black pillars of the nearer trees, the flames of the burning forest. It
was my first fire coming after me. With that I looked for Weena, but
she was gone. The hissing and crackling behind me, the explosive thud
as each fresh tree burst into flame, left little time for reflection.
My iron bar still gripped, I followed in the Morlocks’ path. It was a
close race. Once the flames crept forward so swiftly on my right as I
ran that I was outflanked and had to strike off to the left. But at
last I emerged upon a small open space, and as I did so, a Morlock came
blundering towards me, and past me, and went on straight into the fire!
“And now I was to see the most weird and horrible thing, I think, of
all that I beheld in that future age. This whole space was as bright as
day with the reflection of the fire. In the centre was a hillock or
tumulus, surmounted by a scorched hawthorn. Beyond this was another arm
of the burning forest, with yellow tongues already writhing from it,
completely encircling the space with a fence of fire. Upon the hillside
were some thirty or forty Morlocks, dazzled by the light and heat, and
blundering hither and thither against each other in their bewilderment.
At first I did not realise their blindness, and struck furiously at
them with my bar, in a frenzy of fear, as they approached me, killing
one and crippling several more. But when I had watched the gestures of
one of them groping under the hawthorn against the red sky, and heard
their moans, I was assured of their absolute helplessness and misery in
the glare, and I struck no more of them.
“Yet every now and then one would come straight towards me, setting
loose a quivering horror that made me quick to elude him. At one time
the flames died down somewhat, and I feared the foul creatures would
presently be able to see me. I was thinking of beginning the fight by
killing some of them before this should happen; but the fire burst out
again brightly, and I stayed my hand. I walked about the hill among
them and avoided them, looking for some trace of Weena. But Weena was
gone.
“At last I sat down on the summit of the hillock, and watched this
strange incredible company of blind things groping to and fro, and
making uncanny noises to each other, as the glare of the fire beat on
them. The coiling uprush of smoke streamed across the sky, and through
the rare tatters of that red canopy, remote as though they belonged to
another universe, shone the little stars. Two or three Morlocks came
blundering into me, and I drove them off with blows of my fists,
trembling as I did so.
“For the most part of that night I was persuaded it was a nightmare. I
bit myself and screamed in a passionate desire to awake. I beat the
ground with my hands, and got up and sat down again, and wandered here
and there, and again sat down. Then I would fall to rubbing my eyes and
calling upon God to let me awake. Thrice I saw Morlocks put their heads
down in a kind of agony and rush into the flames. But, at last, above
the subsiding red of the fire, above the streaming masses of black
smoke and the whitening and blackening tree stumps, and the diminishing
numbers of these dim creatures, came the white light of the day.
“I searched again for traces of Weena, but there were none. It was
plain that they had left her poor little body in the forest. I cannot
describe how it relieved me to think that it had escaped the awful fate
to which it seemed destined. As I thought of that, I was almost moved
to begin a massacre of the helpless abominations about me, but I
contained myself. The hillock, as I have said, was a kind of island in
the forest. From its summit I could now make out through a haze of
smoke the Palace of Green Porcelain, and from that I could get my
bearings for the White Sphinx. And so, leaving the remnant of these
damned souls still going hither and thither and moaning, as the day
grew clearer, I tied some grass about my feet and limped on across
smoking ashes and among black stems that still pulsated internally with
fire, towards the hiding-place of the Time Machine. I walked slowly,
for I was almost exhausted, as well as lame, and I felt the intensest
wretchedness for the horrible death of little Weena. It seemed an
overwhelming calamity. Now, in this old familiar room, it is more like
the sorrow of a dream than an actual loss. But that morning it left me
absolutely lonely again—terribly alone. I began to think of this house
of mine, of this fireside, of some of you, and with such thoughts came
a longing that was pain.
“But, as I walked over the smoking ashes under the bright morning sky,
I made a discovery. In my trouser pocket were still some loose matches.
The box must have leaked before it was lost.
XIII.
The Trap of the White Sphinx
“About eight or nine in the morning I came to the same seat of yellow
metal from which I had viewed the world upon the evening of my arrival.
I thought of my hasty conclusions upon that evening and could not
refrain from laughing bitterly at my confidence. Here was the same
beautiful scene, the same abundant foliage, the same splendid palaces
and magnificent ruins, the same silver river running between its
fertile banks. The gay robes of the beautiful people moved hither and
thither among the trees. Some were bathing in exactly the place where I
had saved Weena, and that suddenly gave me a keen stab of pain. And
like blots upon the landscape rose the cupolas above the ways to the
Underworld. I understood now what all the beauty of the Overworld
people covered. Very pleasant was their day, as pleasant as the day of
the cattle in the field. Like the cattle, they knew of no enemies and
provided against no needs. And their end was the same.
“I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had
been. It had committed suicide. It had set itself steadfastly towards
comfort and ease, a balanced society with security and permanency as
its watchword, it had attained its hopes—to come to this at last. Once,
life and property must have reached almost absolute safety. The rich
had been assured of his wealth and comfort, the toiler assured of his
life and work. No doubt in that perfect world there had been no
unemployed problem, no social question left unsolved. And a great quiet
had followed.
“It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is
the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly
in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never
appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is
no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only
those animals partake of intelligence that have to meet a huge variety
of needs and dangers.
“So, as I see it, the Upperworld man had drifted towards his feeble
prettiness, and the Underworld to mere mechanical industry. But that
perfect state had lacked one thing even for mechanical
perfection—absolute permanency. Apparently as time went on, the feeding
of an Underworld, however it was effected, had become disjointed.
Mother Necessity, who had been staved off for a few thousand years,
came back again, and she began below. The Underworld being in contact
with machinery, which, however perfect, still needs some little thought
outside habit, had probably retained perforce rather more initiative,
if less of every other human character, than the Upper. And when other
meat failed them, they turned to what old habit had hitherto forbidden.
So I say I saw it in my last view of the world of Eight Hundred and Two
Thousand Seven Hundred and One. It may be as wrong an explanation as
mortal wit could invent. It is how the thing shaped itself to me, and
as that I give it to you.
“After the fatigues, excitements, and terrors of the past days, and in
spite of my grief, this seat and the tranquil view and the warm
sunlight were very pleasant. I was very tired and sleepy, and soon my
theorising passed into dozing. Catching myself at that, I took my own
hint, and spreading myself out upon the turf I had a long and
refreshing sleep.
“I awoke a little before sunsetting. I now felt safe against being
caught napping by the Morlocks, and, stretching myself, I came on down
the hill towards the White Sphinx. I had my crowbar in one hand, and
the other hand played with the matches in my pocket.
“And now came a most unexpected thing. As I approached the pedestal of
the sphinx I found the bronze valves were open. They had slid down into
grooves.
“At that I stopped short before them, hesitating to enter.
“Within was a small apartment, and on a raised place in the corner of
this was the Time Machine. I had the small levers in my pocket. So
here, after all my elaborate preparations for the siege of the White
Sphinx, was a meek surrender. I threw my iron bar away, almost sorry
not to use it.
“A sudden thought came into my head as I stooped towards the portal.
For once, at least, I grasped the mental operations of the Morlocks.
Suppressing a strong inclination to laugh, I stepped through the bronze
frame and up to the Time Machine. I was surprised to find it had been
carefully oiled and cleaned. I have suspected since that the Morlocks
had even partially taken it to pieces while trying in their dim way to
grasp its purpose.
“Now as I stood and examined it, finding a pleasure in the mere touch
of the contrivance, the thing I had expected happened. The bronze
panels suddenly slid up and struck the frame with a clang. I was in the
dark—trapped. So the Morlocks thought. At that I chuckled gleefully.
“I could already hear their murmuring laughter as they came towards me.
Very calmly I tried to strike the match. I had only to fix on the
levers and depart then like a ghost. But I had overlooked one little
thing. The matches were of that abominable kind that light only on the
box.
“You may imagine how all my calm vanished. The little brutes were close
upon me. One touched me. I made a sweeping blow in the dark at them
with the levers, and began to scramble into the saddle of the machine.
Then came one hand upon me and then another. Then I had simply to fight
against their persistent fingers for my levers, and at the same time
feel for the studs over which these fitted. One, indeed, they almost
got away from me. As it slipped from my hand, I had to butt in the dark
with my head—I could hear the Morlock’s skull ring—to recover it. It
was a nearer thing than the fight in the forest, I think, this last
scramble.
“But at last the lever was fixed and pulled over. The clinging hands
slipped from me. The darkness presently fell from my eyes. I found
myself in the same grey light and tumult I have already described.
XIV.
The Further Vision
“I have already told you of the sickness and confusion that comes with
time travelling. And this time I was not seated properly in the saddle,
but sideways and in an unstable fashion. For an indefinite time I clung
to the machine as it swayed and vibrated, quite unheeding how I went,
and when I brought myself to look at the dials again I was amazed to
find where I had arrived. One dial records days, and another thousands
of days, another millions of days, and another thousands of millions.
Now, instead of reversing the levers, I had pulled them over so as to
go forward with them, and when I came to look at these indicators I
found that the thousands hand was sweeping round as fast as the seconds
hand of a watch—into futurity.
“As I drove on, a peculiar change crept over the appearance of things.
The palpitating greyness grew darker; then—though I was still
travelling with prodigious velocity—the blinking succession of day and
night, which was usually indicative of a slower pace, returned, and
grew more and more marked. This puzzled me very much at first. The
alternations of night and day grew slower and slower, and so did the
passage of the sun across the sky, until they seemed to stretch through
centuries. At last a steady twilight brooded over the earth, a twilight
only broken now and then when a comet glared across the darkling sky.
The band of light that had indicated the sun had long since
disappeared; for the sun had ceased to set—it simply rose and fell in
the west, and grew ever broader and more red. All trace of the moon had
vanished. The circling of the stars, growing slower and slower, had
given place to creeping points of light. At last, some time before I
stopped, the sun, red and very large, halted motionless upon the
horizon, a vast dome glowing with a dull heat, and now and then
suffering a momentary extinction. At one time it had for a little while
glowed more brilliantly again, but it speedily reverted to its sullen
red heat. I perceived by this slowing down of its rising and setting
that the work of the tidal drag was done. The earth had come to rest
with one face to the sun, even as in our own time the moon faces the
earth. Very cautiously, for I remembered my former headlong fall, I
began to reverse my motion. Slower and slower went the circling hands
until the thousands one seemed motionless and the daily one was no
longer a mere mist upon its scale. Still slower, until the dim outlines
of a desolate beach grew visible.
“I stopped very gently and sat upon the Time Machine, looking round.
The sky was no longer blue. North-eastward it was inky black, and out
of the blackness shone brightly and steadily the pale white stars.
Overhead it was a deep Indian red and starless, and south-eastward it
grew brighter to a glowing scarlet where, cut by the horizon, lay the
huge hull of the sun, red and motionless. The rocks about me were of a
harsh reddish colour, and all the trace of life that I could see at
first was the intensely green vegetation that covered every projecting
point on their south-eastern face. It was the same rich green that one
sees on forest moss or on the lichen in caves: plants which like these
grow in a perpetual twilight.
“The machine was standing on a sloping beach. The sea stretched away to
the south-west, to rise into a sharp bright horizon against the wan
sky. There were no breakers and no waves, for not a breath of wind was
stirring. Only a slight oily swell rose and fell like a gentle
breathing, and showed that the eternal sea was still moving and living.
And along the margin where the water sometimes broke was a thick
incrustation of salt—pink under the lurid sky. There was a sense of
oppression in my head, and I noticed that I was breathing very fast.
The sensation reminded me of my only experience of mountaineering, and
from that I judged the air to be more rarefied than it is now.
“Far away up the desolate slope I heard a harsh scream, and saw a thing
like a huge white butterfly go slanting and fluttering up into the sky
and, circling, disappear over some low hillocks beyond. The sound of
its voice was so dismal that I shivered and seated myself more firmly
upon the machine. Looking round me again, I saw that, quite near, what
I had taken to be a reddish mass of rock was moving slowly towards me.
Then I saw the thing was really a monstrous crab-like creature. Can you
imagine a crab as large as yonder table, with its many legs moving
slowly and uncertainly, its big claws swaying, its long antennæ, like
carters’ whips, waving and feeling, and its stalked eyes gleaming at
you on either side of its metallic front? Its back was corrugated and
ornamented with ungainly bosses, and a greenish incrustation blotched
it here and there. I could see the many palps of its complicated mouth
flickering and feeling as it moved.
“As I stared at this sinister apparition crawling towards me, I felt a
tickling on my cheek as though a fly had lighted there. I tried to
brush it away with my hand, but in a moment it returned, and almost
immediately came another by my ear. I struck at this, and caught
something threadlike. It was drawn swiftly out of my hand. With a
frightful qualm, I turned, and I saw that I had grasped the antenna of
another monster crab that stood just behind me. Its evil eyes were
wriggling on their stalks, its mouth was all alive with appetite, and
its vast ungainly claws, smeared with an algal slime, were descending
upon me. In a moment my hand was on the lever, and I had placed a month
between myself and these monsters. But I was still on the same beach,
and I saw them distinctly now as soon as I stopped. Dozens of them
seemed to be crawling here and there, in the sombre light, among the
foliated sheets of intense green.
“I cannot convey the sense of abominable desolation that hung over the
world. The red eastern sky, the northward blackness, the salt Dead Sea,
the stony beach crawling with these foul, slow-stirring monsters, the
uniform poisonous-looking green of the lichenous plants, the thin air
that hurts one’s lungs: all contributed to an appalling effect. I moved
on a hundred years, and there was the same red sun—a little larger, a
little duller—the same dying sea, the same chill air, and the same
crowd of earthy crustacea creeping in and out among the green weed and
the red rocks. And in the westward sky, I saw a curved pale line like a
vast new moon.
“So I travelled, stopping ever and again, in great strides of a
thousand years or more, drawn on by the mystery of the earth’s fate,
watching with a strange fascination the sun grow larger and duller in
the westward sky, and the life of the old earth ebb away. At last, more
than thirty million years hence, the huge red-hot dome of the sun had
come to obscure nearly a tenth part of the darkling heavens. Then I
stopped once more, for the crawling multitude of crabs had disappeared,
and the red beach, save for its livid green liverworts and lichens,
seemed lifeless. And now it was flecked with white. A bitter cold
assailed me. Rare white flakes ever and again came eddying down. To the
north-eastward, the glare of snow lay under the starlight of the sable
sky, and I could see an undulating crest of hillocks pinkish white.
There were fringes of ice along the sea margin, with drifting masses
farther out; but the main expanse of that salt ocean, all bloody under
the eternal sunset, was still unfrozen.
“I looked about me to see if any traces of animal life remained. A
certain indefinable apprehension still kept me in the saddle of the
machine. But I saw nothing moving, in earth or sky or sea. The green
slime on the rocks alone testified that life was not extinct. A shallow
sandbank had appeared in the sea and the water had receded from the
beach. I fancied I saw some black object flopping about upon this bank,
but it became motionless as I looked at it, and I judged that my eye
had been deceived, and that the black object was merely a rock. The
stars in the sky were intensely bright and seemed to me to twinkle very
little.
“Suddenly I noticed that the circular westward outline of the sun had
changed; that a concavity, a bay, had appeared in the curve. I saw this
grow larger. For a minute perhaps I stared aghast at this blackness
that was creeping over the day, and then I realised that an eclipse was
beginning. Either the moon or the planet Mercury was passing across the
sun’s disk. Naturally, at first I took it to be the moon, but there is
much to incline me to believe that what I really saw was the transit of
an inner planet passing very near to the earth.
“The darkness grew apace; a cold wind began to blow in freshening gusts
from the east, and the showering white flakes in the air increased in
number. From the edge of the sea came a ripple and whisper. Beyond
these lifeless sounds the world was silent. Silent? It would be hard to
convey the stillness of it. All the sounds of man, the bleating of
sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects, the stir that makes the
background of our lives—all that was over. As the darkness thickened,
the eddying flakes grew more abundant, dancing before my eyes; and the
cold of the air more intense. At last, one by one, swiftly, one after
the other, the white peaks of the distant hills vanished into
blackness. The breeze rose to a moaning wind. I saw the black central
shadow of the eclipse sweeping towards me. In another moment the pale
stars alone were visible. All else was rayless obscurity. The sky was
absolutely black.
“A horror of this great darkness came on me. The cold, that smote to my
marrow, and the pain I felt in breathing, overcame me. I shivered, and
a deadly nausea seized me. Then like a red-hot bow in the sky appeared
the edge of the sun. I got off the machine to recover myself. I felt
giddy and incapable of facing the return journey. As I stood sick and
confused I saw again the moving thing upon the shoal—there was no
mistake now that it was a moving thing—against the red water of the
sea. It was a round thing, the size of a football perhaps, or, it may
be, bigger, and tentacles trailed down from it; it seemed black against
the weltering blood-red water, and it was hopping fitfully about. Then
I felt I was fainting. But a terrible dread of lying helpless in that
remote and awful twilight sustained me while I clambered upon the
saddle.
XV.
The Time Traveller’s Return
“So I came back. For a long time I must have been insensible upon the
machine. The blinking succession of the days and nights was resumed,
the sun got golden again, the sky blue. I breathed with greater
freedom. The fluctuating contours of the land ebbed and flowed. The
hands spun backward upon the dials. At last I saw again the dim shadows
of houses, the evidences of decadent humanity. These, too, changed and
passed, and others came. Presently, when the million dial was at zero,
I slackened speed. I began to recognise our own pretty and familiar
architecture, the thousands hand ran back to the starting-point, the
night and day flapped slower and slower. Then the old walls of the
laboratory came round me. Very gently, now, I slowed the mechanism
down.
“I saw one little thing that seemed odd to me. I think I have told you
that when I set out, before my velocity became very high, Mrs. Watchett
had walked across the room, travelling, as it seemed to me, like a
rocket. As I returned, I passed again across that minute when she
traversed the laboratory. But now her every motion appeared to be the
exact inversion of her previous ones. The door at the lower end opened,
and she glided quietly up the laboratory, back foremost, and
disappeared behind the door by which she had previously entered. Just
before that I seemed to see Hillyer for a moment; but he passed like a
flash.
“Then I stopped the machine, and saw about me again the old familiar
laboratory, my tools, my appliances just as I had left them. I got off
the thing very shakily, and sat down upon my bench. For several minutes
I trembled violently. Then I became calmer. Around me was my old
workshop again, exactly as it had been. I might have slept there, and
the whole thing have been a dream.
“And yet, not exactly! The thing had started from the south-east corner
of the laboratory. It had come to rest again in the north-west, against
the wall where you saw it. That gives you the exact distance from my
little lawn to the pedestal of the White Sphinx, into which the
Morlocks had carried my machine.
“For a time my brain went stagnant. Presently I got up and came through
the passage here, limping, because my heel was still painful, and
feeling sorely begrimed. I saw the _Pall Mall Gazette_ on the table by
the door. I found the date was indeed today, and looking at the
timepiece, saw the hour was almost eight o’clock. I heard your voices
and the clatter of plates. I hesitated—I felt so sick and weak. Then I
sniffed good wholesome meat, and opened the door on you. You know the
rest. I washed, and dined, and now I am telling you the story.
XVI.
After the Story
“I know,” he said, after a pause, “that all this will be absolutely
incredible to you, but to me the one incredible thing is that I am here
tonight in this old familiar room looking into your friendly faces and
telling you these strange adventures.” He looked at the Medical Man.
“No. I cannot expect you to believe it. Take it as a lie—or a prophecy.
Say I dreamed it in the workshop. Consider I have been speculating upon
the destinies of our race, until I have hatched this fiction. Treat my
assertion of its truth as a mere stroke of art to enhance its interest.
And taking it as a story, what do you think of it?”