`You must follow me carefully. I shall have to
controvert one or two ideas that are almost
universally accepted. The geometry, for
instance, they taught you at school is
founded on a misconception.'

`Is not that rather a large thing to expect us to
begin upon?' said Filby, an argumentative
person with red hair.

`I do not mean to ask you to accept anything
without reasonable ground for it. You will
soon admit as much as I need from you. You
know of course that a mathematical line, a
line of thickness nil, has no real existence.
They taught you that? Neither has a
mathematical plane. These things are mere
abstractions.'

`That is all right,' said the Psychologist.

`Nor, having only length, breadth, and
thickness, can a cube have a real
existence.'

`There I object,' said Filby. `Of course a
solid body may exist. All real things--'

`So most people think. But wait a moment.
Can an instantaneous cube exist?'

`Don't follow you,' said Filby.

`Can a cube that does not last for any time
at all, have a real existence?'

-1-

asking why three dimensions particularly--
why not another direction at right angles to
the other three?--and have even tried to
construct a Four-Dimensional geometry.
Professor Simon Newcomb was
expounding this to the New York
Mathematical Society only a month or so
ago. You know how on a flat surface, which
has only two dimensions, we can represent
a figure of a three-dimensional solid, and
similarly they think that by models of three
dimensions they could represent one of
four--if they could master the perspective
of the thing. See?'

`I think so,' murmured the Provincial Mayor;
and, knitting his brows, he lapsed into an
introspective state, his lips moving as one
who repeats mystic words. `Yes, I think I see
it now,' he said after some time,
brightening in a quite transitory manner.

`Well, I do not mind telling you I have been at
work upon this geometry of Four
Dimensions for some time. Some of my
results are curious. For instance, here is a
portrait of a man at eight years old, another
at fifteen, another at seventeen, another at
twenty-three, and so on. All these are
evidently sections, as it were, Three-
Dimensional representations of his Four-
Dimensioned being, which is a fixed and
unalterable thing.

`Scientific people,' proceeded the Time
Traveller, after the pause required for the
proper assimilation of this, `know very well
that Time is only a kind of Space. Here is a
popular scientific diagram, a weather
record. This line I trace with my finger shows
the movement of the barometer. Yesterday
it was so high, yesterday night it fell, then
this morning it rose again, and so gently
upward to here. Surely the mercury did not
trace this line in any of the dimensions of
Space generally recognized? But certainly it

-2-

surface.'

`But the great difficulty is this,' interrupted
the Psychologist. `You can move about in all
directions of Space, but you cannot move
about in Time.'

`That is the germ of my great discovery. But
you are wrong to say that we cannot move
about in Time. For instance, if I am recalling
an incident very vividly I go back to the
instant of its occurrence: I become absent-
minded, as you say. I jump back for a
moment. Of course we have no means of
staying back for any length of time, any
more than a savage or an animal has of
staying six feet above the ground. But a
civilised man is better off than the savage in
this respect. He can go up against
gravitation in a balloon, and why should he
not hope that ultimately he may be able to
stop or accelerate his drift along the Time-
Dimension, or even turn about and travel the
other way?'

`Oh, this,' began Filby, `is all--'

`Why not?' said the Time Traveller.

`It's against reason,' said Filby.

`What reason?' said the Time Traveller.

`You can show black is white by argument,'
said Filby, `but you will never convince me.'

`Possibly not,' said the Time Traveller. `But
now you begin to see the object of my
investigations into the geometry of Four
Dimensions. Long ago I had a vague inkling
of a machine--'

`To travel through Time!' exclaimed the
Very Young Man.

`That shall travel indifferently in any direction

-3-

`Let's see your experiment anyhow,' said
the Psychologist, `though it's all humbug,
you know.'

The Time Traveller smiled round at us.
Then, still smiling faintly, and with his hands
deep in his trousers pockets, he walked
slowly out of the room, and we heard his
slippers shuffling down the long passage to
his laboratory.

The Psychologist looked at us. `I wonder
what he's got?'

`Some sleight-of-hand trick or other,' said
the Medical Man, and Filby tried to tell us
about a 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 be explicit, for this that
follows--unless his explanation is to be
accepted--is an absolutely unaccountable
thing. He took one of the small octagonal
tables that were scattered about the room,
and set it in front of the fire, with two legs on
the hearthrug. On this table he placed the
mechanism. Then he drew up a chair, and
sat down. The only other object on the table
was a small shaded lamp, the bright light of
which fell full upon the model. There were
also perhaps a dozen candles about, two in
brass candlesticks upon the mantel and
several in sconces, so that the room was
brilliantly illuminated. I sat in a low arm-chair
nearest the fire, and I drew this forward so
as to be almost between the Time Traveller
and the fireplace. Filby sat behind him,
looking over his shoulder. The Medical Man
and the Provincial Mayor watched him in

-4-

me, but changed his mind. Then the Time
Traveller put forth his finger towards the
lever. `No,' he said suddenly. `Lend me your
hand.' And turning to the Psychologist, he
took that individual's hand in his own and
told him to put out his forefinger. So that it
was the Psychologist himself who sent forth
the model Time Machine on its interminable
voyage. We all saw the lever turn. I am
absolutely certain there was no trickery.
There was a breath of wind, and the lamp
flame jumped. One of the candles on the
mantel was blown out, and the little machine
suddenly swung round, became indistinct,
was seen as a ghost for a second perhaps,
as an eddy of faintly glittering brass and
ivory; and it was gone--vanished! Save for
the lamp the table was bare.

Every one was silent for a minute. Then
Filby said he was damned.

The Psychologist recovered from his
stupor, and suddenly looked under the
table. At that the Time Traveller laughed
cheerfully. `Well?' he said, with a
reminiscence of the Psychologist. Then,
getting up, he went to the tobacco jar on the
mantel, and with his back to us began to fill
his pipe.

We stared at each other. `Look here,' said
the Medical Man, `are you in earnest about
this? Do you seriously believe that that
machine has travelled into time?'

`Certainly,' said the Time Traveller,
stooping to light a spill at the fire. Then he
turned, lighting his pipe, to look at the
Psychologist's face. (The Psychologist, to
show that he was not unhinged, helped
himself to a cigar and tried to light it uncut.)
`What is more, I have a big machine nearly
finished in there'--he indicated the
laboratory--`and when that is put together I
mean to have a journey on my own

-5-

one-fiftieth or one-hundredth of what it
would make if it were not travelling in time.
That's plain enough.' He passed his hand
through the space in which the machine had
been. `You see?' he said, laughing.

We sat and stared at the vacant table for a
minute or so. Then the Time Traveller asked
us what we thought of it all.

`It sounds plausible enough 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 Time Traveller. And
therewith, taking the lamp in his hand, he
led the way down the long, draughty corridor
to his laboratory. I remember vividly the
flickering light, his queer, broad head in
silhouette, the dance of the shadows, how
we all followed him, puzzled but
incredulous, and how there in the laboratory
we beheld a larger edition of the little
mechanism which we had seen vanish from
before our eyes. Parts were of nickel, parts
of ivory, parts had certainly been filed or
sawn out of rock crystal. The thing was
generally complete, but the twisted
crystalline bars lay unfinished upon the
bench beside some sheets of drawings,
and I took one up for a better look at it.
Quartz it seemed to be.

`Look here,' said the Medical Man, `are you
perfectly serious? Or is this a trick--like that
ghost you showed us last Christmas?'

`Upon that machine,' said the Time
Traveller, holding the lamp aloft, `I intend to
explore time. Is that plain? I was never more
serious in my life.'

None of us quite knew how to take it.

I caught Filby's eye over the shoulder of the

-6-

Time Traveller's most constant guests--
and, arriving late, found four or five men
already assembled in his drawing-room.
The Medical Man was standing before the
fire with a sheet of paper in one hand and
his watch in the other. I looked round for the
Time Traveller, and--`It's half-past seven
now,' said the Medical Man. `I suppose
we'd better have dinner?'

`Where's--?' said I, naming our host.

`You've just come? It's rather odd. He's
unavoidably detained. He asks me in this
note to lead off with dinner at seven if he's
not back. Says he'll explain when he
comes.'

`It seems a pity to let the dinner spoil,' said
the Editor of a well-known daily paper; and
thereupon the Doctor rang the bell.

The Psychologist was the only person
besides the Doctor and myself who had
attended the previous dinner. The other men
were Blank, the Editor aforementioned, a
certain journalist, and another--a quiet, shy
man with a beard--whom I didn't know, and
who, as far as my observation went, never
opened his mouth all the evening. There
was some speculation at the dinner-table
about the Time Traveller's absence, and I
suggested time travelling, in a half-jocular
spirit. The Editor wanted that explained to
him, and the Psychologist volunteered a
wooden account of the `ingenious paradox
and trick' we had witnessed that day week.
He was in the midst of his exposition when
the door from the corridor opened slowly
and without noise. I was facing the door,
and saw it first. `Hallo!' I said. `At last!' And
the door opened wider, and the Time
Traveller stood before us. I gave a cry of
surprise. `Good heavens! man, what's the
matter?' cried the Medical Man, who saw
him next. And the whole tableful turned

-7-

He put down his glass, and walked towards
the staircase door. Again I remarked his
lameness and the soft padding sound of his
footfall, and standing up in my place, I saw
his feet as he went out. He had nothing on
them but a pair of tattered blood-stained
socks. Then the door closed upon him. I had
half a mind to follow, till I remembered how
he detested any fuss about himself. For a
minute, perhaps, my mind was wool-
gathering. Then, `Remarkable Behaviour of
an Eminent Scientist,' I heard the Editor
say, thinking (after his wont) in head-lines.
And this brought my attention back to the
bright dinner-table.

`What's the game?' said the Journalist. `Has
he been doing the Amateur Cadger? I don't
follow.' I met the eye of the Psychologist,
and read my own interpretation in his face. I
thought of the Time Traveller limping
painfully upstairs. I don't think any one else
had noticed his lameness.

The first to recover completely from this
surprise was the Medical Man, who rang
the bell--the Time Traveller hated to have
servants waiting at dinner--for a hot plate.
At that the Editor turned to his knife and fork
with a grunt, and the Silent Man followed
suit. The dinner was resumed.
Conversation was exclamatory for a little
while, with gaps of wonderment; and then
the Editor got fervent in his curiosity. `Does
our friend eke out his modest income with a
crossing? or has he his Nebuchadnezzar
phases?' he inquired. `I feel assured it's
this business of the Time Machine,' I said,
and took up the Psychologist's account of
our previous meeting. The new guests were
frankly incredulous. The Editor raised
objections. `What was this time travelling? A
man couldn't cover himself with dust by
rolling in a paradox, could he?' And then, as
the idea came home to him, he resorted to
caricature. Hadn't they any clothes-brushes

-8-

own part, sudden questions kept on rising
to my lips, and I dare say it was the same
with the others. The Journalist tried to
relieve the tension by telling anecdotes of
Hettie Potter. The Time Traveller devoted
his attention to his dinner, and displayed the
appetite of a tramp. The Medical Man
smoked a cigarette, and watched the Time
Traveller through his eyelashes. The Silent
Man seemed even more clumsy than usual,
and drank champagne with regularity and
determination out of sheer nervousness. At
last the Time Traveller pushed his plate
away, and looked round us. `I suppose I
must 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, if you like, but you must
refrain from interruptions. I want to tell it.
Badly. Most of it will sound like lying. So be
it! It's true--every word of it, all the same. I
was in my laboratory at four o'clock, and
since then...I've lived eight days...such days
as no human being ever lived before! I'm
nearly worn out, but I shan't sleep till I've told
this thing over to you. Then I shall go to bed.
But no interruptions! Is it agreed?'

`Agreed,' said the Editor, and the rest of us
echoed `Agreed.' And with that the Time

-9-

the second. I seemed to reel; I felt a
nightmare sensation of falling; and, looking
round, I saw the laboratory exactly as
before. Had anything happened? For a
moment I suspected that my intellect had
tricked me. Then I noted the clock. A
moment before, as it seemed, it had stood
at a minute or so past ten; now it was nearly
half-past three!

`I drew a breath, set my teeth, gripped the
starting lever with both hands, and went off
with a thud. The laboratory got hazy and
went dark. Mrs. Watchett came in and
walked, apparently without seeing me,
towards the garden door. I suppose it took
her a minute or so to traverse the place, but
to me she seemed to shoot across the room
like a rocket. I pressed the lever over to its
extreme position. The night came like the
turning out of a lamp, and in another
moment came 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 still. An eddying murmur filled my
ears, and a strange, dumb confusedness
descended on my mind.

`I am afraid I cannot convey the peculiar
sensations of time travelling. They are
excessively unpleasant. There is a feeling
exactly like that one has upon a switchback-
-of a helpless headlong motion! I felt the
same horrible anticipation, too, of an
imminent smash. As I put on pace, night
followed day like the flapping of a black
wing. The dim suggestion of the laboratory
seemed presently to fall away from me, and
I saw the sun hopping swiftly across the sky,
leaping it every minute, and every minute
marking a day. I supposed the laboratory
had been destroyed and I had come into the
open air. I had a dim impression of
scaffolding, but I was already going too fast
to be conscious of any moving things. The

-10-

me, I flung myself into futurity. At first I
scarce thought of stopping, scarce thought
of anything but these new sensations. But
presently a fresh series of impressions
grew up in my mind--a certain curiosity and
therewith a certain dread--until at last they
took complete possession of me. What
strange developments of humanity, what
wonderful advances upon our rudimentary
civilisation, I thought, might not appear
when I came to look nearly into the dim
elusive world that raced and fluctuated
before my eyes! I saw great and splendid
architecture rising about me, more massive
than any buildings of our own time, and yet,
as it seemed, built of glimmer and mist. I
saw a richer green flow up the hill-side, and
remain there, without any wintry
intermission. Even through the veil of my
confusion the earth seemed very fair. And
so my mind came round to the business of
stopping,

`The peculiar risk lay in the possibility of my
finding some substance in the space which
I, or the machine, occupied. So long as I
travelled at a high velocity through time, this
scarcely mattered; I was, so to speak,
attenuated--was slipping like a vapour
through the interstices of intervening
substances! But to come to a stop involved
the jamming of myself, molecule by
molecule, into whatever lay in my way;
meant bringing my atoms into such intimate
contact with those of the obstacle that a
profound chemical reaction--possibly a
far-reaching explosion--would result, and
blow myself and my apparatus out of all
possible dimensions--into the Unknown.
This possibility had occurred to me again
and again while I was making the machine;
but then I had cheerfully accepted it as an
unavoidable risk--one of the risks a man
has got to take! Now the risk was inevitable,
I no longer saw it in the same cheerful light.
The fact is that insensibly, the absolute

-11-

It chanced that the face was towards me;
the sightless eyes seemed to watch me;
there was the faint shadow of a smile on the
lips. It was greatly weather-worn, and that
imparted an unpleasant suggestion of
disease. I stood looking at it for a little
space--half a minute, perhaps, or half an
hour. It seemed to advance and to recede
as the hail drove before it denser or thinner.
At last I tore my eyes from it for a moment
and saw that the hail curtain had worn
threadbare, and that the sky was lightening
with the promise of the sun.

`I looked up again at the crouching white
shape, and the full temerity of my voyage
came suddenly upon me. What might
appear when that hazy curtain was
altogether withdrawn? What might not have
happened to men? What if cruelty had grown
into a common passion? What if in this
interval the race had lost its manliness and
had developed into something inhuman,
unsympathetic, and overwhelmingly
powerful? I might seem some old-world
savage animal, only the more dreadful and
disgusting for our common likeness--a foul
creature to be incontinently slain.

`Already I saw other vast shapes--huge
buildings with intricate parapets and tall
columns, with a wooded hillside dimly
creeping in upon me through the lessening
storm. I was seized with a panic fear. I
turned frantically to the Time Machine, and
strove hard to readjust it. As I did so the
shafts of the sun smote through the
thunderstorm. The grey downpour was
swept aside and vanished like the trailing
garments of a ghost. Above me, in the
intense blue of the summer sky, some faint
brown shreds of cloud whirled into
nothingness. The great buildings about me
stood out clear and distinct, shining with the
wet of the thunderstorm, and picked out in
white by the unmelted hailstones piled along

-12-

`In another moment we were standing face
to face, I and this fragile thing out of futurity.
He came straight up to me and laughed into
my eyes. The absence from his bearing of
any sign of fear struck me at once. Then he
turned to the two others who were following
him and spoke to them in a strange and very
sweet and liquid tongue.

`There were others coming, and presently a
little group of perhaps eight or ten of these
exquisite creatures were about me. One of
them addressed me. It came into my head,
oddly enough, that my voice was too harsh
and deep for them. So I shook my head,
and, pointing to my ears, shook it again. He
came a step forward, hesitated, and then
touched my hand. Then I felt other soft little
tentacles upon my back and shoulders.
They wanted to make sure I was real. There
was nothing in this at all alarming. Indeed,
there was something in these pretty little
people that inspired confidence--a
graceful gentleness, a certain childlike
ease. And besides, they looked so frail that
I could fancy myself flinging the whole dozen
of them about like 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 unscrewed the little levers that
would set it in motion, and put these in my
pocket. Then I turned again to see what I
could do in the way of communication.

`And then, looking more nearly into their
features, I saw some further peculiarities in
their Dresden china type of prettiness. Their
hair, which was uniformly curly, came to a
sharp end at the neck and cheek; there was
not the faintest suggestion of it on the face,
and their ears were singularly minute. The
mouths were small, with bright red, rather
thin lips, and the little chins ran to a point.

-13-

laughingly flinging them upon me until I was
almost smothered with blossom. You who
have never seen the like can scarcely
imagine what delicate and wonderful
flowers countless years of culture had
created. Then someone suggested that
their plaything should be exhibited in the
nearest building, and so I was led past the
sphinx of white marble, which had seemed
to watch me all the while with a smile at my
astonishment, towards a vast grey edifice
of fretted stone. As I went with them the
memory of my confident anticipations of a
profoundly grave and intellectual posterity
came, with irresistible merriment, to my
mind.

`The building had a huge entry, and was
altogether of colossal dimensions. I was
naturally most occupied with the growing
crowd of little people, and with the big open
portals that yawned before me shadowy
and mysterious. My general impression of
the world I saw over their heads was a
tangled waste of beautiful bushes and
flowers, a long-neglected and yet
weedless garden. I saw a number of tall
spikes of strange white flowers, measuring
a foot perhaps across the spread of the
waxen petals. They grew scattered, as if
wild, among the variegated shrubs, but, as I
say, I did not examine them closely at this
time. The Time Machine was left deserted
on the turf among the rhododendrons.

`The arch of the doorway was richly carved,
but naturally I did not observe the carving
very narrowly, though I fancied I saw
suggestions of old 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 with flowers, and surrounded by

-14-

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 time I was there--a floury thing in a
three-sided husk--was especially good,
and I made it my staple. At first I was
puzzled by all these strange fruits, and by
the strange flowers I saw, but later I began
to perceive their import.

`However, I am telling you of my fruit dinner
in the distant future now. So soon as my
appetite was a little checked, I determined
to make a resolute attempt to learn the
speech of these new men of mine. Clearly
that was the next thing to do. The fruits
seemed a convenient thing to begin upon,
and holding one of these up I began a series
of interrogative sounds and gestures. I had
some considerable difficulty in conveying
my meaning. At first my efforts met with a
stare of surprise or inextinguishable
laughter, but presently a fair-haired little
creature seemed to grasp my intention and
repeated a name. They had to chatter and
explain the business at great length to each
other, and my first attempts to make the
exquisite little sounds of their language
caused an immense amount of amusement.
However, I felt like a schoolmaster amidst
children, and persisted, and presently I had
a score of noun substantives at least at my
command; and then I got to demonstrative
pronouns, and even the verb "to eat." But it

-15-

`As I walked I was watching for every
impression that could possibly help to
explain the condition of ruinous splendour in
which I found the world--for ruinous it was.
A little way up the hill, for instance, was a
great heap of granite, bound together by
masses of aluminium, a vast labyrinth of
precipitous walls and crumpled heaps,
amidst which were thick heaps of very
beautiful pagoda-like plants--nettles
possibly--but wonderfully tinted with brown
about the leaves, and incapable of stinging.
It was evidently the derelict remains of
some vast structure, to what end built I could
not determine. It was here that I was
destined, at a later date, to have a very
strange experience--the first intimation of a
still stranger discovery--but of that I will
speak in its proper place.

`Looking round with a sudden thought, from
a terrace on which I rested for a while, I
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 had not
noticed this before. But everything was so
strange. Now, I saw the fact plainly enough.
In costume, and in all the differences of
texture and bearing that now mark off the
sexes from each other, these people of the
future were alike. And the children seemed

-16-

broad view of our old world under the sunset
of that long day. It was as sweet and fair a
view as I have ever seen. The sun had
already gone below the horizon and the
west was flaming gold, touched with some
horizontal bars of purple and crimson.
Below was the valley of the Thames, in
which the river lay like a band of burnished
steel. I have already spoken of the great
palaces dotted about among the variegated
greenery, some in ruins and some still
occupied. Here and there rose a white or
silvery figure in the waste garden of the
earth, here and there came the sharp
vertical line of some cupola or obelisk.
There were no hedges, no signs of
proprietary rights, no evidences of
agriculture; the whole earth had become a
garden.

`So watching, I began to put my
interpretation upon the things I had seen,
and as it shaped itself to me that evening,
my interpretation was something in this
way. (Afterwards I found I had got only a
half-truth--or only a glimpse of one facet of
the truth.)

`It seemed to me that I had happened upon
humanity upon the wane. The ruddy sunset
set me thinking of the sunset of mankind.
For the first time I began to realize an odd
consequence of the social effort in which
we are at present engaged. And yet, come
to think, it is a logical consequence enough.
Strength is the outcome of need; security
sets a premium on feebleness. The work of
ameliorating the conditions of life--the true
civilising process that makes life more and
more secure--had gone steadily on to a
climax. One triumph of a united humanity
over Nature had followed another. Things
that are now mere dreams had become
projects deliberately put in hand and
carried forward. And the harvest was what I
saw!

-17-

saw mankind housed in splendid shelters,
gloriously clothed, and as yet I had found
them engaged in no toil. There were no
signs of struggle, neither social nor
economical struggle. The shop, the
advertisement, traffic, all that commerce
which constitutes the body of our world,
was gone. It was natural on that golden
evening that I should jump at the idea of a
social paradise. The difficulty of increasing
population had been met, I guessed, and
population had ceased to increase.

`But with this change in condition comes
inevitably adaptations to the change. What,
unless biological science is a mass of
errors, is the cause of human intelligence
and vigour? Hardship and freedom:
conditions under which the active, strong,
and subtle survive and the weaker go to the
wall; conditions that put a premium upon the
loyal alliance of capable men, upon self-
restraint, patience, and decision. And the
institution of the family, and the emotions
that arise therein, the fierce jealousy, the
tenderness for offspring, parental self-
devotion, all found their justification and
support in the imminent dangers of the
young. Now, where are these imminent
dangers? There is a sentiment arising, and
it will grow, against connubial jealousy,
against fierce maternity, against passion of
all sorts; unnecessary things now, and
things that make us uncomfortable, savage
survivals, discords in a refined and pleasant
life.

`I thought of the physical slightness of the
people, their lack of intelligence, and those
big abundant ruins, and it strengthened my
belief in a perfect conquest of Nature. For
after the battle comes Quiet. Humanity had
been strong, energetic, and intelligent, and
had used all its abundant vitality to alter the
conditions under which it lived. And now
came the reaction of the altered conditions.

-18-

mastered the whole secret of these
delicious people. Possibly the checks they
had devised for the increase of population
had succeeded too well, and their numbers
had rather diminished than kept stationary.
That would account for the abandoned
ruins. Very simple was my explanation, and
plausible enough--as most wrong theories
are!

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 of the rising
moon grew brighter. I could see the silver
birch against it. There was the tangle of
rhododendron bushes, black in the pale
light, and there was the little lawn. I looked at
the lawn again. A queer doubt chilled my
complacency. "No," said I stoutly to myself,
"that was not the lawn."

`But it was the lawn. For the white leprous
face of the sphinx was towards it. Can you
imagine what I felt as this conviction came
home to me? But you cannot. The Time
Machine was gone!

`At once, like a lash across the face, came
the possibility of losing my own age, of
being left helpless in this strange new world.
The bare thought of it was an actual physical
sensation. I could feel it grip me at the throat
and stop my breathing. In another moment I
was in a passion of fear and running with

-19-

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 fists until my
knuckles were gashed and bleeding from
the broken twigs. Then, sobbing and raving
in my anguish of mind, I went down to the
great building of stone. The big hall was
dark, silent, and deserted. I slipped on the
uneven floor, and fell over one of the
malachite tables, almost breaking my shin. I
lit a match and went on past the dusty
curtains, of which I have told you.

`There I found a second great hall covered
with cushions, upon which, perhaps, a
score or so of the little people were
sleeping. I have no doubt they found my
second appearance strange enough,
coming suddenly out of the quiet darkness
with inarticulate noises and the splutter and
flare of a match. For they had forgotten
about matches. "Where is my Time
Machine?" I began, bawling like an angry
child, laying hands upon them and shaking
them up together. It must have been very
queer to them. Some laughed, most of them
looked sorely frightened. When I saw them
standing round me, it came into my head
that I was doing as foolish a thing as it was
possible for me to do under the
circumstances, in trying to revive the
sensation of fear. For, reasoning from their
daylight behaviour, I thought that fear must
be forgotten.

`Abruptly, I dashed down the match, and,
knocking one of the people over in my

-20-

scrambled to my feet and looked about me,
wondering where I could bathe. I felt weary,
stiff, and travel-soiled. The freshness of the
morning made me desire an equal
freshness. I had exhausted my emotion.
Indeed, as I went about my business, I found
myself wondering at my intense excitement
overnight. I made a careful examination of
the ground about the little lawn. I wasted
some time in futile questionings, conveyed,
as well as I was able, to such of the little
people as came by. They all failed to
understand my gestures; some were simply
stolid, some thought it was a jest and
laughed at me. I had the hardest task in the
world to keep my hands off their pretty
laughing faces. It was a foolish impulse, but
the devil begotten of fear and blind anger
was ill curbed and still eager to take
advantage of my perplexity. The turf gave
better counsel. I found a groove ripped in it,
about midway between the pedestal of the
sphinx and the marks of my feet where, on
arrival, I had struggled with the overturned
machine. There were other signs of removal
about, with queer narrow footprints like
those I could imagine made by a sloth. This
directed my closer attention to the pedestal.
It was, as I think I have said, of bronze. It
was not a mere block, but highly decorated
with deep framed panels on either side. I
went and rapped at these. The pedestal
was hollow. Examining the panels with care
I found them discontinuous with the frames.
There were no handles or keyholes, but
possibly the panels, if they were doors, as I
supposed, opened from within. One thing
was clear enough to my mind. It took no very
great mental effort to infer that my Time
Machine was inside that pedestal. But how
it got there was a different problem.

`I saw the heads of two orange-clad people
coming through the bushes and under some
blossom-covered apple-trees towards me.
I turned smiling to them and beckoned them

-21-

that sphinx alone. If they mean to take your
machine away, it's little good your wrecking
their bronze panels, and if they don't, you
will get it back as soon as you can ask for it.
To sit among all those unknown things
before a puzzle like that is hopeless. That
way lies monomania. Face this world.
Learn its ways, watch it, be careful of too
hasty guesses at its meaning. In the end you
will find clues to it all." Then suddenly the
humour of the situation came into my mind:
the thought of the years I had spent in study
and toil to get into the future age, and now
my passion of anxiety to get out of it. I had
made myself the most complicated and the
most hopeless trap that ever a man
devised. Although it was at my own
expense, I could not help myself. I laughed
aloud.

`Going through the big palace, it seemed to
me that the little people avoided me. It may
have been my fancy, or it may have had
something to do with my hammering at the
gates of bronze. Yet I felt tolerably sure of
the avoidance. I was careful, however, to
show no concern and to abstain from any
pursuit of them, and in the course of a day or
two things got back to the old footing. I
made what progress I could in the
language, and in addition I pushed my
explorations here and there. Either I missed
some subtle point, or their language was
excessively simple--almost exclusively
composed of concrete substantives and
verbs. There seemed to be few, if any,
abstract terms, or little use of figurative
language. Their sentences were usually
simple and of two words, and I failed to
convey or understand any but the simplest
propositions. I determined to put the thought
of my Time Machine and the mystery of the
bronze doors under the sphinx as much as
possible in a corner of memory, until my
growing knowledge would lead me back to
them in a natural way. Yet a certain feeling,

-22-

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 is a vast amount of
detail about building, and social
arrangements, and so forth. But while such
details are easy enough to obtain when the
whole world is contained in one's
imagination, they are altogether
inaccessible to a real traveller amid such
realities as I found here. Conceive the tale
of London which a negro, fresh from
Central Africa, would take back to his tribe!
What would he know of railway companies,
of social movements, of telephone and
telegraph wires, of the Parcels Delivery
Company, and postal orders and the like?
Yet we, at least, should be willing enough to
explain these things to him! And even of
what he knew, how much could he make his
untravelled friend either apprehend or
believe? Then, think how narrow the gap
between a negro and a white man of our
own times, and how wide the interval
between myself and these of the Golden
Age! I was sensible of much which was
unseen, and which contributed to my
comfort; but save for a general impression
of automatic organisation, I fear I can
convey very little of the difference to your
mind.

`In the matter of sepulture, for instance, I
could see no signs of crematoria nor
anything suggestive of tombs. But it
occurred to me that, possibly, there might
be cemeteries (or crematoria) somewhere
beyond the range of my explorings. This,
again, was a question I deliberately put to
myself, and my curiosity was at first entirely
defeated upon the point. The thing puzzled
me, and I was led to make a further remark,

-23-

moderate swimmer. It will give you an idea,
therefore, of the strange deficiency in these
creatures, when I tell you that none made the
slightest attempt to rescue the weakly crying
little thing which was drowning before their
eyes. When I 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 right
before I left her. I had got to such a low
estimate of her kind that I did not expect any
gratitude from her. In that, however, I was
wrong.

`This happened in the morning. In the
afternoon I met my little woman, as I believe
it was, as I was returning towards my centre
from an exploration, and she received me
with cries of delight and presented me with
a big garland of flowers--evidently made
for me and me alone. The thing took my
imagination. Very possibly I had been
feeling desolate. At any rate I did my best to
display my appreciation of the gift. We were
soon seated together in a little stone arbour,
engaged in conversation, chiefly of smiles.
The creature's friendliness affected me
exactly as a child's might have done. We
passed each other flowers, and she kissed
my hands. I did the same to hers. Then I tried
talk, and found that her name was Weena,
which, though I don't know what it meant,
somehow seemed appropriate enough.
That was the beginning of a queer
friendship which lasted a week, and ended-
-as I will tell you!

`She was exactly like a child. She wanted to
be with me always. She tried to follow me
everywhere, and on my next journey out and
about it went to my heart to tire her down,
and leave her at last, exhausted and calling
after me rather plaintively. But the problems
of the world had to be mastered. I had not, I

-24-

the nights of our acquaintance, including the
last night of all, she slept with her head
pillowed on my arm. But my story slips away
from me as I speak of her. It must have been
the night before her rescue that I was
awakened about dawn. I had been restless,
dreaming most disagreeably that I was
drowned, and that sea-anemones were
feeling over my face with their soft palps. I
woke with a start, and with an odd fancy that
some greyish animal had just rushed out of
the chamber. I tried to get to sleep again,
but I felt restless and uncomfortable. It was
that dim grey hour when things are just
creeping out of darkness, when everything
is colourless and clear cut, and yet unreal. I
got up, and went down into the great hall,
and so out upon the flagstones in front of the
palace. I thought I would make a virtue of
necessity, and see the sunrise.

`The moon was setting, and the dying
moonlight and the first pallor of dawn were
mingled in a ghastly half-light. The bushes
were inky black, the ground a sombre grey,
the sky colourless and cheerless. And up
the hill I thought I could see ghosts. Three
several times, as I scanned the slope, I saw
white figures. Twice I fancied I saw a
solitary white, ape-like creature running
rather quickly up the hill, and once near the
ruins I saw a leash of them carrying some
dark body. They moved hastily. I did not see
what became of them. It seemed that they
vanished among the bushes. The dawn was
still indistinct, you must understand. I was
feeling that chill, uncertain, early-morning
feeling you may have known. I doubted my
eyes.

`As the eastern sky grew brighter, and the
light of the day came on and its vivid
colouring returned upon the world once
more, I scanned the view keenly. But I saw
no vestige of my white figures. They were
mere creatures of the half light. "They must

-25-

change from light to blackness made spots
of colour swim before me. Suddenly I halted
spellbound. A pair of eyes, luminous by
reflection against the daylight without, was
watching me out of the darkness.

`The old instinctive dread of wild beasts
came upon me. I clenched my hands and
steadfastly looked into the glaring eyeballs. I
was afraid to turn. Then the thought of the
absolute security in which humanity
appeared to be living came to my mind. And
then I remembered that strange terror of the
dark. Overcoming my fear to some extent, I
advanced a step and spoke. I will admit that
my voice was harsh and ill-controlled. I put
out my hand and touched something soft. At
once the eyes darted sideways, and
something white ran past me. I turned with
my heart in my mouth, and saw a queer little
ape-like figure, its head held down in a
peculiar manner, running across the sunlit
space behind me. It blundered against a
block of granite, staggered aside, and in a
moment was hidden in a black shadow
beneath another pile of ruined masonry.

`My impression of it is, of course,
imperfect; but I know it was a dull white, and
had strange large greyish-red eyes; also
that there was flaxen hair on its head and
down its back. But, as I say, it went too fast
for me to see distinctly. I cannot even say
whether it ran on all-fours, or only with its
forearms held very low. After an instant's
pause I followed it into the second heap of
ruins. I could not find it at first; but, after a
time in the profound obscurity, I came upon
one of those round well-like openings of
which I have told you, half closed by a fallen
pillar. A sudden thought came to me. Could
this Thing have vanished down the shaft? I lit
a match, and, looking down, I saw a small,
white, moving creature, with large bright
eyes which regarded me steadfastly as it
retreated. It made me shudder. It was so like

-26-

when I pointed to this one, and tried to
frame a question about it in their tongue,
they were still more visibly distressed and
turned away. But they were interested by my
matches, and I struck some to amuse them.
I tried them again about the well, and again I
failed. So presently I left them, meaning to
go back to Weena, and see what I could get
from her. But my mind was already in
revolution; my guesses and impressions
were slipping and sliding to a new
adjustment. I had now a clue to the import of
these wells, to the ventilating towers, to the
mystery of the ghosts; to say nothing of a
hint at the meaning of the bronze gates and
the fate of the Time Machine! And very
vaguely there came a suggestion towards
the solution of the economic problem that
had puzzled me.

`Here was the new view. Plainly, this
second species of Man was subterranean.
There were three circumstances in
particular which made me think that its rare
emergence above ground was the outcome
of a long-continued underground habit. In
the first place, there was the bleached look
common in most animals that live largely in
the dark--the white fish of the Kentucky
caves, for instance. Then, those large eyes,
with that capacity for reflecting light, are
common features of nocturnal things--
witness the owl and the cat. And last of all,
that evident confusion in the sunshine, that
hasty yet fumbling awkward flight towards
dark shadow, and that peculiar carriage of
the head while in the light--all reinforced the
theory of an extreme sensitiveness of the
retina.

`Beneath my feet, then, the earth must be
tunnelled enormously, and these tunnellings
were the habitat of the new race. The
presence of ventilating-shafts and wells
along the hill slopes--everywhere, in fact,
except along the river valley--showed how

-27-

portions of the surface of the land. About
London, for instance, perhaps half the
prettier country is shut in against intrusion.
And this same widening gulf--which is due
to the length and expense of the higher
educational process and the increased
facilities for and temptations towards
refined habits on the part of the rich--will
make that exchange between class and
class, that promotion by intermarriage
which at present retards the splitting of our
species along lines of social stratification,
less and less frequent. So, in the end,
above ground you must have the Haves,
pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty,
and below ground the Have-nots, the
Workers getting continually adapted to the
conditions of their labour. Once they were
there, they would no doubt have to pay rent,
and not a little of it, for the ventilation of their
caverns; and if they refused, they would
starve or be suffocated for arrears. Such of
them as were so constituted as to be
miserable and rebellious would die; and, in
the end, the balance being permanent, the
survivors would become as well adapted to
the conditions of underground life, and as
happy in their way, as the Upperworld
people were to theirs. As it seemed to me,
the refined beauty and the etiolated pallor
followed naturally enough.

`The great triumph of Humanity I had
dreamed of took a different shape in my
mind. It had been no such triumph of moral
education and general co-operation as I
had imagined. Instead, I saw a real
aristocracy, armed with a perfected
science and working to a logical conclusion
the industrial system of 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

-28-

a peculiar shrinking from those pallid
bodies. They were just the half-bleached
colour of the worms and things one sees
preserved in spirit in a zoological museum.
And they were filthily cold to the touch.
Probably my shrinking was largely due to
the sympathetic influence of the Eloi, whose
disgust of the Morlocks I now began to
appreciate.

`The next night I did not sleep well. Probably
my health was a little disordered. I was
oppressed with perplexity and doubt. Once
or twice I had a feeling of intense fear for
which I could perceive no definite reason. I
remember creeping noiselessly into the
great hall where the little people were
sleeping in the moonlight--that night Weena
was among them--and feeling reassured
by their presence. It occurred to me even
then, that in the course of a few days the
moon must pass through its last quarter,
and the nights grow dark, when the
appearances of these unpleasant creatures
from below, these whitened Lemurs, this
new vermin that had replaced the old, might
be more abundant. And on both these days I
had the restless feeling of one who shirks
an inevitable duty. I felt assured that the
Time Machine was only to be recovered by
boldly penetrating these 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 to clamber down into the darkness
of the well appalled me. I don't know if you
will understand my feeling, but I never felt
quite safe at my back.

`It was this restlessness, this insecurity,
perhaps, that drove me further and further
afield in my exploring expeditions. Going to
the south-westward towards the rising
country that is now called Combe Wood, I
observed far off, in the direction of
nineteenth-century Banstead, a vast green

-29-

two hundred yards. The descent was
effected by means of metallic bars
projecting from the sides of the well, and
these being adapted to the needs of a
creature much smaller and lighter than
myself, I was speedily cramped and
fatigued by the descent. And not simply
fatigued! One of the bars bent suddenly
under my weight, and almost swung me off
into the blackness beneath. For a moment I
hung by one hand, and after that experience
I did not dare to rest again. Though my arms
and back were presently acutely painful, I
went on clambering down the sheer
descent with as quick a motion as possible.
Glancing upward, I saw the aperture, a
small blue 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 Underworld alone. But even
while I turned this over in my mind I
continued to descend. At last, with intense
relief, I saw dimly coming up, a foot to the
right of me, a slender loophole in the wall.
Swinging myself in, I found it was the
aperture of a narrow horizontal tunnel in
which I could lie down and rest. It was not
too soon. My arms ached, my back was
cramped, and I was trembling with the
prolonged terror of a fall. Besides this, the
unbroken darkness had had a distressing
effect upon my eyes. The air was full of the
throb and hum of machinery pumping air
down the shaft.

`I do not know how long I lay. I was roused by
a soft hand touching my face. Starting up in
the darkness I snatched at my matches and,
hastily striking one, I saw three stooping

-30-

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 such an experience.
When I had started with the Time Machine, I
had started with the absurd assumption that
the men of the Future would certainly be
infinitely ahead of ourselves in all their
appliances. I had come without arms,
without medicine, without anything to
smoke--at times I missed tobacco
frightfully!--even without enough matches.
If only I had thought of a Kodak! I could have
flashed that glimpse of the Underworld in a
second, and examined it at leisure. But, as
it was, I stood there with only the weapons
and the powers that Nature had endowed
me with--hands, feet, and teeth; these, and
four safety-matches that still remained to
me.

`I was afraid to push my way in among all
this machinery in the dark, and it was only
with my last glimpse of light I discovered
that my store of matches had run low. It had
never occurred to me until that moment that
there was any need to 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 had four
left, and while I stood in the dark, a hand
touched mine, lank fingers came feeling
over my face, and I was sensible of a
peculiar unpleasant odour. I fancied I heard
the breathing of a crowd of those dreadful
little beings about me. I felt the box of
matches in my hand being gently
disengaged, and other hands behind me
plucking at my clothing. The sense of these
unseen creatures examining me was

-31-

speedily clambering up the shaft, while they
stayed peering and blinking up at me: all but
one little wretch who followed me for some
way, and well-nigh secured my boot as a
trophy.

`That climb seemed interminable to me.
With the last twenty or thirty feet of it a deadly
nausea came upon me. I had the greatest
difficulty in keeping my hold. The last few
yards was a frightful struggle against this
faintness. Several times my head swam,
and I felt all the sensations of falling. At last,
however, I got over the well-mouth
somehow, and staggered out of the ruin into
the blinding sunlight. I fell upon my face.
Even the soil smelt sweet and clean. Then I
remember Weena kissing my hands and
ears, and the voices of others among the
Eloi. Then, for a time, I was insensible.

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 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

-32-

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 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 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.

-33-

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

-34-

`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
suchlike 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

-35-

Chapter 8

`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 learned 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 recognized 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

-36-

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 patent 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

-37-

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 recognized 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
moralized 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 airtight 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

-38-

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, Phoenician,
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 airtight 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.

-39-

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 hill-side,
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

-40-

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 spit 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
realization. In manoeuvring 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

-41-

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
recognized, 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

-42-

`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

-43-

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 the 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

-44-

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 fitted 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.

Chapter 11

`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, another thousands of days,

-45-

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

-46-

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 further 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 sand-bank had appeared in the

-47-

`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.

Chapter 12

`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 recognize our
own petty 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.

-48-

now I am telling you the story.

`I know,' he said, after a pause, `that all this
will be absolutely incredible to you. To me
the one incredible thing is that I am here to-
night in this old familiar room looking into
your friendly faces and telling you these
strange adventures.'

He looked at the Medical Man. `No. I cannot
expect you to believe it. Take it as a lie--or
a prophecy. Say I dreamed it in the
workshop. Consider I have been
speculating upon the destinies of our race
until I have hatched this fiction. Treat my
assertion of its truth as a mere stroke of art
to enhance its interest. And taking it as a
story, what do you think of it?'

He took up his pipe, and began, in his old
accustomed manner, to tap with it nervously
upon the bars of the grate. There was a
momentary stillness. Then chairs began to
creak and shoes to scrape upon the carpet.
I took my eyes off the Time Traveller's face,
and looked round at his audience. They
were in the dark, and little spots of colour
swam before them. The Medical Man
seemed absorbed in the contemplation of
our host. The Editor was looking hard at the
end of his cigar--the sixth. The Journalist
fumbled for his watch. The others, as far as I
remember, were motionless.

The Editor stood up with a sigh. `What a pity
it is you're not a writer of stories!' he said,
putting his hand on the Time Traveller's
shoulder.

`You don't believe it?'

`Well--'

`I thought not.'

The Time Traveller turned to us. `Where are

-49-

machine. If there is one!'

He caught up the lamp swiftly, and carried
it, flaring red, through the door into the
corridor. We followed him. There in the
flickering light of the lamp was the machine
sure enough, squat, ugly, and askew; a
thing of brass, ebony, ivory, and translucent
glimmering quartz. Solid to the touch--for I
put out my hand and felt the rail of it--and
with brown spots and smears upon the
ivory, and bits of grass and moss upon the
lower parts, and one rail bent awry.

The Time Traveller put the lamp down on the
bench, and ran his hand along the damaged
rail. `It's all right now,' he said. 'The story I
told you was true. I'm sorry to have brought
you out here in the cold.' He took up the
lamp, and, in an absolute silence, we
returned to the smoking-room.

He came into the hall with us and helped the
Editor on with his coat. The Medical Man
looked into his face and, with a certain
hesitation, told him he was suffering from
overwork, at which he laughed hugely. I
remember him standing in the open
doorway, bawling good night.

I shared a cab with the Editor. He thought
the tale a `gaudy lie.' For my own part I was
unable to come to a conclusion. The story
was so fantastic and incredible, the telling
so credible and sober. I lay awake most of
the night thinking about it. I determined to go
next day and see the Time Traveller again. I
was told he was in the laboratory, and being
on easy terms in the house, I went up to him.
The laboratory, however, was empty. I
stared for a minute at the Time Machine and
put out my hand and touched the lever. At
that the squat substantial-looking mass
swayed like a bough shaken by the wind. Its
instability startled me extremely, and I had a
queer reminiscence of the childish days

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sheets of drawings was absolutely distinct;
but this phantasm vanished as I rubbed my
eyes. The Time Machine had gone. Save
for a subsiding stir of dust, the further end of
the laboratory was empty. A pane of the
skylight had, apparently, just been blown in.

I felt an unreasonable amazement. I knew
that something strange had happened, and
for the moment could not distinguish what
the strange thing might be. As I stood
staring, the door into the garden opened,
and the man-servant appeared.

We looked at each other. Then ideas began
to come. `Has Mr. gone out that way?' said
I.

`No, sir. No one has come out this way. I
was expecting to find him here.'

At that I understood. At the risk of
disappointing Richardson I stayed on,
waiting for the Time Traveller; waiting for
the second, perhaps still stranger story, and
the specimens and photographs he would
bring with him. But I am beginning now to
fear that I must wait a lifetime. The Time
Traveller vanished three years ago. And, as
everybody knows now, he has never
returned.

EPILOGUE

One cannot choose but wonder. Will he ever
return? It may be that he swept back into the
past, and fell among the blood-drinking,
hairy savages of the Age of Unpolished
Stone; into the abysses of the Cretaceous
Sea; or among the grotesque saurians, the
huge reptilian brutes of the Jurassic times.
He may even now--if I may use the phrase-
-be wandering on some plesiosaurus-
haunted Oolitic coral reef, or beside the
lonely saline lakes of the Triassic Age. Or
did he go forward, into one of the nearer

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ages, in which men are still men, but with
the riddles of our own time answered and
its wearisome problems solved? Into the
manhood of the race: for I, for my own part,
cannot think that these latter days of weak
experiment, fragmentary theory, and mutual
discord are indeed man's culminating time!
I say, for my own part. He, I know--for the
question had been discussed among us
long before the Time Machine was made--
thought but cheerlessly of the Advancement
of Mankind, and saw in the growing pile of
civilisation only a foolish heaping that must
inevitably fall back upon and destroy its
makers in the end. If that is so, it remains for
us to live as though it were not so. But to me
the future is still black and blank--is a vast
ignorance, lit at a few casual places by the
memory of his story. And I have by me, for
my comfort, two strange white flowers--
shrivelled now, and brown and flat and
brittle--to witness that even when mind and
strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual
tenderness still lived on in the heart of man.

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