhaps,
I thought, by an explosion among the specimens. In another place was a
vast array of idols—Polynesian, Mexican, Grecian, Phœnician, every
country on earth, I should think. And here, yielding to an irresistible
impulse, I wrote my name upon the nose of a steatite monster from South
America that particularly took my fancy.
“As the evening drew on, my interest waned. I went through gallery
after gallery, dusty, silent, often ruinous, the exhibits sometimes
mere heaps of rust and lignite, sometimes fresher. In one place I
suddenly found myself near the model of a tin mine, and then by the
merest accident I discovered, in an air-tight case, two dynamite
cartridges! I shouted ‘Eureka!’ and smashed the case with joy. Then
came a doubt. I hesitated. Then, selecting a little side gallery, I
made my essay. I never felt such a disappointment as I did in waiting
five, ten, fifteen minutes for an explosion that never came. Of course
the things were dummies, as I might have guessed from their presence. I
really believe that had they not been so, I should have rushed off
incontinently and blown Sphinx, bronze doors, and (as it proved) my
chances of finding the Time Machine, all together into non-existence.
“It was after that, I think, that we came to a little open court within
the palace. It was turfed, and had three fruit-trees. So we rested and
refreshed ourselves. Towards sunset I began to consider our position.
Night was creeping upon us, and my inaccessible hiding-place had still
to be found. But that troubled me very little now. I had in my
possession a thing that was, perhaps, the best of all defences against
the Morlocks—I had matches! I had the camphor in my pocket, too, if a
blaze were needed. It seemed to me that the best thing we could do
would be to pass the night in the open, protected by a fire. In the
morning there was the getting of the Time Machine. Towards that, as
yet, I had only my iron mace. But now, with my growing knowledge, I
felt very differently towards those bronze doors. Up to this, I had
refrained from forcing them, largely because of the mystery on the
other side. They had never impressed me as being very strong, and I
hoped to find my bar of iron not altogether inadequate for the work.
XII.
In the Darkness
“We emerged from the Palace while the sun was still in part above the
horizon. I was determined to reach the White Sphinx early the next
morning, and ere the dusk I purposed pushing through the woods that had
stopped me on the previous journey. My plan was to go as far as
possible that night, and then, building a fire, to sleep in the
protection of its glare. Accordingly, as we went along I gathered any
sticks or dried grass I saw, and presently had my arms full of such
litter. Thus loaded, our progress was slower than I had anticipated,
and besides Weena was tired. And I, also, began to suffer from
sleepiness too; so that it was full night before we reached the wood.
Upon the shrubby hill of its edge Weena would have stopped, fearing the
darkness before us; but a singular sense of impending calamity, that
should indeed have served me as a warning, drove me onward. I had been
without sleep for a night and two days, and I was feverish and
irritable. I felt sleep coming upon me, and the Morlocks with it.
“While we hesitated, among the black bushes behind us, and dim against
their blackness, I saw three crouching figures. There was scrub and
long grass all about us, and I did not feel safe from their insidious
approach. The forest, I calculated, was rather less than a mile across.
If we could get through it to the bare hillside, there, as it seemed to
me, was an altogether safer resting-place; I thought that with my
matches and my camphor I could contrive to keep my path illuminated
through the woods. Yet it was evident that if I was to flourish matches
with my hands I should have to abandon my firewood; so, rather
reluctantly, I put it down. And then it came into my head that I would
amaze our friends behind by lighting it. I was to discover the
atrocious folly of this proceeding, but it came to my mind as an
ingenious move for covering our retreat.
“I don’t know if you have ever thought what a rare thing flame must be
in the absence of man and in a temperate climate. The sun’s heat is
rarely strong enough to burn, even when it is focused by dewdrops, as
is sometimes the case in more tropical districts. Lightning may blast
and blacken, but it rarely gives rise to widespread fire. Decaying
vegetation may occasionally smoulder with the heat of its fermentation,
but this rarely results in flame. In this decadence, too, the art of
fire-making had been forgotten on the earth. The red tongues that went
licking up my heap of wood were an altogether new and strange thing to
Weena.
“She wanted to run to it and play with it. I believe she would have
cast herself into it had I not restrained her. But I caught her up, and
in spite of her struggles, plunged boldly before me into the wood. For
a little way the glare of my fire lit the path. Looking back presently,
I could see, through the crowded stems, that from my heap of sticks the
blaze had spread to some bushes adjacent, and a curved line of fire was
creeping up the grass of the hill. I laughed at that, and turned again
to the dark trees before me. It was very black, and Weena clung to me
convulsively, but there was still, as my eyes grew accustomed to the
darkness, sufficient light for me to avoid the stems. Overhead it was
simply black, except where a gap of remote blue sky shone down upon us
here and there. I lit none of my matches because I had no hand free.
Upon my left arm I carried my little one, in my right hand I had my
iron bar.
“For some way I heard nothing but the crackling twigs under my feet,
the faint rustle of the breeze above, and my own breathing and the
throb of the blood-vessels in my ears. Then I seemed to know of a
pattering behind me. I pushed on grimly. The pattering grew more
distinct, and then I caught the same queer sound and voices I had heard
in the Underworld. There were evidently several of the Morlocks, and
they were closing in upon me. Indeed, in another minute I felt a tug at
my coat, then something at my arm. And Weena shivered violently, and
became quite still.
“It was time for a match. But to get one I must put her down. I did so,
and, as I fumbled with my pocket, a struggle began in the darkness
about my knees, perfectly silent on her part and with the same peculiar
cooing sounds from the Morlocks. Soft little hands, too, were creeping
over my coat and back, touching even my neck. Then the match scratched
and fizzed. I held it flaring, and saw the white backs of the Morlocks
in flight amid the trees. I hastily took a lump of camphor from my
pocket, and prepared to light it as soon as the match should wane. Then
I looked at Weena. She was lying clutching my feet and quite
motionless, with her face to the ground. With a sudden fright I stooped
to her. She seemed scarcely to breathe. I lit the block of camphor and
flung it to the ground, and as it split and flared up and drove back
the Morlocks and the shadows, I knelt down and lifted her. The wood
behind seemed full of the stir and murmur of a great company!
“She seemed to have fainted. I put her carefully upon my shoulder and
rose to push on, and then there came a horrible realisation. In
manœuvring with my matches and Weena, I had turned myself about several
times, and now I had not the faintest idea in what direction lay my
path. For all I knew, I might be facing back towards the Palace of
Green Porcelain. I found myself in a cold sweat. I had to think rapidly
what to do. I determined to build a fire and encamp where we were. I
put Weena, still motionless, down upon a turfy bole, and very hastily,
as my first lump of camphor waned, I began collecting sticks and
leaves. Here and there out of the darkness round me the Morlocks’ eyes
shone like carbuncles.
“The camphor flickered and went out. I lit a match, and as I did so,
two white forms that had been approaching Weena dashed hastily away.
One was so blinded by the light that he came straight for me, and I
felt his bones grind under the blow of my fist. He gave a whoop of
dismay, staggered a little way, and fell down. I lit another piece of
camphor, and went on gathering my bonfire. Presently I noticed how dry
was some of the foliage above me, for since my arrival on the Time
Machine, a matter of a week, no rain had fallen. So, instead of casting
about among the trees for fallen twigs, I began leaping up and dragging
down branches. Very soon I had a choking smoky fire of green wood and
dry sticks, and could economise my camphor. Then I turned to where
Weena lay beside my iron mace. I tried what I could to revive her, but
she lay like one dead. I could not even satisfy myself whether or not
she breathed.
“Now, the smoke of the fire beat over towards me, and it must have made
me heavy of a sudden. Moreover, the vapour of camphor was in the air.
My fire would not need replenishing for an hour or so. I felt very
weary after my exertion, and sat down. The wood, too, was full of a
slumbrous murmur that I did not understand. I seemed just to nod and
open my eyes. But all was dark, and the Morlocks had their hands upon
me. Flinging off their clinging fingers I hastily felt in my pocket for
the match-box, and—it had gone! Then they gripped and closed with me
again. In a moment I knew what had happened. I had slept, and my fire
had gone out, and the bitterness of death came over my soul. The forest
seemed full of the smell of burning wood. I was caught by the neck, by
the hair, by the arms, and pulled down. It was indescribably horrible
in the darkness to feel all these soft creatures heaped upon me. I felt
as if I was in a monstrous spider’s web. I was overpowered, and went
down. I felt little teeth nipping at my neck. I rolled over, and as I
did so my hand came against my iron lever. It gave me strength. I
struggled up, shaking the human rats from me, and, holding the bar
short, I thrust where I judged their faces might be. I could feel the
succulent giving of flesh and bone under my blows, and for a moment I
was free.
“The strange exultation that so often seems to accompany hard fighting
came upon me. I knew that both I and Weena were lost, but I determined
to make the Morlocks pay for their meat. I stood with my back to a
tree, swinging the iron bar before me. The whole wood was full of the
stir and cries of them. A minute passed. Their voices seemed to rise to
a higher pitch of excitement, and their movements grew faster. Yet none
came within reach. I stood glaring at the blackness. Then suddenly came
hope. What if the Morlocks were afraid? And close on the heels of that
came a strange thing. The darkness seemed to grow luminous. Very dimly
I began to see the Morlocks about me—three battered at my feet—and then
I recognised, with incredulous surprise, that the others were running,
in an incessant stream, as it seemed, from behind me, and away through
the wood in front. And their backs seemed no longer white, but reddish.
As I stood agape, I saw a little red spark go drifting across a gap of
starlight between the branches, and vanish. And at that I understood
the smell of burning wood, the slumbrous murmur that was growing now
into a gusty roar, the red glow, and the Morlocks’ flight.